Finding resources online can be really hard, especially when you're just starting out your business and haven't signed up for one of the many subscriptions to get stock resources or don't have the funds to hire someone yet. Been there, done that, and still do that for one of my side gigs sometimes. Because of that, this article will be a list of FREE resources you can use to get materials for your brand before signing up for all of those subscriptions.
I've limited it to 3 per category because there are a lot of options out there and some of them repeat to other categories, but overall, here is the list for you with a very brief description of what you can get from these sites.
PHOTOS
Free stock photography is available for both personal and commercial use.
https://unsplash.com/ - Over 3 million free high-resolution images brought to you by the world’s most generous community of photographers. Unsplash is a platform powered by an amazing community. Get access to over 3 million photos under the Unsplash license—which makes them free to do whatever you want.
https://www.pexels.com/ - The best free stock photos, royalty-free images & videos shared by creators. Pexels is a free stock photo and video website and app that helps designers, bloggers, and everyone who is looking for visuals to find great photos and videos that can be downloaded and used for free.
https://www.lifeofpix.com/ - Free high-resolution photography. Free high-resolution photos, no copyright restrictions for personal and commercial use. New photographs are added weekly! All images are donated to the public domain. An awesome community of photographers is here to share with you their best shots.
VIDEOS
https://pixabay.com/ - Stunning royalty-free images & royalty-free stock. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing royalty-free visuals. All contents are released under the Pixabay License, which makes them safe to use without attribution - even for commercial purposes.
https://www.pexels.com/ - Yep, again. This is literally my first choice when looking for videos and no, the Android app has nothing to do with it. Seriously. Nothing.
https://lifeofvids.com/ - Free Videos, Clips & Loops. Is it really free? Hell yeah! No copyright restrictions (personal & commercial). How about that? The only thing we don't want is our entire collection on your website, so we had set the redistribution limited to 10 videos on other sites.
ILLUSTRATIONS/ICONS
https://iconmonstr.com/ - Pretty sure I've talked about this one a lot already but here it is again! iconmonstr - free, monstrously big and continuously growing source of simple icons run by one creator. All icons are free for any commercial use.
https://undraw.co/illustrations - Browse to find the images that fit your needs and click to download. Use the on-the-fly color image generation to match your brand identity. You can use the illustrations in any project, commercial or personal without attribution or any costs.
https://www.reshot.com/ - Free Icons & Illustrations. Design freely with instant downloads and commercial licenses. No cost. No attribution. No worries. Create bold, fearless designs with absolutely no attribution required. Free SVG, PNG, and vector formats made by designers, for designers.
FONTS
https://fonts.google.com/ - All Google Fonts are open source and are without cost. You can use them commercially, and even include them within a product that is sold commercially. Usage and redistribution conditions are specified in the license.
https://www.fontsquirrel.com/ - Free fonts have met their match. We know how hard it is to find quality freeware that is licensed for commercial work. We've done the hard work, hand-selecting these typefaces and presenting them in an easy-to-use format.
http://fonts.adobe.com/ Needed a third to balance things out, but this one is free only with an Adobe subscription. Basically, if you use any font resource (ANY!) make sure to double-check the license first as fonts can be limited to personal use, specific use, only for print/web/etc. Read the fine print.
SOUNDS
https://pixabay.com/ - yes, again! I love the sound options that they have available and though I did originally put this one under the video category, it is amazing for sound, illustrations, photos, and so much more. Make sure to check it out for all of your resource needs because it most likely has them!
https://mixkit.co/ - Free assets for your next video project. On Mixkit, they have a specific license for each item type. Be sure you are aware of which license applies to the item you have downloaded. It's because of this that I have listed this one under sounds instead of videos because for me, personally, I found all the sounds I was looking for royalty-free but not all the videos.
https://www.bensound.com/free-music-for-videos - Royalty Free Music for Videos. The best Music, by the best Artists. Bensound is the best place to find royalty-free music that pops your videos up! There is a much wider selection as part of their subscription, but the free music selection is still quite big and the way it's organized is a dream.
CONTENT
https://dripscripts.growthtools.com/ - Write high-converting email sequences in record time. DripScripts lets you customize proven email sequences that are specifically structured to turn leads into customers. Stop fighting the blank page. All you have to do is pick a template, customize it to fit your needs, and download it to your service provider.
https://answerthepublic.com/ - Discover what people are asking about. Fill your content calendar (fast) and say goodbye to writer’s block with endless content ideas. Get front-row seats to what people are Googling. Identify content ideas without manually having to sift through individual keywords. Save days and even weeks of time.
https://www.contentrow.com/ - Turn Your Writing Up to 11 - Meet your new secret sauce for creating killer written content that’s optimized for engagement. Input a headline or paragraphs of text for analysis, and get instant insights into strengths and weaknesses. Our actionable suggestions improve quality with a click.
EDITORS
https://jitter.video/ - Motion design made simple. Jitter enables creators and teams to easily design stunning animated content and interfaces. Animate your content in seconds with full creative control and team collaboration all in your browser.
https://ezgif.com/ - Although the link is to the GIF section, I use this site all the time for other conversions - all found at the bottom to convert files from one to another. Sometimes, it's faster to use this than to try and edit the original especially when it comes to videos, and it actually does it really well.
https://lumen5.com/ - Grow your brand and drive demand with video at scale. Our online video creator makes it easy for anyone on your team to create engaging video content. Creating with Lumen5 is just like making a presentation. Point and click, drag and drop, done and done.
OTHER RESOURCES
https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/ - If you are not suffering from a color vision deficiency it is very hard to imagine how it looks like to be colorblind. The Color BLIndness Simulator can close this gap for you. Just play around with it and get a feeling of how it is to have a color vision handicap.
https://contrastchecker.com/ - As it says on the tin - this is to help you figure out if your colours work well together and at what sizes. Add in the greyscale option and this is epic. It uses the latest industry standards (to my knowledge) and is very good at figuring out if your audience can see what you see.
https://brandfetch.com/ - All brands in one place. Brandfetch is the home for the world’s brands. Discover the latest logos, colors, fonts and more. We are the global brand registry making brands universally accessible and empowering organizations with better control over their brand assets.
Oof... that's a lot of resources in one place! I hope they are useful for you! 🙂