Imagine: you’ve spent lots of time creating the perfect image to upload onto your soon-to-be website. It is eye-catching, unique and perfect for your online business. But, although this image is legally owned by you, the internet is a dark place and someone snatches up your image for their own purposes. Suddenly, your image is no longer identified with your online business. All that time and effort spent sourcing this image is wasted. 

So, how do you avoid this case of online theft? Well, the answer is pretty simple. By stamping a copyright logo onto your images, keyboard thieves will fail to pass off your content as their own. 

Step 1: Choose your software 

Adobe photoshop, Inkscape or Paintshop are the most obvious editing softwares to do this. However, if you don’t fancy spending your money on these, then there are multiple free photo editing softwares which you can use to watermark your image instead.    Alamoon Watermark, WatermarkLib and Kigo Image Converter can all be used to stamp your copyright logo onto your image. 

Step 2: Where to put the copyright

Open your image in one of these programmes and select the section of the image where you want to add your copyright stamp. Make sure your text goes in a place which is visible. This ensures would-be users cannot get rid of your logo without destroying the image itself. This is important – strategically picking a location for your text to go into means digital thieves cannot steal your image without shooting themselves in the foot.

Step 3: What information do you need to add?

When applying a copyright stamp, you need to make sure you include your name/business name, the year your image was created and the copyright symbol ‘©’ into your text. This way you are solidly safeguarding your image from being swiped up by someone else. Although you can’t stop people from downloading your image free of charge, your name will now always be affiliated with this image. Remember, it is important that you lower the opacity of the text so that people can still see your image!

Now that your image is protected and associated with you, it is important you have a website that people can visit if they want to access your material. Check out our 14-week free trial of Go Sitebuilder and see just how easy it is to get your business online!