Sometimes you get in a situation where you feel like you just hit a brick wall and anything you do won’t work in fixing a particular problem or issue. Did this happened to you too? You probably know what I’m talking about. Same thing happened to me a couple of days ago when I decided to change my WordPress theme on my blog. I’ll tell you in a minute what Twitter has to do with all this.

I found a great looking theme, professionally designed, produced by the famous WooThemes Team. The theme I’m talking about is the one you probably see in front of you right now. It’s called The Original Premium News.

I knew what I have to do in order to change the theme in my WordPress Admin area so I went right ahead and changed it. But little did I know that this, apparently simple task of changing a theme on my blog, would cause me so much “pain”.

Now, this nice looking theme has an open-source script integrated that re-sizes images and thumbnails on the front page, automatically. This script is called thumb.php and it wouldn’t work for me even if I “begged” it.  The problem that occurred was eventually solved by looking for information about thumb.php on various forums, bulletin boards, and developer groups. I’ll give you the full details below.

But the interesting fact is that I had an idea at some point, when I was running out of options, to send out a tweet on Twitter and see if someone would respond. Minutes pased by and nothing happened. I was dissapointed, to say at least. But suddenly my followers started to respond and doing their best to help me out. Even though they couldn’t find a technical solution to my problem, they did help me by supporting me and giving me confidence to go on and solve this issue.

Keeping in mind that Twitter was my last resource I could think of, and that I was ready to give up and delete the theme and set up another one, you probably know where I was standing (read: “edge-of-a-nervous-brake-down”). But luckily for me, my friends on Twitter persisted and eventually I got the idea of contacting one of the developers of thumbs.php, directly on Twitter, and I got a response from him (Darren Hoyt) in a couple of minutes, directing me to a forum built specially for this purpose.

So, I can’t thank enough my friends on Twitter who inspired me to keep trying. These are a few of them and I apologize if I missed somebody: @dshiggins, @darrenhoyt, @lukerumley, @shoestringing, @a3austin, @simonerubin, @mcleodg, and probably many more who re-tweeted my “cry for help”. Thank’s again guys, you ROCK!

Now for the more technical aspect of this let me explain what to do and how to do it:

How To Fix thumb.php To Properly Display Images?

The best information I could get was the Google Code forum for open-source projects. You can see the original timthumb.php developements and you can also contribute:

http://code.google.com/p/timthumb/

After I tryied everything from changing file permissions with my FTP software, to altering the thumb.php script and nothing worked, I found the answer I was looking for: It wasn’t me, it was my Hosting Provider, which is HostGator for me. Found the answer here:

http://code.google.com/p/timthumb/issues/detail?id=8

If you are on HostGator, all you have to do is contact them by going to:

http://www.hostgator.com/

Click where it says: “Click here. Live Chat” on the upper-right corner of the web-page and tell the followings:

add following rules [ 1234234,340151 ] to mod_security for www.yourwebsite.com
Please whitelist for the domain

That is all you have to do. Wait a couple of minutes and you’ll probably see the images on the front page of your web-site.

Since thumb.php or timthumb.php is an open-source project, more and more WordPress theme developers use this little script and integrate it on their projects. So keep your eyes open because I’ve seen thumb.php used on other themes as well.

Here are a couple of more resources to help you:

http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/04/02/timthumb-php-script-released/

http://www.woothemes.com/2008/10/troubleshooting-image-resizer-thumbphp/

http://www.wpconfig.com/2008/10/16/troubleshooting-image-resizer-thumbphp/

http://www.darrenhoyt.com/support/forum/timthumb

If you have other questions or issues go ahead and drop me a line. I’ll give my best shot in helping you solve any issues you might have.

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In my quest for high quality websites and blogs that could inspire me to have more great ideas to implement on my websites and businesses I stumbled upon a very interesting blog that’s loaded with valuable information and I believe it’s a comprehensive way of learning how to make money online.

The blog I’m referring to has an interesting semantics name called EzMoneyOn.net and it’s one of the many blog’s in the community centered around the making money online niche.

So, what exactly makes a blog stick, so to speak, when it comes to finding value and even more, to find people who offer value? I always wondered what’s the incentive for people to stick to a blog a read it thoroughly? Now, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to spot a genuine valuable blog that’s bursting with information. It’s an actual gold mine. And Simonne’s blog, EzMoneyOn.net is no different than that.

She’s blog is what I call a P.B.B. (Professional Blogging Business) offering valuable information on how to make money online with PLR products, PPC, affiliate marketing, niche marketing, and much more. But she doesn’t stop at just displaying a bunch of money making methods, she goes into great detail on how to actually start in one particular direction like niche marketing and how to build up a real business by driving traffic, optimizing your website, getting backlinks and building a prospect / customer list.

This is the best example of a blog that is oriented towards a blogging business model with the typical blogging strategies that always work but also puts out a lot of information about related niches like how o start making money in the affiliate marketing world.

Particularly, I like the section about how to do a proper research and also learn how to interpret your statistical data to know where your visitors click where they are on your site.

You can also find tips and tricks to bring high quality targeted traffic to your website. You might want to check that out. I highly recommend it.

