When people hear the phrase “stock photo” a lot of things come to mind. From “worst stock photo” lists on blogs to corny stock photo poses and smiles, people have a lot of misconceptions about exactly what stock photos can and should be used for. In reality, cheap stock images have a lot more uses than just as punch lines in “fail” lists. Businesses around the world rely on cheap stock photography to get the affordable images they need for legal commercial uses. Here’s the top three ways that cheap stock imagery is most commonly used.
- Online Graphics
Lots of bloggers and online content creators probably rely on images pulled off of Google Images to spruce up their posts, but that’s actually an illegal practice that could land you in a lot of trouble somewhere down the road. Every photograph is actually the intellectual property of the artist who captured it unless otherwise noted, and if you use random images that you don’t have the legal right to to spruce up your blog posts, you could face legal repercussions.
That being said, buying original photographs from high quality artists can be incredibly expensive, and isn’t in the budget for many bloggers and website owners. That’s why people turn to stock photography so often to spruce up their online content: it’s a great way to get high quality, high resolution images that you can use legally for a cheap price.
- Marketing Campaigns
Just like blogging, it’s illegal to use random images you find online for advertising campaigns and marketing purposes. And while someone may never see your blog posts that use illegal images if you are lucky, advertising campaigns are obviously meant to reach as many eyes as possible and can give your illegal image use a lot more exposure. If you want to construct marketing campaigns the legal way, cheap stock images are your best bet.
- Internal Presentations
Any commercial uses, even in interlan settings for trainings or Powerpoints that you deliver to your company, require licensing to use. And if you want to make sure that your presentations don’t put your coworkers to sleep, you will need some great imagery to spice things up. Cheap stock imagery is a great way to add color and pizazz to presentations without putting yourself in a bad legal position. Just like all of the other uses on this list, people rely on cheap stock pictures to keep themselves on the right side of the law for the right prices.