It’s Freebie Friday time again folks! Here’s a new special edition brought to you by our friends from Launch Effect - a free WordPress theme that lets you create a viral landing page in minutes. We’re giving away 3 premium yearly plans! Scroll down to see how to grab the theme!

Here’s how Launch Effect works

• visitors to your website sign up using their email
• upon signing up, the page generates a special URL for them to share with their friends
• use the URL to track your most active referrers (right in the WP admin panel) and reward them for spreading the word
• they integrated with MailChimp already and Aweber will follow soon

Launch Effect Premium

Launch Effect Premium is the paid version of the theme that offers more control and new features to help you build a great-looking website that goes beyond a landing page. With its robust settings panel, Launch Effect Premium empowers web designers, marketers, and WordPress enthusiasts to build beautiful, fully featured websites without touching a single line of code. Here’s a quick rundown of its features:

• Fully-styled blog and theme capabilities (WP’s widgets & menu controls)
• Expanded design customization tool
• Slide-down viral sign-up tab
• Animated countdown clock and progress bar
• Brandable footer
• Premium priority support

Launch Effect Premium also offers the beloved features of the free version: MailChimp sign-up list integration, Typekit and Monotype web font integration, and a referral link generator with conversion tracker. Here are some demos showcasing the possibilities of Launch Effect Premium.

WIN a Launch Effect Premium License!

Win a single site Launch Effect Premium license with access to all future upgrades. You can check out upcoming features for LE Premium right here.

• tweet this: win 3 premium licenses to @LaunchEffect from @InspiredMag
• leave a comment telling us what you plan to launch using Launch Effect

We’ll randomly pick three winners and make the announcement here next week. Good luck!

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Win 3 Licenses for the Launch Effect Premium WordPress Theme

A follow up to Love Triangle by Alexa Lash – a writer, editor, and on-the-spot poet. Former Floridian and resident Bostonian, she has written for the Seminole Chronicle, Momslikeme, and the Central Florida Future, and is currently working in the Journalism Department of Emerson College.

We found the body, dressed in the newest line from Décolleté, spread on the runway, legs flaring away into an upside-down V. A purple wig—each model had her own color—fit snug on the vic’s head as if nailed down.

“Ms. Violet is dead!”

This, from a small man with a black boa tied around his shoulders. He looked glamorously sad, his sequins and his tears shone under the runway lamps.

I couldn’t quite make out his accent. I could hear a faint faux French, where he emphasized Ms. in an awkwardly stated meez. Meez Veeolette eez dead. Dead, dead, dead. I wanted to laugh right there, this sequined man next to a woman without shine, clashing like brown and black or horizontal stripes with polka dots (the little man being the dots).

I held my breath, then puckered my cheeks to keep the laughter from hahaing forward. This was serious business, both boa and body.

“You must be Mr. Décolleté. I’m Detective Harlow.”

We shook, and he frowned as if I were wearing a Mumu.

“Nice coat, Harlow.” He took a long breath inward and coughed. “Very—1920s of you.”

I shrugged and lifted my shoulders up until they appeared padded.

It’s not like his outfit was any better; he’d missed a button on his shiny shirt. And his shirt was shiny. Shiny.

Usually, the fashion world is not my scene: slim-fitted models, light bulbs the size of coconut bra shells, dresses cut with diamond backs, edges so sharp they look like knife-points. I heard it was a cutthroat business—cue eye-roll here—but I didn’t think they took it to heart, or Ms. Purple did, right above the heart (the killer just missed it).

I made an A-line to a mirror on the far side of the room. Someone had streaked the mirror with red lipstick, only slightly, like a shoe peeping out from the bottom of a dress. That little hint of color struck me as odd since Violet didn’t wear red anything. You even called her purple and she’d start ripping seams.

So this means I had my first suspects: Ms. Mauve and Ms. Red.

—

Divas, especially those who inhabit the fashion world, maintain a sort-of pact with the clothing gods. You eat little, you’ll be able to fit in me. You know. A frickin’ mantra. So when I went to question the models, I thought it’d be with difficulty comparable to unbuttoning shirt cuffs solo. But instead it was zipper-like and easy. No catches, no fastening stories to another. They had alibis, solid alibis.

