DepositPhotos
This is a database that, in my opinion, perfectly combines professionalism and price. You can subscribe to thirty photos for about 30 dollars (it varies from time to time) per month. It costs a dollar per image or vector when here we are talking about a selection of beautiful images and a higher quality than the free databases we mentioned.
The user experience in this database is also at a higher level and it helps us get to the images we want faster. When working with masses of content, this is something that will be critical.
Link to DepositPhotos
Image database – 123RF
123RF
A leading image database and one of the best on the internet in my opinion. The interface is particularly convenient, and the website also has a huge database of not only images for download, but also: video clips, sound files, illustrations, vectors and more.
The images in the database are suitable for graphic designers, web developers, including digital professionals who need to make regular use of professional images without fear.
Link to 123RF
Image database – Dreamstime
Dreamstime
A leading photo bank with over 25 million users every month!
Similar to other photo repositories, here you will find 2 purchase routes: one, according to the number of photos per month and the second according to credits / points. Here too it is a database with a huge selection of images, illustrations, icons, video files, sound files and more.
Link to Dreamstime
Why do you need photo archives?
A stock photos website is a well-known topic to anyone involved in digital marketing, whether it’s on Facebook, a website or through a mailing list, knows the constant need for high quality photos.
Photo site – photo archives
Photo site – photo archives
What makes an image a high quality image?
First of all, it should be an aesthetic photo, photographed professionally, and if possible, it should also have some kind of ‘wow effect’.
The second thing is the adaptation of the image to our need.
This is already a section that filters out a lot of good photos. Matching can be: content, color, type of characters, atmosphere or even proportions or direction of gaze of the characters.
In addition to all of this, we also want photos that we can find in an existing database and if possible then also not break the bank for the purchase of each of them.
In this article, I have compiled the best recommended photo archives for me. On these photo sites you can download high quality photos.
Some are free repositories and some offer paid images for commercial use, I believe there is room for both.
Let’s start with the free photo sites and move on to the paid ones afterwards:
Recommended photo archives
Images for purchase – recommended image libraries
Image Sites: Recommended free image repositories
It used to be a bit rude to admit it among those who consider themselves a professional in the field of marketing, today it is more accepted – yes, I also use images from free image databases.
It depends on the need and the image, of course, but basically there’s really no reason not to do it. Today you can find beautiful pictures also in such a picture database and you can download pictures free of charge.
These are recommended image stockpiles for free download:
PIXABAY
This is an image database that includes not only downloadable images but also allows you to buy illustrations, files and vectors and even short videos.
The database is based on amateur photographers when you can enter the page of each photographer and see his collection.
You can leave feedback and interact with the photographer or other users.
In this respect, Pixbay has a bit of a community feel. You don’t have to give credit to the creator, but if you do, it’s certainly appropriate.
If you really feel that a certain creator saved you, you can always ‘invite him for coffee’ with a small donation through PayPal. As mentioned, this is not mandatory at all.
It is not possible to upload any image to Pixbay. There are quite strict rules and indeed the pool seems to be mostly of high quality.
The search is very convenient and can be segmented by categories, standard criteria of color, size, orientation and more.
There are image repositories with more precise filtering options but this one definitely does the trick.
Unsplash UNSPLASH
This is also a free downloadable image repository. These are photo bank services at the level of Pixbay, there are those who will say that it is more professional in terms of photos, in my opinion they are equal with a slight advantage to Ansplash.
As a photo database, it offers all kinds of unique features such as ‘collections’ or different categories such as ‘wallpapers’ etc. I did a little experiment to understand which of these reservoirs is stronger.
I ran all kinds of common image searches in the loot to see which image bank comes up first and who has a more impressive collection of images.
In the LIGHTNING PHOTOS search, you can find photos in both databases that brought the most impressive results and came up first in the search.
When I searched for the word HAIFA meaning the city of Haifa, Pixabay won big with a wide selection of beautiful photos.
