This is the cover of my new book of images of Stratford-upon-Avon. These are images taken with my own camera.
Whilst I own a sophisticated Panasonic camera, I find the colour palette of my cheap Casio Exilim camera (less than £100) preferable for landscapes and, in particular, the colours of Warwickshire.
you can watch a slideshow of the book. I suggest that you watch them on full-screen.
How can I monetise these?
Stratford-upon-Avon is a tourist town with two big outlets – the Shakespeare Trust and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Would it be conceivable that these oulets could incorporate these images into gift products for the tourists?
Also, there is a weekend market where I could sell these via a stall which would cost around £80 for a day or I could take the cheap route of simply handing out leaflets to a web page where the tourists could order what they want.
Here is a collection of oil paintings of Stratford-upon-Avon that have been compiled in my new book.
I have to take my dog for a walk everyday and I take my camera with me. As a result, I have taken numerous pictures of places on my walk and have built up a selection of images throughout the year.
It is interesting to view the changing colours and scenes throughout the year. Also, the difference that can be made by using different colour filters.
I put the pictures into Photoshop and apply an oil painting effect including colour saturation to enhance the colours.
I feel that these would be quite commercial if I tried to sell these to the many tourists that visit Stratford-upon-Avon but so far I haven’t explored this possibility. By putting the images into a book, I can get some feedback from the tourist retailers about this.
I recommend that you view the book in full screen on a fast slide-show…
I create a book of samples of my work each year, mainly so that I can see how my graphical skills are progressing and to show potential clients.
All the images are created from ordinary photos and then stylised using Photoshop, Photoshop Actions and manual editing.
I currently own around 300 Photoshop Actions and each action has multiple layers and settings that enable me to produce literally thousands of variations.
However, as you will see I revert to a relative handful of my favourite actions to produce most of my work.
Reviewing my work this year, I think I need to be a bit more adventurous with my styles and introduce a greater variety of designs.
Although there are some 160 images in the new book, there are literally hundreds of images that I couldn’t reproduce because of lack of space. The book is in A3 format.
The book starts with oil paintings of Stratford-upon-Avon landscapes taken with my camera, then a flowers section and then portraits of humans and animals thereafter.
I apologise for the sound in the background of this video which is picking up background noise – you may prefer to switch the sound off:
In addition to Photoshop Actions, I have literally thousands of banners, icons and graphic templates all accumulated as a result of my subscription to Envato Elements. This enables me to create an infinite variety of graphical designs.
As I produce my images, I keep them in monthly folders so I can see my productivity each month.
I would love to produce my work in poster size and display in a big gallery but for the time being I am selling my designs on Redbubble . I am also doing a few private commissions.
Perhaps the greatest use of my graphics is to use them on my websites and those of my clients.
Marketing mock-ups are great for branding businesses. These are graphics that enable us to quickly and easily brand our businesses by placing our own logo or branding material into the image.
Here are a few examples for a potential new customer I am working on:
I have entered the Envato graphics competition where there is $2,000 in prizes up for grabs. The competition is based around the Flex Photoshop Action.
I’ve found a good print on demand site at Redbubble.com and I am selling my graphics through this site.
Below are a sample of a few of my products:
Although I tried to set up a print-on-demand shop through Photobox I did not like their solution. They then decided to outsource their solution to a third-party provider who wanted to charge a monthly fee.
With Redbubble their is no charge to start selling your graphics and you can decide the profit margin over their manufacturing cost.
There are two other print on demand sites like Redbubble that I currently know about:
Design By Humans
Society 6
I am sure that there are plenty of other sites.
Whilst these sites provide a solution for selling your graphical skills they do not provide much in the way of traffic – that is your responsibility.
Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest are ideal free traffic vehicles for what is a very visual medium. Also, doing short YouTube videos showing before and after demonstrations on how the graphics were created would work.
I chose print on demand with Redbubble.com because I like how they have set their site and service up and it is very simple and easy to use.
This is my graphics review 2015. In 2015, I took a different direction with my business.
It started with my interest in creating better graphics for my websites but gradually the process of creating art-work from any photograph took me over with a passion. Sometimes in life you just have to follow your passion and that’s what happened to me.
In 2015, I have restyled literally hundreds of photographs and I decided to put a selection of these together in a physical 160-page A3-size book that is currently on order. I decided to video the book on the site of the vendor to give you a flavour of some of the images I have created in 2015: (Click the arrows in the bottom right-hand corner of the video to view full-screen)
I have taken many of the photographs with a very cheap camera and the rest are other people’s restyled photographs. Other images are simply video snapshots from YouTube!
I use Photoshop and Photoshop Actions to create these images.
The purpose of the book is to be able to show friends, family and clients examples of my work and encourage them to think that they can restyle their photographs, if only by hiring me to do it for them.
No matter how good a photographer you are, it makes a lot of sense to edit your photographs in a photo-editor like Photoshop. You can adjust lighting, colour saturation, you can change the background, you can add effects etc You can literally turn your photograph into a work of art.
I have a passion for art that goes back many years. The walls of my house are a testament to that passion. I own a lot of pictures. This is a problem because I don’t have space for too many more. I now own digital images that in many cases are better than the pictures currently on my walls! I therefore need to offer my skills as a service to other people to make any sense of generating more art work.
Other than this, I don’t really understand why I have devoted so much time to increasing my graphical skills. It was just something that interested me so deeply that I was compelled to spend time pursuing my passion whether or not I could find a way to monetise them.
I have been looking for a new way to improve the life of my customers because I pretty much became disillusioned with the value I was offering my clients in the highly competitive niche of internet marketing. I needed to find a new way of progressing my business and in order to do that I have taken a long sabbatical.
