How to Get Stock Photos for your Shopify Store

If you are selling items online that you don’t actually physically have at your location or if you have the items at your location but you just don’t have the facilities to take good photos you might want to consider using stock photos for the products in your Shopify store. There are actually quite a few companies out there that deal with product stock photos and you may be able to find what you’re looking for. If you are selling specialized products that don’t have stock photos you may have to consider other options which will discuss here.

Where to Find Stock Photos of Products

Many people that set up an online store get their product images directly from a Google image search. However, this can be a very bad idea. If you have taken an image that a competitor of yours actually took themselves and then placed on their website you may run afoul of intellectual property law. If someone takes a photograph, the rights to it are usually theirs. However, that doesn’t mean that all is lost. You may politely ask the retailer where they get their images and see if there is some way that you can get access to the same images.

Stock Photo Websites

Don’t waste a lot of time looking on stock photo websites for your product photos. Do a quick Google search and see if any of the first few results are from a stock photo image. If not, you probably are going to find that particular product on any stock photo page. A lot of the time, what stock photo websites have, are images of a particular product model that represents all of the products in that category. For example, they may have a picture of a specific blender model, but they are not listing it is the model they are simply listing it as a blender.

Ask the Manufacturer

One of the things that you can do that many storeowners don’t even think about is contact the manufacturer and get suggestions from them as to where you can get photos of the products that you’re selling. Some manufacturers even have stock photos that they have taken for various marketing purposes but even if they don’t they’ll probably be able to point you in the right direction so that you can find a viable source.