What source do you use to obtain the best photos & pictures for your blog posts? I obviously have access to my own local real estate market photos, but see lots of professional quality blogs with great diversity in the pictures and photos attached.

Whatever you do, use a royalty-free source otherwise you are opening yourself up for ridiculous lawsuits.

Not sure what you mean by your own real estate market photos but beware of using random images off the MLS. Our MLS has adopted a rule that disallows anyone else from using listing photos without express permission from the listing broker.

I take 99.9% of my own photos. Or I purchase them from places like istockphoto.com where you can use them for commercial use.

http://www.morguefile.com (I think that's the url...can't check right now) has royalty free photos you can use free, some for commercial use (check licensing.)

You can also search http://flickr.com for royalty free creative commons photos for commercial use. You must make sure that the licensing allows commercial use.

Most places require annotation /credit unless you've purchased them.

I have a hyper local niche site and I either take my own pics or just e-mail the owner and ask if they'd like to submit a pic to my blog post. I have been really happy with how friendly people have been and how excited about submitting pics they are.

Yep. istockphoto or dreamstime or any of the stock image libraries, they all pretty much have the same stuff, same photographers and illustrators uploading to each of the sites, so pick one you like. Cheap and easy...

I've got a few photos that either I've taken myself, friends have taken or that I have paid for over the years that I use fairly often. If I cannot find anything that really suits the topic correctly I use some images from royalty-free sources to fill the gaps.

I agree it is always best to use your own photos and images.

I've build up my own library of photos over the years. I just go out with my camera and take a lot of photos. It is amazing at how quickly you can build up a ok sized portfolio.

...also be abundantly careful of what photos you post on sites like Picassa and the like. A colleage said that Picassa simply deleted his account without warning. He violated TOS, he had a photo of one of his listings in wich the yard sign (For "sale") was visible in the photo...in the TOS, they do say that they reserve the right to delete your account should you violate them...they're serious!

I've used many times ( [url=http://www.sxc.hu/][/url] http://www.sxc.hu/) as it's a free website. It's not that good as fotolia or other premium services but still, can be very helpful most of the times...

Your ranking can be boosted by continually adding new posts and fresh, accompanying photos.

We take all our own photos now. I found out about the MLS change the hard way!!!!! It was not fun.

I have used istockphoto.com and got some really good pictures from there in the past.

I would also recommend taking your own photos or buying the rights to use photos from others. If you don't mind giving attribution, you can find free photos from various sources by using Creative Commons Search - http://search.creativecommons.org/

I'm always amazed at how my photos and or videos are ripped and end up on other sites. Not embedded but ripped off youtube. I had three vids ripped this summer.

Hi,
Like some other members, I feel that using real pics are more beneficial because then there is less possibility that you are using the same photos as your competitor is using. When such things caught by the customers, it leaves very bad impression of your brand.