Oct/092
How Images Can Improve Your Blog
Every blogger experiences writer’s block once in a while. Sometimes it seems impossible to think of a unique story or write more than a few sentences about your topic. An effective way to enhance your post and capture your readers’ attention is using great artwork. Images draw readers’ eyes down the page, engaging their emotions and encouraging them to continue reading. Today, we’ll provide you with our top five tips for using images on your website.
- Make your photo relevant to your topic so readers understand what you’re writing about.
- Focus on size. If your image is too large, resize it so it will work on different platforms. Most sites like Wordpress and Blogger allow you to resize your image when you add it to your post. However, keep in mind that Image Space Media does not overlay ads on images smaller than 200x100, so make sure you choose a photo that is larger than those dimensions.
- Be careful about the placement of your image within your post. You can choose to align your image to the left, right, or center. If you choose to wrap your text around the image, you should always try to leave some space between the image and the text. Larger images that are too wide to wrap your text around typically work best aligned in the center.
- Stick with images that look professional. Check out last week's "Maximize Your Image Manager" post for some affordable online image resources.
- Always color-correct your photos. Adjusting the contrast and saturation levels using Adobe Photoshop or a less expensive program can beautify any image quickly and easily.
Since readers tend to scan blog posts, including artwork should one of your top priorities to help draw in your audience. What’s your strategy for using photos?
Oct/092
Social Media Proven to Boost Site Traffic
The numbers are in and it’s official: embracing social media increases site traffic.
When the Huffington Post launched its Social News site on Facebook Connect in mid-August, the site received 6,925,000 unique users in September according to comScore. Social News allows users to link to Huffington Post articles directly onto their Facebook profile using a pop-up window and one section even them see what their Facebook friends are reading on the site.
According to Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau, Facebook-referred
traffic is up 48% since the launch of its Facebook Connect site and 15% of all comments now come through Facebook. Users of the political news blog increased by 50% over the last year, surpassing The Washington Post and BBC. This is pretty impressive for an independent blog that is barely four years old.
We predict that many news organizations will follow in the HuffPost’s footsteps and encourage all of our online news publishers to appoint a social media editor ASAP!
Source: guardian.co.uk
Oct/091
Take Control of Your In-Picture Ad Campaigns
In addition to being the first and leading provider of in-picture advertising technology, Image Space Media also offers publishers an innovative feature that allows
them to control which images their in-picture ads appear on.
The Image Manager allows publishers to take complete control of their in-picture advertising campaigns. Within this control panel, users can view the number of impressions, clicks, and earnings on their domains and add additional keywords to increase the relevancy of the ads on a particular image. The Image Manager provides a great deal of flexibility so that publishers can manage their visitors’ experience.
Don't believe us? Get started with Image Space Media this weekend and check it out for yourself!
Oct/092
Maximize Your Image Manager
Including pictures on your blog is not only a great way to brighten up a recent post, it’s also an easy way to earn more money with Image Space Media! However, finding quality images to which you also have legal rights can present a challenge. To ensure that you have as many pictures as possible in your Image Manager, we’ve selected several royalty-free online image resources that offer quality pictures at affordable prices.
Stock.XCHNG (www.sxc.hu) is a free stock photo website that has a huge gallery of over 350,000 high-quality photographs from around the world. Users can browse the collection and are encouraged to share their photos and graphics with others. Whether you are looking for a wallpaper, in need of an illustration to liven up your latest post, or simply searching for inspiration, you will be able to find nearly everything on Stock.XCHNG.
Looking for Halloween-themed images? Try KaveWall!
Cutcaster (www.cutcaster.com) is a photo and vector illustration marketplace that lets you purchase royalty-free images for web publishing and design. Buyers register for free and then browse the library until they find the image that they want to purchase. Cutcaster offers several purchasing options including downloading comps, buying credits, and bidding. After registration, users can also submit their own graphics for free and set their sale prices.
Kave Wall (www.kavewall.com/stock) has an impressive collection of free stock photos, images, and textures for use on your website. Images are divided into categories like “holiday” and “office” and are all incredibly quick and easy download. Users are encouraged to share and edit any picture as long as they credit its original owner.
FreeDigitalPhotos.net (www.freedigitalphotos.net) allows users to download “genuinely free images” for corporate as well as personal use. No registration is required and the images are available for instant download. Users need only spend money if they choose to purchase the highest resolution files (typically used in print). FreeDigitalPhotos.net invites both amateur and professional photographers to share and sell their work and receive commission if other users choose to buy a higher-res version.
