Most Bloggers Forget This Simple Rule. Do You?

When I wrote “most bloggers” in the title, I was including myself. In fact I forget this rule 80% of the time probably. Want to know what rule I am taking about? It is this one:

Include one image on each blog post you publish.

This rule is important for a couple of reasons. First of all adding images to your blog posts will help you capture the attention of distracted readers and encourage them to read your post.

Second, having images around will improve the design of your blog and make it more appealing.

Third, images can be a good source of search engine traffic, especially every post you publish has one (i.e., over time the combined traffic you’ll get for your images will add up).

So why do most bloggers forget this simple rule? Probably because they get lazy over time. That is my case at least. The solution is to force yourself to add those images initially, until you develop the habit.

Where to Find Images for Your Blog

“Where do you find images for your blog?” That is a question that I get asked quite often, therefore I decided to write about it.


The interesting thing is that the quality and sophistication of the images that I use grew gradually with my blogging experience. When I started blogging, I would just use Google Image Search. Some of those images were really awful, and some were even copyrighted. I used them nevertheless, thinking that both my readers and the authors would not care that much…

Over the time I discovered better places to find images. Royalty-free ones, which is more important. Below you will find 3 sources that I use often.

iStockphoto
I started using iStockphoto (referral link) only recently because I was reluctant to pay for images. “There are free resources out there, why should I pay then?” That was my reasoning, but I changed my mind after taking a look at the quality and variety of their database.

For most blogs the small format will suffice, and they cost $1 a pop. I think that is a reasonable price, specially if you consider that the quality of the images can separate your blog from the pack.

Stock.Xchng
While I like iStockphoto, I also like to save money. Most of the times before going to their site I will check some free resources to see if I can find a suitable image. My favorite one is Stock.Xchng.

The site has a smaller database, but the quality of the images is good enough. Another benefit is that you don’t need to register up (unless you want special image formats), just right click and “Save image as.”

Yotophoto
Yotophoto is a search engine that will look for royaly-free images on several places around the Internet (including Stock.Xchng, Flickr, Wikipedia, Morguefile and others).

The quality of the images is not so good, but it can be useful if you are looking for something very specific