Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Twitter Opens Advertising Opps to the Masses

For quite a while now everyone and their brother has been lobbing the “when are you going to really monetize Twitter” bombs into the micro-blogging giant’s front yard. It’s a popular thing to do but as of late that cry has lost a little steam (in part due to having real business people like Dick Costolo at the helm) and the latest move by Twitter could put a dent in one of the Internet industry’s favorite pastimes for sure.

The Next Web first reported the new Twitter for Business section and reported

The new version of business.twitter.com will provide business owners with twitter success stores, ideas, tips, tools and resources. Some of the tools included are information on promoted products and tutorials one how to communicate with customers using mobile.

Twitter’s business tools range from basic tips “What is Twitter” to more in-depth information on analytics, case studies, API integration etc.

The main page looks like this and the big attention getter is on the right side, which might as well read “Give Us Your Wallet”

Twitter is no longer just giving advertising a try with a few select folks. Now it’s official that Twitter is really open for business. It’s kind of sad to watch the old “Twitter is cool but hasn’t made a red cent” days go away. Now we have to look at Twitter as a legitimate business. Now whether what they do is meaningful is whole other story.

Along with this new way to get into advertisers pocketbooks, Twitter has updated its Twitter 101 offering with a new presentation of its old material and additional updates.

It appears now that Twitter is moving into the next phase of its development. How well it will work remains to be seen. Does advertising on Twitter give advertisers the best bang for their buck? Will more advertising be a positive or negative influence on the overall experience? To listen to Jason Falls tell it to ReadWriteWeb you certainly get one possible side of the argument clearly.

“Selling trending topics is like gaming Digg,” Falls said.

“Twitter is inviting marketing money bags to completely ruin the organic nature of the tool. When I look at something like that, I tell clients, ‘They’re just whores for your money.’ It’s obvious they’re making Facebook-like errors to try and compensate for the fact they never had a business model in mind when they built this thing.”

Yikes.

It’s too early to tell anything at this point but it does appear as if 2011 will be the Year of Real Revenue Generation for Twitter. If it isn’t then how much longer will investors put up with the excuses / reasons for not making much to this point?

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Make Money Blogging in Your Spare Time

With the new year just a few weeks away, one of the most popular resolutions to make, is to make more money or to start a business in the new year. No matter how many people attempt to make the resolution, only a small fraction will take the plunge to actually get started, while even a smaller fraction will actually make any extra money in the new year.

A very simple way to start making a few extra dollars online in the new year, is to start a blog on the side. While you probably won’t get rich off blogging, you can definitely start a fun project on the side that “could” grow into something much more. The actual cost of creating a blog is only a few dollars ($7 a year for a domain and under $10 a month for web hosting), so there is a lot more upside then potential down side.

For those of you that have never created a blog, or still unsure where to start, I’ve created five different categories for you to choose from. Even if you start a new blog and only post once or twice a week, that is still 50-100 posts per year! By continually adding content to your blog, you are also building a resource which could turn into a nice long term revenue source. The categories listed below are in order of “revenue potential”.

Blogging for Passion

We hear it all the time, do something you are passionate about and the money will follow. While this may be true in some situations, it doesn’t apply to everything. However, if you are just starting a blog and have no idea where it could go, or how long you will stay interested, you might as well write something you are passionate about. This will not only provide quality content that you really know about, but you will want to stay active with your blog and it won’t die out for lack of interest. Depending on how many other people share your interest, and the success of your blog, the potential in this area can swing either way.

Revenue Potential: Varies based on topic/blog structure…

Personal Blogging

As expected, many bloggers have started out with their own personal blog, before trying to make a blog that makes money. Having a personal blog is a great way to teach yourself how to use the WordPress platform, while building a blog of your own. Once you have a good understanding of how to make posts, pages, use plugins and different themes, you blogging potential is limitless. If you are going to start a personal blog, you should not expect to make money with this type of blog.

Revenue Potential: 1/4 – A personal blog is made for exactly what it sounds like, “personal”. Personal blogs should/can share your every day experiences, posts about you and your family, and can be your online diary to share with the world.