We hope this article provided you with some useful information about affordable online image galleries. If we’ve missed any photo sites that you’ve been using, let us know with a comment or email info@imagespacemedia.com so we can add it to this post!
Oct/090
Should Publishers Charge for Their Content?
In a comprehensive article for Advertising Age, author and seasoned advertising veteran Judy Shapiro discusses the question of whether publishers can best monetize their site by charging for their content (the "gated" model) or by offering it for free and relying on ad revenues.
She concludes that charging for content is outdated and futile: "Most people can get most content one way or another and circumventing the gated-content model is not that hard for users. Media companies trying to figure out how to plug all the naturally leaky ways content gets out there is like trying to win at whack-a-mole. Frustratingly unsatisfying."
The following are Shapiro's suggestions for how to best monetize your blog while using the free content model:
- Use content to attract audiences
- Create a community to coalesce audiences
- Leverage the power of your community to drive revenue
Follow these suggestions and (in Shapiro's words) hear your "content monetization engine roar." Read more about Shapiro's suggestions and the rest of her article here.
Oct/090
Would You Drink Twitter Wine?
Twitter has teamed up with the California-based winery Crushpad to form what they call the Fledgling Initiative. According to the organization's website, “the Fledgling Initiative embodies two things that are at the core of Twitter's mission: providing access to information and highlighting the power of open communication to bring about positive change.” You can take part in @fledgling’s mission by following their wine-making tweets and pre-purchasing their Twitter-branded bottles of Pinot Noir and Chardonnary. $5 from each bottle will be donated to Room to Read, a non-profit children’s 
literacy and education organization that brings books and libraries to the world’s most impoverished regions. What a great way to drink for an honorable cause!
Oct/090
Picad Media Is Now Image Space Media
Welcome to Image Space Media, formerly known as Picad Media. To give our clients a better sense of what we do, we have changed our name to Image Space Media. Our new name better describes with the essence of our services: giving publishers an opportunity to monetize the image space.
Today as we are roll out with our new name as we continue to unveil improvements to our in-picture advertising service. In the next few weeks expect faster loading times on your ads, more keyword possibilities to derive more relevant ads, and better analytics and tools for publisher ads.
We value the partnerships we’ve made with publishers and you can count on the same service with new and improved service modifications. By the end of the year we hope to complete the Beta stage and fully release Image Space Media products. Stay tuned to hear more about how Image Space is growing and is changing the ways in which publishers derive income from online advertising.
Oct/090
Tweet your Wordpress posts through Publicize
Are you a Wordpress user? If so don’t forget to take advantage of the built-in promotion tools WP offers bloggers to help increase traffic and reign in repeat visitors.
Last week Mashable highlighted Ping-O-Matic’s new feature Publicize which allows you to instantly post your entries to your Twitter feed. Unlike TwitterFeed another popular plug-in which periodically checks your blog for new updates and posts to Twitter, Publicize is instantaneous and allows for instant feeds.
Increasingly blogs have peppered their looks with “Tweet This,” “Stumble Upon” widgets to attract traffic and hopefully more fans to their content. Of course you can always opt of the service but with many competing voices on the web it seems to be a quick and easy way to reach a wider audience.
Oct/090
Image Space Media Glossary
We often use web lingo that we assume our publishers are familiar with. But for those of you who have ever wondered what exactly we’re talking about, here is a comprehensive list of online marketing vocabulary that every publisher should know.
In-Picture Advertising – an online ad solution that overlays advertisements over relevant images.
Impression – a single appearance of an advertisement loaded on a website (advertisers sometimes do not count reloads and other “nonqualifying activity”).
Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) –measurement that depicts the value of an online marketing campaign proportional to the amount of site traffic.
Cost Per Click (CPC) – the amount of money paid by advertisers for a single click on their ad.
Pay Per Click (PPC) – model in which advertisers pay publishers only when their advertisement is clicked.
Return On Investment (ROI) – the percentage of profit advertisers earn from a marketing or advertising campaign.
Rich Media Ads – interactive media technology used in online advertising, including streaming videos and applets.
Oct/091
Publisher of the Week: The Smart Stylist
This week, the Image Space Media team would like to recognize TheSmartStylist.com as Publisher of the Week. TheSmartStylist brings its readers fashion that is “Trendy & Stylish…the Smart Way.” The site, updated daily, is targeted towards reasonably priced items and steers clear of “over-priced so called fashion.” In times like these, it’s important for a fashionista to be a recessionista!
Bookmark TheSmartStylist now!