Who was left? Well, there were the variegated collection of non-red models. Décolleté himself. Assistants. Obsessive fans. Ex-boyfriends. Ex-lovers. The list went on. I needed more clues, to find some semblance of a pattern. I’d settle for argyle at this point.

It didn’t take lengths to question the suspects, just a few weeks to get to all of them. I had it hemmed down to two people: Décolleté’s assistant, Bee Dazzle, and Ms. Violet’s lover, that handsome man they dubbed The Black Tuxedo—what he modeled for the big-time brands. His real name was Peter Peplum so I understood the need for a moniker.

They were the only two with alibis that seemed to stretch out like an elastic waistband. His story was all capris, no pants. And hers, well, you could see through her like a tulle skirt, dancing ballet around the truth.

I called Dazzle in first.

“Don’t touch the merchandise, honey.”

Officer Dux let Bee go, her dress leaving little flakes of glitter on his hands. I couldn’t help thinking it, but she was haute. And she knew it; boy, did she know it.

“Nice outfit, Dazzle.”

“Thanks. It’s a Décolleté original.” She wiped her hands down her column skirt and smiled. Her lipstick was red, lipstick-on-the-mirror red.

I gave her water, which she scarfed down. I asked her about her relationship to Violet, whose real name was Sarah Burberry, and about an argument they’d had in Violet’s dressing room before she was found.

“Look, Black and I, we’d been seeing each other before Violet got here. Just because she was purple, doesn’t mean she wasn’t green with jealousy. She thought Black and I were sneaking around behind her back.”

“And were you?”

“Where do you think I was when Violet was killed?”

Black agreed they’d been keeping it all a secret. It explained the flimsy alibis, and why it seemed their stories were made of more transparent fabrics. They were protecting one another.

The problem remained: who killed Violet?

I could sense something was off, so I retraced my steps as if walking back on a runway. Back to the beginning. The red lipstick, the kill wound—the kill wound. The killer had just missed her heart.

I asked Dazzle for her lipstick, and grabbed it carefully to test for prints.

—

I had to admit, he had that—something.

“Why’d you do it, Décolleté? Your prints were on Bee’s lipstick. The lipstick matched the shade on the mirror.”

The small designer held a black tie in his fists.

“What was the point of the lipstick?”

“She was a liar and a thieeeef. Before she knew me, she was just Sarah. And how does she repay me? She steals my ideas and gives them to my competitor, Diamanté. I was going to write ‘traitor,’ but I heard a noise and ran off before I could get anything down.” He pulled the tie harder. His face flushed a darker hue.

“You didn’t have to knock her off.”

He lunged, fashion forward.

If the bullet fits…

His boa feathers scattered as he fell. But he wasn’t dead. Dead, dead, dead. Seems he just missed death the way he just missed a button, or a heart.

The little man was feisty for having just been shot. He squirmed enough that his pants glimmered under the light, so I handcuffed him in the station’s latest model of cuff.

“Don’t worry. Handcuffs are totally in right now.”

He frowned and quieted, and stayed that way until the ambulance arrived.

Wanna read more captivating stories for geeks from Alexa’s series? Check out What is Luv: Another Love Poem in Internet Slang, Text Drive: An Inappropriate Poem in Textual Terms, Less than Three: A Love Poem in Internet Slang,  Type M for Murder: A Mystery Short in Graphic Design Terms, Pub and Marriage: A Noir Short Story in Publishing Terms & Kern, Baby, Kern: A Relationship in Typographical Terms.

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we're publishing. Also, it's highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

Crime of Fashion: A Crime Story in Fashion Design Terms

Check out the hottest web design goods curated by our pals at WebDesignGoodies - this time with a Valentine twist! Here’s a neat collection of recent freebies, themes, graphic elements and other goodies. Feel free to contribute in the comments as well!

All You Need Is Love Vintage Poster/Flyer Template (only $6)

100% original lettering composition (calligramme) made from the name of song, written by John Lennon. Our poster is mix of modern typography and retro 1969`s feel. Don’t you want somebody to love?! It will be useful for St. Valentines day vintage parties, as invitation for funky style wedding. Or it could be used as poster for Beatles tribute concert. Anyway, you can simply print it and put it on the wall of your room. Also, All You Need Is Love Poster Pack includes original vector EPS file, with lettering in 4 different color combination. So you can print valentine card, t-shirt or bag for yourself or friend, with our artwork to show your emotion to everyone.

