Need Photos For Your Website or Blog? Be Careful Where You Get Them!
I know, I know! I tagged this FREE PHOTOS LIST for a reason! When you gather your free photos you need to understand this whole copyright thing so you are always aware!
You see -
About 5 years ago now, when I first was looking at opening my own massage therapy practice, I had a lady from out of town, design my very first website. The price was cheap and because she took care of all of the technical aspects of building the site I TRUSTED her. She also threw up some ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL photos on my website. The website got me clients within a month and because of her expertise I was able to pull in clients from all the local surrounding areas.
Sounds good, right? Wrong.
About a year later, I discovered that one of the photos that she put on my website (a stunning tropical island picture) WAS COPYRIGHTED!!!! I had no right whatsoever to be using it on my website!
I was absolutely floored when I got a CEASE AND DESIST letter in the mail demanding that I take down that picture IMMEDIATELY or else! Now I took down the photo, but apparently the person decided that was not enough because for a full two years, I kept being threatened with a lawsuit if I did not pay a ridiculous amount of money (thousands of dollars) for using that photo to make money for my massage therapy practice! Eventually, and I still do not know why, the person FINALLY left me alone and I have never heard a peep from them again. I never paid but that was a very stressful situation to say the least….
My point is this: I learned a valuable lesson – Do not just trust a web developer to put photos on your website. By the same token, if you are building your own website, you cannot just grab photos off of Google Images or somewhere online because they could be copyrighted. You want to pay special attention to all training here at WA on gathering photos for your website. You can also go to photo stock websites and buy photos but you will want to compare pricing and packages because there is a HUGE difference in pricing across the various companies.
If you want to purchase photos just go to GOOGLE and type in STOCK PHOTOS. The two that I have used thus far are:
***However, IN THE BEGINNING you should try for the free options that Kyle recommends to you in the training and go from there.***
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You're so right! My ex took a photo off a site called Deviant Art, goofed it up, and made the COOLEST band logo. He brushed off my concern at the time but a year or so later POW! same problem you had, but with TShirts, CD Covers etc all over the world. It's just NOT worth it! Oh, and he WAS a web designer so I'm betting he created some problems for clients also! -Alexx
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I will certainly remember this. I haven't put up any images yet but I wasn't thinking about lawsuits, YIKES! That must of been really stressful.
Thanks for kickin' that lesson to me.
Yeah, sometimes we need to hear it a DIFFERENT way. I had people tell me to be careful before all that happened but I just brushed it off. But I got the full lesson the hard way and now I will never forget again!