A great photo can really add a lot of flavor to a blog post and in our own analysis at Online Marketing Blog as well as with clients, including quality images with a blog post can boost traffic and referrals 30-50%. To make posts more personal, I try to use my own photos as much as possible and do use imags from Flickr under Creative Commons from time to time. This is an area of significant impact for blogs as effective communication and marketing tools, so last week we ran a Reader Poll on the best site for royalty free, stock photos for bloggers.
We had the most comments from iStockphoto users and interestingly enough, the “Other” category came in second place with suggestions including: screenshots, stock.xchng, PhotoXpress.com and Creative Commons imagies from Flickr.
The poll results are below, but as you can tell from the image, Shutterstock was the winner: Best Stock Photo Site for Bloggers.
- Shutterstock.com (38%, 83 Votes)
- iStockphoto.com (31%, 68 Votes)
- Other – Add to comments (9%, 19 Votes)
- dreamstime.com (8%, 17 Votes)
- fotolia.com (8%, 17 Votes)
- morguefile.com (2%, 5 Votes)
- stockvault.net (2%, 4 Votes)
- freedigitalphotos.net (1%, 3 Votes)
- everystockphoto.com (1%, 1 Votes)
Online Marketing Blog has been using iStockphoto for the past 3-4 years but after seeing this poll, we’ll check out Shutterstock. In fact, I ran into the Shutterstock booth while at the SXSW Interactive conference and shared the good news in person. There was a photobooth within the exhibit booth (with props) that was very popular with conference attendees.
Congratulations to Shutterstock on winning Online Marketing Blog’s Best Royalty Free Stock Photo Poll.
