Archive for August 7th, 2008

Website Traffic: Getting The Right Visitors

Thursday, August 7th, 2008
by Jill Brennan

Targeted website traffic is by no means a guessing game. It is an exact science that takes time and effort to get right. The only way to get more website traffic is to reach the audience you designed your website after.

The only way your site can be successful is if the visitors find your information useful. For example, consider browsing for books on Amazon.com: when you buy a book, the site gives you suggestions for other books in that category. The company figures that if you bought one book on a specific subject, others on similar subjects might interest you. You’ve just been targeted. While targeted website traffic won’t give you guaranteed traffic, it will increase your chances of reaching the correct audience.

Targeted website traffic by no means guarantees traffic. Targeting only increases your chances of hitting the right audience. You don’t want to randomly lure people to your site and hope for the best. That’s a waste of time.

Although they don’t really hurt anything by being there, you don’t want to waste time courting them, just hoping they will like what they see and become a fan or a customer. It is up to you to take advantage of all the marketing knowledge out there, just waiting for you use.

Keywords are the building blocks when it comes to traffic, whether its paid or free traffic. Because searching on the internet is driven by people typing in what they are looking for, they have to use words to describe what it is they want. They can’t use their hands or facial gestures, it has to be words. For example, if they wanted big furry dice that they could hang in their car, they will type associated words into their preferred search engine to seek out what they want.

This is why you’ll often hear internet marketers talking about ‘getting inside the head of the prospect’. What would they type into a search engine in order to find fuzzy dice? Would it be “car dice”, “furry dice”, “soft hanging dice”? Or some other variation that you’ve never thought of? Picking the right keywords is about improving your chances of success.

To both maximise your web traffic and build even more you need to have other items that your fuzzy dice seeking consumer is also likely to be interested in. In order to do this, you need to know more about your customers. Are they male or female? Under 25 or over 40? Perhaps a car accessory site is the best fit. Or maybe an unusual gift type site is a better mix. Without understanding the interests of your likely web visitors, its difficult to get your pitch right.

Targeted website traffic is like playing the stock market — you can make predictions based on careful research, but you will never know exactly whether your predictions will translate into sales. All you can do is increase the odds of driving more website traffic to your site through targeting your audience.

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Digital Scrapbooking Software: Preserving Memories Easy

Thursday, August 7th, 2008
by Rex Simpleton

A long time ago taking pictures and developing them meant spending a fortune and a great deal of time so when making pictures the whole process was just a generator of headaches. If you wanted to make a scrapbook things would cost a fortune.

But that happened before, when technology wasn’t at its peak. Nowadays, people can do everything with computer help. Photos can finally resist the test of time.

It’s time to forget about films, photos and albums that only stay in corners of our house and get filled with dust. Now you can make a whole scrapbook only with the use of computer. You can save it on your computer and keep it from being deteriorated; the same thing can happen to your photos.

Scrapbooks became popular when people wanted to show others photos of their family, friends or themselves in an original presentation. Scrapbooks are a great way to keep memories in a wonderful layout.

Sending pictures to people through mail may be a traditional way but it’s not that effective as you can spend a lot of time without being sure that your photos will safely arrive to the destination. Another disadvantage about is the fact that they might not get on time or get lost on the way there.

The Internet has brought about the modern way of sending photos without you leaving the comfort of your own home. All you need to do is compile them into a scrapbook file and share them with people in any part of the world. Before you know it, your photos will be seen by your loved ones wherever they may be.

With all these capabilities, the only thing that is required of people is to be creative on how they are presenting their photos. Digital scrap booking is the solution.

It is said that when digital scrap booking was introduced, its market already reached up to millions. Just imagine the number of people wanting to have their photos stored and shared to others and you will be able to figure out why they embraced this technology easily.

This has become the answer to keeping photos intact and in good condition so you can always look back at the happy times whenever you find yourself lonely and out of contact with the persons that you love.

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4 Easy Steps To Create Web Graphics

Thursday, August 7th, 2008
by Lucas Heijn

I’m sure that you have experienced this: You need some help to understand how to do something on the computer. Someone volunteers to show you. They get in front of the computer and go click, click, click - Done! You saw that they did it, but you are none the wiser as to how to do it. Frustrating, isn’t it! This article is a step-by-step guide in creating a Photoshop graphic.

First Step: Choose Size

Go to “File” and click “New”. You now need to specify the size of your graphic. Normally you would have determined this in advance as you must first have a purpose for the graphic. Ours is a header graphic. Headers on a sales page are usually around 700 pixels by 120 pixels. So we can choose that as our size for the graphic.

Second Step: Decide On A Background.

In choosing a background we have 3 options. We can choose a solid color, a gradient, or a picture as the background.

To insert a solid color, these are the steps we must follow. On the left of the work area is a floating toolbox. Towards the bottom of this box are two small squares, one over the other. Click the top one and a color picker comes up. Click the mouse on the color required for the background and click OK. The color of the top square is now your chosen color. From this floating tool box choose the bucket tool. If you don’t see it, move the mouse over each tool until you find the gradient tool. Right click it and choose bucket.

When the bucket tool has been chosen, move the mouse pointer over the new graphic. When the pointer changes to a bucket, left click. Now the new graphic is filled with the color you chose.

To fill this with a gradient, change the bucket toll into the gradient tool. Once again you need to choose a color. This time you will need to choose 2 colors. The top square is your starting color and the bottom square is the finish color of the gradient.

Having chosen the gradient tool you will notice on the top of the work area new choices have appeared. This will allow you to choose the style of the gradient.

Importing a picture into your graphic as a background is easy. All you need to do is open a file with the picture you want to use. Make sure that the picture is larger or equal in size to the graphic you are creating. With your mouse just drag and drop the picture into your new graphic. Now just move it around to where you want it. That’s it.

This works with JPEG Files but does not work with Gif files.

Step 3 Layers

Photoshop works with layers. Each time you import something or introduce more text you create a new layer. To the right of your work area you should see “Layers”. Click on it and now it will display all the layers in the graphic. Clicking on a layer in this box will make it the active layer, and you will be able to work on this layer.

You could now import a picture. Just use the drag and drop method mentioned earlier. When you do this you will notice that not only do you get the picture but also some background you don’t want. You can remove this with the eraser tool.

If the background is mostly one color use the “Magic Eraser”. You can choose this by right clicking on the eraser and choosing it. After choosing “Magic Eraser” move it over the section you want to remove. Click the mouse and you will see the background disappear. After removing the background and while it is still the active layer you can move this layer to where you need it.

Step 4 The Text

In Photoshop your text is also a layer. Each time you insert new text you create a new layer. You are able to move the text around as you can any other layer.

On the left hand tool box click the “T”. Move the mouse to the area where the text is to go. Click the mouse and start typing. You can choose the font, size and style as in any other Windows program.

Now that your text is in place it can be enhanced and made to stand out. Make sure the text you want to work with is the active layer. On the top bar of the work area is “Layer”. Click it and choose “Layer Style”. This will open up numerous options. To get an idea of what each of these does just play and experiment with it. As you choose an option it will instantly be seen before you commit it.

There you are you have finished a simple but professional graphic you could use in a web site.

Just save it in Photoshop PSD format. This will allow you to come back and change anything you like. To save it as a smaller file suitable for the web, go to “File” and choose “Save For Web & Devices”. This will produce an image that will load faster.

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