SUB-Ingredient:

Graphics

Training Videos - Requires Adobe Flash Player How to Use Graphics to Increase your Sales How to Download Irfanview for free How to work with Different Graphic Formats How to Crop your graphics How to Rotate your graphics How to Resize your Graphics How to Change the Color Depth of Graphics How to Apply effects to Graphics How to take and work with Screen Shots How to Add Text to your Graphics How to automate time-consuming graphics tasks How to apply quick color changes to your graphics

Products to Download Marketing Clipart 100 + Web Templates

Training Documents (PDF) - Requires Adobe Reader Coming Soon

It’s official, everybody still judges books by their covers… And that goes for eBooks too.

Our websites and anything else we create online is like our book, and our graphics are what catch people’s attention. It’s just like dating, in fact. Your website, eBook, or software may be the “best catch” in the ocean of prospects, but if it has a butt-ugly face then no one is even going to read the description for it! 

So don’t skip this step! Make your websites with pretty header graphics. Use one of those cute little ‘eCovers’ for any software or books you’re selling. Not familiar with an eCover? It’s just a little picture of what your book cover or software box WOULD look like if it existed offline. There are many software programs out there to put these together for you, or you can draw them or have them drawn in a graphics program like Photoshop. 

Even a single sales page will need both an eCover and a header graphic if you want your site to look credible. The only question that remains is how are you going to go about getting these graphics produced?

It’s not as hard as it used to be to create usable web graphics like your page headers (yes, I created the ones on this site from scratch) and logos. However, you have to ask yourself, and be really honest when you do so, if your business is one where people are judging your professionalism or success by your website appearance.

If so, you will probably need to go the extra mile and have a real pro outsource your graphic work for you. Again, websites like rent-a-coder.com, contractedwork.com, and elance.comare ideal for finding these freelancers to get the work done for you cheap… Just make sure you like their portfolio and they have great feedback before you hire anyone.

If you choose to do some yourself, then you probably already have a favorite graphics studio software in mind. Adobe’s Photoshop is really popular these days, as is Corel’s Paint Shop Pro. These both cost a lot of money, so my recommendation for you is an open-source program called GIMP, which is extremely powerful, efficient, and best of all, free.

As for what to design, that’s up to you… It’s Art, you know? I can’t tell you what will look good for your niche or personality. The best advice I can muster is to go take a look at other sites, preferably in your own niche that you admire and start from there. Create a few different versions and pick the one that both looks professional and feels the most like you.

And make sure that you create a logo for your business, while you’re at it. A logo not only lends credibility, but can give you a big boost in your name recognition later, because visual patterns are more readily remembered than business names.

Just running a sales page? Then you probably won’t need a Logo, not until you run multiple sales sites and want to link them together for more credibility.

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