- Hey, everyone.
And today, I'm gonna be teaching you
how to get two things for free.
The first thing is free photos.
Yep, in this video, I'm gonna show you
how to find stunning photos online
that you can copy and reuse for free.
Yep, for free.
And I'm even gonna show you case studies
of some creative ways that people all across the globe
are copying these photos and reselling them
to earn extra cash online
through some fun online side hassles.
My hope is that by seeing these case studies
of how people are earning money from free photos,
that it might inspire you to come up with your own ideas
for how you can use these stunning free photos, too.
So that is one thing that I'm gonna be teaching you
how to get for free.
The second thing is my eternal gratitude
by taking a moment out of your very busy day
to give my video a like and to subscribe, because seriously,
every time you do it, it genuinely supports me.
So thank you so much to those of you out there
that take a moment to do so.
There it is.
Once you've gone ahead and clicked the Like button
and gotten my eternal gratitude for free,
we can move on to why you're actually here,
and that is to find photos that you can copy,
use, and sell for free legally,
because that's the thing, right?
That is something a lot of people don't think about,
and it's one of the biggest mistakes I see people make
when they want to find photos to use
is that they come to Google Images,
search for what they want,
and then just take any photo that they find here.
But here's the thing.
If I came and just copied this photo, that would be illegal,
and it could get me into trouble,
and that's because the moment you create any sort of art,
which, yes, includes photography,
it is instantly protected by copyright.
Yep.
That means that only you are allowed to use it,
which includes reselling it.
And something a lot of people don't realize
is you don't even need to apply for copyright protection.
It's instant. No registration required.
And so, because it is Britannica that owns the copyright
to this photo, only they can use it, not me.
But you know what?
While it would be illegal for me to use that photo,
it would be perfectly legal for me to come
and take this photo and then print it onto a range
of different print-on-demand merchandise,
like posters, phone cases, and even shower curtains,
and then sell it.
So why is it legal for me to resell this photo?
Well, that's because, as you will see,
this photo is in the public domain.
The public domain simply refers to art,
such as pictures and photos,
which no longer has any copyright protection
and can now be used by anyone for any legal purpose,
including resell.
And there are two ways that an image
can lose its copyright protections.
The first reason is because copyright protection
doesn't last forever.
Eventually, it expires.
And so once it expires,
because no one owns any copyright protection,
it enters the public domain,
which is why it is absolutely legal
for you to resell the "Mona Lisa" painting on a poster.
Why?
Well, let's because any copyright protections
on the "Mona Lisa" expired a long time ago.
So that is one way
that a picture can enter the public domain,
but there is a another way,
and that is that artists such as photographers
can choose to waive the copyrights on the photos they take
and declare their photos is having a CC0 license,
which, in other words, means they declare it
as being in the public domain.
And that's what happened to this photo.
The photographer waived the copyrights to it
and declared it to be in the public domain.
And so these are the sorts of photos
that I'm gonna be showing you how to find online.
Yep, I'm gonna be showing you my favorite websites
where photographers have placed their stunning photos
into the public domain for free.
But before I do that,
I must do the standard YouTube legal disclaimer
that you probably heard a million times before,
and that disclaimer is this.
I am not a lawyer. This is not official legal advice.
This video is my understanding of the law
as someone who is not a lawyer themself.
This video is my personal opinion only,
and very importantly,
this video should not be used as a replacement for a lawyer.
Great. Awesome. Excellent.
With that out of the way,
let's start out with the first website,
and that is PIXNIO.
This is an awesome website
to specifically find public domain photos.
Every single photo on here has a public domain license.
Every time that someone uploads a photo here,
they have to agree
that a public domain CC0 license will now be applied
to their photo.
So to find a photo of what you're looking for,
come to the search bar and do a search.
So now, I've got a bunch of photos of dogs
that have all been given a public domain license.
So this is how I was able to find that photo of the dog
that I showed earlier in the video.
And downloading is easy.
