images

Do You Know These Top 10 Websites to Find Free Images for Your Blog?

I recently found out that adding pictures to individual blog post really makes each article sticky and resonates more with those who read it, because an image tells more story than a bunch of words crumpled together. But due to the advent of copyright laws online these days, you can’t just pick up any beautiful image you see online and slap it into your blog post, because if the owner of that image hasn’t given you right to use it, then you might end up be sued for copyright infringement (which might warrant you taking down the photo).

So in other to avoid this copyright infringement and stay on the safe side of things, you might want to stay clear copyrighted images and focus on those ones which are free to use.

In case you don’t know where to find such free images as aforementioned above, below are 7 awesome websites that you ransack today in your search for free images.

1. EverstockPhoto [http://www.everstockphoto.com]

Everstockphoto is one of the most popular website to find free images, it is known to be the search engine for free images. Their images comes from many sources but don’t feel uncomfortable they are all license specified.

Creating an account on everstockphoto for free, you can upload, tag, comment and collect images on behave of your free account.

Currently they are having more than a million images on their site. Everstock was launched in April 2006.

One of their main aim is to become the leading portal for the stock exchange photography community, and add more features to service.

2. Stock.XCHNG [http://www.sxc.hu]

This awesome website is probably of the biggest places on the internet to look for free images. It has over 400,000 free images on virtually different any topic on the internet; ranging from Arts, Technology, blogging etc. Also, since it’s now owned by Getty Image, be expecting to see more enhanced image search services on the long haul. Give them a try today.

3. Free Photos Bank [http://freephotosbank.com]

This is another awesome site to get free images for your blog posts. Free Photo Bank offers you an awesome option to see which photos are the most downloaded and the good thing is – you really don’t have to register in other to download them. Plus you can decide to use it literally for anything you have in mind.

4. Photo Pin [http://photopin.com]

An awesome website that is among the best when you want beautiful images, top-quality and elegant free photos for your personal use, Although each images there are under the protection of creative commons licensing – this means if you end up using any of photos from Photo Pin you’d need to link back to the original source.

5. Freedigitalphoto.net [http://www.freedigitalphotos.net]

Yet another awesome free image community, they have a unique way of uploading images on their website. All their photos are free, either business, personal or educational, it all free. although their images are of small size, but they are all perfect, if you need the larger size of their image then you need to go for the premium account.

6. Foter [http://foter.com]

This is yet another free image website where bloggers can come and get relevant photos for their blog posts. And just like Photo Pin above, you can use any of the images but you mustn’t forget to give credit back to the image source.

Apart from that, there’s no other restriction, so you can decide to use the images as you deem fit.

7. Unprofound [http://www.unprofound.com]

There are enormous amount of totally FREE relevant images for you to use if you’re targeting to get an image impromptu.

With Unprofound , which I consider the best because of the no-restriction it gives with the use of it images; you can use the images gotten from there for anything you have in mind. Either for educational, personal or commercial purposes, images from Unprofound will help you better in being on the safe side of things.

8. Comp Fight [http://compfight.com]

Comp Fight makes it quite easy searching for Creative-Commons-Licensed images for your content uses daily. The beauty of this site is it ability to search out relevant images from Flickr and combining it to their own images so that you can get the most relevant image search ever.

9. Morguefile [http://morguefile.com]

It has a massive amount of images for free download, ranging from arts to all kinds of images. But these images can only be used for personal, practical and educational uses and it can’t be sold or used for commercial purposes. So while using images from Morguefile you might want to be really careful not to end up using it for things other than what I just mentioned above.

10. Stockvault [http://www.stockvault.net/]

On my last list is stockvault, not that stockvault is the worse free images community. Among the images communtiy listed here it’s one of the best community to find free images. It was launched in 2004, its a community for students, graphics designers and photographers, these three group of people can share images for others to use without no cost. They are having over 30,000 free images available on the website.

You can even try these two websites to find quality images for your blog posts

So in conclusion, all these sites are the best in terms of getting free images and they can keep you safe from photographer’ wrath if you adhere to follow all the instructions attached to using each images gotten from their sites.

But let ask, did I miss your favourite free image website? Please tell us yours in the comments. Thanks for reading.

3+1 Ways to Optimize and Speed Up WordPress Blog

By Rahul Kuntala 8 Comments

All right. Let’s gear up some questions about your blog performance now.. Have you ever thought about your blog’s loading time?

No.. than It’s time to think about it now..

Why?

Because it’s not only essential to maintain a friendly SEO blog but also for your readers engagement. If you want to increase your readership or to decrease your bounce rate, you need to focus on decreasing your blog loading time. The faster it loads the better it is. Following are the few best ways to Speed Up WordPress.

