They say a picture is worth a thousand words so sometimes freelancers need to provide a picture with their content to clarify, illuminate, or capture attention. But where do you get pictures from and, more importantly, where can you get pictures from that won’t result in a rabid lawyer hunting you down and suing your freelancing pants off for copyright infringement.

There are paid and free options of varying quality and you can read about some of them on Freelance Weekly. But one of my favorite go-to sources is Flickr. Flickr offers many different licenses for you to use some of their user-generated content.

These licenses are drawn from the Creative Commons licenses that offer more useful and potentially collaborative licenses than the overarching and fairly restrictive Copyright.

Here’s how it works: When someone on Flickr uploads a picture, they assign a license to it. Sometimes they will assign a fairly restrictive license because they don’t want anyone to use it. Other times they will assign a license that allows people to use the picture but not for commercial gain. And other licenses allow users to resell pictures or freely share pictures or modify the picture.

You can view pictures on Flickr through each of these licenses here: Visit this page, check out the various license options and be sure to read the key in the sidebar that helps to explain what each of the licenses mean.

So, if you have a blog and want to post a picture to your blog, you might choose the Attribution or Attribution, No-Derivatives license. If you have a personal blog, you might choose one of the non-commercial options for even more selection. Ebooks might only be allowed to use content with the Attribution license.

Here’s the process to follow

1. Go to Flickr’s Creative Commons page and find the license that applies to your situation. Content to be used in your freelance business is generally NOT going to be a non-commercial.
2. Browse through for pictures (or search in that category using related keywords). I like to use a couple of comma-separated keywords and synonyms to get a good amount of choice.
3. Find the picture, choose the size. When you do that, you’ll get either a link to embed the picture or a place to download the size you want.
4. Embed the link or paste the picture into your content.
5. Include the appropriate attribution (if necessary).
6. As a courtesy, let the user know where the picture has been posted. (It’s the least you can do since they’ve given it to you for free).

That’s it! You can get great looking pictures for free using Flickr’s Creative Commons licensing. Just make sure that you use the licenses appropriately. Even if you don’t think you’ll get caught, just remember that you want other people treating your content with the same regard that you are treating these pictures. Take the first step and honor the licenses.

Flickr provides a really easy “no-brainer” way to add great pictures to your content!