How to Find Free Graphics for your Blog

Ah the delights of trying to launch a blog whilst redecorating! This week I have managed to post in the rain breaks when clearing out my garage, now I’m waiting for my kitchen ceiling to dry.  Then I’ve got to go to John Lewis (big department store) to buy a pink sewing machine (really) and my mugs.  Yup, this is the internet lifestyle I signed up for.   Oh, and I am going to the movies this afternoon – on a school day.  So not so bad after all.

In my last post I discussed how to make and use screen-shots in your blog. And indeed graphics can help make your post crearer, more readable and reduce bounce rates – the rate at which people take one look at your blog page before reversing out in a hurry.

You’ll probably want to use other sources of graphics in your posts, but pretty soon you realise that when you Google for a specific image, they’re often owned by a graphics company which charges for downloads. I once paid $250 for one image for a poster I designed. I’m sure you don’t want to do that.

You night be tempted to just “borrow” the image, maybe painting out the watermark. Firstly this is very naughty. You wouldn’t want it to happen to you. Secondly those companies have a tendency to find your site, track you down with dogs, break down your door with axes in the middle of the night and demand a lot of money. The last bit is true in any case. One of the biggest companies is currently buying up images on the Net with the express purpose of chasing down webmasters and presenting a bill. Just say no to jpeg theft.

But fear not, for Dave the Shoestring Marketer is at hand with freebies. Just read on.

Freefoto has housands of images, free for web use. There are no membership fees, and you can buy larger versions for print. It looks like it’s UK based, so the images have a UK bias. But that could be because they are checking my location and serving me UK based images. I’m not sure. You’re mileage may vary. You can edit and use them however you like, but not sell them straight on. It’s not the largest range, but you’d be surprised by what they have.

www.freefoto.com

Morguefile is similar in set up to Freefoto, only MUCH bigger. I’ve just had a look around there and have already snaffled some images for my first product. This would be my go-to place for photo graphics, which are avaiable on the same basis as Freefoto’s offer.

www.morguefile.com

Wikipedia Images there are often licensed under Creative Commons. Creative Commons is similar to Public Domain and allows use of images with no royalty payment.  ALWAYS check the image is royalty free first. I’ve found it useful in the past, and will usually check it out.

www.wikipedia.org

Zemanta.  You may have noticed the graphics in the top right hand side of my posts. These are provided free of charge by Zemanta, a browser add-on, which offers pictures, tags, links and related articles to your Gmail account and to your blog posts. I often post to my other blogs directly from Gmail so I fin this very useful. It’s free, and finds appropriate FREE images by reading what you type.

When you click “Add Zenmanta” a box full of related images appears to the right of your edit window. Just click on one and it is inserted into the post.

www.zemanta.com

So with these resources you have no excuse. Go forth and beautify.

Resource Box

Technorati Tags: Blog Building, Creative Commons, Freefoto, Graphics, Internet Marketing, Wikipedia, Zemanta

How to Make and Use Screen-shots

Image via Wikipedia

In the keeping your friends and customers apart on Facebook post you might have noticed a few screen-shots. They certainly help illustrate and make the story easy to follow.

This is how it’s done.

Fire up the program or website you want to illustrate. When you have everything you want on screen, press the “Print Screen” button. It’s often called “PrtScrn” and found at the top of the keyboard near the numeric keypad

Now fire up a graphics program. Photoshop is good if you have it, but I use GIMP as it has pretty much everything and it’s free. Paste (Ctrl + V) into the edit window of your graphic program

You now have an editable screen shot

To highlight the area you want to focus on using the Crop Tool. Select the area and crop the picture. Highlight any specific area you want e.g. by selecting the paintbrush tool and circling the area. SAVE to your desktop as a jpeg file.

To use in an e book, place the cursor at the point in the word processor document you are working on. Go to the Insert Menu, select “Picture” or Image”, browse, Find and Insert the Image then save the Document. Incidentally the best ebook creation tool is Open Office. This has all the features of Microsoft Office, it’s free, and creates PDF’s with clickable links. You want those!

To use the screen shot in a blog post you CAN upload the image to your blog, but this uses up your web space and slows down the page load time. You don’t want potential readers to bounce out of your page because they’re bored.

You SHOULD upload your screen shot to a photo hosting site. I use Photobucket.com.

Create an account if you don’t already have one, then create an album – preferably something related to your blog. You can even create sub albums for individual blog posts.

Upload the photo to the album and you will now be invited to SHARE your pictures.

You want the HTML code option. DON’T panic if you don’t understand HTML, all you need to be able to do is copy and paste. And breathe!

Having copied the HTML Link, hop over to your blog dashboard. When you edit your post move the cursor to the point you want to insert the picture. Change the Post Edit Screen from “VISUAL” to “HTML”

PASTE (Ctrl+V) your HTML code into the point you want the screen shot to appear. Switch back to “Visual”, save Draft or Publish.

So now your blog post has lots of illustrations, with no delay in page loading. Happy readers – more sales for you.

Resources

Technorati Tags: Graphics, HTML, Photobucket, Print Screen, Screenshot

Keeping your customers and friends apart on Facebook

Image via CrunchBase

I don’t doubt Facebook is a great marketing tool. You can have fan pages, like pages, groups – all places where you can post your blog feed, or send direct messages to potential customers. Ace. But I use Facebook to kick back with my friends, and arrange nights out. My friends are not really internet marketers. Frankly they think I’m a bit odd. Frankly so do I.

