So you made a cool post but you need a thumbnail, and a thumbnail needs an image. What better way to accomplish that by googling some term vaguely related to your topic and taking the first result, right?

Well I take issue with that. Let's be real, most people on Steemit are plagiarizing gits, scammers or bots with no intention of doing an honest days' work. There's a lot going on to try and keep it at bay but it's a losing battle. That's just how it is.

But it doesn't mean we should just shrug our shoulders and just do whatever we want. At some point you realize if I'm ever going to get more than a reputation of about 50, or earn more than $100, I'm going to have to create my own content.

When that time comes, you're still in the 'get rich quick' mindset, and so you just go on google and search any old appropriate image, even though that is also stealing and thus illegal.

The fact is, most people don't know what the laws are. I've already posted about what the laws are so I'm not going to repeat that, but I have noticed the 'honest' people tend to use Pixabay for their images. This, in my opinion, is a mistake.

I find pixabay incredibly limiting. Perhaps it doesn't apply for everyone, but when I'm posting articles about the sticky butt-glue tunnels from cave dwelling glow worms, pixabay just doesn't have it in stock.

Rather than be deterred and just steal content, I have a better tool that not many people know about:

Google.

What?

Crazy eh? But seriously. go into the advanced settings, and you find this:

It looks like a lot to swallow, but there's only two things we need to look at:

• The search words
• The Usage rights

We want to make sure we choose the license that is able to be shared and used EVEN COMMERCIALLY - that's the key here:

And voila:

Now let's compare that to Pixalame:

I think it's clear who the winner is here. Of course, this is because Google searches these results from all over the place, including pixabay, whereas pixabay is limited to pixabay.

You can also do this with text (Though obviously this should only be used for the occasional quote. ORIGINAL CONTENT guys, STOP posting news about the iPhone X for F$CKS SAKE!), just check the advanced options, and you'll never break a law again! Every little helps, you know. We can each do our part to clean this site up.

Glad to be of service!