Free Images For Your Website

There is an old saying: A picture is worth a thousand words!

And on top of that, some images even ask questions!

The only one who doesn’t think so is Google. Well… They are getting better at understanding images. But they have a long way to go yet, so we still have to describe our images to Google in image tags.

Find great and free images for your website

I know you can find images of higher quality on a standard stock site. And they have a lot more images to choose from. But at the same time, I sincerely hate many of these sites because they are ONLY in it for the money! Ok – fair enough. Money is what makes the world go around. But when it becomes too obvious it looks like greed to me.

Besides – You rarely need 6000*5000 pixel images. Images of slightly lower quality will often do fine.

In order to make even more money many of the big classic stock sites have invented their own currency. They often call these “Credits”. So instead of buying images with normal dollars on a credit card you first have to buy credits. And the smart thing is YOU CAN’T BUY CREDITS MATCHING THE IMAGE YOU WANT! You HAVE to buy MORE credits than you need which means your image will suddenly and secretly become more expensive.

And you end up with an account on a stock site where you have some dollars. Not enough to buy one more credit. And you will ALWAYS have some money you can’t use this way.

Sorry folks. I hate it and I won’t support it.

But luckily we have so many sites that offer free images and to this day I still haven’t bought any stock images. I almost bought one for a book once, but I realized by spending a week reading their terms that I could use one of their free images if I credited the photographer.

Search for free images on Google

You will notice if you search for Free Images on Google that all the big stock sites will show up. And most of them have absolutely no free images so it is a jungle! I tried this several times and just end up with an image that is not free at all.

All the big stock sites have occupied the first pages of google search results which means all the smaller websites with free images appear far down in the Google search. So they can be tricky to find.

List of websites offering FREE images

Here is a list of sites where you can download beautiful free images for your website.

There are hundreds of stock image sites out there, but we also got a great number of sites where we can download FREE images! Some of the commercial sites also have free downloads but are often connected with terms like you have to post a link to the site.

This is a list of these which I have used a lot and you can find a lot of beautiful free images. Many are only small sites and some of them are front for IstockImages so they mix up free and paid images – which can make it hard to find the free ones. Pexels and Pixabay are my favorites and have the largest free collection of images. Unsplash is also one of the better sites.

1. Pexels.com
2. Pixabay.com
3. WikiMedia Commons
4. kaboompics.com
5. unsplash.com
6. Pickupimage.com
7. stocksnap.io
8. burst.shopify.com
9. freerangestock.com
10. SkitterPhoto.com
11. Lifeofpix.com
12. LibreShot.com
13. gratisography.com
14. www.flickr.com – You need to sign up and look under Explore / Commons. Remember to check the license for each image as they vary.
15. Dreamstime.com is a commercial site but they have free images you can use under different terms.
16. VeryFunnyPics.eu
17. FreeImages.com
18. Morguefile.com
19. StockSnap.io
20. Make4fun.com
21. Imagehousing.com
22. NewOldStock
23. DesiBucket.com
24. PngMart.com – NOT for commercial use!
25. PicJumbo.com
26. Vecteezy.com – When you search you can sort the free images by clicking Free Licence in the left bar (which isn’t present on all pages). Many are free but requires attribution on most.
27. Splitshire.com
28. FoodiesFeed.com – Tons of food images
29. ImgBin.com – 3 free downloads a day

Image sizes and cropping in WordPress

Downloading images and uploading them to WordPress without resizing them is a huge mistake! Your site will become slooooooow! If you download an image in 6000 * 5000 pixels you want to reduce it manually to 800 * 600 or whatever size you need. Cut it to the biggest size you want to use on your website, then apply compression. either by using an online service, or a graphics program like Gimp or WordPress plugins.

In the beginning, you should simply upload your images as 1024 pixels and WordPress will create smaller versions it will use on smaller devices. This will match the needs of almost any user demands.

WordPress will automatically create smaller versions of your image like this:

• Thumbnail size: 150px (square)
• Medium size: Max width and height of 300px
• Large size: Max width and height of 1024px
• Full size: The original size of your image

You’ll want to upload your images in 1024px if you plan to use only these default image sizes. And I recommend you do it until you have the time to go more advanced. This will allow your images to be served correctly even at the largest size, which may not be possible if your image is smaller than the largest size WordPress is using (which is 1024px by default).

If you feel the need to go more advanced here is a video for you.

Image Compression

Image compression is very important. It takes unnecessary information out of the pictures. Images have to load fast and this is the way to do it. There are a few sites out there that will help you compress your images after you cut them to the right size.

1. Imageoptim.com
2. compressjpeg.com
3. iloveimg.com/compress-image
4. imagecompressor.com

WordPress plugins:

There are quite a few WordPress image plugins on the WordPress Repository (Look under Plugins in the Admin panel when you are logged in to your WordPress site). I have tested many of them but I tend to use these plugins. The advantage od using plugins is if you have many images this is a lot faster.

1. Smush
2. EWWW Image Optimizer

Graphics Programs

If you want to do the image compression yourself you can use these programs. Personally, I use Gimp. It takes a little time to learn but it is free and when you save your jpg image you can compress it. I start with 50% compression and look at size and quality. If I go for quality I start at 60-65%. You should als resize your image to the correct size as this will make the size considerably smaller.

1. Riot
2. Gimp – although it is quite complicated.

Keywords used in this article:
beautiful free images 10-100 medium competition
free images for your website 10-100 no competition
free images 1000-10.000 low competition – is my main keyword