Messages

1

Marketing Talk / Re: Would you pay $9.95 for a graphics membership site?

« on: March 12, 2013, 07:29:35 AM »

I was paying that for a web graphics club. Very, very nice graphics, and cheap, but I soon had enough to last years, so I unsubscribed. Seems like you'd have a large churn rate.

The price is way to low for custom work. Outsourcing sounds fine until you factor in supervisory time. Do you really want to spend your time managing folks in low-way countries? Not to mention customer service time (can you say: "multiple rounds of revisions"?

We're developing a site that will offer stock graphic to a niche market, but custom work to modify a stock piece starts a fairly pricey time clock. No idea if it will work, it's basically a test. But I'd stay away from custom at mass market prices.

Just my $.03.

gary

2

Product/Service Reviews / Re: What brand of external hard drive do you recommend?

« on: March 12, 2013, 07:22:09 AM »

You  may have already made your purchase, but I thought I'd weigh in anyway...

I had to replace three of my external drives last month: 2 Maxtors (Seagate) and 1 Lacie. Old age, I suppose. They all gave about 6 years of hard, 24/7 service, and then stopped. Fortunately, I lost no data, as I have an aggressive backup strategy.

After a lot of research, I replaced them each with a WD My Passport Studio 1TB. About the size of a pack of cards, no power cord (runs off the computer) and metal casing. Bought 2 with Firewire and 1 USB 3.0 (all are going on my Mac server). You have to bee careful of the connections to make sure they have what your computer needs.

Obviously I don't have a lot of service time with them, but so far, so good under heavy workloads. I love the smaller footprint and lack of power connections. Cleans up my server closet a lot.

Just my $.03.

gary

3

Off Topic Forum / Re: Cat Lovers -- Wanna be friends?

« on: September 03, 2012, 02:30:02 PM »

Thanks, Karen. We miss out fur babies.

Sad thing is that the last two were  my daughter's favorites. We lost them both on successive days. She was heart-broken.

gary

4

Off Topic Forum / Re: Cat Lovers -- Wanna be friends?

« on: September 02, 2012, 03:58:03 PM »

Used to have a cat site (felinefolllies.com) but it was  hacked to the point of destruction and I haven't had the heart to put it back  up (although we've been thinking about it). Four cats-in-residence now, sadly, down from eight over the last few years.

gary

5

Marketing Talk / Re: Sometimes your niche finds YOU

« on: September 02, 2012, 03:54:58 PM »

Great niche, actually, and can be appealing to cat lovers of all breeds. And if other bobtail cat owners are as enthusiastic as you, they'll be all over the site!!

gary

6

The Freebie Forum / Re: Wordpress Help

« on: August 10, 2012, 11:22:42 PM »

As we're on the WP topic. I'm going to use this theme, looks excellent. Have a look and see. Flexibility 3. Click the link, and plenty of video tutorials.

I'm a big fan of the Flexibility theme, and the Tlexsqueeze theme is even better. I've pretty much standardized on that theme, even though I have dozens, and belong to a couple of "theme cubs." I keep coming back to FS because it's so darned -- flexibile!

Pricey as themes go, but you won't have to buy another theme.

There's a promising new theme at the Warrior Forum called "Theme Revenge" which is similar, that is, you can control and change a lot of things. I didn't buy it as it does a lot of what FS does, but it is cheaper.
gary

7

The Freebie Forum / Re: Wondering

« on: August 10, 2012, 03:14:18 PM »

Nice resource. Be sure to click "creative commons", as the commercial licenses are still a little costly (compared to the micro-stock sites).

8

The Freebie Forum / Re: Wondering

« on: August 10, 2012, 02:31:36 PM »

Was reminded that another great source for really inexpensive graphics is http://www.graphicriver.net. Many types, print, web, type, icons, etc. Most are just a few dollars. The Prototypes section is especially useful, with many PS Smart Templates for making covers mockups, etc. I'm a regular visitor there to see what's new.

gary

9

Marketing Talk / Re: Page 1 of Google in 5 Hours

« on: August 07, 2012, 08:39:48 AM »

Thanks, magicman, for your insights.

I suspected photographers might not be a good niche, but it's one I was familiar with, so I felt more comfortable with it for my first effort in this type of model. There are some photographers who spend some money, as they use AdWords, etc., but they have a solid enough web presence to not need this type of service, I think, and they're located, for example in my area, in Atlanta or close by, rather than in a suburban county. Larger customer/prospect back, I suppose.