Sports Blogging

This one can easily fall into the “blogging for passion” category. It isn’t enough to simply watch our favorite players and teams on TV, but we also want to have our own thoughts and opinions and meet with other fans of our teams. Having a sports blog about your favorite team or player, is a great way to start a blog that makes you want to keep writing more and more content. If your sports blog gets enough attention, you may even be able to score some free game tickets, press passes or interview a few sports players. Revenue wise, sports blogs are tough because there are so many, but many sites offer affiliate programs where you can earn commissions on any referred sales for sports tickets, memorabilia, apparel and sporting goods.

Revenue Potential: 2/4 – The majority of sports blogs out there are providing information, pictures and the latest news and scores. How many times have you visited a sports site with the intention of buying a product? Probably not many, if ever. If you end up creating a high traffic sports blog, you may be able to sell direct advertising on the blog as a revenue source.

Reviewing Household Items and Purchase

Shopping and review based blogs are definitely a big money maker. When customers are looking to purchase a new product, or see a commercial on TV, before paying for it, they want to see what other people are saying. Blogs about products, services and customer experiences are a great start for creating a revenue generating blog, but you are also providing a useful resource in the process. If you are going to blog about products you buy, you can easily link to Amazon’s associate program and earn a commission should anyone buy through Amazon, after clicking on your site. In addition to direct sales, Google Adsense and coupon affiliate program would work well on product review blogs.

Revenue Potential: 3/4 – A review site is for product reviews, and this is exactly what people search for online before making a purchase. For a customer to search “product name reviews”, they are already in a buying mode. Make sure your review blog provides them with the information they are looking for, and a place to purchase.

Niche Blogging

A different, but very effective methods for making money with blogs, is through niche marketing, or mini sites. The concept of niche blogging is to create a blog on a small specific topic, then being one of the best blogs in that niche (mainly to rank high in search results). If you wanted to make a niche blog about “red widgets”, you would want to get an exact match domain name such as “redwidgets.com”, write specifically about red widgets, link to Amazon red widgets products you could buy, adding Google Adsense to your site and so on… Having a tight niche blog is a great way to teach yourself how to blog, while giving you the best chance for making some money in the process.

Revenue Potential: 4/4 – Niche blogs and sites are built specifically to generate revenue and sales based on the tight focus of the product or service the blog is based on. Search Google for any specific toys or products, and you will most likely find a few niche blogs in your results.

No matter what type of blog you start, the main point I’m trying to get across is that you must GET STARTED! Don’t wait another year and find yourself making the same resolution.

I’ve created a ton of web sites and blogs over the years, and many of them I was really thrilled about starting up, then fizzled out and got pushed to the back burner. However, a good amount of those web sites and blogs still make me money months and even years after I’ve touched them. It’s all about building content that people are searching for. Remember, a blog or web site works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year… if your blog makes just $1 a day, that’s an extra $365 a year… and over $1,000 if you can earn just $3 per day!

We can all use a little extra money during the holidays, but imagine getting a few small checks everything from your own tiny blog? It is possible for even the untrained blogger, you just need to get started and take action.

For a step by step guide of how to get started as blogger, or how to make more money with your blog, download my free 137 page ebook, “Six Figure Affiliate Blogging“. You can also submit any blogging questions you have to my “Blogging Q&A” post.

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Tuesday, December 14, 2010

October and November Earnings Breakdown

Over the last few months I’ve been showing breakdowns of my earnings here on ProBlogger in an attempt to give some insight into the diversity of income streams available to bloggers, as well as showing how earnings can vary from month to month.

Following are the breakdowns for October and November.
Screen shot 2010-12-10 at 2.19.58 PM.png Screen shot 2010-12-10 at 2.20.09 PM.png

The split changes a little from month to month based upon a variety of factors. For example, in October, affiliate income went up by quite a margin as I did a couple of larger promotions on my photography blog. In November, ebook sales rose quite well because I did a promotion with affiliates on the ProBlogger ebooks. Similarly, Amazon affiliate income and AdSense have both increased in the last couple of months, as tends to happen when we move towards the holidays.

To get a sense of how the revenues have tracked over the last few months, here’s a different visualization that shows how each area has performed (click for a larger picture).

Screen shot 2010-12-10 at 2.22.03 PM.png

Now that we have seven months of data, I hope that it’s clear how things can vary from month to month depending upon the season, special events, and promotions that you might run.