Just click on the photo that you want to use,
and you'll be taken to a photo page
where you can choose what size you want to download it in.
So that is my first website.
Onto the next one, which is quite different from PIXNIO,
because as you will see,
while it does indeed have quite a lot
of free public domain photos,
not all of them on the website are free
in the public domain.
So that website is Wikimedia Commons.
Now, this is part of the Wikimedia Foundation,
which also owns Wikipedia.
Here, photographers can submit their photos
to be included in the gallery,
and these images then get used on Wikipedia entries.
Millions of images have been uploaded to Wikimedia,
and all of them are free to use.
However, just because photos are free
doesn't mean that they are in the public domain.
A photo can be free to use,
but have additional restrictions.
So for example, take this photo here.
This butter has a CC3 share-alike license.
With this license, while the photo is free to use,
it has additional restrictions on it.
For example, you have to attribute the original photographer
each time you use it,
whereas if you come to the photo that is right next to it,
this photo here has a Creative Commons 0 license,
which is another way of saying
that it is in the public domain,
and as long as you aren't breaking a another law
by using it, you can use it for any personal
or commercial purpose restriction-free.
Yay.
The thing about Wikimedia, though,
is that while there are so many awesome photos in here
that you can use,
because of the fact that different photos on here
have different licenses, I don't really think
that it's very beginner friendly to use,
which is why I recommend that you use it in conjunction
with my next website, Free-Images.com.
If you're a longtime subscriber,
you'll probably recognize this website,
since I previously featured it
as a way to find artwork for free, too.
But it's not just artwork that you can get for free.
You can search for photos by coming to the search engine
and searching through their stock photos.
Free-Images.com is constantly searching
through the internet, looking for free public domain photos,
and then combining them into an awesome library like this,
making them really easy to search through.
So for example, take this photo here.
This photo wasn't uploaded directly to Free-Images.com.
Instead, they found this public domain photo on Wikimedia.
Then they downloaded it
and added it to the free photo library.
And I generally find that it's easier and more convenient
to browse through Free-Images.com
to find images on Wikimedia
than it is to browse through Wikimedia itself.
But it's not just Wikimedia that they collect images from.
As I said, they look for public domain images
across the internet, download them, and collect them.
So for example, take this photo here,
and instead of Wikimedia,
you will see that this photo was originally sourced
from Pixabay.
Now, the thing about Pixabay is that Pixabay is a source
of thousands of incredible, stunning public domain photos.
So here's Pixabay.
As you can see here, it looks a lot like PIXNIO, doesn't it?
This is a website where photographers can come
and upload their photos,
so that people can copy them and download them for free.
Except here's the thing.
Unlike PIXNIO, where if you upload a photo,
it by default gets a public domain license, here on Pixabay,
if you upload a photo,
it is instead given a custom Pixabay license
that has some major restrictions
on what type of commercial purposes you can use it for.
But you see, here's the thing about Pixabay.
It didn't used to be like this.
Instead, they used to be like PIXNIO.
Yep, prior to January 9th, 2019, just like PIXNIO,
all photos that were uploaded to Pixabay
were given a public domain license,
and it wasn't until Canva went and purchased the website
that they changed this on January 9th, 2019.
They added the custom Pixabay license
with commercial restrictions
and applied it to all new images
that were added to the website.
But here's the thing.
Once you put a photo in the public domain,
it is there forever.
There are no takesies-backsies, Canva.
And so Free-Images.com has also collected the photos
that were uploaded to Pixabay with a public domain license
and added them into the library as well,
which is super convenient.
And because they also link back to the original page
that they got it from on Pixabay,
it makes it very easy to double-cheek,
so that we can see that, yes,
this image was uploaded prior to January 9th, 2019,
so it was placed the public domain when it was uploaded.
And you see, here's the thing, right?
It's good to double-check
because when you copy and download a photo
that you find on the internet,
it is legally up to you to determine
whether it was actually in the public domain,
because you see, here's the thing.
If someone steals a photo from a photographer's website
and uploads it to PIXNIO
without the photographer's permission,
it wasn't actually in the public domain.
