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15 Great Sites for Legal, Free Content

June 9, 2008 by Jonathan Bailey

free and legal content

[Updated June 2018 by Laurel Devoto]

You don’t have to spend a bundle to get great free and legal content for your website. Photos, videos, sounds, and vectors are available for free online without breaking the bank or the law. Knowing where to find high-quality, relevant content is a great way to improve your website or blog and make it more interesting for visitors. Without spending a dime, you can still use high-quality images on your blog to improve reader engagement and help make your blog posts look more attractive. There are so many sites that offer a variety of licensing options to suit any project.

Web Content and Copyright Rules

Most types of content have some kind of copyright, which means that you can’t use them without permission. While there are notable exceptions — things old enough that they’ve fallen into the public domain, for example — in most cases you don’t want to use anything available online without express permission. Doing so can open you to a host of lawsuits.

However, there are licensing options available for those who want to use content created by others. Some types of licensing require you to pay. Others let you use the content for free as long as you follow the guidelines set forth by the creator. For example, you might have to include a link or credit; in other cases, you might only be able to use the content in certain locations or ways.

Always check the licensing options before choosing your content, even if it’s free. You want to understand the requirements so you can follow them when you use the content. If you misuse a photo, video, sound, or other types of media, it can be considered stealing. There are legal options available to artists whose work is used without the proper fees and attributions.

Evaluating Free Content

With so much content available, you shouldn’t ever have to settle for something that doesn’t fit your design vision perfectly. There are so many sites with such a variety of media available that putting in a little extra time should help you find what you want. For example, you might be able to find an excellent infographic on one site but find mesmerizing scenic images on another.

Look at the quality of the images offered on the site. If there are lots of gorgeous, high-resolution pictures available, you can rest assured that the site is worth your time. It can take some searching and playing with keywords to find the right images, so don’t waste your time on a site that doesn’t offer the content you want. Scroll through some of the featured images and perform a few common keyword searches to judge the quality of the content available.

If you’re worried that the images you’re choosing are overused, try doing a reverse image search to see how often they show up. If they’re splashed across pages similar to yours, there’s a chance that your audience has seen them before. You might want to expand your search to something new. You don’t want to look exactly like every other site in your niche.

15 Great Sites for Legal, Free Content

1. PhotoDropper

free stock images

If your site uses WordPress architecture, PhotoDropper is a quick way to find and attribute images. It helps you use the right kind of attribution so that you avoid any licensing or copyright issues as well. Since it’s an add-on for WordPress, it’s also designed to place the image on your site. Using something like PhotoDropper can help save you time and energy if adding images to your site is something you intend to do on a regular basis — like on your blog, for example.

2. StockSnap

free stock images

StockSnap is another site that offers high-quality images for content creators. Everything offered on the site uses Creative Commons CC0 Licensing, which means that you can use the image anyway you want without even attributing it. As StockSnap says in their discussion on licensing, though, attributing the image to the creator is a nice thing to do and you should consider doing it even if you don’t need to.

3. Pexels

free stock photos

Pexels also offers free stock images and videos under the CC0 license, so you don’t have to provide attribution. The site also has an option to download free videos to use on your site. You don’t have to sign up for a membership to use the site, though doing so may help you keep track of the photos that you download. If you’re often going back for more photos, having a record of ones you’ve already used can be useful so that you’re not using the same image twice.

4. Wikimedia Commons

free use images

With over 2 million media files, including images, videos, audio and eBooks, all available under Creative Commons, open source or public domain licensing, Wikimedia Commons is a great resource for anyone looking for media to use. Though commonly thought of as just another part of Wikipedia, files placed into the Wikimedia Commons are available for use by anyone and the site is easily searchable. The site also has sound and video clips that are licensed under the same terms of the images.

5. Freesound

free stock photos

Freesound is a site where people upload, share, and use sounds made by others for their sites. It’s a creative commons database with plenty of files available. If you’re editing a video or looking to add creative animations to your blog, Freesound is a great place to start. Like images, sound can be copyrighted. Everything available on Freesound is available without having to attribute the sound or pay for it — which can help reduce your media budget, especially if you use sounds regularly. Free and legal content can help you use your money for marketing or in other areas of your blog.

6. Freepik

free stock photo site

Freepik has a variety of media that’s free for personal and commercial use. The site also includes vectors. If you haven’t used a vector for things like logo design and site design before, consider trying it out. They’re ultra-high quality images that can be scaled up and down without losing quality. If you try to resize a picture too often, it might look blurry or distorted. That’s no good when you need the same image on multiple types of projects, like logos, headers and business cards. Vectors are a better choice for these projects.

