You’d be surprised, but a lot of online services like to charge money for the photographs they take.

Okay, maybe you’re not all that surprised. You’ve run a few Google searches yourself and, after viewing about 15 pages worth of links, you’re all tapped out on finding free photos for your blog and just want to know how it can be done.

Well, you’ve come to the right place, even if it meant you had to Google “how to find free photos for your blog.” Let’s explore exactly how you can find free photos, start publishing them to your blog, and never have to worry about copyright or payment issues again.

Start with Stock: Here are the Good Sites
The first thing you want to know is where the free, high-quality images come from. You get right to the point, don’t you? Well, good, because we’ve got the answers:

Everystockphoto

The key to making this site work for you is to take full advantage of the search filters. In other words, not all of their stock photos are royalty-free, so you’re going to have to do a bit of picking and choosing in order to ensure that you find the photos you’ve been looking for. So make sure that every search you enter also comes with the right filters.

Stock.xchng

There’s also a mix of royalty-requiring and royalty-free stock photos here, so you’ll have to make sure that when you find that right high-quality image that it doesn’t come with watermark. But it’s worth checking out simply because there are so many images available that there are bound to be some high-quality, free ones.

123rf

If your blog’s design is better suited to the smaller stock photos out there, then this site is for you – it generally ranges up to the 400px mark which means you’ll find mostly icons and small images here. On the plus side, it’s easy to find these for free at 123rf.

Google Creative Commons Image Search

How could we ever forget Google? Make sure you just enter in your Google Image search properly and use the “usage rights parameter” when you’re searching; this way, you’ll guarantee yourself no copyright infringement and you’ll have access to a database of high quality images that will, quite frankly, blow your mind.

Here’s How to Avoid the Pay Sites
Okay, that heading was a lie, because there’s really no way to completely avoid the pay sites. But if you just assemble a quick list of sites that do offer high quality royalty-free photos – and we just created a list for you above – then you should have no problem finding the pictures your blog needs in the future. Keep these sites bookmarked under one specific folder and you’ll be able to search a cornucopia of blog-ready photo files; just make sure that you remember to actually write the blog posts when you add them to your blog. Can’t forget the words!

Carrie Thompson is an SEO project manager for RYP Marketing, a Roanoke internet marketing company specializing in web design, search engine optimization, white label SEO, Google Adwords (PPC) and more.