Recently I’ve had some business contacts adding me, and it would be nice to keep in touch with them about my blog and other offers without alienating my other friends.

Now as I’ve said, Fan Pages or Groups are an option, but when you’re just starting out you’re going to have trouble getting people to join. A No Fan Page can be soul destroying. I really don’t want a separate business account yet – that would of course, be a breach of FB’s Terms of Service at any rate, and the last thing you want is to suddenly lose alll your accounts without warning. I want to do as much as I can from a single log in.

So how could I post marketing information to my marketing buddies, while discussing Doctor Who and stand up comedy with my geek friends?

Facebook Friend Lists is how! It takes a little work, but worth the effort.

In your Facebook Profile, select the Friends menu. You can separate your friends into Lists. When you select Edit Friends you will currently find a Create a List button on top of the Friend Screen.

Create a list of “College Friends”, or “Your Market” – whatever you like

You can assign friends to one or more lists. When you get a new friend request, you can add them directly to a list.

Now type a Status Update which is specific to one group of friends, or even one or two friends only.

BEFORE hitting the Share button look for the little downwards pointing triangle to the left of the button

There are a number of options there to allow you to choose who sees this update.

Choose “Customise”. You will see a drop down menu, offering the choice of: Friends of Friends; Friends only; Specific People, and Only me. Why Only Me? Perhaps it’s a way of making a note for later. Who knows?

Choose “Specific People”. No surprisingly there’s no drop down menu, but

if you type the name of the list or person you want to see your message in the box below it should auto complete for you.

At this point you can also exclude people from your Status Update, again by typing their name or their list in the box.

Now you’re ready hit the Share Button and voila, your secret IM life is safe from your loved ones.

Technorati Tags: Business, Facebook, Facebook features, Instant messaging, Marketing

Finally …

OK.  That could have gone better.

So, spent the weekend with Alex Jeffreys, Dean Holland and Sally Neil at the Instant Profits Seminar – a $997 ticket, no less!  I didn’t pay that, by the way.  Alex and Dean comped me in.  Value and Price are not always the same thing.

So … after spending two days trying to find out why my WordPress Blog didn’t work (hissy fit with Hostgator threatening to throw my toys out of the pram) I learn that I can’t access my own blog as my ID Theft Protection software thinks my site, and conseqently I am fraudulent.  So if you’re reading this, hang on to your credit cards and keep your mouth closed in case I have your gold teeth.

Followed by … a long day configuring OptimizePress, the premium Wordpress theme, an evenign designing my header, and a morning putting it together I am ready, just about, to launch the blog.  I have engaged in “active learning”, and mind mapped the process, which I shall share with you soon – not so much a learning curve as a learning cliff.

Anyway ….

So here we are on Monday morning after a packed weekend of networking, hard-core marketing intelligence and alcohol at the Instant Profits Seminar.  This was the first time I’ve met a real live internet marketer.  All I can say is don’t get them wet or feed them after midnight.

It was jam packed with really useful stuff.  I had a few “Oh yeah” moments, which have coloured in some plans I was already making.  I have a product in the pipeline, what I learned here will get it to market.

People had flown in from India and Australia for the event.  I just got in the company Ferrari, drove to a bus stop, rode to a tube station and walked the rest of the way.  It was fun meeting everyone, esp Sally Neil (when is that membership site coming out, btw?), who without knowing it, set me on the path the financial freedom.

The real star of this weekend is Dean Holland.  His presentations were incisive, clear and left nothing out.  He would chat about the finer points of the plan with anyone who had a question.  If you don’t know Dean, he’s a student of Alex Jeffreys, and has taken his business from being $30,000 in debt to $600,000 in two years.  I could use some of that!

If you’ve never had the chance to hear Alex Jeffeys’ 21 Days to a Million presentation, which he gave off the cuff without slides, do so.  It’s like cleaning the lenses of your glasses with one jaw dropping piece of marketing information. which turned things on their head for me.

Of course there was a pitch.  Alex and Dean are jointly taking on new students to mentor, ans promise to build your business with you, not just present a course.  I’ve heard ALex’ webinars can last seven hours, so I don’t doubt the value.  Did I buy?  No.  Although great value the price is out of this rookie marketer’s league.  I’m not so much in Alex’s Inner Circle as in the Outer Ring Road.

Would I buy?  Oh yes, I’d bite their hands off! I’ve spent over $100,000.00 on a real world business, and know the value of good information and a great team.

Right now I’m all about being The Shoestring Marketer.  A penny saved is a penny earned.  I’ve got enough plans and skills.  It’s time to put them into action.

I’ve made some great contacts, and have buddied up with another marketer called Annie Cox.  We’re keeping each other accountable.  Twice a week we email each other to report our progress or otherwise..  You’re welcome to join us in Dave’s Outer Ring Road and be accountable to each other.  Mind you, I dole out the spankings if you don’t meet your targets!

Technorati Tags: Alex Jeffreys, Dean Holland, Marketing, Sally Neill, WordPress

Who, What, When, Where, How and Why?

Technorati Tags: Affiliate marketing, Business, Marketing