The awesome image above that I used to draw attention to this post is a 100% free public domain stock photo.

You can see how the image goes perfect with the title of this post, “Where to Get EYE-CATCHING Stock Photos For Free or Cheap”.

Using stock images like the one above are a fantastic way to draw attention and add some “spice” to what would normally be a boring wall of text in your articles.

Whether you work online building websites, writing articles or selling products – most likely, at some point you”re going to be in the market for high quality stock photos. Unfortunately, if you go to Google and type in “stock photos” you will get bombarded with websites that charge insane amounts of money for the rights to use their images.

This is why I felt the need to compile a list of the best free or cheap stock photo websites I could find.

Keep in mind this post is a work in progress and I will continue to add to the list as I come across more sites in the future.

Free Stock Photo Website List: (in no particular order)

1) https://pikwizard.com/ – Pikwizard is an excellent free stock photo site. What makes Pikwizard stand out is its high-quality images of people, which are few and far between on the best stock photography sites

2) http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/ (This is where I got the image used in this post)

3) http://morguefile.com/

4) http://www.sxc.hu/

5) http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp

6) http://www.stockvault.net/

7) http://stockart.deviantart.com/

8) http://www.kozzi.com/ (registration required)

9) http://www.everystockphoto.com/

10) http://www.davesfreephotos.com/

11) http://www.unprofound.com/

12) http://www.wikimedia.org/

13) http://publicdomainpictures.net/

14) http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

15) http://www.rgbstock.com/

16) http://depositphotos.com/

IMPORTANT – Read the license restrictions before downloading and using any image you find on these websites. Just because the image might be “free” doesn”t mean it can be redistributed or packaged in a commercially sold product, etc. Take a few seconds to read the licensing on every image you download just to be on the safe side.

If you don”t mind spending a few bucks on your images, the place I would highly recommend is http://photodune.net/.

The images at PhotoDune are high quality and are substantially cheaper than places like istockphoto & shutterstock.

If you’re using these images for web projects then most likely you will never need to shell out the cash for istockphoto.com images.

Quick Tip -If you ever come across an image on a website and want to check if its available to download from public domain or stock photo websites, the easiest way to check is to do a reverse image search.

You can do this by going to Google Images or Tineye.

Lets try with the image I used in this post.

Enter the exact image URL and hit search. In this case my exact image URL would be: http://imdevin.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/eye-catching-stock-photo-580×315.png

You can see first results is the exact URL where you can download the free public domain image at http://www.publicdomainpictures.net

You can also use a reverse image search to check and see if your own copyrighted images are being shared or stolen on the web. Give it a try!

If you know of any other free or cheap stock photo websites that can be added to the list, feel free to share in the comment below or shoot me a message via my contact page.