I needed to rediscover my passion for my business because I felt that it was not nurturing my spirit and, that being the case, it was difficult to convey my passion to my customers and therefore difficult to engage properly with them.
In a sense, I needed to step back from the coal face, look at what I was doing and then move forward more intelligently.
During that sabbatical, I have been steadily honing my skills with Photoshop simply because I love the creative process of creating unique and beautiful images. I wasn’t ever sure how I could use this skill but it is now coming into clearer focus.
At the same time, I have continued reading and watching a lot of marketing tutorials to give background to my research.
I really want to build my business around graphics, in the following ways:
building stunningly beautiful and unique websites.
providing bespoke image restyling services to other people
selling pre-made images
I will be using images, and tutorials on how I create my images, as the model for driving traffic to my squeeze pages and offer pages and I have a membership site almost finished for the purpose of providing outstanding value to my clients.
I am fortunate in the fact that my current income covers my monthly expenses, so income from this new venture will just be the cream on top.
I am following Sean Mizes Membership Blueprint to build this business to $5,000 per month by 31.March.2016.
Here is the outline of the blueprint that I will be following:
[boxibt style=”gray” bordercolor=”#000000″]The primary goal is to change lives both financially and spiritually.
A = 500 new subscribers per month (- need 1,500 targeted visitors to squeeze page each month) 33% conversion
B = 50 sales x $10 = $500 (- sold in email campaign to new subscribers.) 10% conversion
C = 60 members x $37 per month = $2,000 (- need a membership site with lessons.) 12% conversion
D = 20 sales x $37-$97 = $740 – $2,000 (- need a new training each month with 4 hours of training.) 4% conversion
E = 10 coaching clients x $100 = $1,000 (- need a coaching programme.) 2% conversion Plus: Give amazing training to 100% of your list via email (- write 3 to 5 emails to list each week.)
Ideal Daily Activities:
80% of time is driving traffic to my squeeze page
Write a simple daily schedule (-use Action Enforcer?)
Record audio/video for 30 minutes Write daily email – 15 minutes
Create 3 images or articles and post on my blog and social media – 45 minutes
Record 2 YouTube videos – 30 minutes
Add lesson to membership site – 15 minutes
Then some days:
Write sales letters for weekly or monthly product release – 1 hour, or
Write launch emails for new product – 1 hour Any spare time:
Drive traffic using content – 2 hours[/boxibt]
Today I created and ordered a book of some watercolour images I have created and next week I am talking to my daughter who is interested in helping me to build this business.
Thumbs up for my new venture
I feel that I am well on the way to finding increased satisfaction in my business by doing work I love and, at the same time, giving more value to my customers. Whether this new venture succeeds financially or not, I will be enjoying the creative process whilst helping others.
Hopefully, I will be able to connect through the heart rather than the head to make this spiritually uplifting!
P.S. I hope you enjoyed these pictures of my granddaughter acting in front of grand-dads camera!
In one of the sections of his book entitled ‘The Brutal Truth’, John Reese has a sub-heading or chapter with the headline:
Mediocre Graphics No Longer Cut It, You Must Use Beautiful Top-Notch Design (No Exceptions).
When John Reese says something like this about website design, I listen.
Here is a brief description of his career so far:
[boxibt style=”gray”]In 2004, Reese astonished the online marketing world by selling $1,080,496 worth of his “Traffic Secrets” product over the course of eighteen hours. He launched a new product and made over a million dollars in less than a day without spending a single cent on advertising.
Reese realized early in his career that the best way to make money is to learn from others. The successes and failures of other experts in the online marketing field helped him learn to avoid gambling on new strategies with his hard-earned money.
For instance, Reese once sold a domain name for 900 dollars, and the buyer turned around and resold the same domain name for one million dollars in cash. Talk about a hard lesson learned!
In 1994, Reese created one of the first auto-responder services on the world wide web.
Since then, he has developed and launched over 100 projects on the Internet, including a free photography site for eBay users, which launched in 1998. Within the first 10 months after going live with his eBay photo hosting site, it was already ranked among the top 500 websites in the world for web traffic.
What did that mean as far as Reese’s bottom line was concerned?
He was making over 100 thousand dollars a month for a website that cost under 500 dollars to create and develop.
Reese is an eBay pro. He’s even made over 38 thousand dollars on a single eBay auction.
Reese has been sharing his expertise with other Internet marketers since 2004.
He is a pro when it comes to research and development, testing projects, tracking results, generating online traffic and conversion. http://john-reese.net[/boxibt]
So when John says, “The days of ‘ugly websites’ that make a lot of money are over.” I listen to him.
He goes on to say:
[boxibt style=”gray”]Oh, I know, I know, but but but… you read about some split-tests where the ‘ugly’ design or ad converted higher than the ‘pretty’ version!
There will always be a place for simple, compelling copy-driven direct response mechanisms (i.e. ads, landing pages etc) in digital marketing. It’s the copy that sells people and always has.
But there’s a ‘bigger picture’ happening. And ‘YES, there may still be a few ugly sites online that are having success today, and some may even be making a fortune right now, but
A) those are the rare exception and
B) I believe their conversions will only continue to get worse.
It’s only a matter of time, because a major shift is occurring and I’ve seen it as clear as day in DATA THAT DOESN’T LIE.
With the worldwide increase in device usage (smartphones to tablets) we find ourselves using these screens more and more. Because of this behavioural shift it created an important focus on UI (user interface) design and user experiences.
If you haven’t noticed, graphical interfaces got cleaner. And easier to use.
There’s an entire design ‘evolution’ occurring across the Web, mobile devices and more. And it’s all about CONVERSION. More professional, easier-to-navigate design makes more money.
Design now matters. A lot.
