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.
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.
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.
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)
