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Copyright-Free Photo Sites Like Unsplash Have Terrible Algorithms, and Navigation is Needlessly Time-Consuming
How many people read your story hinges as much on great photos as great writing, and finding the right one is not easy.
Does this photograph look like an old man running? He is neither old nor running. But I entered those three words into the Medium-embedded Unsplash search field. And I never typed in anything about a dog. I didn’t bother to look through the other 10,000 choices to see how many pictured an old man running. None of the first 27 choices did.
I use Unsplash as an example because its interface with the Medium app is quickest. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spend an hour hunting for a perfect picture. But Unsplash is also the least accurate at finding what you need.
My experience with Medium shows that the photograph or illustration you choose is tied with the subtitle as the most vital part of your work after the title. It is the best way to get eyeballs on your story. To be successful on Medium, you need reads and interactions. Two to three seconds of viewing doesn’t create a reader. I have seen many Medium authors ignore this.
But Unsplash and several other copyright-free sites don’t make it easy. “You get what you pay for” applies here. I don’t know if…