As competition grew, companies competed by having better design and better user experiences. ‘Design’ is what people see and experience in the digital world. It’s now incredibly important.
If your business doesn’t have awesome design you’re at a huge disadvantage. PERIOD.
TRUST is a major factor with online conversions. Great design is one element of establishing ‘instant credibility’ with prospects that don’t know of you and your business. If you take two competitors with everything else the same, but one has better design than the other, the one with the better design wins – better logos, product packaging, use interface and more.
This wasn’t always the case online as just a few short years ago ugly marketing converted quite well (even for sales) and in some markets it still does. But things are changing fast. It’s still a ‘balancing act’ that the copy has to do its job, but more and more people feel better about doing business with a company that has more professional design and a better user experience.[/boxibt]
It was reading ‘The Brutal Truth’ by John Reese that made me continue down the track of developing my Photoshop skills.
Joh Reese and ‘The Brutal Truth’ have eventually led to the creation of my product ‘Easy Actions‘ (launching 3rd July 2015) which is an easy way in for anyone to start creating beautiful graphics for their website, product packaging and much more
I have been working on a new product – it’s called Easy Actions – which is all about using Photoshop Actions to make stunningly beautiful graphics.
In this article I want to cover:
why this product is important
what it does
how you can do it
where and when you can get it
Why Easy Actions is Important
In his book, The Brutal Truth, John Reese says “Mediocre graphics no longer cut it, you must use beautiful top-notch design (no exceptions). The days of ugly websites that make a lot of money are over.”
If you don’t know who John Reese is, he is reputed to be the first internet marketer to make a million dollar product launch. He has gone on to incredible success as a consultant for other businesses. When he says something, I listen.
The internet, and websites in particular, are a very visual medium – we make an instant assessment about a website from how it looks, even before we start reading the content. Whilst the quality of content is critically important, so too is the packaging of your content.
When I first got into internet marketing in April 2009, graphics were a problem for me. I was very afraid of infringing copyright and inadvertently did so.
I wrote an article on avatars and used an image from the film Avatar to illustrate my article. It was stupid, I know but I little thought anyone would take any notice of my little website at the time. I was offering free advice and therefore I was not really making any money from the article.
Suffice it to say that I soon received a threatening take-down email – for a while I thought I might be involved in legal action. It was a harsh lesson that I won’t forget in a hurry.
So for a number of years, the graphics on my site were pretty uninspiring because I could not source good graphics without spending money.
In the meantime, I gradually learnt to use Macromedia Fireworks (which was bundled in with a copy of Dreamweaver that I had been given many years before) to edit images and to this day I still use this software for simple edits.
I’d heard about Photoshop but the cost of around $700 seemed too expensive and I didn’t fully understand what advantage would accrue to me by investing in it.
So for a long time I stuck with Fireworks.
What Easy Actions Does
Over the years I have bought a number of graphics packages – some of these included Photoshop Actions. These Actions were for marketing graphics – things like e-covers and mock-ups. I was intrigued by these and managed to get hold of an old copy of Photoshop CS5.
Eventually I managed to run one of these Actions – the very first time I used it I was instantly hooked, even though I was frustrated by how complex all the tools seemed. A simple task like importing an image seemed less than intuitive in Photoshop.
For a while my usage of Photoshop was confined to running Photoshop Actions for marketing graphics until one day I stumbled upon Actions that can create works of art out of Photographs. These Actions have transformed my ability to create stunning graphics from quite ordinary photographs.
The power of Actions gradually led me into using Photoshop more and more for creating and editing images. Now I am a full convert.
There are loads of free and low-cost graphical editors available today but, with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had tackled Photoshop a lot earlier – in my opinion it is the one and only choice of graphics editor principally because of Actions.
These are ‘scripts’ that run automated processes on top of a photograph that can instantly transform it into a sketch, watercolour, oil painting, poster and many other stylised forms at the push of a button.
When you add in the power of Photoshop brushes and styles and some of the other powerful tools within Photoshop, nothing else comes even close to Photoshop in my experience.
I see Photoshop Actions as a great way to start using Photoshop as Actions do 95% or more of the heavy-lifting and you can get an instant result at the push of a button which encourages you to go on and learn more about manipulating and tweaking that result.
Photoshop can now be acquired for around £10 per month which makes it affordable for everyone.
My product Easy Actions is a great introduction to Photoshop Actions – once you get started, I anticipate that users will soon be ‘hooked’ by the power and scope of what they can achieve i.e. creating beautiful stylised images from ordinary photos.
How You Can Do It With Easy Actions
In Easy Actions I go into my sources of copyright free images – there are 2 or 3 principal sources.
I then show how to open an image in Photoshop, load an Action script and then run the Action.
I then demonstrate some simple edits using several different types of Action as case studies. You can literally watch over my shoulder as I create my images.
I believe anyone will be able to do this in less than 60 minutes from start to finish.
However, you will want to then get into more advanced editing on Photoshop so I have given an optional extra of 41 videos that go through all the tools of Photoshop and how to use them. This is a one-time-offer for those that want to go a step further.
As an additional offer, I am also offering very low-cost coaching so I can cover new Actions as they come onto the market and advanced Photoshop techniques. I also hope to get guest contributions from cutting edge designers over time as the membership increases.
How To Get Easy Actions
I am planning to launch Easy Actions as a Warrior Special Offer via JVZoo at 3 p.m. GMT on Friday 3rd July 2015 for 7 days only on a dime-sale.
My hope is that I can work this product into my flagship offering so I can spend more time on Photoshop which is something of a passion for me.
I also want to sell my images as printables on Etsy and also to offer a ‘done-for-you’ service. So there are plenty of options for monetising my skills and to fund ongoing investment into buying more Photoshop Actions.
So look out for the Easy Actions Launch on or around 10th July – hopefully it will take-off like a rocket.
