When you develop a website, you’ll probably want to add images to it to brighten it up and attract your viewer.  If you’re not a photographer or illustrator where are you going to find the images you need?  Stock image online sites can help.

Stock images are illustrations, film footage and photographs that are offered for sale.  Many are used commercially.  There are a plethora of stock image companies on the net, some are smaller and more home grown while others have millions of pieces in their collections.  Bill Gates owns one of the largest companies.  Some of his collections are so valuable they are housed in a refrigerated area in Iron Mountain in a cave 200 ft. underground.

The images available on these sites range from the benign to the extreme.  For instance, some pictures are of plain ol’ objects like blue file folders, hair pieces and false teeth, while other images evoke more emotion.  For instance, an addict who clearly doesn’t want to watch the rehab video in front of him,  a woman wearing a mink coat on a cold night in the ghetto or a father watching his baby walk for the first time.

There are so many images to choose from you might be think it could take a lot of time to find just the right one.  Luckily the sites have easy to use search tools.

There are many questions to answer on the search tools.  For instance, “date photographed” you can answer generally like the mid 1980′s, give a broad answer like 1935-1941, or exact 2/5/2005.   Or “orientation” of picture like horizontal, panorama or vertical.  Or “point of view” like aerial, close up, above, below, from space.

There are a range of prices for each image, from the very inexpensive to the expensive.

If you are creating a website adding images is a quick, easy and inexpensive way to enhance the appearance of your site.

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3. Search Engine Optimization