A Complete Guide to Finding Images for Your Creatives

Ask any seasoned affiliate and you’ll know that there are dozens of different elements that affect the performance of your campaign. The wording used, the landing page, and most of all, the creatives used in your ads. Which brings another question to mind: 

How on earth can you score great images for your creatives?

This is the reason why we’ve created this guide to help you find the best images to spice up your creatives and improve the performance of your campaign.

The Power of Carefully-Selected Imagery

Colors are emotional cues and they are just one of the many elements that make up an image. Having attractive pictures can give your ads a more authentic look and shows consumers that you’re dedicated to quality, rather than finding your ads bland.

Taking the time to carefully select images for your creatives can have a great impact on your ads. This practice can help you:

Create a Connection with the Audience

Consumers develop ad blindness very easily, but having the right creatives can stir emotion and inevitably draw your targets’ attention. For instance, affiliates in the gaming industry can produce ads that mimic gameplay, which will definitely draw the attention to gamers and similar demographics.

Magnify the Effect of Feelings and Emotions

As we mentioned before, colors have the ability to ignite certain feelings and unconsciously encourage users to take certain actions. Some of the psychological effects that colors have include, but are not limited to:

• Red: Energizing, powerful color that attracts attention, increases heart rate.
• Green: Representation of balance and harmony, reduces heart rate slightly.
• Blue: Soothing and relaxing, reduces heart rate.
• Yellow: Ignites intense feelings of joy and optimism, increases confidence.
• Purple: Spiritual and energetic, creates intrigue.
• Orange: Combination of red’s power and yellow’s gentleness, stimulates appetite.

Attract Attention Like Never Before!

Memes, functional posts, and other creative approaches resonate deeply with consumers, so you can employ these creative images to really attract attention. Forget about bombarding your audience with product-centric posts and start giving them value in some form!

How to Find Images for Your Creative Elements

Now that we’ve gone over the importance of the images you choose, let’s take a look at the steps you can take to source the best images.

In simple terms, there are two main elements you have to focus on when looking for images, which are avoiding legal issues and finding sources that offer a large collection of images.

Prevent Legal Issues

Copywriting is no joke, especially for affiliates that like taking images from Google search and social media. Instead of playing with this metaphorical time bomb, don’t take pictures unless you’re sure you’re allowed to.

Whenever you download an image, either make sure it doesn’t have reserved rights or that you have the appropriate license, which can usually be acquired by signing up to a paid stock photo website.

Finding the Ideal Sources

Next, you have to do your homework and track down the best sources. Affiliates that have the budget should not hesitate to invest in a paid photo bank because they usually have higher quality photos that have not been used as much.

Here are our picks for the best 5 platforms out there:

Flickr – Free

Technically a photo sharing and management application, Flickr has become a pseudo-social network where photographers showcase their pictures. Many of these come with a CC0 licenses, which means that the images are in the public domain and can be used for any purpose.

Unsplash – Free

Unsplash offers extremely artistic photos and images that make your campaign look amazing, especially if you want to attract millenials. And, all of them are free and you don’t even have to create an account to download them!

Pexels – Free

Pexels is known for having more business-oriented images, so it’s a great choice for affiliates who are promoting functional products or goods for commercial use.

Raw Pixel – Free with Paid Version Available

Raw Pixel has a little bit of everything, but not all images are free for all uses. To play it safe, the paid versions allow you access to a certain number of images and gives you the freedom to use them for your ads as well.

Shutterstock – Paid

Shutterstock is the mother of all image banks, but its super-high-quality images are only available for paid subscribers. That said, it’s definitely work making the investment if you have the money!

Learn More About Getting the Best Resources for Your Affiliate Campaign

Whether it’s on a paid or free platform, finding the best images for your ads isn’t easy. From psychological effect to color scheme and relevancy, you have to weigh a variety of elements in order to make the best choice.

To learn more about the best techniques to improve the performance of your ads, stay tuned or get in touch with ActiveRevenue and we’ll be happy to help.