A reader asks:
As a small business we can’t afford to pay a lot for things we’ll rarely use. We want some business related pictures (pictures of business people, business meetings etc.) for our advertising and our new website, but stock images are expensive. So do you know where we can get some cheap or better still free business pictures?
In general I’d argue strongly against skimping on marketing material, cheap, poor quality images could cost you far more in lost opportunities than you’ll save. That said however, while many of the large well known suppliers of stock images do charge relatively high fees there is now a considerable range of cheap, low priced competitors offering some excellent quality images. For example I’ve purchased some excellent business related pictures from fotolia where prices start at £0.50 per image and most are offered on a royalty free license. A quick Google search for “cheap stock photos” suggest that you might also find the following useful:
- iStockPhoto is very similar to fotolia and it’s prices look to be comparable.
- DreamsTime which is also very similar.
There are quite a few others offering stock images starting in the $1-$5 range too. However if the cheap ones listed above are beyond your budget then there are a few other options, which provide free business images:
- Stock.XCHNG which claims to be the leading free stock photo site.
- Flickr - Not everything on Flickr is usable, but they do provide a range of images that are free provided the original creator is given credit (under the Creative Commons Attribution license).
- everystockphoto.com which provides a search engine that pulls in several sources, notably Flickr and Stock.XCHNG for business photos.
I’m sure there are more, but those are the ones I use regularly.
Asking John:
Do you have a business question you would like me to answer? If so you can Ask John, inquire about using me as your Business Consultant or or you can ask on the forums where you’ll get both my input and that of your fellow entrepreneurs.
This blog is about business opportunities and ideas that I spot, think of or hear about and think are useful and interesting. It is intended to provide ideas and inspriation for you to help you find the right business idea for you to then grow it into a successful business.
You can also get free images by searching commons.wikimedia.org. But I’ve been using iStockPhoto for several years with good results.
We use Bigstockphoto for all our photos, they are fairly similar to istock and charge about the same.
Having good photos on any marketing material is worth speding some money on. First impressions do count.