Looking forward, I’m predicting December to be quite a good month in terms of AdSense and Amazon, thanks to holiday shopping. I’m also running a fairly larger promotion in December on dPS with some affiliate pushes, so I’m hoping that that income stream will spike quite a bit also.

Looking further ahead, I’m hoping to see the red ebook line increase with some good spikes in the new year, as I have several ebooks currently in different stages of production for dPS.

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8 Amazing Blogging Lessons from Albert Einstein

einstein-blogging

Albert Einstein has made many amazing contributions to the scientific world, including the theory of relativity, the founding of relativistic cosmology, the prediction of the deflection of light by gravity, the quantum theory of atomic motion in solids, the zero-point energy concept, and the quantum theory of a monatomic gas which predicted Bose–Einstein condensation … and finally he brings us 8 amazing blogging lessons.

Jokes apart, Einstein was perhaps the most influential scientists to ever live, and I would be strange if we could not find some blogging related principles among his ideas, right?

1. Persevere

“It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

Your blog won’t succeed overnight; success requires perseverance! There’s no such thing as an “overnight success.” What often appears to happen overnight is the result of many years of work.

This is what I call the “silent years” of success. If you can persevere through the “silent years,” then you will qualify to succeed.

Eddie Cantor said, “It takes twenty years to become an overnight success.”

2. Focus

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”

I like to say, you can do anything, but not everything! To succeed in blogging you must give your blog the attention it deserves. If you want a part-time income, then you put in part-time hours, if you want a full-time income, …you’ll have to put in full-time hours.

Focus your efforts, if you want to succeed! Focused energy is power, and it’s the difference between success and failure.

If you never focus your efforts …you won’t have a future, just a longer today.

3. Create Value

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

Don’t waste your time trying to create a successful blog, dedicate your time creating a valuable blog. If your blog is valuable to others, it will succeed.

You create value for others by solving their problems. Your blog must solve people’s problems. You will only be rewarded in this lifetime for the problems that you solve for others.

Labor to be valuable and success will chase you down!

4. Be Curious

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

What you’re curious about is what other like-minded people are also curious about, so blog about things that pique your curiosity.

Don’t write about the mundane, and the obvious; explore your curiosity. Research the unknown and document what has never been documented before.

You have to “think bigger,” Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

You have to think differently, he said, “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.”

5. Make Mistakes

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

Make mistakes; mistakes make you better, smarter, faster, and more relevant. If you’re not making mistakes then you’re not making progress. Get rejected a few times, mess up a few projects, this is the pathway to success.

Want to succeed twice as fast, make twice as many mistakes, run into twice as many obstacles.

Frank Clark said, “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”

6. Don’t Be Insane

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

You can’t keep doing the same thing everyday and expect different results. In other words, if your blogging routine is the same from month-to-month, your results will be the same from month-to-month.

In order for your results to change, you must change your actions, to the degree that your actions change will be to the degree that your results change.

7. Expect Opposition

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

There will always be opposition. People will oppose your blog, your ideas, and the risk that you’re taking. Zig Ziglar said, “Little men, with little minds, and little imaginations, go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.” Never let “little men” stop you from achieving your dreams. Great spirits have always encountered great opposition.

8. Play Better

“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”

When it’s all said and done, your success will depend on how well you played the game. You must commit to play the game better than anyone else. If you can play the game “better,” you will succeed!

About the Author: Mr. Self Development is an author who teaches a motivational and practical guide to success. Please visit him at MrSelfDevelopment.com. Check his site out!

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Top PSD to HTML Services

I know I mention it a lot, but I’m a huge advocate for having a great custom blog / web site design. With that said, I am always finding new designers to work on web design, but it is always tough to find a quality designer that can provide both high quality design and PSD to HTML cutting as well. If it isn’t the quality you are having an issue with, it might just be the extra cost. You do have an alternative though, there are many sites that specialize in just PSD to HTML services, where they will cut up your design and have it ready for you within a day, or even hours.

Whether you are looking to have a full site designed, or even just a landing page, this list of html cutting sites should be a very useful resource to come back to. The selection of services below include companies that offer PSD to HTML/XHTML/CSS coding. These sites also have other services, such as search engine optimization, easy integration to WordPress, Blogger, and Joomla, and others.

