Would it shock you to know that you’ve got less than 15-30 seconds to establish your credibility with new site visitors? Studies have shown that people make unbelievably quick decisions about a site’s value - it only takes most people a matter of seconds to scan a landing page and decide whether to stay or go elsewhere. Including good quality images that are relevant to the content on your site is one of the best ways to convince new visitors to stick around long enough to read your content and ads. I cant stress the next point enough. If you’re trying to make money online you’re in the business of getting and keeping people’s attention. If the majority of your visitors leave your site within 15-30 seconds, never to return, you’ve wasted time, effort and money getting them there, especially if you’re spending money to drive traffic with contextual advertising. Images should be thought of as an investment. They capture people’s attention far more quickly and effectively than any other element on a page, and pairing relevant, attractive images with your content says to visitors “this site is a credible and valuable resource for what I’m looking for.” The only problem is that most of us aren’t graphic designers or professional photographers who have tons of image stock to use. So where are the best places to find affordable royalty-free stock images? Here are a couple of great resources you can use to punch up a website without breaking the bank.

iStockPhoto - My favorite Image Resource

I’ve built dozens of websites using images from iStockphoto. There are a ton of other royalty-free stock images sites that charge as much as $100 a photo. When you’re trying to maximize the return on the investment you make in building an affiliate site or blog, penny pinching is crucial. Thankfully, there’s really no reason to be paying premium prices for images anymore. On iStockphoto, I only spend around $1 per image and, in my opinion the site’s got the best search function and results of any stock site out there. The site is community based and is also great way to search for and find graphic designers to do custom work like banners and logos if you’re doing your own advertising.

BigStockphoto - My Other Go-To

I use BigStockphoto almost as much as I do iStockphoto. BigStockPhoto is a great resource with a huge inventory of stock and the prices per image almost identical to those on iStockphoto. I tend to go to iStockphoto first because I think the search function is little bit better, but I usually check both if I don’t find exactly what I’m looking for on either site because the prices are the same.

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