Website Graphics

The advent of the Internet has made it possible for those who have ever wanted their own business to create and build one at extremely low cost. Compared to 'real-life' brick and mortar stores, online businesses also provide a completely automated process, allowing for products to be purchased around the clock, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 52 weeks a year. Although some marketers, especially the 'guru's' of Internet Marketing employ staff to deal with customer enquiries, most of the work can be done by you and you alone. This of course, depends entirely on how many websites you have and if you are able to cope with them all yourself and something that each individual will decide for himself what works better for him.

When you enter a 'real life' store, you are faced with products that you can see and feel. Tangible products that you are able to hold and decide whether the quality is worth the price. This is something that we have all come to depend upon, seeing the goods and touching them before we hand over our hard earned cash. An online business is however a lot different. What we see is a 'virtual' store. Even if this virtual store is selling tangible products that will be shipped to you after purchase you, as a customer, need to be able to see the product even though you cannot hold it until after you have purchased it and it has been delivered safely to you.

Some businesses are built solely for the Internet, for example, e-book stores and Minisite graphics such as those on Creative Niche Graphics, however many off-line businesses are building websites and selling their goods online, being able to reach a much wider audience and thereby building a stronger and more profitable business. If their products can be shipped abroad, then having an online business that reaches far and wide as opposed to the local neighbourhood, can mean a growth in sales and a highly profitable business unheard of in years gone by.

Even if you have a business that has been growing and extremely successful over a few years, having an Internet presence will certainly help your profits. However, there is one thing that you should consider and which is most important, when setting up your own online business.

Whether you are bringing your business from the 'real world' to the virtual world or whether you are just starting out in business with your own website, what your prospective customer sees could determine the success or failure of your online business.

The one thing that you must remember therefore, when either starting an online business or placing your existing 'real life' business online, is the graphics contained on your web page. It does not matter what you are selling, whether it be tangible products or electronically downloadable merchandise, your prospective customer needs to see what he or she is buying and graphics is the only thing that makes this possible.

If you have a website, you need graphics to sell your product or products. With tangible items, photographs of the product will suffice. However, you will still need to have top and bottom banners at least, hence the many websites that provide a website template service. Even more so if you are selling digital downloadable products is the need for high quality graphics for your website. Electronically downloadable books or, more commonly referred to as e-books, need graphics to complement the content. You cannot take a photograph of the product because it is not 'tangible' therefore, the use of website graphics and programs is needed to display the merchandise that you are selling.

Unless you are adept in producing graphics for your product and website and know where to go to purchase royalty and copyright free photographs, you will need to hire someone to do this for you. Depending on where you go, you could expect to pay in the region of $150 for a Minisite consisting of top and bottom banners, pay button, background swatch and e-book or box graphic. Is it worth it? This will depend on how you look at your business. If you are serious about earning money online and are serious about your business presence, you will have no second thoughts about investing in your online business success with high quality website graphics.

Do not let the graphics on your website determine the success or failure of your online business.

Joining a graphics membership site is still lower in cost than purchasing custom graphics. By purchasing graphics with rights attached to them, not only can you use them for your own website but you can also resell them to make a profit.

The Minisites on Creative Niche Graphics have all been created by me and membership is limited to just 1000. In addition, the minisites for the previous month are placed in archive for purchase separately within the members area at a slightly higher price.

Creative Niche Graphics also gives you a unique business opportunity. All of the minisites in the members area have Limited Master Resale Rights attached to them which means that you can resell them for your own profit and pass on resale rights to your buyer.

If you are interested in creating your own website graphics and in particular, ecovers, there are certain tools and resources that you will need. You will also have to spend out some of your hard earned cash but if you are intending to create graphics to sell as an online business, this expenditure will be more of an investment.

Creating your own graphics is the cheapest way, especially if you use free paint programs such as The Gimp. The problem with these programs is that the actions for e-covers for Photoshop only work in Photoshop so without them, you will have to fiddle about to get the correct perspective. They are however ideal for creating your own header and footer for your website. For whatever reason you use the free programs or Photoshop, you will still need either your own picture or photograph for your design or you will need to purchase a royalty free graphic from a stock photo site such as Big Stock Photos. You could also use pictures from the public domain or from the free stock photo sites that are available, however you will not find any 'model' photographs with these sites, i.e. photographs of people actually posing for the photograph due to them being free. To use photographs of models, it is best to go to either Big Stock Photos as all models sign a model release form, or you could purchase Private Label photographs. One thing you must not do is Google images to use as this is illegal!

To create a high quality e-cover, you will need to have a set of actions for Photoshop. Two really nice action packages are Cover Action Pro and 3D eCovers.

As you can see these are a little expensive but if you want to create custom ecovers for others as an online business, this actually works out a lot cheaper in the long run. You could expect to pay at least $27 for an ecover so if you create just four to sell as custom graphics for your customers, this would cover the cost of one package plus a little more. Likewise, if you are intending on creating quite a few ecovers for yourself to utilise your private label rights products, investing in these programs and scripts will still work out cheaper for you.

You will however have to sit down and design your website or e-cover from scratch and although for the graphically minded person this can be fun, it can also be time consuming. If you are not graphically minded and do not really want to spend the time designing and creating website graphics and/or ebooks then please think twice before spending out on any of these programs.

I purchased this ebook a little while ago and is something that has helped me with my online graphics business.

Although there is no affiliate program with this product (just in case you decided to promote it), if you are going to create website graphics for others, Know Your Image Rights by Michelle Brouse can save you a lot of money and hassle.

Just click on the image above to be taken to the page - scroll down right to the bottom to sign up and get your FREE Niche Site!