The Web Squeeze has recently published a large collection of recommended places to find free stock photos.

40 Free Stock Photo Sites.

Stock photos are very useful, and of course it’s nice to not have to pay for them. A well-placed photo can liven up a text-heavy blog post, and attract attention from StumbleUpon users if placed near the top. They’re also good for ad creatives, and other things where a photo can improve the overall look.

It’ll probably take you awhile to go through the list, but it’ll probably be worth your while if you bookmark some of your favorites as you check the sites out. Then you can refer to your more compact list of sites the next time you need a stock photo.

Need some images to make your posts more interesting? You need stock photos.

A stock photo is a royalty-free image sold or given away for free that can be used in things like flyers, brochures, and of course websites. Have you ever seen the same photo used in more than one place (for example, I’ve seen the same image of people watching TV in more than one satellite company’s ad)? Chances are, it’s a stock photo. Paid stock photos are frequently being used as book covers even (generally with some adjustments in Photoshop).

Obviously you don’t want to buy stock photos for use on your blog, as that could quickly get expensive (iStockPhoto may be cheap, but those $1 images stack-up pretty fast…). There are plenty of places to get totally free images for use on your blog. Here are a five sources that you may find useful:

• Stock.Xchng
• StockVault
• YotoPhoto
• Flickr (look for images licensed with Creative Commons).
• Creative Commons Search