Best place to buy images?

If you don't plan on selling the site, checkout clipart.com. $159 per year.
They are owned by Getty and have a subset/limited resolution images from photos.com and their other sites.
The limited resolution images are fine for websites.

I use iStockphoto but I use the Pay As You Go option. My favorite stock photo site by far. It's only about $1 per photo (for the small ones, but they're perfect for my websites).

That's funny, I never thought of istock as being expensive. I always find great pics there. I find the xs or small size ones work nicely for the web. I never looked at the subscription. The pay as you go/need credit price is very low.

You can also try contacting some artists that will get it done in return for a link.

Thanks for all your responses!

Definitely leaning towards iStockPhoto as the quality seems unmatched, and most the sites I am building will probably fall under commercial category, as I will be selling various items. I kinda freaked when I saw the subscription price, as I thought it would be cheaper becoming a subscribed member.

Pay-as-you-go seems reasonable after further researching

Dreamstime was another that I like a lot, and will probably explore further.

Clipart for the price seems to be a great deal, not exactly what I'm looking for right now, but definitely something worth getting later.

Just checked out openstockphotography.org, and for some reason the search doesn't return any results? However, thanks for the tip, as now I know about Wikimedia Commons...cool!

Finally, a few years back, when I actually had time to draw...I had a account I had long forgotten all about with DeviantArt.com, which has some incredible artist's looking for exposure, and some really unique content.

Probably test their desire for exposure once I get better at ranking some sites. I'm sure there's plenty artists that would be happy to see their work plastered all over our websites...so it might be a cheap alternative, as well.

Again, thanks for your insight everyone!

edit: ralf in response to openstock not working, I found this...

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ca...res_and_images

^^^Tons of useable images^^^

Look up morgue file. There images are free and have not yet let me down. Just make sure to check the copyright of what your downloading. Most allow any kind of use as long as you don't reupload the pics without editing them in some way.

I used three different sites: iStockphoto, Fotolia, and Shutterstock. Sometimes only one may have the pic I'm looking for. Sometimes the same pic is more affordable on one, while another pic is better priced on another.

istock is the way to go on this, if you are on a budget. I buy them as I need them, never paying for a year or anything.

We've typically done the pay as you go istock route.

Dreamstime will be gud... Im always looking the great quality image there..

I generally buy images from istockphoto but I do look for free resources first from site like morguefile or sxc.hu. Most of time the I find what I need from those free resources if not then I pay up !!