So you’ve just finished some great content or blog post for your website and now you’re looking for some images to add to it. But you’re struggling to find the right images. Doing a search for stock photos could be the solution to your problem.
What are stock photos?
Let us explain first what stock photos exactly are. Most images you’ll see in magazines, on packaging, posters or websites aren’t created specifically for that product or promotion. What you’re actually seeing are so called stock photos. Stock photos are ready-to-use images which you may use by purchasing the license.
Stock photo websites is the place to find those photos and they make it easy for you to find the right photo. Once found most websites offer various ways to purchase the file. Roughly they can be separated in:
- Pay As You Go – Pay as you go to download the files you need, when you need them. Often simply as adding the files you want to a shopping cart and pay with a credit card or PayPal account.
- Credits – Credits are a payment method sold in preset packages. Credits let you pay once for multiple downloads up front and than download files with a click of a button. Note that most credits expire after a year.
- Subscriptions – Subscriptions give you a set number of credits each day that you can use to download files for the duration of the subscription.
The complete list
Below we’ve listed the complete list of the best stock photo websites, what they’ve got to offer, the purchase options, the results for a search for New Zealand, Basil and Truck photos and the cost of the files.
The 960 pixels sample
Cost for the files vary strong from website to website, ranging from just a few dollars up to a few hundred dollars. But to give you an idea we’ve checked what the cost would be if we’re after a full size photo (minimal 960 pixels wide) suitable for a website based on the cheapest credit pack. As you’ll see we often have to grab a over-sized image (medium size) as most small size photo dimensions are only around 800 pixels wide thus not suitable for our full size pick (coincidence?).
What else?
- All prices shown are in USD (unless otherwise mentioned).
Without further ado check out the complete list.