7. Videezy

free stock images

Videezy is another site where you can purchase high-definition stock videos, b-rolls, backgrounds, and other types of videos. You need to look at the license on each individual video and make sure that you can use it in the type of project you’re creating. On Videezy, some downloads are only available to be used for free in personal projects. Others are free for use on commercial projects. Just make sure that you’re following the terms of the licensing for each individual file.

8. SoundBible

free stock pictures

With new sounds being added three times per week, SoundBible offers a great library of free and legal content for people looking to add audio files to their projects. Whether you’re adding sounds to your blog or editing video to display on it, you’ll find something to enhance your project on the site. Sounds download in an MP3 format.

9. Stock Footage 4 Free

free high quality stock photos

At Stock Footage 4 Free, there are more than 115,000 stock footage clips, motion backgrounds and templates. You have lots of options to choose from if you’re looking to improve a single blog entry or planning an overhaul of your entire blog. One benefit of the site is that each video has a great description. This means that you don’t have to watch a lot of videos to find exactly what you’re looking for. Check out their license agreement to see what kinds of projects you can use their content in.

10. Burst by Shopify

free stock images

Burst offers new photos for download and use every week. They’re offered to help people create a retail store on Shopify, but you can use them in projects for your blog as well. People can contribute images to the site; you won’t ever know exactly what you’ll find. You don’t have to attribute the images you download from Burst, but in their terms they suggest doing it anyway. It’s a great place to find a revolving series of images so it’s worth checking on a regular basis.

11. FreePhotos.cc

free stock photos

If you want to search a lot of creative commons images at once, FreePhotos.cc offers that service. You can use common categories and tags to find images that are free to use without attribution. This site also offers a subscription service that sends zipped images to your email. This can be helpful if you’re looking for some additional inspiration. They also ask that you link their service to others — like people who you swap blog posts with, for example — if you like what they offer.

12. Clipstill

free stock images

Cinemagraphs are described by Clipstill as a “living photograph — a still image with seamlessly looping subtle moving element.” They’re usually 3-8 seconds in length. According to the site, they help increase user engagement. This is likely because they’re interesting, in-motion, and able to catch the eye and interest of the person viewing your site. You can use them as you’d use regular images or as a web design element. You have to link to the cinemagraphs you download. They’re all downloadable in MP4 format.

13. Fotor

free stock images

If you use a WordPress blog, then consider trying Fotor for downloading and using Creative Commons images. It lets you find them and embed them directly into your blog posts and photos. They have more than 335 million images to choose from. If you scroll down the page, you’ll see categories like nature, animals, and religion, among others. If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, scanning a category might help you find something that works perfectly.

14. Life of Pix

free images creative commons

Life of Pix offers royalty free stock photos that are high-resolution. They’ll help keep your website looking sharp. They also have a neat feature called photographer of the week. It highlights the contributions of a particular photographer. The person changes every week and the site links to a variety of art that is available from that person. They also have a variety of free and legal content like videos for download, helping you find all the media you need in one place.

15. New Old Stock

public domain stock photos

One benefit to using older photos is that they can use them without having to pay or use attribution. Once things are free of copyright, they belong to everyone and can be used in any way you choose. All the photos posted on New Old Stock are historical photographs that come from the public archives. The might not be suitable for all blog types, but they’re excellent for aesthetic blogs or anything that needs a touch of old-time flair. Since the public domain has a ton of free and legal content, it’s easy to find historic images when you need them.

The Right Photo

The importance of excellent photos can’t be overstated. According to an article in Entrepreneur, blog posts with photos get 650 percent more engagement than blog posts that consist only of text. This means that even if the content you’re writing is excellent, it will be difficult to find an audience or be shared on social media sites without great pictures.

Text doesn’t capture a person’s interest immediately in the same way that images do. Interesting scenery, groups of people, animals, instructional photos — all of these can help keep someone on your blog long enough for them to be engaged by your writing. If you use relevant images, they can also help signal the content of your post to a reader. This helps them decide right away whether the post is right for them. Since there’s so much free and legal content available, you should be using images in every post.

It’s also important to use relevant images. If someone sees something that doesn’t resonate with their interests, they might leave the page before engaging with your content. You don’t have to stick to a single site to find great stock photos. As a matter of fact, you should hedge your bets and try a few different sites when performing searches. You’ll be more likely to find the perfect free stock photo, video, audio, or vector for your project. While one site might have the right photo for a blog post about one topic, you may find that another site suits a different topic better. So dive in and try a few sites to see whether the perfect stock photo is available for free for your blog.

