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I built a website called LibreStock that allows you to search through many many commercial free not attribution required stock photos:
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Hey man thanks for the kind words.
It definitely depends on the article. The niche I am working in I am semi-familiar with, so writing the articles / researching them is easier than if I went into a website about medicine for example. I would say it takes around an hour per 1,000 words. That includes researching and everything, over my years of uni I have gotten quite good at writing and researching. And I use a dual-monitor setup so that I can have word processors and information up at the same time.
Well I worked from May 15th-May 29th on this site and I probably did about 3 hours a day over the period of that time. Some days it was 8 hours, some days none. But I'd say around 40 hours for the first month so far.
Yeah I do link out to amazon right now, but I limit the number of links and keep them within images usually. Such as a 'buy now button' or on the image of the product. I have linked to a few external sources, but these are usually to try and give some spice to my article.
I use stock Amazon images and then re-purpose them by putting them within a heading banner or somewhere else. This gives a unique feel to them and is better than just the image. I also think it will give my website a certain 'feel' as it develops and gets bigger.
I also use Libre to get free for commercial use HD photos that I use throughout my website.
To be honest, you could get a stock photo for a small sum.
You could also use a creative commons image. You can find a great selection of images here I searched puppies for you but you obviously can search whatever you like, there's tons and they're 100% free to use. To be honest if you are doing an illustration over it, you most likely will face no legal trouble. But it's foolish to simply say "do it" and expect to 100% pass go.
I hope some if any of this helped. Take it or leave it, and good luck :)