If you’re just a beginner or even a pro webmaster, Pixabay is your next destination to download free images online. Keep in mind, that images are one of the most important things to consider when putting up a new site or just updating old content.
Particularly, because images are what complete and complement your website content. And now that in the past years, you either needed to provide your own images. Or rather, pay money to graphic designers and photography sites in order to use quality images. But, all thanks to the emergence of application platforms that allows us to download free images online.
Through these platforms, you can download free images online without spending a single coin! And if need be, some of them have methods that, seamlessly, allowing you to appreciate the image creator — like the ”Buy Coffee” method. Eventually, there are still some sites you can pay a certain fee to be able to access quality images for both your personal and commercial use.
What Pixabay Is All About
Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, who share copyright-free images, videos, and music. All contents in the release fall under the Pixabay License — which makes them safe to use without asking for permission. Or rather, without giving credit to the artist — even for commercial purposes.
As time goes by, more and more free images are made available daily to the users of sites like Pixabay. And so to speak, if you are a website designer/developer, Pixabay for WordPress has even made it so easy for you to download free, high-quality pictures to your website.
The Pixabay web platform was founded in Germany back in 2010 as an international, free-to-use website for sharing photos, illustrations, vectors, graphics, film footage, and music. And with that knowledge, anyone can visit their website to download any of the above-mentioned file types for free.
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However, there are some stipulations when using certain files like videos. But, as long as you’ll give sound attributions, you’ll be good to go. What I can say is that I find the platform so useful.
Especially, to creative content designers like our very own team of Web Tech Experts Taskforce who need images now and then but for free. That said, when you talk of Pixabay, it’s a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright-free images and videos.
Basically, all contents are released under the Pixabay License. A unique License that makes them safe to use by anyone visiting their main website. Without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist — even for commercial purposes.
According to their terms, the license is thus necessary in order to empower creators and protect their community. While keeping it as simple as possible. For your information, below is an overview of what Pixabay content can and can’t be used for.
What is allowed?
- First, all content on Pixabay can be used for free for commercial and noncommercial use across print and digital. Except in the cases mentioned in “What is not allowed”.
- Secondly, attribution is not required. Meaning, that giving credit to the contributor or Pixabay is not necessary. But, it’s always appreciated by the community.
- Then lastly, you can make modifications to content from Pixabay. As long as you have an active and verified user account profile.
What is not allowed?
- Redistribute or sell someone else’s Pixabay images or videos on other stock or wallpaper platforms.
- Sell unaltered copies of an image. e.g. sell an exact copy of a stock photo as a poster, print, or on a physical product.
- Portray identifiable people in a bad light or in a way that is offensive.
- Use images with identifiable brands to create a misleading association with a product or service.
This section only applies to image users and not to the appropriate image authors. And as such, you’re not allowed to do all of the above.
How To Download Free Images From Pixabay
At times, as I touched on a little bit earlier, by searching through a variety of web pages online, getting quality images can prove to be so hard. Whilst, this is the case, adding Pixabay to WordPress makes the work so much easier.
Simply, because you’ll have an in-access to over a million high-quality images that you can use right in your dashboard. The only main downside of this method is that you may come across an image that has been used on multiple number sites.
But, that’s a small price to pay for being able to access an image library of this caliber. And with just about any type of image, you could dream of.
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Of course, if you’d like more images and then have an opportunity to customize them — through a tool like Canva — the solution is to download them directly from Pixabay.
However, there is a faster and easier way to do that when you use an alternative method — Pixabay Free Images Plugin. Whereby, you can also easily optimize your images too. Below is a simple method of how to use the plugin.
Earn Donations From Your Images
As aforementioned, Pixabay users can download royalty-free photos, videos, and music. And, as they do so, they can in return reward the creative minds through donations. Currently, artists can only receive donations through PayPal. Please indicate your PayPal email address or Merchant ID through the settings page.
The Merchant ID is a 13-digit code — which you can easily find on your PayPal account’s settings page. They only accept PayPal for donations to users. Whereby, as a user, you can use any of the options on this page for donations to Pixabay.