Here are seven of the top PSD to HTML sites that you can check out. Necessary information (price, benefits, services) have been included. I’ve personally used W3 Markup and PixelCrayons a few times and have always been happy with their work.

XHTML Team (http://www.xhtmlteam.com/)

REVIEW:

XHTML Team provides clean coding that works in all kinds of browser. Their codes also work on iPhones and Blackberries, so you don’t have to worry about your page looking different when accessed on an iPhone or Blackberry. XHTML Team can also do complicated pages, and many web developers have commented on the company’s efficiency and fast turnaround time. You can get the codes in only 24 hours or in a couple of days.

SERVICES:

  • PSD to HTML
  • PSD to XHTML
  • PSD to CSS

PRICE:

Starting from $50

BENEFITS/OPTIONS INCLUDE:

  • Clean W3C Valid HTML+CSS and XHTML+CSS Coding
  • HTML 4.01 Transitional and XHTML 1.0 Transitional
  • Easy integration to any CMS
  • Cross-browser compatibility
  • Optimized for fast loading

Pixel Crayons (http://xhtml.pixelcrayons.com)

REVIEW:

Pixel Crayons has been providing PSD to HTML/XHTML/CSS conversion since 2004. It currently has more than 120 staff members, so you can be assured that your projects will be done and delivered on time. You also won’t be disappointed with their support staff and turnaround time. Their project managers respond fast, and once the QA has finished checking and testing the markup, the project manager would deliver the project to you. If you’re a web designer who doesn’t enjoy coding, you should check out Pixel Crayons for their clean and good quality codes and great service.

SERVICES:

  • PSD to HTML
  • PSD to XHTML
  • PSD to CSS

PRICE:

  • Basic package costs $99
  • Professional package costs $199

BENEFITS/OPTIONS INCLUDE:

  • W3C Validation: CSS, XHTML & HTML
  • Markups: HTML 4.01 Transitional, HTML 4.01 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Strict
  • Pixel-precise hand-coded conversion
  • Integration to third party CMS, blogs, and more
  • SEO Semantic CSS-based XHTML code
  • Load speed optimization
  • Complete presentation separation
  • Cross-browser compatibility

PSD2HTML (http://www.psd2html.com/)

REVIEW:

PSD2HTML is undoubtedly the most popular PSD to HTML/XHTML conversion site. They were one of the first sites to offer this kind of service, and many web designers have used the site for their projects. PSD2HTML pays attention to detail and their codes are clean and efficient. In addition, the company constantly develops new technologies and techniques to make sure they have the best services. They also follow international quality standards.

SERVICES:

  • PSD to HTML/CSS
  • PSD to XHTML

PRICE:

Starting from $159

BENEFITS/OPTIONS INCLUDE:

  • W3C Valid HTML/XHTML/CSS
  • Cross-browser compatibility
  • SEO semantic coding
  • Optimized for load speed
  • Implementation to WordPress, Movable Type, Joomla, Blogger, CMS, X-Cart, others

W3 Markup (https://w3-markup.com/order)

REVIEW:

W3 Markup has been around since 2003. Some of their satisfied clients include owners and designers of websites and companies. W3 Markup provides PSD to HTML/XHTML conversion, and they always make sure that they never miss a single detail on your original Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator designs. Additionally they can include custom functions for your page to make it easier to manage. W3 Markup has a confidentiality agreement—web designers who are into outsourcing can trust the company not to disclose any details about them or their project. And since W3 Markup’s office is in the US, you can easily give them a call if you have any problems or concerns.

SERVICES:

  • PSD to HTML
  • PSD to XHTML
  • PSD to CSS

PRICE:

Starting from $169

BENEFITS/OPTIONS INCLUDE:

  • W3C Valid HTML/XHTML/CSS
  • Cross-browser compatibility/accessibility
  • FIR implementation
  • Presentation technique
  • Semantics/Search engine compatibility
  • Load speed optimization
  • Software implementation (CMS, shopping carts, blog, etc.)

PSDGator (http://www.psdgator.com/)

REVIEW:

So you have a great page design and you’re looking for someone to code for you? PSDGator converts image page designs created on Photoshop into HTML or XHTML. Your design can be in PSD, JPG, PNG, AI, BMP, etc., and you can trust PSDGator to slice it and hand-code it to your preferred markup language. They also have a fast turnaround time; you can make sure that your project will be done in two business days. PSDGator provides good quality services starting from $99, with existing customers getting 10% discount.

