One of my favourite things about building websites is getting to be creative with the look and feel of each site I build. True, lately I’ve been lazy and have been using the same layout for most of my new sites, but that doesn’t mean I can’t customise them to stand out from one another.
If you look at my site Working Holiday Info you’ll see that loads of detail was put into drawing characters from different countries holding items from the country they’re destined for. This took a crapload of time but I was willing to spend the time on it because I love drawing and I wanted to built a site that stood out a bit. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to spend on making all of my sites so customised, I don’t have the photos to draw on for inspiration, and I have no idea how to use Illustrator to make my own images from scratch.
For some reason this afternoon was the first time I thought of a solution to this problem: stock photo websites. I’d heard of stock photo websites as a way to earn money online but I had never thought of actually buying photos to use on my own sites. I suppose a part of me hates paying for things that I can do myself but as I attempt to build more sites and start earning a bit more, it makes sense to spend the money now to save the time later. Plus my finished websites will have a much more professional, polished look for a small amount of money.
I just downloaded my first ever stock photo which can be seen in the header of my Living in Sydney website that is nearing completion (finally!) As of right now there’s no title but I am decent enough at Photoshop to be able to pull this part off myself. It’s actually getting that background photo that’s tricky for me.
I used the first site I stumbled onto iStockPhoto and it had loads of great images to choose from. I spent US$18 on 12 credits and bought that image on my Sydney site for 3 credits for a small image (1527×314 pixels). The cheapest files are 1 credit and the most expensive are 28 credits for super huge files. Spending $4.50 on one photo might seem pricy but I expect it to be on every page of my website for the site’s lifetime (or at least until a redesign) so I think it’s a bargain.
The main reasons for me going down this road is to save time, get quality images, and not step on anyone’s toes by ‘borrowing’ images I find on Google. If you’ve got a bit of a design mind but don’t have the time or resources to snap photos and make images of your own from scratch, start browsing around the stock photo sites and see what you can come up with.
Does anyone have any recommendations for other good stock photo sites to draw files from?
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