Feb/100
The Banner Blues: Combating Burnout and Blindness
via Jakob Nielsen for Useit.com
At Image Space Media headquarters, we're all pretty big proponents of online advertising (Cash Rules Everything Around Us, after all). We think it's a great way for publishers to financially support their passions and their expressiveness. And, of course, we believe we provide a unique and game-changing way for publishers to use their unique images to get paid.
But not all online advertising is effective online advertising. And it's not just you, getting sick of seeing the same banner ads above the sites you visit every day - it's a proven phenomenon called Banner Burnout, and it has very real implications for publishers and advertisers.
Let the stats do the talking: A study by DoubleClick found that after the fourth impression, CTR rates for banner ads go from 2.7 percent to less than 1 percent. That's pretty abysmal!
Photo via Flickr user jamescastle3
But before you can even worry about click through rates, there is the critical problem of Banner Blindness to deal with. As you can see from the amazing eyetracking studies shown above, created by Jakob Nielsen, the eye is automatically drawn to areas not dominated by ads. As Nielsen writes, "If users are looking for a quick fact, they want to get done and aren't diverted by banners; and if users are engrossed in a story, they're not going to look away from the content."
To combat the Banner B-problems, advertising experts suggest placing banners with animation, flashing bright colors, and cryptic messages at the top of your site. But what if that's not exactly the style you have in mind for your site? Remember, banner ads are not the only ad solution. These are many great advertising strategies to generate revenue - banner ads, Google AdSense and AdWords, in-text ads, Image Space media ads... Given the number of options in your arsenal, it's important to be tactical about your advertising solutions. How do you want your site to appear visually? Check out our online advertising tag for all of our past coverage of the various ways you can make ads work for your site.
Feb/101
Successful Blogs: From Start-Up to Follow-Through
Photo by Sureash Kumar via stock.xchng
Don't lie, you've done it before: started a blog with the best of intentions, had the drive to write a few stellar posts... and then fizzled out. I am certainly guilty of creating at least two blogs that are now abandoned, floating out in the blogosphere, and I will never tell anyone their names because they are too embarrassing.
So how can you avoid the flash-in-the-pan blogging phenomenon? ProBlogging and Chris Brogan's site are fantastic resources for would-be bloggers, written by industry veterans who have years of experience forming their own strategies for building successful blogs.
We have done you the service of aggregating the most helpful advice for the two hardest tasks of blogging: starting a great blog that will attract readers and, importantly, maintain your interest, and then keeping it going with posts that don't feel like a chore to write.
Nathan Hangen of Making it Social provides great tips for the first task of starting a blog in his article 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started. Here are some choice pieces of advice:
Narrow Your Niche
This is something that took me a long time to understand. I thought that by covering a bunch of topics, casting a wider net so to speak, that I would attract more people to my blog. The problem with that strategy is that when you do attract new visitors, you throw them off if your content isn’t consistent. They’ll wind up leaving and you’ll have to recruit new readers for every single post. So, try fishing with a spear instead.
When You Have a Blog, You are the Authority
Own It! – We blog from behind a desk and see our lives as imperfect or incomplete. However, to a customer or new reader, you have an incredible amount of authority. If you have gone through the work of publishing content, then you need to step up to the plate and own that content. Take the authority and use it. You might be a 6 or 7 (on a 10 point scale), but to that new person, you are a leader.
Start Networking Early!
I cannot emphasize this enough. Use Twitter, comments, and guest posting as a tool to meet new people. The wider your reach, the easier it is to get noticed. Don’t wait for people to come to you…get out and network. People love personal connections! Go to conferences and shake hands with other bloggers. You never know which contact could turn into a great guest posting opportunity, a JV deal, or a new devoted fan
But what happens if you start a blog you love and then lose that loving feeling? David Turnbull of Adventures of a Barefoot Geek wrote an awesome post on How to Ease the Pressure of Blogging, the highlights of which are after the jump:
Jan/101
Online Advertising in Plain English
With acronyms like CPA, CPM, CPC, web marketing jargon can get confusing really fast. Understanding online marketing terms is especially challenging for publishers since most info on the web is tailored to advertiser needs and interests.
Photo by Carlos Zaragoza via stock.xchg
In light of this, we'd like to help publishers like you demystify these terms so you can make the best advertising revenue decisions for your blog. Here are some of the most commonly used terms in online marketing:
Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing is a web-based revenue sharing practice between advertisers/merchants (affiliate merchants) and online publishers, whereby compensation is based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a hybrid model. In a traditional affiliate network the merchant usually has a direct relationship with the publisher.
Jan/100
Welcome to Image Space Media’s Newsletter for January 2010, the Happy New Decade Edition!
| IMAGE SPACE MEDIA News for January 2010  thanks to www.allbestwallpapers.com for the lovely strawberry cocktail Happy New Decade 2010! Your input helps us develop every aspect of our technology, from the layout to the content of our ads. Please keep it coming! If you have any comments or questions, please contact us at info@imagespacemedia.com. in this issue:
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Jan/100
Optimizing your images for Google Image Search
Last year at Search Market Expo West, Peter Linsley from Google Image Search outlined how publishers can improve their ability to get images indexed by Google and other major search engines.
We've mentioned a few of the tips in a previous post like learning how to use alt tags and using plenty of descriptive text. Linsley covers the basics and more and breaks down image search behavior, which is very different from web search.
If you think about the paradigm when they do a query, it's not so much about what's the first result... users can consume images in a heartbeat, and if the image they happen to like is at the bottom left-and corner or the bottom right-hand corner, so be it. They'll see that, there's something about the image that attracts them, and they'll click through.
Since image searches are very subjective, there is no way for search engines to figure out what you are looking for. Sometimes users aren't just looking for a specific image but use the image search function as a tool for inspiration, research, and "sometimes they just use it to kill time, just for the fun of it."
I really enjoyed reading Linsley's best practices which include asking yourself how to make your images useful for users.
It's really about immersing the user into a very image-centric experience. These are the kinds of landing pages, these are the kind of images we've observed that our users tend to like.
For more tips keep reading here
Dec/090
Image Space Media Newsletter: December 2009
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IMAGE SPACE MEDIA News for December 2009 
Welcome to Image Space Media's newsletter for December 2009. HAPPY HOLIDAYS EDITION!! WIN THIS CAMERA! As usual, a big thank you to our publishers using Image Space Media's technology in beta, and for your feedback. Your input helps us identify what areas we need to improve upon. With your help and feedback we've been steadily working to improve our technology. If you have any comments or questions please send them to info@imagespacemedia.com. in this issue:
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Dec/090
The Best of This Year’s High-Tech Holiday Gifts
As if you couldn't tell from the overwhelming news coverage of Black Friday sales, it is time, once again, to scour the internet for new and interesting holiday gifts for your loved ones. If you are anything like us at Image Space Media, you are probably interested (at least for yourself) in what's new in high-tech gifts. But where to start?
Luckily, CNET has made things easier for you (and us) this year with their aptly titled 2009 Ultimate Holiday Tech Guide. Whether you're looking for the best gaming consoles or the newest smartphones, CNET has you covered. For the budget-conscious, CNET's Cheapskate blog is spotlighting 100 days of crazy-low holiday deals. And, in an awesome feature, CNET's editors have compiled their favorite gadget gifts for this holiday season. They love the Apple MacBook Pro, Amazon's Kindle, and the Sony PlayStation 3 Slim.
If you're understandably more interested in receiving than giving, CNET allows you to make your own wish list and browse other people's lists to see what tech lovers are wishing for this holiday season. What's your dream holiday gift?
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/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!