Stock Images, Hotlinking, and Other Image Issues for Bloggers

I’ve talked about blog photography a lot in my Blogging 101 series, but it’s mostly been focused on taking photos yourself. But being a blogger doesn’t mean you always need to take your own photos! Of course, you can’t just pop onto Google or re-use an image you found on Pinterest because of Copyright. But, you can find a large selection of images online which have been created and licensed for other people to use them on their own sites. 

There’s many Stock Photo sites which have images available for use (for FREE) on your own blog – but you have to know that you’re using them right. Different sites have different licenses for different images, and to make sure you’re not at risk of getting in trouble, you need to choose the correct images which have licenses to fit what you’re using them for.  

Image Licenses

Creative Commons License

The most common type (get it?) type of license to look out for as a blogger would be a Creative Commons License. These are a series of licenses which photographers can apply when putting them online to protect their copyright to the image whilst still allowing others to use it free of charge. 

Creative Commons licenses require attribution to the image creator which is just crediting the image as you’ve probably seen talked about on social before. This credit should be visible on your site when using this kind of license. These images are also often unavailable for commercial use – and so cannot be used for posts that include advertorial content.  

Public Domain

Public Domain images don’t explicitly have a license in place – however the image creator has placed their work into the ‘public domain’ for anyone to use in whatever way they would like. These are often labelled with a Public Domain Mark 1.0 which means there is no copyright attached. You can therefore use the image, modify, distribute and post the image even for commercial purposes without asking permission from the image creator.

For creators to release their works into the public domain, they can use the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) License which is an extension of Creative Commons. 

Royalty Free (RF) License

A large amount of stock images fall under the Royalty Free License, where the designer using the image only needs to purchase the image once and has unlimited use with it afterwards. 

You can only print up to half a million copies of the image with a RF license, and you cannot create derivative products (such as posters, calendars, cups etc.). Which is where many creators get into trouble when they start to create additional income streams through merch. 

Royalty Free Extended License

If you do want to create derivative products (such as posters, calendars, cups etc.) you will need an Extended Royalty Free License. However there are usually number limits applied to the image used. 

Rights Managed (RM) License

Rights Managed Licenses means the buyer will need to define exactly where the image will be used and for what. This includes number of printed copies, length of time used, size, and industry. With a RM License you can exclusively purchase an image just for you in the industry, meaning competitors can’t. As these can sometimes be costly and it’s so specific, these aren’t really worth it for blogging – however it’s good to know what this means if you come across it. 

Editorial Use License

You’ll be hard-pressed to find stock photos which can be used for commercial purposes that include recognisable products, brands, and people. An Editorial Use License is applied on images that feature brands, recognisable products, logos, celebrities, and events. This means they can only be used for editorial and newsworthy stories and not any form of advertising or commercial application. 

Stock Photo Websites

Many stock photo sites have images available in the public domain or under creative commons or royalty free licenses. Meaning you are free to use them on your blog, depending on specific stipulations of the license. However it’s always advisable to research and determine each of the images you find on these sites to ensure you know what you’re able to do with them.

• Pexels
• Unsplash
• StockSnap
• Pixabay
• Free Range Stock
• Death to Stock
• Magdeleine
• Pic Jumbo
• Picography
• CreativeCommons
• MorgueFile
• Public Domain Pictures
• Splitshire
• Stockvault
• Getrefe
• PhotoPin

Design Assets

It’s not just images you may need help with! There’s a selection of sites which let you download icons, fonts, textures, and other parts of design. These can help you to up your design game for your blog – by giving stock images and your own images a little embellishment to make your own. 

• Creative Market
• FreePik
• FlatIcon
• Graphic Burger
• IconFinder
• Web Design Depot

Hotlinking Images

One thing I keep seeing bloggers doing to ‘get around’ copyright images is to use hotlinking instead. Some people believe that because they’ve used the original URL of an image when using html to place it on their site, that they’re no longer in trouble if the image has a copyright attached. Not only is this wrong, but it can have larger implications for both the original owner and the blogger. 

What is hotlinking?

In as simple terms as possible – hotlinking is displaying an image on your site with the source being the original image owners website. If you’re a fan of HTML mode or you’ve just accidentally clicked into it before, you will have seen how your images have their own URLs instead of just being images. Hotlinking means you’re using the URL of someone else’s website to display that image on your own website. 

How hotlinking affects the original website?

If a blog is using hot-linked images, it means that every time someone visits their site and that image is loaded on the browser, it’s loaded from the original websites server. The more people visiting the blog means the image is loaded more times, putting additional strain on the original websites servers. This can also add costs to the original owner, especially if they are a small blogger with a limited plan. 

How hotlinking affects you?

If you use images that are hotlinking to other sites, it means you have less control over the images on your own site. If the original owner deletes the image, so does your own. If they change the image to be something completely different, so does your own. This could have possible adverse effects to your blog posts. 

If your images are being hot-linked… then you can get your own back by changing the image that is attributed to that URL or deleting the image. This means the hot-linker gets the above effects on their content. Otherwise you can also reach out and tell them to remove the content, as if you own the images it is still deemed under copyright!

Other Image Issues

Images for Different Reasons

For blog posts – you need images for different reasons. For example, I have an image at the top which works as a blog header and featured image on my homepage. Whilst this works well as a horizontal image, it doesn’t fit the needs of other platforms such as Pinterest. For this reason, I create other images which I post there in a vertical format. 

Making sure you find images that can be edited to fit all your needs after you’ve posted your blog post is vital. You can often download a stock photo and edit it multiple different ways before you’re done with it.

Sizing

When it comes to blog images – the size of the file can put extra pressure on your load times which affects your readers experience. If you’re creating your own graphics, make sure you use exact sizes to fit your blog’s width to optimise it. If you’ve already created many images which are larger, try using a plug-in which compresses images to make up for this.