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Brighten Up Content with Graphics
By Dewald Pretorius | October 9, 2007
They say that a picture speaks a thousand words.
A major drawback of written text is that it does not convey tone, inflexion, and emotion. That’s a very important part of human communication that’s missing when you read a block of text.
In affiliate marketing, or any marketing for that matter, you want to reach down to the emotional level of your target market. I’m sure you’ve heard before that people make a decision to buy based on their emotions and then they endorse their decision with logic.
Photos can help you set the overall theme of your content and dial in particular emotions with the reader.
It’s wise to use photos sparingly. Don’t overdo it. You just want to give the reader’s imagination an image to grab on to and then run with it.
Where do you get professional pictures to use on your web site?
Before I answer that question, let me issue this caution. If the only way to get a picture is to right-click on it and “save as…” then you’re probably stealing it. Never use stolen property on your web site.
It’s far better to use stock pictures that you buy from various online suppliers. BigStockPhoto is the service that I prefer. They have thousands upon thousands of pictures, and you pay only between $1 and $2 per photo. There’s also iStockPhoto. They’re very popular, but I just find it a lot easier to find the pictures I’m looking for at BigStockPhoto.
There are other web sites that make pictures and graphics available free of charge, but you have to be very careful and make sure that you can actually freely use those items. Laura Milligan published a list of 100 legal sources for free photos and graphics. If you’re happy with just every day life pictures, you’ll probably find them on the free resources.
Between free pictures and paid stock pictures, I definitely prefer the latter. You know you’re getting quality work and you know you’re given a license to use the material. I found that one has to spend too much time searching for professional quality pictures, such as a person depicting a specific mood where the person is set against a white background. Spending an hour searching for a free picture versus spending five minutes plus $1 - the second option makes far more business sense.
For ideas on how to use pictures, just look at this post. Also browse to the other sections of this site using the hyperlinks on the right.
I use the little golden men at the beginning of the content to illustrate the overall theme of the content. Then, deeper in the content I’ll sometimes include emoticons to set or illustrate a specific mood or emotion.
It’s important that the graphics don’t break the text into separate sections, which often results in huge chunks of white space inside the content.
To float the graphics like I’m doing on this site, use the following HTML:
I prefer using inline CSS styling for the graphics as opposed to styling it with a CSS stylesheet and assigning it a class.
With inline CSS styling the graphics float in the intended places in your RSS feed content, when someone reads the content with an RSS feed reader. That flexibility is lost when you style it with a stylesheet, and the graphics jump in between the paragraphs and create huge white spaces.
Let the pictures speak at least a thousand words to your readers! It’s so much less to type.
Tags: Building Websites
Topics: Building Websites |
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October 3rd, 2008 at 10:00 am
[…] For the most effective internet marketing strategies, you have to do a variety of things and not focus all your money or all your time on one single kind of marketing. Use different services and opportunities, and determine what results they bring you. With certain offerings, you could get better benefits by going the free route, while other offerings can only produce an income through paid advertising or through a combination of both paid and free strategies.Author: Elwood Luker. At www.earningsforce.com you can get tips for Internet marketing, and how graphics can add emotion to text. […]