Every story needs a picture and these days it’s easy to find Creative Commons licensed photos that can be used with proper citing for free on your blog. You can browse and choose free photos for your posts in “armchair” comfort from your WordPress editor with the PhotoDropper plugin.
With PhotoDropper you will never be more than four clicks away from the perfect photo. Not only does PhotoDropper search for the perfect photo, it uploads the photo to your blog’s image library (no worrying about broken links) and handles the creative commons attribution.
To see the plugin in action watch the video and check out the slideshow for detailed how to instructions.
You can grab this great plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory. The directory includes an overview by the plugin’s authors, simple installation instructions with a video, a FAQ that includes how to add a photo to your blog post and screenshots of the plugin’s interface.
WordPress > PhotoDropper Plugin – WordPress Plugin Directory
Find the perfect blog photo without ever leaving WordPress. Now with access to over 211M+ Photos it is easy to find the right photo with…
From WordPress
How to Search and Add a Free Photo to Your Post with PhotoDropper
The finished results of “4 clicks”. A great and very cute photo of kittens in my post with a proper Creative Commons credit link provided by PhotoDropper without leaving the post editor.
This great tool tip points the way to the PhotoDropper button the first time you open your post editor after installing the plugin. Click the balloon icon in the Upload/Insert section to open PhotoDropper.
First timer users will be prompted to fill out this form. To get images with the correct Creative Commons license for your site, answer the first question. Submitting your email address is optional. Agree to the legal stuff and click the green Let’s PhotoDrop! button.
Type your photo search term in the form and fine tune the search by choosing options from the recency or sort by drop-down menus. Hit enter to search.
Browse and select your perfect photo. Click 2! Siamese Cats yielded a lot of great photos to pick from. Choosing between all the cute photos was the hard part of the process.
Click 3! Click to insert into post. You can also view the image on Flickr. Not the photo of your dreams? Choose back to search to select another.
Now for the best part your chosen image is uploaded to your Media Library and the Add Media dialog box opens. Now you have all the WordPress image tools available: add an alt text, chose alignment and image size. Click insert image and your done – in 4 clicks of the mouse!
Install the PhotoDropper plugin and find out for yourself how it easy it is find the perfect free photo for your next post.
Visit the Creative Commons site to learn more about how “Creative Commons lets people share their work (photos, writing, videos, and more) with the world so that anyone can use and remix their creations under the licensing terms the authors provide.” From the PhotoDropper Creative Commons page.
Looking for more Creative Commons Images or low cost royalty-free photos check out these articles:
Rick’s Tips: 5 Favorite Low Cost or Free Image Sources for WordPress Blog Posts
You’ve written a terrfic article and now it needs a finishing touch – an image. Most people skim articles on the internet, engaging your…
5 Photo Plugins that Will Pull Creative Commons Images into Your Site
Everyone knows that livening up a post withimages helps a lot. But searching for images that the right Creative Commons license can…
From WPMU
Public Domain, Free Photography and Images for Your Blog
Originally published on Lorelle on WordPress and used here with permission. This list is for my classes and workshops needing public domain…
From: Lorelle Teaches
Hi Sue,
A beautifully presented article. I’m inspired to build pages like this. One thing about the creative commons license. I think i played with photodropper or some similar tool and i think the photos stated that they couldn’t be used commercial purposes. My blog runs on a commercial website and its purpose is of course to ultimately create money.
Any thoughts
Thanks
Shaun.
Hi Shaun,
Thanks for the compliment and thanks for visiting my article.
There is a Creative Commons license that allows commercial use of the photos. The first time you use PhotoDropper you will be promoted to fill out a form. To get images with the correct Creative Commons license for your site, answer Yes to the first question, “Does this site make money?”. PhotoDropper will now only present Creative Commons photos that are legally acceptable to use on your site.
thanks for the clarification Sue – I’ll look into that. Having images on a blog is so important for engagement – I hate just having blocks of text no matter how well it is written. On a somewhat different subject have you written anything on how to “systemize” your publishing. In other words a repeatable process that gets your content written and syndicated out hopefully to get new readers coming in plus also backlinks. Curation as we have both discussed recently with storify is a great idea to get the content flowing but where can if flow to ?
Regards,
Shaun.
Content can flow out to social media sites and web 2.0 sites such as: LiveJournal.com
Tumblr.com, Typepad.com, Posterous.com, FriendFeed.com, Delicious.com, WordPress.com, Multiply.com, Blogger.com,Blog.com. The idea would be to put the main article on you website and reach out to these other sites with announcement posts that link back to your site. My partner and I are currently in process of vetting a WP premium plugin that handles the posting to the web 2.0 sites and a plugin that handles multiple social media accounts. Will keep you in the loop about how things turn out.