I've always wondered what drives artists and creators to publish some of their works under permissive licenses, such as Creative Commons or Public Domain. It's pretty incredible that there are so many royalty-free resources out there, especially for people who are just starting out with blogging or video production. Great initiatives such as Pixabay and Wikimedia only exist because someone decided to give away their time and effort for free. 

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<center>https://i.imgur.com/ikUFklG.png</center> 
<center>*Source: [User Progressor on Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/en/creative-commons-licenses-icons-by-783531/)*</center>

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# Why Give Away Your Work For Free?
I personally think that people share their work under permissive licenses for many different reasons. Some people might have a truly philanthropic mindset, which drives them to share their work with the world for free. In other cases, releasing part of your repertoire might serve as a great portfolio. 

One thing that I am sure of, is that they're probably not doing it for the money. It's true that artists might receive some donations through Pixabay or other platforms, but I highly doubt that it's enough to make a living. 

# Supporting Creators Who Release Under Creative Commons 
Over the past few months, I've started to realize how easy it is to find royalty-free images for my blog posts. That's part of the reason why I've started to send some Pixabay creators some small donations whenever I use their images. 

Of course, you can't possibly send everyone money, so I just tend to send around 5 or 10 dollars from time to time. I really hope that I'm not the only one who's doing this, otherwise those artists might not care to release under Creative Commons next time. 

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## Some questions for my readers:
* Do you often use royalty-free media for your content? 
* Have you ever donated to some of these artists? Or do you plan to do so? (Don't worry if you don't!)

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