Package include:
• Well grouped print ready PSD file with 4 different style posters (2625px x 3375px, 8.5”x11” with .25” bleeds, CMYK , 300 dpi )
• EPS file with 4 different style lettering compositions.
• Background of this poster is cool old paper texture, you can use it separately.

Valentines Landing Page (only $9)

This is a simple Valentines Landing Page. Perfect for, you guessed it, Valentines Day! However can be altered for anything else if you so choose to do so. Documentation and Easily Edit! Layered PSDs are included with this template.

3,000 High Quality Stock Vectors (only $47)

High quality stock vectors can save you tons of time in creating new projects, whether you use them as-is or as the jumping off point for your own designs. But those high quality vectors can be incredibly expensive. That’s where this awesome deal from Vectorain comes in. You’ll get 3,000 Royalty-Free vectors – a $2,700 value – at the unbeatable price of only $47! That’s an average cost of $1 for every 63 vectors. You’ll get all 3,000 vectors in EPS10 format, as well as JPG previews. Included are individual elements, complete designs, and more.

Game elements ($6)

Check out some addictive casino games elements and 3d icons of roulette chips, dices and playing cards of four aces. The pack consists in vector EPS illustration of casino elements hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades suits.

Grunge Heart (only $1)

Melt her heart woth this grunge style heart.

Valentine – Small business template (only $22)

Do you have small business and would like to have cool site? This is the best choice for you. Our template is easy to customize, fun to work with and looks great! And we have small bonus for you. Since valentine is here soon and people will be looking for presents, we have styled our template for this occasion! All changes need to be made are described in detailed documentation.

Hand Draw Valentine Icons – Free PSD Heart Icons

Valentine’s Day soon on this occasion today freebie is Hand Draw Valentine Heart Icons Set. In this free icon set is included 6 pre made valentines heart graphic and PNG Icons (32×32, 48×48, 64×64, 128×128). Zip file include 24 png icons and free PSD template.

 Tiffany Blue Valentine’s Day Icon Set (free)

 Sky WordPress Theme (only $39/free if you join)

Sky floats above the pack in style and its sense of whimsy is sure to leave your visitors surprised and refreshed. Sky is unique in the way it’s homepage operates, loading all of your content seamlessly using ajax. This means that no matter how many pages you have in the “slider,” your initial page load speed will be lightning fast as each page is only loaded when it is displayed.

 Fabulous WordPress eCommerce theme (only $75)

Sell your fashion, clothes, and many more apparel products of your business site fabulously with Fabulous. Big images of your featured and recent products, easy-to-find yet eye-catching shopping cart, and image slideshow, gives you more chances to get linked with your customers, besides (of course) its integration with your other social media’s accounts. Keep your customers focus on your products, and cover your site ‘Fabulous’ly.

Bonus: Type faster with TextExpander for Mac – only $17!

If you’re like a lot of people, there are likely a number of standard text snippets you use on a regular basis. TextExpander is the most popular Mac typing shortcut utility that saves you time and keystrokes. Just assign abbreviations to frequently-used snippets of text. Then, when you type the abbreviations they expand to the full text snippets. With this fantastic deal, you can get it for just $17! That’s half off the regular price of $34.95!

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we're publishing. Also, it's highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

Spread the Graphic Love with Valentine Design Goodies

This is a guest post by Alex Mathers, founder of Red Lemon Club, a self-taught illustrator and writer who believes that any freelancer passionate about work they are good at deserves to create a successful and thriving career from it. Alex recently released an extremely useful online course titled The Freelancer’s Guide to Winning Incredible Clients through Google+ Mastery

Google’s latest addition to the ‘social’ world, in the form of social networking platform Google+, appears to have divided people on how useful and how valuable it actually is. What it has so far shown, is a huge amount of promise and value through its use as a professional networking tool that can be used to expand business and bring professionals together.