Basically, it all comes down to this: if you are a beginner in blogging or you want to learn how to make money online, this is the best place to start. So go ahead. Check out Simonne’s blog and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed to get notified when she publishes a new article. Here’s the link to her blog:

http://www.ezmoneyon.net

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One of the many opportunities for making money at home for beginners is by the “Paid-To” type of work. Now the main advantage in these kinds of programs is the fact that you don’t have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to set up an online business, you don’t have to have a list of prospects or potential customers, you don’t have to know anything about web design, PHP, or HTML, or anything related to that. You don’t even have to have a website!

That is a great advantage as you don’t have to spend a lot of time. You could be making dollars online as fast as 1 or 2 hours from joining one of these programs!

But, of course, there is a draw-back. You can’t expect to make a fortune and strike your first million dollar per year income doing that. But it’s a good thing to start making easy money online fast, and it could help you pay the rent or pay some bills or it can be a good start to save some money and later on invest it in a full scale online money making business. Something you probably always dreamed of.

And that is why I decided to share with you one of my friends website and find out how he can help you to start out online since he is an expert in making money at home for beginners.

He’s name is Elan and here’s his website:

http://www.moneylizard.com/2008/12/making-money-at-home-for-beginners-goals/

This is actually his blog and he just started out blogging. As you can see there aren’t many articles on the blog. But he decided to help others that are in the same situation he once was. And that is the reason for this making money at home for beginners blog.

I loved the theme of the blog and the way the design is structured. You can easily find the most popular articles in the top left side of the blog and also you can subscribe to his RSS feed to get updates about the articles he’s going to post. I highly recommend to do that. Just enter your valid email address and that’s it. He also recommends a few money making full proof methods.

Particularly I liked his blog because it contains interesting articles about paid surveys and other opportunities and you should really take close attention to what he has to say since he’s sharing he’s own experience with all these programs. This is a good way to know what works and what doesn’t.

Elan in also a spiritual type of guy and he knows how important it is to cure procrastination and actually start working for your own good. That is why he shares he’s personal thoughts about making money at home for beginners and how to start out online by setting your goals and get laser focused about what you really desire and get filled by the energy that will drive you and help you become who or what you always dreamed of.

Check out Elan’s blog right now and I promise you have nothing to lose. You can only gain.

http://www.moneylizard.com/2008/12/making-money-at-home-for-beginners-goals/

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Today I would like to talk to you about images and how high quality images can increase conversion rates as much as 5%.

Now in this world of high competitive markets when even 2% Conversion Rates are considered good, on an average base, imagine what it would be like to get a 5% conversion rate boost just from implementing a few simple strategies and tactics with some high quality images.

Today, it’s almost impossible to find a landing page or a sales letter or even a marketing pitch that doesn’t have a 3D cover of a book or report or something similar. And why is that? Because, guess what? It will increase the value of the offer and at the same time it make’s the sales letter look more professional in the eyes of a potential customer.

I would like to share some of my secrets of creating high quality 3D images, ebook covers, short report covers and information product packages that look like real photos.

I’ll start by sharing with you some of the work that I’ve done in the past few years and I’ll also explain how you can use these tactics and create your own 3D images for your products.

One of the earliest images that I did was this 3D box (see image above) for a product that I launched related to the Affiliate Program called Global Domains International or just short GDI. Now this was a long time ago, when there was no such tool as eBook Cover Creator and other software like that, or if there was, the price tag was probably staggering. As you can see the image is not astonishing and actually I did it in a couple of minutes with Photoshop.

I applied some masks and modified some layers and then I stretched the two parts of the box so it looked like a 3D view. But it’s far from being high quality. First of all it has no shadows and shadows can make a big difference in fact I think shadows are the one element that have the most impact on a image especially with 3D images. It also doesn’t have lights and the today new 2.0 style and that is obtained with reflections.

The next step was to do something better. Something that would have shadows and still have a big impact on the audience. As you can see, this is a better quality image and it looks also better with the gray and the yellow text contrasting each other. It’s also a good idea to apply small details like that red triangle I added  that says “FREE”. It gives the image a nice look. You could also add small images like “Satisfaction Guaranteed” or “Virus Free”, “Spyware Free” or even “Risk Free” stamps and seils.

The next thing I did was a 3D book cover as seen above. I still didn’t apply shadows to this one and I probably would have increased my conversion rates but I still did fine with this. It’s the same principles applied again with only two images: the main cover and the side cover put together in a 3D image. All I did a multiplied the layers and I re-arranged them.

I also did some headers with Photoshop and this is one of them. this is very easy to obtain, just smash up some images, rearange them, apply some shadows, maybe some proper outer-glow colors and your done.

After headers and ebook covers I decided I’ll go into more deeper waters if you know what I mean. I designed this cover for an online magazine I was about to launch at that time, about Article Marketing. This is the first issue of the magazine.

This is me, by the way, I thought it would be funny to add me on the cover of the magazine but I dropped the idea and kept the image as a reminder.

And this is what the magazine looks like with a proper set of shadows and lights and reflections. This is also made with Photoshop using a set of actions that automate the whole process of delivering a professional looking 3D image or e-cover.

As you can see, there is a lot to ‘cover’ but if you can think out of the box and not be afraid to always try out new things then you can get to create really interesting stuff and also improve your artistic skils. And all this can not only be fun but it can also get you higher conversion rates on your squeeze pages, landing pages, sales letters and so on. I’ll be sharing some more great stuff with you in the future so stay tuned.

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