How do you choose the best image for your story, Unsplash or not?To dig up some data on this, I analyzed the featured photos of the&nbsp;top 100 Medium stories of all time&nbsp;and found that they fall into six categories.TOP 50<ul><li>Unsplash or HD generic: 18</li><li>Custom design/photography: 15</li><li>Famous person: 7</li><li>Screenshot: 4</li><li>Cartoon: 4</li><li>GIF: 2</li></ul>

Totals:

<ul><li>Custom design/photography: 20</li><li>Unsplash or HD generic: 17</li><li>Famous person: 6</li><li>Screenshot: 3</li><li>Cartoon: 1</li><li>GIF: 1</li><li>None: 1</li><li>Suspended: 1</li></ul>

Next 50–100 Top Stories

<ul><li>Don’t feel bad using Unsplash . Custom photography and design and generic HD photos were exactly equal and made up 70% of all top 100 stories.</li><li>Ui and design articles were mostly custom designed. News-related stories tended to be Screenshots of events or photos of famous people.</li><li>54% of photos had people in them , that number increases if you include POV photos, as if you’re looking through the eyes of the author.</li><li>Only one story didn’t have photos at all.</li></ul>The featured photo of your medium story plays an important part, but it also shouldn't be used as a crutch.

Takeaways: What does this data actually mean?

Unsplash is a great resource. But ever since its partnership (and embedded search-and-insert tool in the editor) with Medium in February 2018, it seems everybody is using it.Is that good?As a writer, if you do exactly what everyone else is doing, your voice will be lost in the crowd.“It is better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation.”— Herman Melville, novelist

How to Choose the Best Image for Your Medium Story

This is an excerpted lesson from the Medium Writing Course: 30 Expert Writing Lessons for Writers Who Want to Make It Big on Medium. Unsplash is a great resource. But ever since its partnership (and…

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