Here are 6 ways Google+ can help you attract more and better clients:

1. You can engage with targeted prospects

Thanks to Google+ incorporating the much needed ‘circles’ element to the platform, you are not only able to very clearly define the feeds you see on your home screen depending on what circles you have defined and chosen to be revealed, but you can send out content to specific groups or individuals.

What this does is allow you to target your content so that it is seen by the right people.

On a web platform that could allow anyone and everyone to see all manner of content you post, this is really valuable, and to a professional like yourself, even more so.

2. Sharing more in-depth content

Google+ is brilliant for sharing expanded and varied content. Posts can be essentially any length you like, you can include animations, films, the ability to tag people in posts. Google+ displays pictures really nicely and picture editing is great, giving you plenty of control.

You could even treat Google+ as your own blog, like Kevin Rose, who has swapped his blog for his G+ feed.

3. Gives you the ability to more easily reach out to anyone, including ideal clients

Reaching out and interacting with people is a key element gathering support, exposure, fans, connections, and ultimately paid work for freelancers. Doing this online to complement your engagement in the ‘real world’ can be very powerful if done in the right way.

Google+ lets users connect with potential clients, key influencers and others who support your freelancing business in better and more effective ways.

Firstly, because the platform allows you to follow the updates of people without them requiring to accept a friend request ,as on Facebook, you are in a better position to attract connections by actually interacting with their content and mentioning their name appropriately through ‘+ tagging’  and so on.

Secondly, circles allows you to share specific information with the relevant people, which allows for the sharing of content in a much more focused way. This is very valuable when we are talking about relationship- building.

Thirdly, the highly superior search function within Google+ makes finding people, as well as content to share and engage with, much more easy. The extended circles feature will allow you to share your updates with people you follow who haven’t followed you back yet, bringing further connection-making ability to the system.

4. It provides a more professional, business-like environment

A more professional crowd appears to be being drawn to Google+, mainly for its features and benefits for businesses.

This is where freelancers need to be in order to make the most of being in close proximity to other professionals who can work with them and provide work for them. For the time being, Google+’s user-base is comparatively small (though still huge and growing!), which means being able to stand out more too.

5. Google+ showcases your work and business in greater depth

You have the capability to really turn your profile on Google+ into a place to showcase what you do, be that a visual portfolio, or something in written format, like your CV. You can utilise the great picture display and sharing options, such as albums, and images next to your profile picture on your profile page, as well as the ‘About’ area which can contain a great range of material, as well as links, details about where you’ve lived and contact details.

6. You are better able to get found in search

Being linked with Google+ means that everything that is associated with you, including your profile, and brand page, will attract preference from Google’s powerful search engine, so that you, your shared content, and your brand will be found more easily.

The value this presents for self-promotion is very clear. Google is very interested in material that is being shared socially, like it is on Google+, and will make sure that socially-shared content gains priority through their search engine.

Google’s introduction of the +1 button means that anything that receives a +1 (similar to Facebook’s ‘like’) will gain more preference through Google search.

Because everything shared in Google+, as well as images now, has a +1 button linked to it, there is a lot of scope for gaining a large amount exposure through this. As Google+ is still in its early stages of development, expect to see a lot of further improvement and added features that will benefit you as a freelancer or small business over time. I’d love to hear what you think of Google+ and what it could offer you as a freelancer in the comments section below.

This is a guest article from Alex Mathers, who has written a well-received e-course designed specifically for freelancers who want to use Google+ to win great projects and clients, called: ‘The Freelancer’s Guide to Winning Incredible Clients through Google+ Mastery’. You can read a free sample chapter from the course here, instantly downloadable.

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6 Ways Google+ Can Win you More Clients

It seems these days that many designers automatically settle on the main color in their website’s palette automatically: white. Every other color is just an accent to that. Today, we look at 40 websites that used a bolder color to base their design on — in this case, blue.

It’s harder to pull off a web design that is based on a bold color — the relative safety of a plain old white background is easy to work with. These designers have made it work, though, and this means they can design sites that deliver greater branding benefits using the psychology of color. Check out how they did it.

