Finding affiliate marketing images can be risky and time-consuming – bloggers have the same issues. Images and other graphics play a critical role in your content marketing strategy. Visitors are skimming your content and graphics provide a way to present data in a visually appealing manner.
They inform readers, reduce bounce rates, eliminate walls of text and even provide SEO opportunities. Unfortunately creating quality graphics can be time-consuming and expensive.
Amazon affiliates and others also need to also be careful to not use images improperly or risk being de-authorized from the affiliate program. Fortunately, there are many free sources for stock photos to help you.
Amazon affiliates and others also need to also be careful to not use images improperly or risk being de-authorized from the affiliate program. Fortunately, there are many free sources for stock photos to help you.
We look at …
- rules for using 3rd party images
- can i use product images on my website
- sources for free images
- licensing types
- Amazon Associates issues
- raster vs. vector images
- free editors
Go to our content marketing page for more tips.
Vector vs Raster Images
Vector images are made up of lines, points, curves and mathematical formulas. They have the advantage of being smaller and resizable to any size with loss of quality. Icons, Fonts, line art are examples of vector images. Raster images, on the other hand, are larger and limited in scaling by their original size and resolution. Photos are always raster images. Fonts are typically vector graphics as are most logos so don’t just focus on image and photo libraries.
Our Image and Vector Sources Checklist
Below is our checklist of free libraries for you to use. Just check off an item that you have already visited for your project. Your selections will be remembered when you return.
Image and Photo Sources
Vector Graphic Sources
About Free Sources
Many companies create collections of images that can be freely used. Often these sites are ad-based and looking for the traffic that comes from bloggers and affiliates coming to their sites. They also may have premium packages and other fee-based products to create revenue. They often have links to paid stock libraries.
Copyrights — Proper Usage and Attribution of Images
Original artwork of all kinds is subject to complex copyright laws. The best course is to either create your own graphics or properly license them. Some images are free to use, some request attribution and some sites have both free and premium files. Just check, it is easy to confirm the license type from these sites. All the vector graphics and image sites in this post offer free vectors, fonts or stock photos. But the license may vary. There are a few types of licenses you will encounter…
- Creative Commons Zero (CC0) — These can be used for any purpose with no attribution required. Even these though may have some restrictions – not being able to sell as a collection, for instance,
- CC2.0 — these may be used for any purpose but require attribution.
It is also ultimately up to you to be sure that there are no model or product rights infringements. The best practice is to check the license type before getting started. If CC2.0 provide attribution. You can also always ask the photographer. These are opportunities to reach out and perhaps get a backlink.
Copyright Trolls
No these aren’t some short ugly creatures living under a bridge … well kinda. Copyright trolls are lawyers who scour the Internet looking for images that are not licensed correctly. They are the slip-and-fall lawyers of the web. If you are contacted by one they will demand that you produce licenses for any suspected image on your site. If you can not they will demand fees for the image use. Taking down the image is not enough since they will claim you benefited from it in the past. One of the more notorious companies for using these tactics is Getty Images. It is much like the overreach of the RIAA and downloaded music a few years ago. The RIAA has stopped this practice. Hopefully, Getty will also. In fact, Getty is being sued for some of their practices.
We also have a separate post with just the Free Graphic Library Checklist.
Rules for Amazon Affiliates
Images that vendors put on Amazon’s website are restricted. As an affiliate, you can not copy and paste them to your blog or review site. In addition to the risks discussed above, this is one of the more common reasons to get deauthorized by Amazon.
You can use Amazon listing images only if you use the Product Advertising API to embed them into your posts as products like Prosociate do.
Any affiliate can also use Stripe at Amazon.com. No need for API keys. Just log into your Associate account and start browsing at Amazon. You will see the Stripe banner in the top left-hand side. There you can download the Amazon images and product descriptions.
Graphics Creation Tools
With all of the available free vector graphics and images available you might be tempted to stop there. But of course, you need to make these “your own”. Titles are added, logos applied, color schemes changed, images combined, etc. You can hire a graphic artist to do these tasks and with all of the other needs of any site, that can make sense.
Other tasks like content creation, SEO, backlinks, hosting issues, e-mail marketing – these might be a better use of your time. But many of us are creative types. I find the process refreshing. With today’s tools, it is fairly easy to work with vectors, fonts, images, effects etc. to create unique graphics.
Image Editors
Free Image Editing Software
There is a great selection of free editors available to work on photos and other images.
GIMP (Mac, PC, Linux)
Gimp is a good alternative to Photoshop if you are on a budget or don’t use these tools often. It does have a bit of a learning curve but basic tasks are quick and easy. It is stable and well supported by the community.
Seashore (Mac only)
Seashore. only runs on Apple computers but is simpler to use and has most features that a blogger would need. A strong contender for Mac users.
Photoscape (PC)
Photoscape only runs on Windows-b