Author: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey writes at Plagiarism Today, a site about plagiarism, content theft and copyright issues on the Web. Jonathan is not a lawyer and none of the information he provides should be taken as legal advice.

Related

Filed Under: Features, Multimedia Tagged With: blog content, copyright, Digital Images, free images, Legal, Photos, Videos

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Comments

  1. Sue says

    June 10, 2008 at 6:22 am

    There’s another great resource: Community Webshots.
    If I can’t find a photo at Flickr, I head right over there and usually succeed.

    There are five sizes available, each with a preview, and the different methods of posting them are given in the preview box (Blog or website, direct link, or forum BB code).

    Between Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, Stock Exchange and Webshots, there is no excuse not to have legal photos on your site. :)

    And thanks for the other links. Other than Open Source Audio, I’d never heard of them.

    • Oceanora says

      January 30, 2016 at 9:31 pm

      Here my suggestion:

      For picture without attribution link:
      1. Pixabay
      2. StockSnap
      3. http://logojuice.net/
      4. Life of Pix
      5. Pictography

  2. Jonathan Bailey says

    June 10, 2008 at 9:34 am

    Sue: Thanks for the reminder about Webshots, it is easy to forget about them with so many great sites for finding images!

    Very welcome for the other links. Hope some of them help out!

  3. William Stewart says

    June 13, 2008 at 11:17 pm

    Flickr is great for photos to add to your blog posts, though I do think it’s important to add an attribution of where the photo came from.

    Hulu is unfortunately only available in the US, so for us “international bloggers”, we’ll stick to Youtube for the time being!

  4. Marina Hotforwords says

    August 6, 2008 at 9:12 pm

    Very true! These sites are great resources for all bloggers. I can add two more into your library:
    http://www.hotforwords.com
    http://www.oed.com

    Marina

    • J. Chavez says

      October 10, 2013 at 4:21 am

      I struggle with creating content on my site all the time. Since English is not my first language, it is often tough to come up with words to help me explain my thoughts.

      Syndication allows me to offer great fresh content for my readers. I also love using PLR articles as well. They often give me great ideas on what to write.

      Recently I found a really cool tool that helps this creative process considerably. It is unlike any article spinner that I have ever seen. It uses a whole different way to construct articles that makes creating unique content very quickly based on a keyword phrase.

      The link to this cool content tool is http://www.freewebcontentguide.com/go/rcw-for-free-blog-content-creation
      It would be nice to hear what you think of it. Make it a great day.

  5. alisheraz says

    August 30, 2008 at 3:20 pm

    It is really a very nice gesture to give the information about these sites. As I love to visit flicker and also VOXANT. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS is quite informative. I will send this link to all of my friends. I believe that this will modify the isolated communities on internet.

    John

    Outsourcing Solution in Pakistan

  6. Shawn says

    August 30, 2008 at 3:24 pm

    there’s no question on the popularity of photo blogs but i woudln’t upload any photo due to unprotection by not having copy rights or by not having restrictions to download them.

    Shawn

    Outsourcing Solution in Pakistan

  7. Shaikh Izaj Ahmed says

    October 12, 2008 at 3:26 am

    Really a good knowledge for those who are newbies for blogging, Actually it is must to blog with your own content but some times it may be helpful.

  8. Raymond says

    January 12, 2009 at 11:36 am

    I belong to several video sites. One day (when I grow up) I will put one up myself. As I look at the pros and cons of different video sites, I find HULU has what is a serious con for me. HULU’s videos are only up for a limited time. So if you are blogging and want to refer back to a post with a HULU video that has been taken down, you might want to think twice. I just found this blog today. Thanks for the great post, I will use this information.

  9. Bob Richards says

    May 30, 2013 at 4:16 pm

    Just found another site that so far works well
    http://www.backlinkmetro.com

  10. APNA JAHANIAN says

    November 2, 2013 at 6:08 am

    well, I don’t think, because if you are applying for google adsense, you must provide content by you… and adsense hates copyright issues…

  11. Bryan says

    December 19, 2013 at 2:46 am

    Great site here..
    why not add this in your list http://www.prweb.com.

  12. Prince Asiedu says

    January 24, 2014 at 5:30 am

    content management have been problem for ‘cos I don’t time to feed my blog with fresh content but now I’m ok http://justpizo.com thanks for the post

  13. Skitterphoto says

    May 14, 2014 at 8:52 am

    Great blog, I’d like to add a free source for photo content. All images on http://www.skitterphoto.com are free to download, modify and share.

  14. Cynthia C says

    May 30, 2015 at 11:09 am

    I write 2 blogs and I’m always looking for free use image and video sources. I ‘ve used Creative Commons and Unsplash as some of my sources. I just found Pablo by Buffer, plus some new sources here.