Critical Zero

Obama 2012

Resume Baking

Foundation Six

Souljade

Yodaa

Carbonmade

The Pixel

Morphix

Vegas Uncork’d

Skype

Twitter Basics

Owltastic

Postbox

Campaign Monitor

Quiip

Elbow Park

Orion Advisor

Bartelme Design

Icebrrg

Birdie

Alex Swanson

Marie Catrib’s

Omaha Barcamp

Kyan

LeaderBe Consulting

Yowza

Ready Made Designs

Knight

Nude Designs

Delibar

Elemodo

Onavo

Jar Design

PSD2HTML

DesignCrowd

nclud

Shelly Cooper

Vimeo

Los Colores Olvidados

Why blue? It’s a bold color but one that’s psychologically fairly neutral and uncontroversial for a business to use — a safe choice. That’s not to say it doesn’t mean anything. Blue is considered a calming color that represents focus, attention, and is both uplifting and motivating. These are all traits that most businesses don’t mind being associated with. While not many businesses will simply say “I need a blue web design” they’ll often request it in their brief or have it as part of their logo. Color psychology does suggest that overuse of blue can come off as sterile and detached, so don’t forget to mix it up a little with other colors that are friendly and pair well.

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we're publishing. Also, it's highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

40 Websites That Look Great in Blue

Joe Childress & Jonathan Combs have been creating visual projects together since 2008. They have collaborated on commercials, animated shorts, viral videos and several other forms of visual stimulation. They both currently reside in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and find anytime they can to create.

Step 1. Find a previous American Idol contestant who made the top 24 and wants a music video.

After the music video Joe Childress & Jonathan Combs (that’s us!)  directed for Tim Halperin’s “She Runs” climbed to 100,00 views in July 2010, we were hungry to make another video. Tim spent the rest of the year touring, promoting his EP “Make or Break” and eventually landing on “American Idol” by flirting with Jennifer Lopez. He ended up making it into the Top 24 and performed his soon-to-be single “The Last Song” on national television.

After his experience on “American Idol” Tim came back to Texas ready to turn “The Last Song” into a hit music video & continue to develop his fan base. He asked us to come up with a crazy cool concept for a killer music video.

Step 2. Come up with a crazy cool concept

As with any creative endeavor, beers are an essential part of the process. We (Joe & Jonathan) met up to listen to the song, drink a few drinks and brainstorm on ideas. After deciding on the overall theme of Tim crawling through his own head searching for inspiration to write a final song for a lost love, we began working on ways to represent this visually. With a low-budget, DIY video under our belts we wanted to create a larger, more cinematic video this time around. But one thing was instantly obvious: we were going to need funding.

Step 3. Raise money through Kickstarter

Raising money for music videos (and really any artistic project) used to be quite a pain. With “She Runs” we had absolutely no budget and had to build the idea and concept around that fact. Knowing that kickstarter.com had created a way for fans, friends and complete strangers to support your vision, we let our imaginations run wild. With kickstarter, though, there is one catch: you have to reach your goal within 30 days or your project doesn’t get funded, and supporters get their money back.

We pitched the idea to Tim (who’s head exploded after hearing it) and we knew the best way to get people on board for helping us was to give them stuff. So we created a promo video specifically for the kickstarter campaign and provided incentives for people to give.

Step 4. Put together a team of fiendish creative types

Through the 100% volunteer crew from the “She Runs” shoot we knew we had plenty of people we could count on. It was important for us, after seeing everyone’s dedication on that shoot, that we find ways to compensate them for their hard work and creativity. Although we couldn’t pay them what they were worth we knew with funding we would have the means to at least pay them something. The producers, directors and several others involved went without a paycheck in order to put as much money into the video as possible. The next four weeks were spent solidifying the script, storyboarding, securing locations, collecting props, building sets, finding food donors for the shoot days, reserving equipment, finding actors, all the while worrying if raising $8,000 was an attainable goal.

Step 5. Spend 4 grueling days shooting

With everything in place and the money raised it was time to take our vision from paper to screen. The next four days involved Tim flipping out when he realized what he thought was a water reservoir was actually a fish-infested, slimy cow trough, shooting in public places without permits as cops drove by, gale force winds blowing over railroad ties, destroying equipment and demolishing lights, and an actress’ hair being accidentally set on fire. After the dust settled we knew (hoped) that our creation was in the can. Now it was time to edit.

Step 6. Lock yourself in a room with the footage

After months of pouring over storyboards, putting together the rough cut came easily and allowed us to spend more time tightening the edit and adding in visual effects.