SERVICES:

  • PSD to HTML/CSS
  • PSD to XHTML

PRICE:

Starting from $99

BENEFITS/OPTIONS INCLUDE:

  • Valid CSS and XHTML
  • Clean and well-structured CSS
  • Cross-browser compatibility
  • SEO structure
  • Semantic XHTML
  • Optimized and sliced images

PSDSlicing (http://www.psdslicing.com/)

REVIEW:

PSDSlicing makes it easy for web designers by providing quality and detail-oriented HTML/XHTML/CSS coding. The company has been around for four years, so their coders are experienced and their QA team is very reliable. You can expect a fast turnaround time and an affordable price. Many website owners have been satisfied with PSDSlicing’s services that about 90% of them return for more projects.

SERVICES:

  • PSD to HTML
  • PSD to XHTML
  • PSD to CSS

PRICE:

Starting from $149

BENEFITS/OPTIONS INCLUDE:

  • W3C Valid HTML/XHTML/CSS
  • Search engine optimized
  • Cross-browser compatibility
  • Hand-coded and semantic HTML
  • Readable and well-structured CSS

WPCoder (http://wpcoder.com/)

REVIEW:

WPCoder is a small company that provides PSD to HTML/XHTML/CSS coding. Its web developers claim to love WordPress, so the company specifically deals with WordPress theme coding. Even though WPCoder is a small company, their coders and developers are very experienced, so don’t worry about their quality of service. They definitely deliver and they can provide you with PSD to XHTML/CSS coding, as well as other WordPress services. Furthermore, if you happen to accidentally delete or screw up your WordPress theme WPCoder keeps a backup of every project they did for six to eight months. WPCoder will make sure you’re satisfied with their services.

SERVICES:

  • PSD to HTML
  • PSD to XHTML
  • PSD to CSS

PRICE:

Not specified on the site, but free project quotes are available upon request.

BENEFITS/OPTIONS INCLUDE:

  • W3C Valid XHTML/CSS
  • Hand-coded and well-structured
  • Tableless CSS
  • Cross-browser compatibility
  • Optimized and sliced images

Feel free to leave any other PSD to HTML design services you know of, or if you have used any of the following services.

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Monday, December 13, 2010

Will You Build or Buy Your New Blog?

This guest post is by Andrew Knibbe of Flippa.

When most of us think of blogging, we think about starting from the ground up. Having researched a niche, we search for a good domain, choose a blogging platform, apply a template, and prepare our first post…

But there are other options for the beginning blogger. One of the least talked about, and most often overlooked, is to buy an existing blog.

This post isn’t intended as a prescriptive how-to: what I’d like to do is introduce the idea of buying a blog, and talk about the key considerations that bloggers and would-be bloggers might address before they go down this path.

Why buy a blog?

There are plenty of reasons why you’d consider buying an existing blog:

  • it will already have been populated with content
  • if it’s a known blog with valuable information, it’ll have attracted backlinks, and should have search engine presence
  • it may come with a ready-made audience—hopefully, a loyal one
  • it may have a great domain name and/or a strong unique brand
  • it may already be generating an income
  • it’s all set up: rather than starting from scratch, you can simply tweak or amend the blog’s layout and design to suit your needs.

The thing to realize about buying a blog is that you’re unlikely to find a blog that perfectly suits all your needs from the get-go. The blogs you consider probably won’t offer you all of the benefits listed above, and they may offer these advantages to varying degrees.

In short: buying a blog isn’t an instant solution for those who want to start a blog, but if you choose the blog well, it can offer a number of advantages over starting a new blog from scratch.

Blog-buying pitfalls

Like any market, the blog property market has a range of pitfalls for the beginner, and buying a new blog as a way to get a head-start on a new blogging niche isn’t for everyone.

Obviously the great appeal of building your own blog from the ground-up is that it costs you nothing but time. Buying a blog, on the other hand, costs money.

