All Posts, Blog, Free Stuff, Photography, Web Design
Your readers are more visual now then ever. Captivating them with great headlines is key, and so is capturing their attention with an interesting photo or graphic that goes along with the headline. Full disclosure, we actually use these websites along with paid RF websites like iStock and 123RF for our projects as well as client projects. Reason being is that there are a good amount of free resources for images online with creative commons licensing, but there are times when you’ll need to purchase a specific image that just isn’t found anywhere on the free market.
“Free images and videos you can use anywhere
All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required.”
What I really like about this site is the free videos. Don’t get me wrong, they have a great library of photos to choose from with a broad range, but lets face it video is where it’s at these days and getting to use some HD quality ones for your project will make a great impression for your viewers.
“Hundreds of high resolution images added weekly. Free from copyright restrictions.“
This is a very clean and easy to navigate and search user generated stock photography website. It’s easy and quick to create an account, and I encourage that you do so that as you download photos you take the time to “like” the photographs that you come across. As a photographer this means a lot to us!
“Search millions of Creative Commons photos and add them to your blog posts easily.”
Their headline pretty much says it all. Catering to web creatives and bloggers alike, you’ll find plenty of great images and photos to use on your websites here.
“NEED FREE STOCK PHOTOS FOR YOUR NEXT PROJECT?
We are a stock photo community where photographers & designers can share their own photos and artwork with people from all over the world.”
If you’re looking for really great high quality photography from photographers around the world, you’ll enjoy this website. I’ve seen a bunch of highly edited and HDR photographs posted here for free use.
“Startup Stock Photos was started as an outlet for photos we were already taking on a regular basis. It’s grown to be much more than that. People and organization all over the world have used these photos to make some really awesome things. We’re happy to have helped.”
If you’re looking for photos and images with that “startup” or agency look, you’re going to enjoy this website. From wooden desk tables to white board and monitor screens, you’ll no doubt find an image or two to fit your project. While there isn’t a search feature or a huge library of photos, the ones that this photographer uploaded for your free use are fantastic.
What did you think of the list? Hopefully this helps you if you were looking for some great sources for photography and images. Remember to give credit back to the website/author of the photos you choose to use. While what you find may be free, what it does cost time, expertise, and skill to do photography. Having credit and recognition goes a long way!
All Posts, Blog, Content & Copywriting, Marketing
We often get questions from our clients and people to our website or social media about ways to generate traffic on a website that don’t cost as much as doing full blown SEO Marketing. If you don’t know already, the median cost for adequate SEO (search engine optimization) campaigns can range from $250 – $5,000 a month if not more. Depending on your business’ marketing budget, you may not be able to afford anything towards paid marketing, and that’s ok. One of the best things you can do to promote your business and drive traffic “organically” to your website is to create great content on a your website.
Creating organic content is rather easy in thought. If you’ve got a WordPress website, you’ve already got a blog built in. So logging in and creating a post and publishing it is a snap. Check out our free how to videos if you need a refresher.
The Value Add
The value in your posts is what you talk about and how detailed or defined you can get. It’s not so much on repeating what most may already know about your industry, but a different take on something common or a simple way of solving a problem that most suffer though the hard way. And in there lies the organic and realistic perspective that only you can provide in your words.
The more topics you write about in this same fashion you will build up a fan base. People who respect what you have to say over some industry leaders even. Why? Because of your unique perspective and how relatable you are.
Provoke An Action
Once your readers have consumed your posts, you should ask them to take an action. This action may be fulfilling a promise, sharing your post with 2-3 people, trying out the steps you laid out, or maybe even to prove you wrong in a way. Lastly, you can offer a give-a-way of something of value to your readers. Could be a top 10 list, discount coupon, or something of the like so that they are willing to give you their names and email addresses in exchange for this free option. This is also a great way to build your email list!
Monitor Your Analytics
While you may not see too many comments on your posts, you may notice the increase in traffic to your website on the days you post, and a couple of days after each post. But first lets talk about consistency. Your readers would appreciate knowing that you’ll be publishing new content on a regular basis. That “regular” basis may be once a week or more, but it is at the least consistent. This is probably the hardest challenge of all. We all get bogged down with busy work and life moments that pouring into our business can sometimes be more of a chore than a pleasure. I promise you the results will encourage you, where the lack of publishing will also be seen in your analytics.
While these are just a few benefits of self publishing for what I like to call sweat equity marketing, there are always more. We’ll write more about it next week to keep this post short. In the meantime what are some topics in mind that you are ready to publish? Check out this cool and FREE Editorial Calendar. It may help you put all those ideas down and plan when to write and publish them for the next few days and weeks.
All Posts, Photography
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of being the photographer for a high school buddy of mine. It was an absolutely beautiful afternoon with the famous Florida sun gearing down for a fantastic sunset. Now this was a shoot I did alone since it was a small engagement, but if I had my assistant with me I probably would have staged this photo. Believe it or not it was a candid real moment that I happened to be at the right place at the right time to capture. Check out the original post on our Instagram page here.
All Posts, WordPress, WordPress Plugins
If you’re like me, you’re almost always on your smartphone or have your device in a close reach. It’s not because I want to look busy all the time, but that there are a lot of things that are happening online from social media posts, website metrics, responses to blog posts, and content creation to name a few.
I came across this post from WPMU Dev that highlights quite a few of the apps and tools I use as well as a bunch more including:
- Buffer
- SimpleNote
- PingDom
- Google Analytics
- MailChimp
by Brenda Barron
![What You Need to Know About Managed Hosting [PRESENTATION SLIDES]](https://jpdesigntheory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Managed-Hosting-Main-Page.jpg)
All Posts, Featured, WordPress
Recently I was honored to be a speaker at WordCamp Tampa and FLBLOGCON and my talk was about Managed Hosting. We at Design Theory have been providing this service to our clients for the past few years where we take care of backups, updates, security and more so that our clients can focus on their website content and businesses without worry.
While there are many questions out there regarding hosting at a basic level and the validity or need of an enhanced hosting platform like managed hosting is why I decided to make this talk. Below are the slides from my talks that you can view, download, and share. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us!