Here is a link to the article, which also reveals that he sold 2 further photographs to the same collector for $1.1m and the other for $2.4m. That’s $10m in total!
Having looked at Peter Lik’s work on his website, I can’t say that I am terribly impressed by his portfolio.
It seems to me that he over-saturates his photos with colour i.e. that he is using a photo-editing programme like Photoshop to do so. In doing so, he loses the natural tonal quality and the colours become somewhat harsh and even garish.
Of course, art is very subjective but, personally, I cannot see anything very special in his work and he reminds me of artists like Damian Hirst.
So why would someone pay so much money for a photograph? And why has he sold upwards of $500m of his work?
I think perhaps Peter Lik is a better marketer than he is a photographer (although I have to say that his website is less than impressive – my images site is better in my opinion).
Firstly, he has clearly been in the industry for quite a few years and has won a number of awards so he has become something of an authority in his niche. The more that he has social recognition, and particularly from the experts in the niche, the more people are likely to pay for his work irrespective of how good the image is. This is called ‘social proof’ (- something that Van Gogh failed to acquire in his lifetime.)
It has Lik’s name on it, he has been recognised by the ‘establishment in the photo art world, and therefore he commands a premium.
He has also appeared on television and carried out a number of photographic stunts that have attracted publicity so that he has become a household name in the US.
Next, he limits the number of prints that he creates from any particular photo to less than 1,000 to create artificial scarcity. In practice, there is nothing to stop him from creating unlimited copies of his images. I imagine he agressively defends the copyright to his images to maintain that scarcity.
He prices his work starting at $4,000 and increases the prices as the prints sell so that buyers end up paying a huge premium for the last few prints. The high prices means that there is a perception of higher value, which together with his social proof of being a photography expert, gives instant cache to his work and commands the attention of buyers.
Here’s how one article describes his pricing strategy:
Most photographs are offered in very limited editions. A large format print is often limited to ten or less. And they all sell for the same amount. This is the typical business model for galleries. Lik’s approach is very different. His editions are in lots of 995—950 limited editions and 45 artist’s proofs. Each print is identical but the proofs have a bit more prestige to them so they start at $10,000. His business model is that as a print is selling, the price will increase. Once he has sold 10 percent of a limited edition, the price increases. So, an image that would cost $4000 if you bought the first one, could reach as high as $200,000 when it’s down to the last few. All being said, each photo can gross more than $7 million.
The price alone gives instant exclusivity to his work.
He has also reinvested his profits in creating galleries around the world to showcase his work. This also provides instant cache for his work as no doubt these galleries are located in places where there is a wealthy client-base living locally. I imagine that he holds events at his galleries where only the wealthy are invited to exclusive shows of his work.
However, the fact that he has sold the 4 most expensive photographs, more than almost anything else, means that the rest of his work automatically acquires a higher perceived value even though there are probably many better photos available. This is an example of how value is completely subjective in the art world (and in many other spheres).
You can imagine the conversation with a buyer…
‘I am offering this print for ONLY $200,000 which is a massive discount on the $6.5m that I sold one of my pictures for – get it now before the price rises or I completely sell out!’
There are lessons to be learnt here for any business – perhaps having the highest prices in your niche mark you out as the ‘go-to’ expert in your industry and the lowest prices mark you out as a relative loser even though you offer a good service.
Isn’t perception a wonderful thing?
People will value you and your work according to the value you place on yourself and your work – remember that when you are marketing your business and you will make more money and be able to command higher prices. This will in turn enable you to invest in the kind of marketing that maintains the perception of higher value – things like presentation, packaging and marketing events.
$6.5m for a photograph – he’s having a laugh all the way to the bank but I also applaud him for being a master marketer!
I have just put the finishing touches to Mark Salmon Photo Artist. This is a website that showcases my expertise with Photoshop and my passion for creating works of art from quite ordinary photographs.
This website is fully responsive so it looks equally as good on a smart phone as it does on a desktop computer!
The interesting thing about many of my personal photographs is that they are taken on a rather ancient Casio Exilim, about the size of a credit card. I slip this into my top pocket whenever I go out and snap what I encounter. I then return to my computer and endeavour to stylise these photographs by improving them in a number of ways.
I justify the time by the fact that websites are very visual by their very nature and skilful use of graphics is a definite advantage when creating marketing media.
I am looking for other ways in which I can monetise this skill because I would be delighted to be able to make a full-time income from this passion of mine.
I have always been interested in art and the many pictures on the walls of my home testify to this fact. At one time I was even importing oil paintings from China!
If you would like to acquire Photoshop skills then you can do no better than invest in my training product Easy Web Page Graphics.
I have created a new product called Easy Banner Graphics over the course of the last 3 days.
This product was created quite by chance when I saw another banner template for sale and thought that I could create something that was more valuable.
I have created 10 Photoshop files covering 10 standard sizes for web advertising banners. Each banner can be created in 103 flat colours with silhouette shapes for any niche or perhaps a logo.
The purpose of this product is to make banner ad creation fast and simple to accomplish.
I decided to use a flat colour palette because these colours appeal to me personally – in truth the colours can easily be changed to whatever is wished and the same is true for the font.
This is the first time that I have tried to sell a graphic template so it will be interesting to see if there are any takers.
I will also be offering Easy Web Page Graphics at a discounted price for those that don’t own Photoshop. I have bought a lot of graphics products and I think the overall package is extremely valuable.
Email Swipe Generator is a new product that is being launched shortly by two of my fellow coaching students – Daniel Madeira and Scrembo. Their expertise is in solo ads and email marketing.
They commissioned me to set up a membership site for them and to integrate the site with JVZoo so you can look forward to this launch shortly.