The paradox here is, of course, that your time is money. If you can afford to buy a blog, you may reduce the time it takes you to reach a point where you’ve attracted a loyal readership—you may be able to monetize your blog much sooner than you would if you were starting your won blog. Basically, if you buy a good blog, you can minimize the leg-work, and fast-track your operation.

You will need some kind of budget to buy a blog. You’ll also need to feel comfortable that the blog you’re buying lives up to the seller’s description of it.

The person who owns the blog may mis-represent any of the information they give you about the blog, from its age and search rank, to its traffic levels and profit potential. You want to be able to trust the person you’re buying the blog from, and that you believe the information they’re giving you—including the reason why they’re selling.

Bloggers may sell a blog that they’ve lost interest in, or a blog that doesn’t align well with their future goals or direction. Perhaps other offline interests—family, work, and so on—have left them with no time to maintain their blog. Or perhaps they underestimated the time it takes to build it up a blog, and now they want to offload what they see as a burden to someone with a real passion for the niche.

Each of these reasons has different implications for you as a buyer, and for the blog you’re buying, so it’s important to get as many facts as you can.

Buying a blog doesn’t just take money: it takes research and care. You’re making an investment in your future by buying a blog, so you want to ensure that the choices you make are well-informed and wise.

Who should buy a blog?

Buying a blog may have greater appeal for those who have some experience in blogging, and know that they have the stamina and dedication to build the blog they buy into something amazing.

If you’ve never blogged before, you may find yourself unable to sustain blogging over a period of time, and that’s ad additional risk you’ll need to take into account if you’re investing money in a blog.

That said, blogs can be purchased for very reasonable prices in online marketplaces, though the less expensive options are unlikely to have established audiences or much unique content. If that’s the kind of thing you want to focus your attention on (rather than choosing blog templates, functionality, and so on), then paying a couple of hundred dollars for a fledgling blog with a good domain mightn’t be a bad idea.

Buying a blog may seem most logical for those who are looking to monetize their site itself, but bloggers who want to establish their credentials and authority in a particular field, engage with a certain audience, or develop their offline earnings potential with the support of good online representation may also consider buying a blog.

What you’re really looking for when you spend money on a blog is an opportunity. More experienced bloggers may be able to spot opportunities more easily, but that doesn’t mean beginning bloggers can’t see, or make the most of, opportunities themselves. Imagine if ProBlogger was up for sale—what would you change to make it better or more profitable? A site that’s underdeveloped has potential to be better.

If you can spot that potential—perhaps the site could do with some keyword optimization, regular well-written posts, and some promotion through social media as well as more niche networks—you might be able to take the good foundations that someone else has put in place and build on them to make something great.

Have you ever bought a blog? Have you considered it? What are your feelings about buying a blog?

Andrew Knibbe is the Marketing Manager at Flippa, the #1 marketplace for buying and selling websites. He blogs at the Flippa blog. Follow him @flippa.

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Sunday, December 12, 2010

Use Photos to Stand Out in the Facebook News Feed

This guest post is by Tommy Walker, Online Marketing Strategist and owner of Tommy.ismy.name.

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? This old cliché has become especially true in blogging. It’s statistically proven that by inserting compelling photographs into your blog posts, you’re able to better retain your reader’s attention.

So what if photos are also exactly what you need to stand out on the world’s most popular social network?

On Facebook, Photos are the most used features of the site (after status updates of course). You may have already known that, but did you also know that Facebook is one of the most used photo sharing platforms on the entire Internet?

So how can we tap into the power of Facebook Photos to separate your Page from the rest of the noise on Facebook?

If you’ve been using Facebook ads to perform inception on your blog, you’ll have a good idea of the psychographic profile of your readers. We can use this information to create (or find) compelling images that will resonate with your audience.

Let’s imagine I run a blog about creating Hollywood movie props on an indie movie budget. Normally I build simple props that are pretty general, like ray guns, or jet packs. But lately I’ve been running Facebook ads and I’ve learned from the Responder Profile report that the majority of the people who clicked on my ad have listed “Iron Man” as a favorite movie in their profile.

Knowing this, I create a tutorial for my blog that gives instructions on how to make an Iron Man mask.

To really draw attention to this step-by-step tutorial and stand out in my fans’ news feeds only requires a little extra thought and attention to detail. Just a little more work, and I get a result that looks something like this:

Now let’s break down what I did here, so you can create results like this, too.

