Why I've Stopped Using Photography on My Blog

You know the conventional wisdom, right? You have to have photos on your blogs. The Google likes the photos. So find a photo for every blog post.

But you know what? I'm getting tired of seeing the same stock photography everywhere. Even when you think you've found a really original source of photography, like Unsplash or Gratisography, you end up seeing the same pics you choose on a whole bunch of other blogs and Instagram accounts.

Add to that the amount of time I've spent poring over free stock photography sites searching for the perfect photo to illustrate some very specific marketing topic I'm writing about, and it's just too much. I only have so many hours in the day. (And as I wrote recently, I'm having enough trouble as it is getting these blog posts done in those hours.) Searching for, downloading, uploading to and formatting in Canva (shout out!), downloading, and uploading to my site, is not how I want to spend those hours.

So, much like some other fabulous bloggers out there, I've stopped using photography on my blog. I'll have images still (don't want to make the Google angry). But my images will be text-based graphics (thank you, Canva, for making this easier for a non-designer like me).

What do you think? Are you over stock photography? Sticking with it?