You can donate by clicking the “Donate” button right after downloading any kind of media. Alternatively, you can donate by going to the user’s profile and clicking the green ‘Coffee‘ button. That’s alongside the ‘Message’ and ‘Follow’ buttons on the top right part of their profile page.
To upload media, you need to be a registered user of the site first. If you are not yet registered, you can sign up here. Once you have signed up you can upload any media by clicking the “upload” button in the top right corner of the page.
Things for artists to know:
While there’s no need to pay to use the media, it’s always appreciated when you credit the contributor. This provides more exposure to their work. It also encourages them to continue sharing. You can copy, modify, distribute, and use the media, even for commercial purposes. However, depicted content may still be protected by trademarks, publicity, or privacy rights.
For this reason, make sure that you learn more about the Pixabay license in detail. There’s even more! Through it’s Goodies Page, you can also download free tools, jQuery and vanilla JavaScript plugins, and other useful software — by Pixabay dev. Go ahead, and share your own pictures in the public domain with people all over the world. And then, receive donations for your efforts.
The Free Pixabay Images Best Practices
One challenge that a lot of businesses have with social media branding is building initial traction. Getting your first few followers can seem impossible when you don’t even know where to start.
However, if you’ve been in business for a while or have other Web properties (like a website blog, or other social media accounts) then you should start there.
Furthermore, unless you tell your current customers, colleagues, and network that you have a Snapchat or Instagram account, how will they know? Never make the mistake of just assuming everyone knows about all your social media channels, even within your own company.
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It’s also important to realize, that users, engage with social media posts that include images more than with posts that don’t include images.
For example, you can add infographics, photographs, and other visual images to your weblog posts. And then, take advantage of Pinterest and Tumblr, which can be used to store and share visual content. But also, don’t post for the sake of posting. Therefore, keep social media posts relevant, meaningful, and simple.
Keeping in mind, posting too frequently, and posting ‘boring’ content are the main reasons people will unfollow and unlike brands.
How To Upload Your Images — Quality Over Quantity
Pixabay lets you upload only a certain number of images or videos in a given period. This number is determined by the quality of your work. Select wisely and earn privileged upload rights. To encourage everybody to upload truly useful and awe-inspiring photos and videos, Pixabay has a dynamic upload limit for contributors.
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At any given time, you may submit only a certain number of images/videos. This number is determined by the quality of your recent contributions. When the upload limit is reached, you need to wait one or a few days for a “recharge”. Their key community and main editors evaluate each and every submission manually.
There are a few possible outcomes for any image/video to be considered and featured on Pixabay. And as such, you need to know how the upload limit is calculated first. So that you don’t fall victim to your own doing. Let’s look at the criteria that will guide you on this below.
Consider the following:
- Images/Videos of poor quality or without clearly useful subjects are declined.
- Useful images/videos of good quality get approved and they are shown in their list of latest contributions.
- Through likes, favorites, or comments, any of these images can get promoted into the list of upcoming contributions, which gives them more exposure.
- Great images/videos are placed directly in the list of upcoming contributions too. Whilst, giving them more exposure and a better discovery chance.
It’s important to realize, that our agency (jmexclusives) has more than 100 quality images featured on Pixabay (have a look). So, this is a very great motivation for all those newbie graphics content designers. You can follow our leads to get more inspired as you begin your journey.
Your upload limit reflects directly on your Upload Page. Whereas, its calculation is on the basis of the number of approvals. Pixabay checks this number for the first 10, 25, 50, and 100 uploads. And then, for all the other 100 uploads that follow. Luckily, these numbers are just a rough guide, though.
Pixabay may give you a custom upload limit depending on the quality of your work. Just remember the golden rule of uploads: the better your submissions, the higher your chances of upload limit. So, make sure you prioritize quality over quantity! The higher the quality, the more you’ll upload.
Here Are Some Quick Facts To Note:
- A limit of 7 submissions per week for new users. This is the base limit. But, it may increase depending on the quality of your next uploads.
- If a good number of your submissions are approved, they can increase your upload limit to 30 submissions per week.
- If more than half of your submissions are in approval, they can increase your upload limit to 90 submissions per week.