The video was set to premiere on “Kidd Kraddick in the Morning” in a few weeks. In order to meet this hard dead line the final editing and visual effects came from two back-to-back sleepless nights and finished mere minutes before the video was to premier.

Step 7. Have a world premier live streaming event on a syndicated radio morning show

“Kidd Kraddick in the Morning” is a syndicated radio talk show that reaches over 2 million listeners. Tim had been performing weekly on the show doing a segment called “Idol Got it Wrong”. With the success of the segment Kidd offered to premier Tim’s new video. “The Last Song” music video went live over Kidd Kraddick’s Ustream channel to an audience of over 2,000 fans.

Step 8. Plan your next video

An artist’s thirst for creativity is never satisfied. You can continue to nit pick your past projects but new content is created by moving forward. Did your last video suck? Who cares, make a better one. Did your last video rock? Who cares, make a better one.

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we're publishing. Also, it's highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

HOW TO: Create a Killer Music Video

Erin Emocling, aka basterda, is the editor-in-chief of the Lomography Magazine. She also writes Analogue Lifestyle pieces which are often inclined to classic, noir, and vintage memorabilia. Apart from spreading analogue love, Erin is also a marveller of cinematic films and non-sequitur literature. Check out more on the Best of the Best or any of her other series.

“I never wanted to be famous. I wasn’t as steady as a tripod.” – Brian Duffy

Features by Brian Duffy © via www.duffyphotographer.com

In 1979, Duffy left his photographic career of fame and fortune for a life of obscurity and restored Gregorian furniture instead. He abruptly burned the greater part of his collection of negatives and slides, quit his profession forever, and didn’t shoot another picture for nearly 3 decades. In 2009, however, his son, Chris, revived his legacy and curated the first exhibition of his father’s work. After less than a year, Duffy passed away due to a lung disease.

Here’s an intimate and touching documentary film as a tribute to Brian Duffy’s legacy to the world of photography, directed by Linda Brusasco and produced by Brian’s son, Chris Duffy.

THE MAN WHO SHOT THE SIXTIES from CHRIS DUFFY on Vimeo.

Which of these elegantly explosive Brian Duffy photographs strike your liking the most? What other fashion photographers from the ’60s and ’70s would you like to be written about?

Post brought to you by the Lomographic Society International: a globally active organization dedicated to experimental and creative snapshot photography. Boasting over a half-million members across the world, the concept of Lomography encompasses an interactive, vivid, blurred and crazy way of life.

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Best of the Best: Brian Duffy

For our latest iteration of the iNoobs series we’ll be discussing marketing. Specifically paid search marketing, aka “pay per click marketing” (PPC) aka AdWords.

First, let’s take a step back and take a look at the market. I recently wrote about how Yahoo and Bing are dead.

If you can believe it, Google has captured the ENTIRE search engine market. The searches that Yahoo and Bing (and the other minor contributors are sending) are so insignificant that, from a search engine marketing perspective, they can safely be ignored. For now…

(Google has come under fire recently, being called to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights for some alleged minor anti-trust violations. Nothing major. Just the closest thing to controlling the world’s information that mankind has ever witnessed.)

But, I digress.

So, there are essentially two ways to get your website and IMPORTANT CONTENT in front of your readers, clients, and customers (and we’ll get back to social media in a minute – but I don’t generally count it as a 3^rd).

The first is what is referred to as being “organically” ranked in Google’s Search Engine (and even this is split between normal, local, shopping, and now social results). In this scenario, Google has indexed billions (if not more) of pages and content on the Internet. You do a search, and, using its algorithms Google returns to you (1-10) the results it feels best match your search.

The second way to get your site in front of visitors’ is with AdWords (aka Pay Per Click). In this scenario you become an advertiser and say “screw you google, I know what you think… that searcher is STILL valuable, and my site SHOULD be up there… I’m willing to pay to be seen!”

(Maybe that was a little violent.)

Anyway, in the pay per click scenario – you use Google’s AdWords interface/product to purchase ad space for given keywords.   The kicker is you (the advertiser) ONLY PAY when someone clicks through to your website (hence the name “pay per click”).