Here is a snap shot of the website before content is added to it (- I created the graphics):
When I take our dog for a walk, I slip a small camera into my pocket and simply snap the scenes of Stratford-upon-Avon that I see. When I return home, I quickly upload the pictures to my computer and process them through Photoshop. I use a combination of Photoshop Actions and ‘play’ with the images until I find something that appeals to my eye.
Here are a collection of some of my pictures – click on them to take a better look:
All this is within 5 to 10 minutes of my door-step. It seems foolish to measure wealth in terms of money. When you take the time to look around you – i mean really look, you begin to see just how wonderful life is.
My grandfather used to paint and photograph the local scenes (-a number of which adorn my office wall -) and he would be interested to see what I am doing with my photographs – I like to think he would approve
I hope you enjoyed these scenes from Stratford-upon-Avon and maybe they will inspire you to look more closely at what is on your door-step!
I think that I have discovered a graphic artist in myself.
I have always been interested in pictures and art. My house walls are covered in other people’s art that I have acquired over the years!
Also, when I was much younger, I used to enjoy drawing but I gave it up as it did not seem to have much income earning potential as a skill.
In working with Photoshop, I have discovered that I have a passion for working with photographs.
Here are a few examples of pictures taken of my grandchildren and how I have changed them in Photoshop using a combination of Photoshop actions and touching up with Photoshop tools:
Apart from creating a family calendar for Christmas, and using these skills to create graphics for my products, I’m not sure where I am going with these skills! All I know is that I enjoy the technical and artistic challenge of working with graphics like this.
If you have any suggestions as to how I can make a living from doing this I would be very grateful.
Am I graphic artist? I don’t know but all I know is that I really love working with photographs like this – the act of creating something nice is very satisfying.
I think this could be the ultimate key to your branding success and, by association, your business and monetary success (and mine!)
Please don’t read this and move on before you have taken some time out to think about how this applies to you and your business.
I had a kind of epiphany last night and I have woken at 4.45 a.m. to write my thoughts because I couldn’t get back to sleep again before I shared this.
I interviewed Kate Loving Shenk last night about her experiences with Google Hangouts but this has nothing to do with that other than the research I carried out prior to the interview.
(Incidentally, this applies just as much to me and probably 95% of people that I encounter in business.)
Prior to the interview, I was looking at Kate’s Facebook profile and website and was interested to see that she is a spiritual healer with a special interest in eradicating the fear of death. She also has 3 decades of experience as a nurse.
After meeting Kate in a Google Hangout, I realised that she has a kind and caring personality but her profile and website are not instantly magnetic and it bothers me greatly because I think they could be. (I think I need to adjust this in my own business too, by the way.)
I lay awake thinking about why we are attracted to other people and particularly the business leaders in our online community. In almost every instance their magnetic power lies in their personal story.
Let me give you some examples off the top of my head:
Brendan Burchard – at the core of his personal story is a near death experience in a road accident when his immediate thoughts turned to the question ‘did I live, did I love and did I make a difference?’ This epiphany has driven his business forward to try to offer as much value to other people as possible so that he can answer this question in the affirmative when death finally comes knocking at his door.
John Thornhill – his success as 7-figure marketer derives from his story of working on a car assembly line in the north of England and his struggles to build a business whilst working on the line full-time. His story of success is magnetic to the many people who are also struggling in a job they hate and want to emulate John’s success. We can identify fully with his story.
Omar Martin – his story of struggle as a door-to-door salesman positions him as someone that can teach us all about selling strategies. His wife was his sales manager and they have gone on to create a highly successful online business in partnership.
Dennis Becker – aka as ‘the 5-buck guy’ – he struggled with a retail store and ran up huge credit card debts before he finally found success. He went from despair to making something like $35,000 almost overnight when he promoted the Xbox. From that point on, he knew that he could succeed online and has gone on to be a highly respected and successful leader in our online community.
Ann Sieg – a leading trainer of network marketers, recounted how she struggled in network marketing until she started doing demonstrations of what happens to our gut by eating the wrong foods. She actually extruded some horrible gunk through a stocking in front of her audience in a graphical display that was probably horrifying to behold.
Dan Kennedy – his story was one of incredible struggle for many years before he finally broke through to point where he can command incredible fees for his marketing prowess.
Echkart Tolle – in his book, The Power of Now, he recounts how he was in the depths of despair and depression, to the point that he had thoughts of suicide. In fact, he said that ‘he couldn’t live with himself’ and then he started to question the ‘self’ he couldn’t ‘live with’ and he came to the realisation that it was the internal chatter which had created a fictitious ‘self’ or ‘ego’ and that, if he could remove himself from thoughts of the past and fears of the future, and just live in the present moment, he could live in a state of constant ‘bliss’. He recounts how he sat on a park bench for a couple of years in a near constant state of bliss as he began to appreciate the joy of living in the present moment. This story is magnetic to most people who also struggle with their negative thoughts.
In fact, in almost every single instance of a top brand, they have a magnetic story of struggle and redemption.
If you read about Richard Branson’s career, he flirted with business disaster for many years and even went to prison for a VAT fraud that subsequently shaped his ethical approach to business. His struggles with British Airways to establish Virgin Airways are also part of that branding story. Richard Branson’s personal story are very much part of the Virgin brand and the reason why he features in so much of their marketing.
Perhaps you can think about other successful leaders and what attracted them to you?
I can almost guarantee that it was something about their personal story that resonated deeply with you. Often it was the story of their failure and despair and subsequent recovery from that position that is a magnetic attraction to those that are still struggling to find success.
And so I return to Kate, who I mentioned at the beginning of this article.
The thing that kept me awake last night is that behind her interest in eradicating the fear of death is her personal story.
