Website
and image design is a real hassle without the right tools.
There are quite a few "shortcut tools"
you may never have heard of for website
design, website graphics, web page headers, virtual ebook covers
and more. These are tools I use every day in my business to
save time and earn more money. (I guarantee you've never seen a
couple of these.)
Shortcut #1: WYSIWYG
Websites are made from html code. But I can't
build a decent website using html code to save my life. That's
why I rarely use html. Instead, I build all my sites using a
WYSIWYG program. That stands for What You See Is What You Get.
The WYSIWYG program I use is Frontpage, which is
a old program from Microsoft. But there are lots more WYSIWYG
programs on the market nowadays and many of them are free.
If you need a decent WYSIWYG program, the
free Mozilla Compozer or NVU programs are both solid choices. But the next one I'll be
switching to is the more robust XSitePro
WYSIWYG program being talked about here.
Shortcut #2: Website Templates
Not only am I html and css incompetent, even
when using a WYSIWYG program I couldn't make a website from
scratch to save my life. So I reply on templates, or pre-built
web page designs.
This site you're at now started as a template
from templatemonster.com - I got it for about $30 some five
years ago and now have hundreds of web pages built with it. Each
week I simply open the template in my WYSIWYG program and type
in the new content.
There are lots of places to get templates on the
web and programs such as that one mentioned above, XSitePro
comes loaded with countless templates for just about any niche
you can imagine.
Shortcut #3: Custom Image Design
An attractive website contains professional
images and graphics. While it's tempting to simply search
through Google images and "borrow" what you need, most images
are copyrighted and the best graphics are expensive.
While I get many images with my Frontpage
program, they are limited in scope. So for marketing style
images I use pre-purchased image packs. The
packages have many images I can use as is. In addition, I can customize
the images using a free
program called Gimp, or with Photoshop Elements, a lower cost
version of Adobe Photoshop.
Another custom image design tool I now use is my
web-based 2-Minute Graphic creator. This is something I had
installed on my server to speed up the process of creating the
most important graphics for my sales letters. These include
those snazzy graphic-style headlines you see most experts using,
custom add to cart buttons and even guarantee seals.
To see how this tool works, check out this quick
video...
At the end of today's issue I'll give you a chance to get the
image packs I use, and access to my web-based graphic creator at
deep discount.
Shortcut #4: Header Graphic Creators
Most website templates have headers built in.
The header is the very top area of most web pages. It usually
contains your logo,
images and slogan. (See the young couple at the top of this page
- that's the header area.)
Building these custom headers can be a real pain
in the you know what, unless you use a
template based system such as
XHeader Pro. XHeader pro is a free program that takes nearly
all the work out of creating professional headers.
To see an example of the types of headers you
can build using Xheader pro, check out
contractor-liability-insurance.org and look at the header. I
built that in literally 3 minutes. (You can get
a lot fancier with this software if you want, but sometimes
speed trumps beauty and that looks pretty decent for a rush job.)
Shortcut #5:
Ebook Cover Creators
If you want to sell more copies, or even give
away more copies of an ebook, you absolutely need a virtual
cover image. But a poor quality image will actually have the
opposite effect - it will reduce your results significantly.
While you may have heard the old saying, you
can't tell a book by it's cover, the web wasn't born yet when
that saying came about. Nowadays, your ecover tells volumes. Bad
cover must mean bad content. Great cover, great content. While
you know that's not always the case, the fact is, most people
do judge a book by its cover online.
Once again, templates to the rescue. I make all
my covers using a program called Web 2.0 Covers which lets me
create awesome ecovers in just a few minutes. Here's are a few
covers I made with this program...
In closing...
The right tools can save you lots of time and increase your
earnings online.
If you'd like to get
the bundle of tools I use for all the tasks above and more, come to my
new
GuruDesignBundle.com site. You'll get everything at deep
discount if you order the package within the next 72 hours.
Well, that's it for today's
gazette.
See ya in a few weeks...
Jim Daniels
JDD Publishing Co.
P.S. Did you want to Make A Living Online? If so, visit my
site,
Make A Living Online
-- it explains the exact model I used
to get started earning my living online - 14 years ago.
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