11 Free Photo Websites To Fuel Your Vacation Rental Content Marketing

Photographs act like jet fuel for your vacation rental marketing, without high-grade images, your advertising will sputter and lack the horsepower needed to rev up those bookings.

OK, so you’ve got photographs of your vacation home – you can check that off your list! But, photos of your rental property aren’t enough by themselves to get your online advertising off the launch pad.

These days online marketing is heavily dependent on visual stimuli. Words alone are boring! The right photos can help to capture attention, inspire, and stir up emotions in those who are fortunate enough to witness your remarkable content marketing. Yeah, you can be that awesome!

Let me help get you there… First, you’ve gotta have a deep reservoir of crisp professional photos. The internet has an insatiable hunger for content, you know. You’ll need quality images for your blogs, newsletters, holiday posts, and for your social media marketing.

You’ll also want to use professional photographs of local attractions, nature, landscapes, art, food, wildlife, people, and activities placed strategically throughout your vacation rental website.

So, where do you get all these sensational photos from? I’m sharing several free photo sites you can use to fuel your vacation rental content marketing and keep you outta trouble.

Note: Using images you find online can create legal issues if you violate copyright laws. It happened to me in the early days of my career. Learn from my mistakes. Only use images that you have explicit permission to use.

I’ve done the research and compiled a list of the best free photo sites I could find for you. All offer travel photos, most provide licenses that permit the photos to be used for personal and commercial use. If you have questions about any of these free photo websites, check their terms and license agreements.

1– FreeImages:

Up first is FreeImages. It is no doubt a fantastic resource for business-related photos, FreeImages is a content marketer’s favorite bookmark for your blog or social media graphics. When searching FreeImages and other sites listed, use their search tool. Enter in keywords related to your niche or topic. Generally, you can find content for your vacation rental marketing by typing in terms like travel, vacation, or even your property’s location.

2- Pixabay:

If you’re bored by the same old free stock images online, Pixabay is a great tool that’ll help you shake things up a bit. The images on Pixabay have a slightly more indie style compared to the more generic feel of traditional stock images.

3-Flickr:

Flickr is a user-generated photo-sharing site that has a huge array of images available for free with or without attribution. While it isn’t a top choice for me, it’s still worth including, especially when you’re on the hunt for a hard-to-find photo. Check out the creative commons section of Flickr and read the usage terms to make sure your photo usage is on the up and up.

4- Unsplash:

Unsplash is one of my favs. Though the selection is not as large as some of the other photo websites, It provides an awesome resource for images that don’t feel like the typical stock images you see everywhere. Unsplash updates their image library every 10 days. This site’s collection of free-to-use, no attribution images will add a unique flavor to your content marketing that typical stock images can’t quite achieve.

5- Pexels:

PEXELS is another great resource for high-quality photography. The team over at Pexels curates each of the images on their site. They gather images from other free image sources, including Unsplash. Each photograph is of high quality and falls under the Creative Commons Zero license, allowing unrestricted use.

6- MaxPixel:

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When it comes to photos the more you have in your library the better! MaxPixel has a nice selection of wildlife and landscape photos, perfect for those inspiring social media posts!

7- PIKWIZARD:

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PIKWIZARD is pretty neat. The images are similar to the quality that Pexels or Pixabay offers, giving you more selection with an added bonus. This site is different than others as it has a built-in photo editor that allows you to add text and manipulate images right within the website. This one is worth experimenting with.

8- GoodFreePhotos:

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Even with all of these choices for free photos, you may need something more or just different. That’s why I included GoodFreePhotos as an option. While not as fancy as some of the other photo sites, I found a few gems I would use on social media, like this aerial shot of the beach in Fort Lauderdale.

9- Pxhere:

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Pxhere has a similar look and feel as Pexels. It also provides a growing range of stock photos. You can check out their collections, look through popular photos and search by keyword. After searching there’s a range of advanced options you can use to filter the results. I searched Arizona and found some pretty nifty shots. Now you try!

10- PicJumbo:

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Picjumbo is another winner. They have a large library of free images to choose from. They also offer a premium membership and photoshop tools.

11- Google Images:

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Google probably has the biggest library of images online. You may find yourself tempted to use an image you find in Google Images. However, keep in mind my earlier warning. You don’t want to use copyright-protected images.

To avoid a situation that will throw you off your game, hinder your momentum, and hit you in the pocket with costly fees follow these steps to obtain images from Google legally.

If you’re still having trouble finding the perfect photos for your vacation rental marketing, you can opt to purchase photos from royalty-free photo sites like Fotolia, Shutterstock, iStockphoto, 123rf and DeathtotheStockPhoto.com

Bonus – Canva.com is a great tool that allows you to upload any of the images you’ve collected from these free sites and edit them, with text, borders, or other cool artistic things that help to promote your vacation rental brand in a unique way. Below is an example of an image I edited on Canva! Try it out yourself!