A Requirement For Professionalism in Web Design.
If you’re serious about running a web design company, you need to have a membership with a stock photo agency. Sure, if you’re a massive agency with a whole division of graphic artists, you may be able to get away with creating all of your creative from scratch.
But for the rest of us regular web design businesses, it is so much easier to simply find what you’re looking for on stock photo sites. It’s also cheaper, with the licenses costing far less than the cost of a full-time creative staff.
Sites To Keep Your Budget in Check:
Stock photography can be even more affordable if you use coupons. It’s a competitive field and all of the websites offer discounts for those looking to save on your order. Here are some selections we found:
- For iStock by Getty Images – iStock promo code
- For Getty Images – Both websites are owned by Getty Images, but they have different coupons and payment systems. http://www.gettyimages.com/
- For Photos.com – Couponcabin
- For Dreamstime – Goodsearch.com
Stock Photo Sites Aren’t Just About Photos
Image Credit: iStock
Even though we call them stock “photo” sites, you can find much more than just high quality photos (like the one on the right here) on iStock. You can get stock footage for commercials, tv shows and movies.
There is also an unlimited trove of clipart that you can use when building a logo for your website. If you have a promotion for Leap Year, for example you can find thousands of calendars that will fit into your creative.
What About Rights?
Stock photo usage rights can be a bit confusing, and that can scare a lot of people away from using them. But they are pretty simple and allow you lots of flexibility in their usage.
According to iStock’s official license agreement, there are two types of licenses: Standard and extended.
99.9% of you will be using the standard license. It has no expiration date, and it gives you unlimited usage for material like your website, blog, advertisements, etc. With print, you can use stock photos for print runs of up to 500,000. If you go above that, then you are in ‘extended license’ territory (say, a national newspaper ad with a circulation of 5 million readers).
The only restrictions are common sense. Don’t claim that you took the photo/drew the picture yourself. You don’t have exclusive rights (meaning other people can still buy the same photo from the website) and more.