From reading her profile and website, I still don’t know what that is!
I am willing to bet that something in her personal story – perhaps her encounters with death as a nurse, or even a deep personal tragedy, has inspired her to share her experiences and insights on this subject.
The thing that really bothers me is that I don’t know.
And yet I think that this is the key to unlocking the potential of her business and income-earning ability.
And it’s the same with me, I don’t think my personal story, and why I feel I have something that I can to offer to entrepreneurs to improve their business and personal lives, is nearly as strong as it could be.
You see, it requires that we share our story of struggle and failure (something that we all experience at some point in our lives) and it shapes who we are and is at the core of why we are motivated to do important things in our lives.
The fact is that we often hate admitting our story of struggle and failure to ourselves (and particularly to other people) and we try to bury our hurt with all the stories of our successes.
It’s called ‘putting up a front’.
But by doing so, we do not connect and resonate with the very people that we can help most by sharing our story – often the exact same struggles that people are going through themselves and we can specifically help!
You see their personal experience is one of struggle and they cannot connect fully with someone who claims to have ONLY known success (- a claim that is just not credible by the way!)
‘Lifting the curtain’ and sharing our personal struggles and failures, and how we overcame them, is in fact the most important and magnetic thing we can do in our marketing.
The recent release of the film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ recounts Jordan Belfort’s struggle to rise to success, his subsequent imprisonment for fraud and he now has a successful business centred around his powerful ‘Straightline’ sales system.
But it is his personal story, and the authenticity of it, that makes him truly magnetic.
In an article I wrote a couple of months ago, I recounted how my sister had paid $15k to Bo Eason, whose main purpose is to help people to find and articulate their personal story. (If you haven’t watched the video on that page, I strongly urge you to do so!)
At an intellectual level, I fully understood the power of his consultancy but it was only when I encountered Kate’s profile, and woke up last night thinking about it, that the lesson was fully driven home.
Has Kate had many encounters with death as a result of her nursing career? Did she suffer a personal tragedy? Did she become the person that people naturally turn to when death came knocking at their door? Did she have an epiphany whilst sitting at the bedside of someone who was dying? Did they reveal the secret of finding peace when faced with the spectre of death? Did she learn to come to an understanding of death through a long journey or was it an overnight revelation?
I really, really want to know these things because they are the important factors that compel Kate to do what she is doing and would compel me to listen to what she has to say on this subject.
(I hope Kate will forgive me for talking about her specifically but, as I say, I think this same lesson applies to the majority of other businesses I encounter – it was just her unfortunate luck that her business specifically sparked this insight within me and motivated me to write this article from the heart!)
I know that I have to address my own profile and website too and refine my own personal story further because my story is not nearly as powerful as it needs to be.
But I believe that this is what makes us magnetic as leaders of our community. This is what will drive our success as a business and a brand.
No one else has exactly the same story or experiences that you or I do, so no one else can exactly replicate our own special brand or business.
The only question is ‘can you and I articulate our personal story powerfully enough so that it magnetically attracts the specific people that we can help with our unique skills and experiences?‘
I believe THAT is the key question that most service providers and product creators have to address.
It is so critical to our success and fully realising the dream or vision that we have for our business and our personal life.
In fact, I would go further, it is critical to realising our real purpose in life i.e. to improve the lives of other people through the knowledge and unique experiences we personally acquired by living through our personal journey and how we overcame the many challenges along the way.’
That’s where our brand power really lies.
And the interesting thing is that we all have the ability to help others through our own life experiences.
I truly believe that ultimately this is the key to your branding success and mine – yes, there are other factors, like design and copy, but the real power of your brand to attract the very people we can really help lies in the story that lies behind our brand. Chew on that for a while and tell me I am wrong!
Marketing and branding is enhanced by design skills, so I have been quietly developing my Photoshop skills – particularly using Photoshop Actions to create engaging graphics.
Creating graphics is a very desirable skill in website design and it can be expensive and frustrating to outsource.
My coach advocates that we should outsource of graphics because we need to focus on marketing but in so doing you also lose control of your brand to some extent because it is created by someone else.
To build my skills, I have therefore taken shots with my small digital camera and turned them into works of art. Judging from these pictures, I should probably go into photography because I love it. These are some of my personal favourites.
I hope you enjoy these images of my grandchildren (who are the real blessings in my life, together with the rest of my family!) and local scenes. As you can see, I have a little bit of the artist in me. (The dog picture on my home page, is Poppy, my constant companion and disciple!)
These have nothing to do with marketing but everything to do with developing my graphical skills to enhance my web pages and marketing collateral.
Internet marketing has given me a somewhat eclectic mix of skills and I don’t really know what the bigger picture is. I am just trusting that they will all come together for some greater purpose that I am not yet aware of!
If you click on each image, you should see an enlarged version in your browser.
This post is about why I re-designed this website.
This is how my website looked before the changes – pretty radical, huh! –
I was running my site on the Optimise Presss 1.0 theme but this theme is not responsive.
Whilst it has many good features, website design has moved on and I guess that is why Optimise Press 2.0 was created. I almost bought OP 2.0 but backed off after Rob Cornish did an article saying that the page editor was slow and clunky.
I certainly like the look of some the OP 2.0 sites that I have seen but speed of implementation is also important. The price at $197/$297 was also an issue.
Optimise Press 1.0 was good for squeeze pages, sales pages and membership sites. However, I use plugins like Paper Template and Instabuilder now to create squeeze pages and sales pages and I build membership sites on either the Membersonic Theme or the Instatheme.
I then looked carefully at the Thrive Themes produced by Shane Melaugh but I felt that these were relatively expensive compared to other options on the market. I own Shane’s plugin called the Thrive Page editor which gives plenty of page building flexibility anyway on any theme on which I choose to install it.
