Stock images have become an important part of online marketing. They make great additions to blog posts, social media posts, landing pages, websites, ebooks and various other marketing material. Images can help grab the attention of your target audience as 65% of us are visual learners.
They give readers a break from all the text they are bombarded with every day.
When looking for images to use in their marketing most people turn to free stock photo sites. Many of these sites offer free photos to use in your marketing, but they aren’t the best option. You can find several quality images on these sites, but most of them have been overused in the millions of posts that are published every month.
If you want to limit using these posts and standout, you should turn to top quality premium stock images. They don’t have to be expensive either. There are several sites where you can find these photos for around a dollar each. Therefore, to make it easy for you to find these sites I have made a list of the best premium stock image sites you should checkout…
DepositPhotos
DepositPhotos is a premium stock photos site where you can find 130 million stock photos, illustrations, vector images, backgrounds and even videos. The images on the site are placed in categories such as abstract, animals, people, travel, etc. to make it easy for you to find the pictures you are looking for. There’s also a search bar for you to quickly look for images.
They have both a subscription plan and a flexible plan. When you take the subscription, you pay a monthly fee and you can download a limited number of images every month. But when you take the flexible plan you pay $10 per month for 10 images. And when you exceed 10 images you can buy new images for a dollar each.
CreativeMarket
CreativeMarket is a very different kind of stock image site. It is actually an online marketplace where designers, photographers and other creatives sell visual assets such as photos, graphics, templates, fonts and themes. You can find over 2 million photos on this site. Photos that you need can be either browsed by using the categories they have provided or by using the search option. Pricing for the images starts at $2 and goes up to $500. Most of these photos are standalone photos, but you can also find bundles.
You can also buy background images such as illustrations, icons, patterns and textures. They also have premade templates for platforms like Canva and Photoshop so that you can drag and drop in images.
Death to the Stock Photo
Another good place for finding quality stock images is Death to the Stock Photo. They have a small library of just 4,500+ stock assets, but they are very unique. They also follow a voting system where customers get to vote on which photos get added to the library. Around 35 new images keep getting added each month. Their membership plan starts from $12 and goes up to $399.
Adobe Stock
If you want top quality stock images and don’t mind paying for it, you should checkout Adobe Stock. They have a vast library of photos, videos, vectors, and templates in various categories. But as I mentioned they are very expensive. Their basic subscription plan starts at $49.99 and you only get 10 images a month. If you take an annual plan the cost per month will come down to $29.99.
Adobe Stock is best for companies that already use other Adobe tools like Illustrator, Lightroom and Photoshop as it makes it easy to add the images. But if you are using other graphic design tools, it would be better to stick to the cheaper options mentioned in the post. They still provide top quality photos.
Freepik
Freepik is a site where you can find stock photos, vectors, icons and PSD files. Here again you can find photos by either using the search bar or by browsing through their categories. On Freepik there are over 5 million premium resources.
They also have thousands of free resources. But if you use them you have to provide attribution to Freepik. In order to use the free resources without attribution and to get access to the premium resources you will need to sign up for a paid plan which costs a flat €9.99 a month.
Conclusion
These are the 5 best premium stock photo sites you should checkout. You should pick the one that suits your budget and needs best. All of them let you browse through their collection of photos for free. So, make sure you spend an ample amount of time doing this before picking your favorite.
Mitt Ray is the Founder of Social Marketing Writing. You can connect with him on Twitter @MittRay.
Stock images photo by Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