Here’s a scenario. Let’s look at the screen shot below:

I did a search for “paper mate inkjoy pens” and received a bunch of stuff. It’s a mixture of organic web pages, google shopping content, and finally the pay per click ads (at the very top of the screen).

More on Organic Ranking

To organically rank means that your original content can be found when Google “crawls” your website. Your site is scanned by one of the million plus (estimate) servers. The site results are returned and Google categorizes the features of your site with a top-secret algorithm.

A bit of advice here: BE ORIGINAL! Do not steal; do not reuse the same phrase; do not use crappy content.

Google knows, oh yes, IT KNOWS!

If you want to drive traffic to your site by optimizing key words, use the keyword tool in AdWords (you can use it even if you don’t have adwords!) and wrap your thoughts around the keywords that make the most sense for the kind of traffic you want delivered to your site…

Back to AdWords & Pay Per Click Marketing

AdWords is one of my primary tools for advertising sites. And it should be yours too!

Much like Google’s organic algorithm, AdWords too has a way for advertisers to compete – and it’s not simply price.

Google looks at you as an advertiser in many different ways – it looks at your keywords, your ads, your website, and your bid amount and assembles all of this into a “Quality Score”.

All things being equal if you have a good score you can pay a fraction of what a competitor does to have your ad for the same keyword – so it definitely pays to be knowledgeable.

Remember it’s important to:

1. Become proficient in AdWords advertising, should you use it personally; or,
2. Hire a firm that has the experience (and good reputation) for finding the sweet spot where the cost and the advertisement result in the biggest bang for your buck.

The result of an effective AdWords advertisement campaign is more money. And, who wouldn’t want their business to make more of that!?

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we're publishing. Also, it's highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

iNoobs: Google AdWords – What it Takes and What it Means

On February 4th, Facebook will celebrate its 8th anniversary, and we can already consider it a major force in our modern day lifestyle. As many would say, Facebook IS the Internet. I can’t completely agree with that, but, nevertheless, the truth is that over 800 million people use Facebook, and that’s pretty much enough to awe anyone.

The next logical step is the IPO, with all the experts predicting it to be perhaps the biggest EVER. So, with all that, what’s left to say about Facebook?

You’re right, not much. Let’s just have a look at some of the hundreds of infographics made about the social network – actually, we have over 700 (!) on Visual Loop -, its features, and its impact in many different dimensions of our society.

First, a little bit of history:

Facebook 2011 Yearbook | Via

A Brief History of Facebook | Via

Facts about Mark Zuckerberg | Via

The Making of Mark Zuckerberg – A Timeline | Via

The Evolution of Facebook Features | Via

Facebook attacks in 2011 | Via

The Rise Of Facebook’s Valuation From 2004-2011 | Via

Cyber Criminals Target Facebook | Via

From Founding To IPO, Facebook’s Success Story | Via

Facebook IPO | Via

The Road to a Facebook IPO | Via

The History of Advertising on Facebook | Via

And some interesting factoides and numbers:

If You Printed Facebook | Via

A World Without Facebook | Via

What If Facebook Was a City? | Via

The value of Facebook | Via

Facebook Profile Photos By The Numbers | Via

Why Do People Unfriend Each Other on Facebook? | Via

Facebook Statuses | Via

Does Facebook Hurt Relationships? | Via

The Last of the Facebook Myths| Via

Facebook Advertising Opportunities Across The Globe | Via

The Truth About Facebook Depression | Via

Facebook & Education: Is Facebook Bad for Students? | Via

A Look Into the Obsession with Facebook | Via

Men vs Women on Facebook | Via

Social Games Popularity on Facebook and Google | Via

How To Define Shared Media On Facebook | Via

A Graphic Guide to Facebook Portraits | Via

It’s not hard to predict that we’ll be seeing a lot more infographics about Facebook. Is there any other that you find especially interesting to add to this list? Just share it in the comments below.

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Facebook: The path to World Domination in 30 infographics

Just a quick note: the folks at Rackspace created a pretty neat infographic to take customers through a simple decision making process on a route to the solution that’s right for them. Check it out and let us know what you think:

Infographic by Rackspace Hosting

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we're publishing. Also, it's highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

New Infographic: Hosting Decisions, From the Chalkboard