I was therefore pleased to snap up the developers rights for the Elegant Biz theme by Tantan Hilyatana for just $47. It seemed a bargain given that it has all these features:
Fully Responsive + Has Custom Mobile Design
Elegant and Beautiful Design – Designed for easy user interface, elegant and beautiful design as well as professional and modern.
Can be Used for Any Type of Website
Rating System: on post and comments plus rating block as well as top rated items list.
SEO Optimized: all content have been structured for SEO, we use semantical HTML & CSS code which allows search engines to easily index the content.
Unlimited Color Options
Beautiful Gallery with lightbox popup feature
Custom Gallery which allows you to add images from external URL
Content Lightbox Popup – You can add text, image or video on the lightbox popup
Custom Post Types
Custom Page Types
Advanced Typography options: font size, font color, font family.
Un-Moved Background Image for The Boxed Layout – You can use both pattern background or cover background image.
Color Insights – You’ll find color insights inside theme setting. No more confused choosing the best color for your site.
Header Image & Background Color Option
Build-in Contact Form
Stunning Pricing Table – Unlimited color options, built with CSS3 and HTML5.
3 Awesome Homepage Sliders – Big image slider with several of transition variations, sequence slider and featured posts slider.
Testimonial Slider
Automatic Update – You’ll see an update notification on WP admin dashboard when we release new version, simply just 1-click to update without losing all saved settings.
Star Rating Google Rich Snippet
Unlimited-Level Dropdown Menus
Sleek Admin Panel
Auto Generated Thumbnails
Automatic Pagination
Social Sharing Ready – Position is adjustable (floating left, right, top, bottom).
Social Profile Icons
Support All Major Modern Browsers
XML Demo Content & Dummy Theme Settings for blazing fast setup
Boxed and Wide Layout variations
Facebook Comments
Custom Message on Each Post – You can display specific message on each post, on top or bottom of the post.
Threaded Comments
Works with 3rd Party Slider plugin – On the demo we are using Revolution Slider. Please note, this theme does not include Revolution slider, it can be purchased separately on the vendor sales page on CodeCanyon. [Update May 31, 2013 at 01.48 PM EST] We’re going to integrate Revolustion Slider, so you don’t need to buy it.
Built with HTML5 and CSS3
Custom CSS Option – Need more customizations? You can easily add custom CSS directly from admin panel without editing core theme files. Those styles will overwrite the theme styles.
Footer Bar Layout Option
Sidebar Position Option – You can choose left or right sidebar position.
Stripe Bar or float bar on top: Very useful to point out an important information.
Supports Multi-Site – You can install this theme on a multi-site environment.
Custom Login Screen
600+ Icons – A lot of icons included. Use them and create awesome pages.
Support with Latest WordPress – version 3.5.1, also has been tested with WordPress 3.2.+.
Complete set of instructional training videos and text.
Get all future updates with added features FREE for lifetime.
Dedicated support team – We provide you private support and community forum. We care about your site as much as you and will help in anyway possible.
I particularly needed to make my site mobile-friendly and, as this theme is responsive, it fitted the bill nicely.
This design can also incorporate the Revolution Slider, which I have just configured for my sisters website. It took me about a day and half to master the complexity involved with setting up this slider so I am glad that this time was not wasted!
Also, the Revolution Slider was incorporated within my purchase of Elegant Biz theme – if purchased separately off Code Canyon I notice that it costs $19 so my net outlay was just $28 for the developers rights to Elegant Biz – it just gets better and better.
I have no doubt that there will be some page problems involved in swapping over to this new theme and some coding problems but ultimately the additional features should make the change worthwhile.
I also took the opportunity of freshening up my logo into something a little more snappy. There are also 600 icons included within the theme which will make for nice page designs.
So the three main reasons why I redesigned my website were – responsive theme, re-branding and additional features and flexibility offered by the new theme. I hope that you like the new look and functionality.
My latest client website, Tiger Feet, was a super-quick WordPress website build.
My client rang me at lunch time, I started work on it at around 4 p.m. and later that evening I sent the first draft of the site to my client.
This client is a young lady named Emma Breeze. About 4 years ago she came to our Rotary Club to tell us about the dance business she was setting up. To help her, I volunteered to build her first website at http://embodydance.co.uk.
I showed her how to operate the site and from then on, apart from the occasional intervention by me, she has basically developed her website as her business grew.
Her personality and energy are such that she now has a team of 5 staff and has found a sub-niche in ‘dance for people with disabilities’. She has therefore decided to split out this part of her business as a separate brand called ‘Tiger Feet’.
This is is the initial draft of the front page of the website. I have no doubt that this will be tweaked and improved over time:
I don’t build that many websites for clients because I prefer to build them for myself. It is much easier because beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder.
I have found from experience that, when someone else is doing the work, everyone likes to become a web designer by suggesting enumerable changes without realising what the changes really entail in time and skill. And it is difficult to get them to pay for the additional time involved – in other words, they are happy to suggest a thousand changes as long as it is all on your time!
In the case of this website, I did a lot of work on Photoshop to resize the images, lighten them up, optimize them etc
Of course, I want my customer to be happy but it does make me reluctant to create websites for other people unless there is a reasonable margin in the job to cover revisions. In this case there simply wasn’t, as I offered a super-keen price.
One of the business improvements I have suggested is to create a membership area which could serve the following purposes:
to create a dance tuition product
to create a product showing others how to establish a dance school
to use as a staff training area
to create individualised training programmes and schedules for dance students
With this in mind as a future enhancement to her business, I used a theme with a lot of navigation flexibility (the Membersonic Theme) so the membership area can be built on the back of this new site without the need for another website installation.