Flickr FLICKR
Yes yes, this image repository that was a hit at the time of 50 Cent and Nelly Furtado is still a great source of free images for commercial use.
In order to use it as a repository of free images, you need to run a search on it and filter out results with copyrights.
You will be surprised how many quality photos there are out there that are without copyright.
The only problem with the database is that there is no threshold for acceptance, so you will get everything there – high-quality photos alongside photos from a Galaxy S2 phone with the tip of a thumb in the top corner.
Flickr passes the lightning photo search test like this. There are enough copyright free images there but not in the same quality as the above repositories.
In the Haifa photo search test Flickr quite stars as expected. There are many photos from all kinds of neighborhoods and all kinds of events.
For those who need specific photos, Flickr can be the place for them, provided they are willing to compromise on quality.
Photo bank – paid photo databases
Photo bank – paid photo databases
Additional photo repositories for a fee
If you work with images regularly and rely on them professionally, you must also have paid repositories that you work with.
Sometimes such a database can close your corner quickly and save you a lot of time which I hope is also worth a lot of money.
Shutterstock
A on the mistake and offers a kind of intermediate tool called Business Suite, which according to many is unnecessary and cumbersome.
Veteran advertisers claim they can’t even access the tool, since Facebook apparently realized they had nothing to do with it. However, a new advertiser who wants to start working with the sponsored platform may find that there are too many tools that do the job in a much less thorough way.
So let’s get things straight – campaigns should be run in one professional tool, called Ads Manager
Any attempt to make another intermediate tool will only make the learning process for new advertisers much more cumbersome – Facebook should invest resources to make the main tool accessible and not produce additional tools that will only complicate the advertising process.
3. Improving customer service and its accessibility
We are in 2022, and there are still many businesses that have difficulty getting a proper response from Facebook and do not know who to contact.
True, there is an option to go up in front of a representative (which most businesses probably didn’t know how to reach), but this option is also not fully available and in many cases the answers you get from the representatives are generic and amount to “we will transfer to the internal team”, which in many cases does not solve the problem.
The time has come for 2022 to have an organized call center for advertisers that will respond to any malfunction, and not representatives who proactively contact random advertisers.
Google has been doing this successfully for years, there’s no reason Facebook shouldn’t join in and do it as well, after all it’s our money, and Facebook has an interest in us continuing to put it on their platform.
4. War on scams and hackers who are just getting better and better
Hardly a day goes by without advertisers encountering the on-call scam message warning the customer of being blocked if they do not “authenticate” using a page pretending to be Facebook.
Of course these are hackers, and most of the time the method is the same –
They open a business page with the Facebook logo or one of Facebook’s services, tag the business page and send to a page with the exact visibility of Facebook, the average user (who could also be our customer) may fall into the trap.
This means that if the hackers manage to get into the account, they may spend tens of thousands of shekels in a short time for spontaneous campaigns that they will set up, and although the credit companies to the Rabbi know how to credit us for this, Facebook may block the account permanently, even if they realize that it was just a hack.
So yes, they started requiring two-step verification which should at least partially solve the problem, but we would still expect Facebook to be one step ahead of the hackers, who are still not letting up and Facebook is having trouble finding a solution for them.
5. Inability to control locations in the Audience Network
Facebook has a partner network called the Audience Network, which is actually a network that contains thousands of mobile apps and websites that embed its ads. The meaning for the advertiser is that we will also be able to appear in additional locations that are not only Facebook and Instagram.
Sounds good on the face of it, and sometimes can work quite well (probably more than before), but it’s time for us to get control over the apps we’ll appear in, alongside the apps we won’t appear in, a feature that Google has been offering for years and Facebook hasn’t yet.
Yes, sometimes it will not suit us that our advertising appears on Tinder or Candy Crush, and we would like to choose the locations ourselves. So Facebook – take up the gauntlet and launch this all-important feature.