>>>Next Thursday at 11 a.m. EDT / 3 p.m. GMT we’ll run our GUEST PUSH Thursday at #MyBlogGuest discussing BEST guest articles that found homes through MyBlogGuest.<<<
Update: We are now giving away our own images for you to use in your guests posts: Smart Photo Stock
One issue we have to deal with at MyBlogGuest is the poor understanding of what it means to write for the web. A great article can be a poor experience for a web user for a simple reason: it’s hard to read.
Web content should be entertaining and scannable. It should be eye-catching.
Images work best for drawing attention. They can turn any article into a link and traffic magnet.
Many of our guest authors think they should not care about the images as these are up to the blog owner. My opinion: if you provide the content, it should be full-packed. That increases your chances to get approved.
Make your article very easy to publish and very attractive and the publisher is sure to appreciate the effort.
Here are a few examples of great guest articles that have awesome images:
- Funny Ways to Raise Money for Charity by @erocketSEO;
- 5 Sights You Must See from Bird’s Eye View via @traveltweaks
So now that we know that we actually need images, let’s see where we can find them.
Images You Can Use
At MyBlogGuest we only allow images that can be re-used. These are Creative Commons, Royalty-Free or your own images (the latter include: photos taken with your own camera and screenshots you make).
Creative Commons Images
Here are a few useful and details instructions on finding and crediting Creative Commons images. We allow images distributed under Attribution-ShareAlike License that allows commercial re-use and even modification of the source image.
If you are using Creative Commons images in the Articles Gallery, please give a credit in form of the direct (preferably dofollow) link to the page featuring the images (as well as the author and the license).
- Compfight is the great tool to quickly find a great CC image on Flickr (Please make sure you select Commercial license that allows to re-use images even for commercial purposes).
NOTE: Avoid using images with “request to license via Getty Images” label. These are images you need to purchase from the owner.
- Feel free to use our member’s resource. Sharon owns all the images there and allows bloggers to re-use them (please credit back the image page).
- Wikimedia Commons. Here’s their TOS allowing you to re-use the media
- Wired Creative Commons Collection;
- Another great resource from our featured author One Hundred Photos – here’s Dave’s permission to re-use them. Make sure to credit the source!
Royalty-Free Images
Royalty-Free images are those you can re-use for free, even without attribution (which we still encourage because it’s only polite).
If you are using Royalty Free images in the Articles Gallery, please put a public note saying those images are free to use via [put the source here]
- Microsoft resource, which you don’t even need to give credit for, at least in so far as I read the rules
- MorgueFile (You are allowed to use their images. Here’s the license summary).
- 123rf and SXC both have a great collection of royalty-free images
iStock Images
If you are a paying member of any iStock image provider, you might be able to use those images in a guest post as well. You should probably email them about that to make sure.
We got the confirmation from Shutterstock that members can use their bought images in the guest posts:
If you are using iStock images in the Articles Gallery, please put a public note saying those images are purchased by you via [iStock service name here]
Your Own Images
We love screenshots and highly encourage our authors to make lots of them. Any tool review and round-up looks much more useful if you include images in it.
For screenshots, we don’t need any notes as per image sources.
- Here are a few tools for awesome screenshots.
- Here are a few tools that let you create an image easily!
Please add your tools to the list!
Next Thursday at 11 a.m. EDT / 3 p.m. GMT we’ll run our GUEST PUSH Thursday promoting and discussing very BEST guest articles that found home through MyBlogGuest.
Joseph
Latest posts by Joseph (see all)
- Chatting Guest Blogging at #Pitchboxchat - December 19, 2018
- How to Collaborate on Content: Co-Create, Interview and Find Guest Bloggers! #BizapaloozaChat - December 5, 2017
- Ann Smarty Talking Influencer Marketing at #BW_Chat Twitter Chat - February 26, 2016
Bellaisa
Because of your recommendation on another post, I started carrying around my camera with me everywhere I go, so I can get some original and easy to use pictures, as pictures really are the life-blood of a good article. So far, I’ve gotten a few that have really worked well in my posts, but it’s a matter of having the camera ready for those moments. I find I miss a lot of golden shots.