It is just so annoying to find listings for “free” things
that charge for shipping or handling or logging in. To me that is not free. So I have found a few things that are not
mentioned very often that are actually free.
For my second installment on Actually Free downloads, I have Dreamstime
and Graphic Stock. These offer royalty-free
professional photos and vector drawings for the taking. With both of these sites you get to choose
what drawings or photos you wish, instead of being held to whatever they offer
free. This is a great deal if you have a
blog site, write articles or print brochures for your company where you need
professional images to enhance your text.
It is always best to get royalty-free images from a site like this than
to risk stealing an image that may be copyrighted and get hit with a lawsuit
later. Better safe than sorry.
Dreamstime Stock photos
With membership, Dreamstime will allow 20 free downloads of
royalty-free images of your choice.
However after your free 20 downloads they expect you to recommend their
site to your friends. After receiving a
new membership from one of your friends, you receive another 20 free downloads. These are very professional images. You can also receive 20 more free downloads
by buying a small subscription or buying some credits for photos from their
site. In this case the next 20 are not
really free but more like a “thank you” for subscribing.
Illustration for Dreamstime by Denise McGill
Graphic Stock is a site with graphic and artistic images as
well as stock photo images. They offer
new prospective members one week of free downloads at 20 downloads per
day. They do this in hopes of getting
you to pay for a yearly membership at $99 per year. To get your 7 days of free downloads you have
to give them your credit card information.
I find sites that do this a little unnerving because they have burned me
before. They stand by the absolute
letter of their terms. One minute past
the “7th day” and they charge your card. In order to take advantage of the free terms
of these kinds of sites is to be sure to cancel membership on the 6th
day. I love the 6 days of free downloads
I received and if my financial circumstances improve, I will gladly pay for a
year of unlimited downloads from this awesome professional graphic site.
No comments:
Post a Comment