Paying for images on a blog?

It depends on your goal for your blog. When I got a really cheap deal for stock I got some blog images there, but that was maybe 50c each. Most blogs are not going to be paying back the kind of investment you are talking about, unless you mean for a permanent logo or banner.

manego90 said:

Do you guys think hiring artist and photographers is going extreme for bringing content to your blog? And is $25-$75 a good price range for each picture you will be uploading for post on a monthly basis?

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I can't comment on the price, but if it makes you happy, then do it. You only live once (unless you believe in reincarnation) and your money is yours to spend as you will, be it on blogs, booze or luxury cruises.

Personally speaking, I would wait until my blog had matured before forking out money for it. For example, my blog was 3-4 years old before I decided to go for a custom domain and premium theme. Even now, I don't have a lot of followers, though that number is slowly increasing. But you might fork out a load of money on a new blog, only to find that you don't have the patience or stamina to update it regularly, or that you don't get many followers at all.

But it really does depend on what you want out of it. Nobody can tell you how to spend your money (unless they're a financial advisor).

I use images from places like Pixabay and a few other sites. Keep in mind that since you usually want an image around 640 pixels on the long side, and most of those images are up in the 2000x3000 range, you can crop down to a unique sliver of the original.

manego90 said:

Hi writers and bloggers!

Obviously, we can find free images and pictures around the net. In most situations, they are good and ok to use. I'm a big fan of originality and have no problem with using images from google images (as if there was anything wrong with that), but there are times where I want the picture to resonate completely with my blog post and have it's own sense of originality.

Do you guys think hiring artist and photographers is going extreme for bringing content to your blog? And is $25-$75 a good price range for each picture you will be uploading for post on a monthly basis?

Thank you to all who comment. Your suggestions and opions are very much appreciated.


p.s. In case you need to visit my blog page if you want to be very specific. (It's new so please be gentle)

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Be very, very careful with using images found on Google Images. They are not automatically free of copyright. For example, that image of the figure on the mountain you've used on your blog was created by commercial photographer Max Rive (scroll down).

If you didn't take the photo, you need to license it.

Finding it on the Web doesn't mean you can use it.

Look for public domain images, or creative commons licenses and read the license or permissions carefully.

Also remember to credit the artist/photographer as the license tells you

Ooh...please heed the wisdom of Helix and Admin. There are very good reasons why you shouldn't be doing Google grabs. Google image results does not equal free to use. You have to pay attention to the licensing and copyright. You can get yourself in a sticky wicket doing that...especially if you grab a professional stock photo site's property and you haven't paid for it.

Before you go down the road of paying someone, might I suggest having a read through the Where do you get images thread? It's a good resource.

I'm considering blogging on Medium and it seems like almost everyone there now uses photos from a source called Unsplash which is ostensibly free.

Yes! Unsplash is a very good resource for free photos. Nice quality. I second that one. You can also check out pexels.com or pixabay, but I've found Unsplash to be the nicest, personally.

I wouldn't do it myself.