Nope, only the person who owns the copyright
has the ability to waive it,
such as the photographer themselves.
Stolen copies don't count.
And so this tool, TinEye, is actually quite helpful
when doing this type of research.
TinEye is a reverse image search engine.
So let's say that you wanted to find out more
about the history of this cute little puppy picture here.
Well, what you can do is you can download it
and then come to TinEye and upload it.
Now TinEye will scour the internet,
looking for other websites that it can find
that are also using this photo.
You can then order the results by oldest.
Obviously, you can't count on it
to catch every single instance of it,
but it's still very helpful in seeing what it finds.
And when we do that for this,
we can see that the very first website that it can find
that it was uploaded to was Pixabay.
Yay.
So those are some of my favorite websites
for finding free photos, but of course,
I also promised you that I would show you
some cool creative ways
that people are using these free photos
to earn money online.
So then let's head on over to another website, Etsy.
Yep, if we come here, we can find lots of creative ways
that people are using public domain photos
and repurposing them into products to sell.
Now, I should note that Etsy is a private website,
and so while it's perfectly legal
to sell public domain photos,
that doesn't mean that a website like Etsy can't choose
to restrict how they used on their website.
So be sure to read Etsy's terms and conditions
before doing so to see what the rules are around the usage.
And also keep in mind that the rules might be different
from when you're reading them
compared to when I am filming this video,
so I strongly recommend that you take a moment
to read Etsy's terms and conditions
as they are written today.
But, yes, back to our examples.
So if you're a longtime subscriber to this channel,
you might know that camels are one of my favorite animals
and that I like camel things.
And so for fun, the other day,
I came here and did a search for camel prints,
and as I was browsing through these,
I was just like, wait a minute.
Is that my print?
Yep, it turns out that this camel print
that I bought from a local furniture shop
here in New Zealand is actually an edited version
of this popular public domain photo
that was first uploaded to Pixabay in 2012.
Isn't that pretty amazing?
And so here on Etsy, so you will see that there are two ways
that people are making money from this photo.
The first is that there are multiple sellers on here
that have edited the photo to remove the background
and play around with the colors
and are then selling it as a wall print.
And actually, did you know
that you can also sell wall prints and posters
for free online to earn money?
That's right.
You can legally create your own wall prints for free
with the help of public domain photos
and then sell them online to earn extra cash.
And that is all thanks to something
called print-on-demand,
and if you'd like to learn how I and others
are using print-on-demand to make money every day,
you should be sure to download my free ebook,
"The 6 Steps That 6-Figure Online Stores Follow
to Make Over $10,000 a Month,"
and you'll find link to download my free ebook
in the video description below.
But anyway, back the video.
Onto the second way that people are using this photo
to make money,
and that is they've also turned their edited pictures
into a digital download.
Yep, these Etsy listings aren't for a physical wall print.
It's for just a pack of picture files that you can purchase
and then download and print out
to make your own poster from home.
And actually, did you know that editing photos
of removing the backgrounds from them is surprisingly easy?
Yep, as my longtime subscribers know,
one of my favorite tool to edit pictures with online
is this one here, Canva.
I'll have a link to Canva in the video description below.
But yes, using Canva, you can upload a photo
and then you can remove the background from it
with a click of a button.
And you know what?
I did some research, and it turns out
that this method of taking public domain photos
and then removing the background
and then placing them onto a white background
has been popular with other types of animals, too.
But yes, as you can see, through creativity and ingenuity,
people all around the world, including here in New Zealand,
have been able to take free photos like this online
and then turn them into something new
and then sell them to customers like me.
So then, did my video inspire you?
If it did, please hit Subscribe
and click that little notification bell
so you don't miss any of my videos,
and if you'd like to learn more about other ways
that you can earn money online for free,
you should be sure to watch my video,
"100 websites and Apps that You Can Use
to Earn Money Online for Free."
So go ahead, watch my next video,
and I'll see you over there.