Honest Review of Haute Stock Photo Membership
Quality photos and graphics are so important to the look of a blog. This is why I’m sharing my honest review of Haute Stock photo membership, as I’ve been a customer for a few years.
If your photography skills are not up to scratch then you’re definitely going to need stock photos, preferably some feminine and beautifully styled stock photos (if that’s the branding of your site of course.)
Now, there are quite a few places where you can grab some free images to use on your blog, and let’s be clear they are great (just make sure you check you really can use them, I’ve heard of bloggers being sued after using what they thought were free stock photos…)
But I had already noticed a few bloggers with beautiful high-quality images in a certain, very feminine style and I just felt that the quality really made their blogs look professional and stand out.
I admit, as a bit of a cheap skate when I found out I would have to pay for those stock photos I (wrongly) thought free would be good enough for me.
I then spent about 55 minutes looking for a single photo to use on a Pinterest graphic from one of those free sites.
Well that taught me a couple of things: one, I do not have the patience or the time to wade through pages of different, dare I say, crappy pictures, to find one acceptable one.
Two, none of the free images even came close to the quality of those images I coveted.
So I invested in Haute Stock and it was one of the best purchases I made for this blog because I literally use those images every. single. day.
Carry on reading for my full, and honest review of Haute Stock or you can check out Haute Stock here.
Related Reading:
WHY HAUTE STOCK PHOTOS?
Honestly, I just love their images.
I love the feminine style.
The high quality that means however much I fiddle with the sizing it never goes blurry and pixelated.
Plus the photos, coupled with complementary fonts and colors are so easy to produce graphics with a strong personal brand.
HOW DOES HAUTE STOCK PHOTO MEMBERSHIP WORK?
You purchase either a quarterly or annual membership (you can cancel at any time, there is no contract) which gives you instant access to all the hundreds of stock photos in the library.
That library is updated weekly and you can download literally as many images as you like, as many times as you like.
In fact (and this is what I love about Haute Stock) when you grab a membership you can download every image in the library and continue to use them even when your membership expires!!!
So whilst your access to new photos is limited to when you purchase a membership, once you’ve brought a membership and downloaded those photos, you can use them for life!!!
Pretty awesome right!
You can use the images anywhere on your blog, as graphics or for branding and logo creation.
What you can’t do is resell the images, or use the images to make graphics (like Instagram quotes) and sell them.
This makes perfect sense as that would take business directly away from Haute Stock as you would be selling their products! Not cool!
ANY CONS OF HAUTE STOCK?
Honestly, I think it’s a touch pricey.
Let’s be clear for the amount of photos you get it’s an incredible deal.
Literally hundreds (probably more like thousands) of stock photos for either $149 (the quarterly, three month membership) or $499 (for the annual membership).
If you compared that to DepositPhotos, another stock photo provider that the majority of the bigger bloggers recommend, their best deal is 100 photos for $100 dollars.
With Haute Stock you can pay $149 for three months and get instant access to the current library of 9,000+ stock photos already uploaded!
It’s a no-brainer, Haute Stock is so much better value!
But if you are just starting your blog, then even paying $149 for something of incredible value can still be too much!
The problem is it’s the newbie bloggers that can benefit the most from professional stock photography, because it can instantly make your blog actually look like a business rather than a hobby.
I do think it’s sad that stock photos are so expensive, but they are expensive to whoever you buy them from.
So if you are going to invest you may as well get the most value possible and the prettiest by going with Haute Stock!
DOES HAUTE STOCK ONLY DO STOCK PHOTOS?
Oh they do so much more!
Think graphics, icons, backgrounds, papers, overlays and borders, all beautifully styled together with color suggestions and fonts. Haute Stock calls these graphics packs and they are perfect for DIYing your own logo or creating beautiful digital freebies and products.
Below are two tasters of my favorite graphics packs:
Plus Haute Stock also does pre-styled social media quotes, so if you need something to share in Instagram but you’re just not having an Instagram-worthy day, you can just grab one of their quotes and share away!
All the photos in this post have come from Haute Stock and while this is only a tiny snippet of what’s available, I think you get the idea that the Haute Stock photos are stunningly beautiful.