  15. zahidul says

    June 19, 2015 at 3:53 am

    I think MyGuestBlog is also a great site to get 100% unique content. Thanks for sharing new, like Flickr, Hulu etc.

  16. sansan says

    June 25, 2015 at 11:02 am

    Thanks for sharing, great free content

  17. Max says

    September 17, 2015 at 12:00 pm

    Need help finding content , check out –

    https://www.fiverr.com/maxcode360/do-deep-internet-research-for-you

  18. Lisa says

    October 8, 2015 at 1:57 am

    Very good resources for finding web content. Thank you for sharing Jonathan!

  19. Frank Carter says

    November 8, 2015 at 3:05 pm

    Another great resource for finding free legal content is Article City http://www.articlecity.com.

  20. Nicholas Filar says

    March 14, 2016 at 3:06 pm

    I frequently use Wikipedia commons. I have found trouble finding decent images on Flickr though. Really hit and miss. Google image>search tools> is a good method for finding free images. It’s what I used here: naturalrecomposition.com/fitness-trends-that-might-kill-you

  21. tina says

    April 6, 2016 at 6:40 am

    Thanks Jonathan, this’s very useful article.

  22. Andi says

    April 24, 2016 at 10:14 am

    Very helpful, thanks Jonathan for great article

  23. Cathie Dunklee-Donnell says

    June 4, 2016 at 10:54 am

    This is awesome. So many great resources. Would using an article be duplicate copy? Would you just quote it instead?

  24. Randy Garcia says

    June 14, 2016 at 5:41 pm

    I never implemented ArticlesBase. I’m going to give this one a try and I’ll let you know how it works. Thanks for sharing Jonathan!

  25. syed says

    June 29, 2016 at 1:39 pm

    i work really hard on making my content but when i see someone publising it witough my consent, its painful. they should rather look for these resources where they can get free conent for republishing

  26. Andy Kuiper says

    July 5, 2016 at 6:43 pm

    On the way to check out stock.xchnge – thanks for sharing these resources;
    Andy :-)

  27. asad says

    August 15, 2016 at 4:21 pm

    Thanks for sharing J

  28. asad says

    August 15, 2016 at 4:22 pm

    Thanks for sharing
    http://www.healthcaretipsweb.com/

  29. Phill. says

    October 13, 2016 at 4:22 pm

    Thanks Jonathan just what I have been looking for.

  30. Randy Garcia says

    December 25, 2016 at 6:06 pm

    Thank you Jonathan! I’m really glad I found this, helped me move into the right direction.

  31. Mark Toll says

    December 26, 2016 at 3:23 pm

    This is a great post but i do have a question… If you republish someone else’s text, don’t you get penalized from the search engines?

  32. Shaun Doetzel says

    January 18, 2017 at 2:01 pm

    Great resources Jonathan! Thanks for sharing. Need to check out stock.xchnge asap!

  33. John Wood says

    April 3, 2017 at 6:29 pm

    Thanks for mentioning the Photo Dropper WordPresss plugin. I will be checking that out.

  34. Cary Blackburn says

    April 11, 2017 at 12:09 am

    I had no idea about PhotoDropper for Flickr images on WordPress sites. Usually, we would spend the time to look for images manually and use the embed code. Stock.xchnge looks great as we’ve been using Pixabay and Pexels to death. Thanks for these!

  35. CDI Spaces says

    June 27, 2017 at 11:41 am

    Here are few more recent sites with free stock photos:

    StockSnap.io
    Unsplash.com
    Burst (By Shopify)

    All these sites have photos that are more on the modern side – like the type of imagery you would see on Instagram.

  36. Patrick Leonard says

    June 27, 2017 at 9:27 pm

    Some useful tips here for finding stock images or content that you can use without getting yourself into trouble!

  37. Marketing Channels says

    November 22, 2017 at 5:11 pm

    Beyond being able to use the content – can I leverage this content for SEO?

  38. Santosh kumar says

    March 17, 2018 at 2:19 am

    Hi Jonathan, I have  read your full post and trying to start a blog. but, here’s a big question, whether Google and its algorithms will recognize and rank such sites and blogs? If we post those contents which are all ready listed on other article directories. 

  39. Murphy says

    August 14, 2018 at 1:13 am

    Hey Jonathan,
    Thank you for sharing this post. This is a nice job by you. It is easy to find free web content with your tips but how about page rank of our blog or website by Search Engine after using it which already exists on the web. Thank you again for providing this article which is helpful for the people who are already searching for free content…

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