There are also a number of premium plugins installed on this site including an auto-backup plugin, a security plugin, and a visual editor.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed looking at this super-quick WordPress build.
Instatheme launches today (6th March 2014 @ 11 a.m. EST or 4 p.m. GMT) and I will be investing in it and offering a bonus.
I have been using Instabeauty, one of the themes packaged with the Instatheme launch, on two of my membership sites – marksalmon.info and businesscreationmastery.com.
There are 8 or 9 design templates now available and each template has an almost infinite number of colour combinations. However, only 4 of the design templates are available in the upfront price – the rest can be purchased separately (- which I will be doing!).
These themes have been designed specifically for membership sites, so they have plenty of navigation options.
This is the first theme that I am aware of to have a visual editor incorporated into the theme. This gives ‘drag and drop’ page design capability without the need for coding.
The theme is responsive so it is mobile friendly, as you would expect from a new theme.
Included within the offer funnel are some nice graphics options but these are optional.
The theme has been created by Suzanna Theresia, who has created Instabuilder and Instamember – both of which I own. You can expect Instatheme to have been well-tested prior to launch.
Here is a quick preview of the various design templates I mentioned above:
If you buy through my link, I will reward you with a very nice bonus. Simply send me a message through my Contact page with the subject line ‘Instatheme Bonus’ and a copy of your Paypal receipt and I will reward you.
I have been waiting for the Instatheme launch for around 12 months now, so I am excited about it – don’t forget to claim your bonus if you buy through my link.
I have been exploring Photoshop Actions recently and, because I share what I am doing to build my business, I thought that I would share this with you.
Part of the reason for playing around with Photoshop is that I am creating a product called Easy Web Page Graphics sharing what I know about how to create graphics.
I am mostly self-taught. I started out with Macromedia Fireworks which was bundled with an old purchase of Dreamweaver. I find that Fireworks is now relatively simple to use and I use it a lot for simple graphic creation for that reason.
However, some time ago I managed to get a free copy of Photoshop CS5 (which I have since upgraded to CS6). I was buying products that had Photoshop Actions as part of the purchase and was curious about how to use these. With a little bit of experimentation, I soon found that Photoshop Actions make graphic creation very easy.
Recently I discovered a site called GrahicRiver.net that sells loads of Photoshop Actions for very cheap prices and I have been buying a few of these to take my graphical skills to the next level.
Recently Brad Gosse was offering some free stock ‘spicy’ photos. Whilst these do not really have a place in my internet marketing business, I thought that I would share some of the stunning results.
I think that design excellence when presenting your website, content and products is extremely important and I am hoping to take my graphical skills and turn my content into works of art. This combined with green screen video where I can use images as video backgrounds will make for some interesting results. I can also use nice images for squeeze page backgrounds, headers, banners etc.
These sketches have been created from ordinary photographs – some are cropped and others have been touched up. I just wanted to show you what is possible with Photoshop Actions.
As you can see I love creating digital art. For many years, I think I have buried my creativity because my employment (banking and consulting) has really been more about logic than art.
I remember writing an essay at school about an apocalyptic, post-war scenario. The creative process was extremely hard work and I think I frightened myself by my creative potential. I gained outstanding top marks for the work but I never again exercised my creativity to the same extent.
Only during the last year or two, with my websites and now with my graphic creation, I am I now re-finding the creativity that at one time scared me into almost a lifetime of burying the creative muse. I find that this is the kind of work I would like to do but I wonder if I can make a living from it?
Anyway, I love exploring Photoshop Actions – please comment below if you have any ideas on how I can make money from this!
Update:
I am finding the images I have created with Photoshop Actions super-useful for my web design business. When I have a free few moments, i create more designs that I hold in readiness for use on future projects to set my work apart.
They are also useful for eCovers, banners, headers and general website images or even to drive traffic from Pinterest or Facebook. If you want to know how I am doing it, then you may want to pick up a copy of Easy Web Page Grapghics. This product could set your design business alight with the possibilities and tools I reveal.
In this video I outline a source of free graphics that you may have overlooked.
In fact it is a completely authentic and engaging source of graphics that will be great for your personal branding. It is easy to build up a nice library of graphics that you can use in future projects and they will be free of copyright or royalty restrictions – indeed, you own the copyright!
Are you ready for me to reveal this source? Then watch this video:
Now that you have your free graphics, you can take them to one of the graphical editors and make variations of your images. For example:
You can create photo distortions on PicHacks.com or your iPad:
You can create sketches, like this one of my grandson. I will cover how to do this in another video (- subscribe if you want to find out how!):
You can combine pictures:
Here’s another great tip for getting free images from video (-this one has my new video intro and outro):
Here’s an image clipped from this video with Snagit:
The possibilities are almost endless.As I said, this may be a source of free graphics that you had previously overlooked… but not anymore!
Leave a comment and let me know what you think about these tips!
I like playing with logo design concepts and I have just bought a package that enables me to play around with any logo to create different logo designs.
Using Photoshop actions, it is easy to get some stunning logo effects and to create something quite sophisticated.
I have basically created a number of logo concepts below to see which one I like best and I thought that I would share my tests with you.
Which one do you like best – feel free to give your opinion below and tell me which one you like and why.
Here is a collection of oil paintings of Stratford-upon-Avon that have been compiled in my new book.
![woman-912367_1920 [Optimized]Home](http://mark-salmon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/woman-912367_1920-OptimizedHome-1024x768.jpg)
![woman-912367_1920-Flexx1 [Optimized]Home](http://mark-salmon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/woman-912367_1920-Flexx1-OptimizedHome-1024x768.jpg)
![male-1291996_1920-Flex [Optimized]Home](http://mark-salmon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/male-1291996_1920-Flex-OptimizedHome-927x1024.jpg)
