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.
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.
Part of my traffic strategy is video marketing so I have recently been thinking about my branding with video intros.
It is very easy to get a sophisticated video intro from either Fiverr.com or VideoHive.com but in the end I decided to create a simple video intro of my own.
Personally I don’t like long video intros, as I always want to ‘get to the meat’ as quickly as possible and a video intro often stands in the way of that. Seeing the intro the first time is cool but it gets progressively less cool if you watch the same intro time after time!
I therefore decided on another route – buy a nice piece of music and make my own intros.
Here is an example of 10 second, 30 second and 43 second intros from the same piece of music with different backgrounds – all are ‘home-made’ by me.
These were simple to make and I think they are a little more sophisticated than a ‘whiz bang’ animated intro… but that’s just my personal taste. What do you think?
CLICK THE IMAGES TO PLAY THE VIDEOS
43 seconds in blue
30 seconds in green
10 seconds in orange
I would be interested in your comments and feedback on the topic of branding with video intros – do you like this style or do you think that something a little more whizzy is required?
I somehow doubt it but that’s what I have been thinking about during the last week – branding (my days as a lover have long since finished!)
I have produced the following graphics on Photoshop to help brand my business – it only took a couple of hours:
The one I particularly like is the green can – it is slightly different and therefore calls attention.
The Solo Ads Assassin Membership Site
I am also helping Daniel Madeira with his Solo Ads Assassin Membership Site.
He has produced a very nice eBook about his solo ads business and I helped to proof-read the book. I also created the following eCover:
And this is the first draft of the header image for the site:
As a ‘quid pro quo’ for my work, Daniel is planning to promote my own products on the back-end of his funnel as a logical follow on i.e. I have a list, what do I do now? The answer is to build a sales funnel of relevant products to drive traffic to.
So some of my products like ‘Product Creation Renegade’ and ‘Membership Millionaires Bootcamp’ may be ideal follow-on products – Daniel will link to them with an affiliate link so we share the income.
Free License File Creator
Through my membership of Earn1KADay, I acquired the Master Resale Rights to a piece of software called License File Creator. It helps creators of digital products, like me, to create a PDF license file to package with product in seconds.
I have decided to add this software to my site as a free gift for opting in to my list – you can see the link in my sidebar. (As you can see, I have also branded the image on the box to my business!)
WP Affiliate Builder Launch
WP Affiliate Builder was launched this week by Omar Martin & Dave Nicholson – this includes a plugin to help create the affiliate page for digital products.
I did not need this software (as I own WP Affiliate Surge) but I bought WP affiliate Builder twice just to get the bonuses on offer from John Thornhill and Marc Milburn – they have both made some crazy promises and I fully intend to take advantage of their offers to mail their lists and introduce me to their list of affiliates. The way I looked at it was where else could I spend $47 and get exposure to large amounts of potential traffic?
WP Website Wizard Update
WP Website Wizard is my comprehensive training on WordPress – it currently has over 110 videos on various aspects of WordPress. This week I added a further 11 videos about how to speed up page loading times in WordPress. This means that I am offering over 120 short videos for just $47, including a library of graphics and various other bonuses.
I think I will have to revisit my pricing because I am just giving away my knowledge at a crazy low price at the moment and the hosting costs for this product must be relatively high.
My Son Returns To University For His Final Year
I picked my son and his girlfriend up from Heathrow Airport at 7.30 a.m. recently and he returned to Nottingham Trent University on Sunday – so we have also been busy helping him to settle in for his final year.
James & Mercedes have just returned from a month long visit to the USA where they travelled all over the country – California, Napa Valley, Bishop, Death Valley, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Florida before taking a weeks cruise around the Caribbean. I don’t know how they do it on a students income?
I’m attending Webcamp Tomorrow
I’m attending Webcamp, which is over 3 days, starting tomorrow. It is 3 days of training on How to Create Lifetime Monthly Residual Income.
It is streamed live over the 3 days and there is access to the recordings after the event. Cost is $27 which is a crazy low price.
This is the affiliate link of Andrew Hunter who brought this to my attention http://pluginresults.com/likes/webcamp. The course is run by Armand Morin who has generated over $80m online, so he ought to know what he is talking about!
The End of Another Busy Week
Whilst I may not have answered the question ‘Does Branding Make You A Better Lover?‘, I would love your feedback about the branding images that I created or indeed anything else that takes your fancy!
Hope you have a great day and thanks for dropping by.