I look at the whole thing as an exercise to just see if I could rank a site highly and quickly with the techniques I learned — which worked! I'll be rolling those out those same tecniques for my handbook sites and a new publication we're releasing this week http://howtocreateahappierlife.com. Not sorry I did it at all.
 with the
Fascinating that your experience showed who the cheapskates are! There does seem to be a lot of money in the non-pro photographer niche. I have a friend who writes articles for a photographer's website and it's growing at a huge rate with amateurs, signing up, clicking ads, etc. Not a model I want to get into, though....

gary

10

Marketing Talk / Re: Page 1 of Google in 5 Hours

« on: August 05, 2012, 10:29:53 PM »

Hi Teri,

Thanks for the kind words. I think your niches sound great. Lots of potential there, I think.

Sadly, the photography site has gotten less than 10 calls in three months. I believe I've targeted a niche in a too-small area. I've marketed it to photographers without a website, or who have a site that is not well ranked, but no takers. Could be that photographers are cheap -- or that like many these days, they're short on money.

I'm no longer promoting the site, but plan to leave it up, as the domain is good for a year and hosting costs less than $1 per month. Perhaps when the economy turns around, activity will pock up.

In the meantime, I'm building sites in a few other niches that may work better, but will have a little more competition.

Good luck with your sites.

gary

11

Feedback Requests / Re: Please review my squeeze and landing page

« on: July 07, 2012, 11:52:45 AM »

From a design standpoint, there are a lot of visual barriers to comprehension going on:

1. The clutter in the left column occupies the most important real estate on the page, the upper left portion of the page.

2. The closely-stacked coupon boxes make it difficult to recognize and organization.

3. The flashing banners give me a headache! Ouch.

4. All of this on a narrow width that squeezes everything even more.

I'd dump the left column entirely, and build a well thought-out top navigation with dropdowns for the details.

The headline copy seems oddly out-of-joint, not attached to the page conceptually. I'd make it a more directly about the benefit. Maybe "The Insider Secrets of top internet marketers are revealed here. Grab them now and watch your income explode!" Dump the kicker head.

Then separate out the boxes with some of the nice graphics available here. Give everything some breathing room. This is not printed, so you have plenty of space.

But ditch the banners. Pull them apart to use some of the graphics, or make customized heads and a product shot. Since you're repeating the home page copy on the detail page, I'd change that. Make the home page like a blog home page, perhaps, stacking posts that have "teaser" copy (a short sentence or two) and the product, the a more link to take them to the detail page.

On the detail page, move the overview copy to the top. Delete the coupon box; you've already got the video on the page. I imagine you're doing this in case visitors come to the site and land on a detail page. I would opt for readability. And reduce the header size for detail pages -- takes away from the message, which is get the goodie!
-- These are older products, but you might want to avoid advertising that by removing the date at the bottom.

None of these are fatal issues - just needs tweaking in my opinion. But then, it's your web site! Good luck with it!

I like the squeeze page. Classic.
The "call to action" arrow at the top of detail pages is nice.  Not sure about the animation, which is a true turnoff to me, but maybe not others.



gary

12

The Freebie Forum / Re: Wondering

« on: June 27, 2012, 02:37:16 PM »

Take a look at http://marketinggraphicstoolkit.com/ (not affiliate link) for a superb collection of marketing graphics. Most are intended for web use, but I use many of them in print work with a little tweaking of resolution. $10 per month, and Max is always adding content. You can find of his excellent collections on the Warrior Forum from $9.95 to $19.95, but the monthly club contains many of the individual kit's graphics.

I'm a designer, yet I pretty much purchased anything Max comes out with — saves time and money.

gary

13

Technical Assistance / Re: Building themes

« on: June 22, 2012, 08:52:16 AM »

Sounds intriguing. When you discover the name of such as tool, please post. I'd like to check it out myself.

14

Technical Assistance / Re: Building themes

« on: June 22, 2012, 08:32:36 AM »

Sounds as if clicktechs is looking for some sort of development platform to code within.

I agree, the Flex themes are very good. I use FlexSqueeze as the basis for many sites.

15

The Freebie Forum / Re: Wondering

« on: June 21, 2012, 02:14:11 PM »

Most sites with free photos are full of low-quality photos, or so non-specific as to be useless. I use http;//www.fotolia.com for most needs, including site work. Low-res photos go for as little as $1.15 or so each, less if you buy credits in quantity.

Occasionally, I'll find something useful at Flickr.com, but make sure they're licensed for your use.

What, specifically, are you looking for?

gary