Public Domain Images

 Public Domain Images

Public Domain images are iages that no longer have a copyright on them.

Creative Commons Images usually need you to use a  particular attribution to them when you use them.  Normally giving credit to the creator of the image. But not always.

I like to use free, public domain images or stock photography I have purchased the rights to in my blogging and advertising.

You will here celebrities tell you it is OK, to steal images from others as long as it is far enough in the background that no one will mind.  In the same breath they also tell you not to copyright infringe upon anyone so it is as clear as mud to a new blogger.

I will clear it up.  Don’t use images that are not yours.

 

I use Wikicommons images because it is easy to find public domain images there like this:

The quality is a bit off but it is still good for the Internet and I do not have to worry about copyright infringement.  This cute picture of this cat is in the public domain.

I also like to use these kind of images from WikiCommons Images:

This image is what comes up when you search for images of sales

I like the old style, as I am 51-years old.  It will relate with other people my age.  This is my target audience.

I also find images like this here that can be used for many different purposes as they cover a variety of topics:

 

 

This is a great graphic for home-based business, MLM, direct sales, online marketing and a variety of other business categories.

The generic graphics that can be found on WikiCommons Images for free are abundant, and you can readily and easily find what you are looking for unless you are writing about an obscure or more modern topic.  The variety of images is smaller though.

I have also been very impressed by the quality of historic images I find there.  While researching The Great Gatsby as it encompasses the quote “The past becomes the future and the future becomes the past”  Here is the image I chose:

 

This is F. Scott Fitzgerald the author of the Great Gatsby.

 

Sometimes you need a “purple cow” to stand out from the rest of the crowd.  Black and white images do the trick because they are not used as much as they were previously in the media.  They also appeal to my audience demographic as I am looking for people that were used to black and white TV and images like this in the movies.

used to black and white TV images is a psychographc description of my target audience.  Images play and importat psycjhological role in media and blogging.  Images resonate with your target audience in a certain way. They make people think.  They say a picture speaks a thousand words.  I believe that is true.

 

Depending upon what you are looking for you can find just about every kind of picture imaginable on WikiCommons Images.

 

I also did a Google search and found this amazing article on public domain images from of all places Harvard.  They must know.  Here is that article that describes public domain images and Creative Commons Licensing.  They list many public domain collections of images, some I’ve used like NASA and some that I have not like the European Repository for Images.

There is a bonus to using Wikimedia Commons Images.  They are tied to the Wikipedia which is an authority site.  I believe this has helped me get my first blogging experiemnt to 300,000 Worldwide on Alexa.com back in 2013 or 2014.