If you contribute to a blog or any form of sales or marketing material containing imagery, you could easily face civil or criminal charges for copyright infringement. It only takes one “borrowed” image, and you’re playing Russian roulette with hefty fines and possible jail time.  

You absolutely cannot steal images from Google.

Despite numerous options available for finding free photos online, there are still several marketing and sales professionals taking images directly from Google for their collateral – and it must stop! Here are a few resources where you can find great images for all marketing and sales collateral.

Free Stock Photos  

Pexels is one of the best curated free stock photo sources online. With an extensive, organized collection, it’s not only the go-to image source but also free stock video source! A favorite feature is the option to search for photos by categories, such as:

• Black and white
• The most popular photos on the web
• The most downloaded photos
• Photos by color or tone

  

Another popular source, known as the holy grail of free stock imagery is Unsplash. With over 300,000 gorgeous, high-resolution images, there is a huge variety for all marketing and sales collateral, plus, there are no restrictions.

Royalty-Free Images 

iStock is run by the highly reputable Getty Images. Graphic designers, advertising agencies, marketing and sales professionals all find iStock to be a great source for royalty-free images. Prices are low, subscription plans are affordable, and there are a variety of images to choose from. The benefits of using iStock over free stock imagery sites include:

• Multiple size options for downloading
• Select from images, vector images, video and illustrations
• Companies often prefer a paid method for legal rights to stock photos or videos

Be Authentic, Get Creative with Canva

While stock images can meet your sales and marketing collateral needs – and it’s certainly better than borrowing an image from Google – it’s still hard to capture what your business is all about.

Slightly different than stock imagery, Canva is an online design tool that allows you to create images of various sizes across various platforms for whatever you need. Whether you want fun marketing material, informative sales collateral, or in-office or client birthday wishes – Canva can provide. Canva is easy to use and offers designs for:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Blog Graphics
• Infographics
• Presentations

And, so much more! There are even options for animated social media graphics. Plus, there are hundreds of stock images for free and even more for only $1.

Thou Shall Not Steal Images from Google

All content on the internet, whether it’s an image, a blog, or infographic, all belong to someone else. Legal issues revolving around photo theft are very common in our ever-evolving digital world.

There’s only one way to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit for copyright infringement, and that is to use some of these tools mentioned—or ones you find on your own—for your marketing and sales collateral.

Good Luck!