What’s more, as a new contributor, you may submit up to 10 files in 10 days (“base limit”). Great images/videos don’t affect the upload limit. As an example, you’ll upload 10 images and 8 of them get classified as “great“. You may then upload 8 new images right away — or you can wait until the end of this 10-day period, after which the limit is reset.
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Depending on your average “quality score”, your base limit may get increased from 10 to 25 or 50 submissions in 10 days. Of course, 25 or 50 uploads in 10 days may not sound much, right? However, if you mainly submit truly great works, you will hardly ever hit the limit.
Fortunately, to both newcomers and existing users alike, since we are solid platform publishers, I’ve got a Pro Tip for all of you. And, as such, in order for your graphics content designs to be approved and featured quickly, especially on their homepage, you’ll need to;
Consider the following:
- At all times, make sure your content is unique and on-demand,
- For trend ideas, visit their web platform upload section to see the most commonly requested tags,
- Make sure your images are of high-quality resolution (like 3000 x 2000 pixels),
- If you don’t have a great tool to create or design your graphics you can start with Canva,
- Make sure that your Pixabay Profile is always updated with the correct details, etc.
Always remember, having the ability to download free high-quality images is a huge deal. But, it makes website design somewhat easier. It also allows you to have access to files to use on your web posts and pages whenever you write.
By the same token, though you may see similar images used by someone else, it’s a small price to pay. Now that these are free-to-use images, photos, or other media. Furthermore, you’ll have direct and full access straight into your website panel.
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And with so many websites now offering free photos, images, and other related files, it’s good to have one great resource such as Pixabay. Its library is vastly growing and its plugin for automatic image downloads is a fantastic start too. One of the best tools every new or pro webmaster must have.
Pixabay Free Images WordPress Plugin For Webmasters
Through Pixabay Free Images Plugin, you’ll have the ability to easily download royalty-free images/photos under CCO public domain for your own blog.
This plugin is built to save webmasters time. Because once it’s installed, they’ll have the option of accessing the images right from the site. And then download them instantly. The plugin is also very lightweight and powerful.
The idea of its creation is that it takes free photo downloads to the next level. And it just does that, deliver. And although it’s a straightforward plugin, without the requirements of any further settings, it’s fully packed with tons of other great features.
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That’s it! Everything you’ll need to access over million-plus free-to-use images right at your fingertips. As long as you download and install the plugin files correctly and successfully.
After all, if you’re unable to access or download the plugin files, you can simply access them on your WordPress dashboard. All you’ll need to do is to visit the Plugins Directory Page. So long as you’re using WordPress as your preferred CMS — then search for the plugin.
However, if you’re using other CMS methods like Wix, you can Consult Us if you’ll need any further assistance. You can see it’s additional features or download it straight away.
How The Plugin WordPress Works
Once the plugin has been installed and activated, it is now easy to use it. No configuration page is available or additional settings are required. And as soon as the plugin is active, it automatically adds a ”download library” menu to your WordPress Media Section.
Forthwith, in order to use the plugin, Click on Media › Download Images. It’s located in the left menu area of your WordPress website dashboard. After that, you’ll be taken to the download library. Where you can easily search and download images using your Keywords Search.
At this point, you’ll see that the look mimics your regular media library. The difference is that this is the Pixabay image library now attached to your WordPress site. And as you’ll notice, you can also search for images using the tab for a specific category.
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You’ll also see how you can click on the download button to automatically download the image to your WordPress site. Or, if you want to download different sizes, you can look to the bottom right for other available sizes. And if you find your preferred image, click on it to download it on your media panel.
A ”download successful” message will be shown per request. And it will only take a second or two to upload your image. To view your images/photos, please visit your media library and the file will be available. Ready to use!
Finally, I hope the above guide was useful to your business as well as your social media team. But, if you’ll need more help, you can Contact Us and let us know how we can come in. You can also share your additional questions and requests in the comments section. Or rather, refer to this page for more answers.
Also, don’t forget to Donate in order to support our online research work, blog articles, and other related projects. And please, share this post with your friends and other online readers to help us grow together with you.
