Pretty Up Your Blog Posts With Stock Images

You may be the best writer in the world, but if you post to block nothing but text, chances are it's not going to get read. When people see nothing but text they are scared off. You need to pepper your long blog posts with images. This not only makes your overall post more appealing to the eye, but if you choose your images wisely, can give someone an idea of what your post is about instantly, keeping them from moving on without reading.

But where do you get good images for your blog? Well, you could take the pictures yourself. If you're blogging about personal stuff this is pretty easy because you have first hand access to images that are a relevant. Writing a post bout how your dog knocked over the trash can spilling old coffee grounds all over the floor? Just take a picture of it!

However, when you're writing on topics that have a much larger scope, even an abstract scope, it can be hard to generate your own imagery that is of high quality and captures your post's theme. For example, a blog post on how to forecast ROI (return on investment) for ranking well on certain keywords in Google. Sure, you could just take a snapshot of your computer screen with your browser pointed to Google, but you'd better off with a high resolution photograph or illustration that represents your idea more clearly

Where do you get such imagery? From stock photography websites! Stock photography websites offer thousands of photographs and graphic illustrations on hundreds of themes. Professional photographers take these pictures and offer them up for sale so that website owners, bloggers, and people in print media can purchase them for use.

You can find quality stock images on a wide range of topics, such as animals, miscellaneous objects, stock photos of people, and even abstract concepts like success, love, and humor.

How much does stock photography cost? Surprisingly, not much, but it does depend on how you plan to use the images. In most cases you can get a small image perfectly fine for publishing on the web for just a few cents. Typically you will purchase an image under a royalty free license, which means that you pay for it once, but can use it as many times as you like. However, you can't resell the image. For instance, while you can use an image to pretty up your blog post, you can't put that image on a t-shirt and sell it as your own work. When you purchase a royalty free image, the copyright ownership does not transfer to you.

You can pay for an extended license that grants you more rights, such as re-sell rights or copyright ownership, but this will come at a higher price. Sometimes a much higher price. Typically this is not a something you would want to worry about just for adding a picture to a blog post.

So the next time you're thinking about writing an epic blog post full of text, consider adding a few stock images to it. It is a very cost effective way capture a reader's attention and keep them reading!