Step 1: Breaking up the image

Take the main image that you would like to show up in the News Feed and break it up into two or three parts using a photo editor. For the Iron Man album, I broke one photo up into two separate images, with each image highlighting a different element of the build.

The original image looks like this:

To break it up, I simply opened the image in Gimp (although you could use Photoshop or even Paint!) and selected the Battery and Arc Reactor. Then I copied and pasted it into its own image file, and did the same for the mask.

I then very quickly created the album cover by typing “Become” over the Iron Man logo, and saved that as its own image file> I then saved everything to its own folder on my desktop.

Here are two quick notes about album covers. Firstly, selecting the right image is important for two reasons:

  1. The album cover is the first thing people see when someone clicks on the Photos tab on your page. By default, Facebook also displays the two most recent photo albums on the left-hand sidebar underneath the list of people who like your page. When they visit a page, it’s only natural for people to check out the number of people who like that page — for social proof. Take advantage of this curiosity by creating an eye-catching album cover. Even with a small number of likes, you’ll appear to be ahead of the game, as this is valuable real estate that most pages simply aren’t taking advantage of.
  2. The album cover will always appear in the furthest left-hand corner when you publish an album to the news feed. Selecting the wrong image for the album cover can make the entire update completely pointless. take a look at the images below. By default, the photo titled “Step 5″ would be the album cover here, but it’s not a great image. To have the most impact on the News Feed, you’d want to make sure that the album cover shows the image titled “Step 10.” We’ll talk about this more in the next section.

Step 2: Selecting the album cover and organizing your photos

Go to the Photos tab on your Business Page and click on Create a Photo Album.

A dialog box will appear, giving you instructions on uploading your photos.

Click Select Photos and choose the photos you would like to be included in the album.

Click Open once you’ve selected all of the photos for your album. The photos will begin to be uploaded to the album. By default, the album is named with the date and time that you’re uploading the photos. Change the name to reflect the contents of the album. Also, check the High Resolution button (just because you can!).

Once the photos have finished uploading, click Create Album.

From here, select the image you want to use for the cover of your album. Also feel free to add descriptions to your pictures. If it makes sense, insert links to relevant pages within your blog (this will depend on the content of your album).

Once you’re satisfied with your Photo descriptions, click Save Changes. A dialog box will appear prompting you to Publish or Skip.

Do not click publish!

Click Skip. You will be brought to the album and all of the images will appear in the order in which they were uploaded. This isn’t always ideal if you’re really looking to stand out in the news feed.

It is vital to note the arrangement of the photos in the album, as it will determine their order in the news feed.

As I said earlier, Facebook automatically puts the album cover as the far left image of the three in the album preview in the news feed—regardless of how the images are arranged in the album. Facebook then takes the two images after the photo that’s designated as the cover, and assigns them as the middle and far-right images in the news feed.

So if the photos are arranged like this in the album:

They will look like this in the news feed:

To achieve this landscape effect in the news feed, simply drag the two images that are meant to follow the album cover in the order in which you’d like them to appear in the news feed.

Then, your album will look like this:

And the feed will look like this:

Once you have your photos arranged the way you’d like them to appear in the news feed, all you have left to do is create an album description and publish the album.

Step 3: Entering your album’s description

Underneath your photos, you’ll see an Add a Caption link. Click it to open the popup where you can describe your album and include any external links.

Facebook will allow a total of 320 characters (including spaces) in your album description before it hides the content and adds a See More link to the end of your description.

Keep your descriptions around one to two lines, and always put a line break between your description and link so that the content appears cleanly in the news feed.

After you’ve clicked Save, click Edit Album Info to see the Album Description page. Click the Edit Photos tab on the top right of the gray box. Then, click Publish Now.

And there you have it! Your album will have a good chance of standing out in the otherwise really crowded news feed!

What’s that you say? You don’t make props? There are all sorts of other creative ways to use Facebook Photos to promote your business. What are some ways you’ve used this tool? Are there other Facebook Photo ideas you can share?

Tommy is an Online Marketing Strategist and owner of Tommy.ismy.name. He is about to release Hack The Social Network, the ultimate guide to Facebook Marketing, and is currently developing a “mind hacking” course.

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