1. Use WP Cache Plugin:

This is by far the best WP plugin many blogs are using to clear the cache to speed up the blog. You can clean up your cache memory all the time whenever you loading new plugins or deactivating them.

W3 Total Cache Plugin

Installation guide:

Download the plugin here
Unzip the file
Upload the plugin to your Plugins folder via FTP or Admin area
Inside the Plugins section of your WordPress control panel activate the plugin
Under the Dashboard click on W3 Total Cache and use it..

2. Optimize Image Size:

Decrease the image size by tools like image optimizer, shrink pictures, picresize etc.

Or you can simply use this WP plugin WP Smush.it (This reduces image file sizes and improves your blog’s performance)

And try to use the images in the following 3 formats.

.PNG
.JPG or
.GIF

These are the best extensions to save your images and decreasing your images size means you are decreasing your blog’s loading time.

3. Clean Up Your WP Database:

Use this plugin called WP Database Optimizer (This plugin allows you to make automated scheduled database optimization. You can specify how long in between automated optimization).

Installation guide:

Download the plugin here
Unzip the file
Upload the plugin to your Plugins folder via FTP or Admin area
Inside the Plugins section of your WordPress control panel activate the plugin
Under the Dashboard click on WP Database Optimizer and use it..

4. Avoid Too Many Plugins:

Last but not least, don’t use unwanted plugins which effects your blog loading time relatively high. Try to use the top plugins which suits your requirements and needs.

You can check your blog loading time using the following tools.

Pingdom
whichloadsfaster or
searchmetricsrapid

And there are several more ways you can speed up your blog loading time by:

Using free CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Using the better web hosting provider like HostGator
By reducing the widgets in your sidebar

Advantages of having a faster loading blog:

You can have the following benefits if you use the above methods to speed up your blog.

It essentially improves your blog’s credibility

Your visitors or readers will be happy with your blog performance

Low bounce rate (it effects certainly)

Good PR and Alexa Rank (yeah, of course)

and many more…

Your Turn:

If you know extra tools more than the above to check a blog’s loading time or any more ideas/tips on speeding up a blog in your mind – do share them below.

This is a guest post by Rahul Kuntala who blogs at LearnBlogTips

Image Credit:

7 Ways To Find Unique Blog Post Ideas For Your Blog

By Rajkumar Jonnala 5 Comments

Sometimes all you need is a good idea. This is more so if you happen to be a blogger. A lot of bloggers have enough time on their hands to blog everyday yet they seem to be lacking ideas. If you are facing a dearth of ideas for blog posts, you are certainly not alone. For bloggers who want to write good quality content that is interesting, a dearth of blog post ideas is something they have to deal with often. But don’t worry. There are ways in which you can find unique blog post ideas for your blog. You can also use random word generator to find some keyword ideas for next log post. Here’s how.

Forums are a great place to pick out new ideas for your blog. Lots of people log into popular forums everyday to express their thoughts, ideas and opinions. Visit such forums that are related to the niche your blog deals with and see what people are interested about and are talking on. This will give you some pretty good ideas about topics to write about. For example, if your blog is about parenting, visit forums which have lots of moms and dads coming in and find out what interests them.
Social bookmarking sites are another place where you can get unique idea of what to write on your blog. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon have articles on their home pages which indicate that those are the topics people searched on recently. This will give you a good idea of what to write on the niche you are interested in.
The blog comment section of other blogs is a wonderful place to go visit for unique new ideas. Yes, that’s right. Visit blogs which are related to the topic your blog is about and find out what people are commenting and discussing in the comments section. Often, you will find ideas that are fantastic and worth writing about.
You can also go to related blogs for ideas for posts. Go to the archive section of the blog and find out what is being written about. That does not however mean that you copy ideas and stuff. The idea is more about finding topics that interest you and something that you wish to write about.
New sites are a wonderful place to get unique ideas for your blog. Good news sites like the ones by Yahoo and Google are places where the latest and most happening news from all around the globe are reported. You can easily find lots of things to write about, especially if your blog deals with current affairs.
There are quite a few popular ‘questions and answers’ websites on the internet. Yahoo Answers, Wiki Answers and Google Answers are just a few of them. Here people come in to put up their questions and want answers. They are great for finding new ideas for blog posts.
Interview someone you admire. It could be a fellow blogger, a person you admire or your aunt. Only thing, the interview has to be interesting and worthy of reading.

Rajkumar Jonnala likes to write about topics on IT, Science and Technology related to server rack and rack cabinets.