The elements of graphic design include:

• Shapes
• Lines
• Color
• Type
• Images
• Texture
• Balance

They all need to work together to create an overall appealing page. Balance for example would be offset if you have a large image or logo in the upper right hand corner of your page and no graphics or design elements on the left hand side of the page. They don’t have to be symmetrical to be balanced.

Each of the elements of graphic design can be integrated into your web design. For example, shapes, color, type or font and texture can all be used in the design of your logo. They can all be integrated into your header.

The focus of your website design should be to support your content, not to detract from it. Flash and other graphic images should always support your content.

Your Headline and call to action are actually design elements too. They will have color and type that will draw attention to them in a manner that appeals to your audience.

Your opt in box is another design element to pay attention to. Make sure your opt in box has a background color that makes the it noticeable. You want to draw your visitor’s eye to it.

Images and photos. Images and photos can really bring your website landing page to life. There are two keys to remember, the first is that your website must load quickly which means your image files need to be small around 30KB per image or less, while still retaining medium to high quality.

The second key is that the image has to have a purpose. Is it there to evoke emotion? Is it there to demonstrate how to use a product? What is the purpose of the photo or image? For example, you may want to put your own picture on your landing page to help people relate to you and to build your brand.

Use design elements to help brand your business and to draw readers into your site like a good book cover will draw a reader to flip the book over and read the back cover. Your website design alone won’t usually sell products or services but it will motivate your visitors to read your content and that’s the first step to lasting success and a powerful landing page design.

• What a proposal is and isn’t
• What you need know before you start writing that proposal
• The main components of a proposal
• What your proposal should say
• Following up

Not a member of the Virtual Assistant Café? No problem you can click here to join click here to join now

• Learn proven techniques to attract your ideal clients
• Show your potential client why it makes sense to buy from you
• Learn to use the technology today’s business owners prefer
• Learn the skills that your clients are demanding
• Demand top dollar by being able to offer specialized assistance and support

Well, these are just a few of the things that members of the Virtual Assistant Café will achieve.

I created the Virtual Assistant Café as a solution to business owners who complain to me about not being able to get professional assistance and as a solution to virtual assistants who complain to me about being in business for 3 or 6 months & not having clients.

So, as a member of the Virtual Assistant Café I’m going to help you build your client base and increase your income by…

• Teaching you how to promote your business right and
• Teaching you the skills that business owners are looking for in a virtual assistant
• And it’s not going to cost you a mint.

For $47.97 a month…

• You are going to get 2 live webinars each month. One focused on marketing and one focused on a marketable skill
• You are going to have access to recordings of each webinar for as long as you are member
• Plus, I’m going to make it easy for you to implement everything you learn by giving you step-by-step assignments, templates, worksheets and forms that can used as is in your business.
• I’m also going to give you personal feedback, advice and support each month
• and for everyone who signups for the Virtual Assistant Café by the 9th of this month, I’m going to spend an hour with you one-on-one discussing your immediate challenges and creating a plan to overcome those challenges
  • Our first marketing webinar is on the 10th and the topic is Creating Proposals That Sell and the first skills webinar is on the 17th. I’m going to show you how to add products to shopping carts

Just click here to join the Virtual Assistant Cafe today!

The trouble is, headlines and titles are often easier to come by than graphics which are both attention getting and relevant to the subject matter and as more and more e-books hitthe market – there’s an added challenge to be unique. Here are a few tips and strategies to find the right e-book cover graphic.

• The most common step e-book creators take is to hit the stock photo websites. This is a great option because the cost for stock photos are relatively low and the search tools make it easy to find a number of options. And many sites offer downloads in a number of sizes making clarity and image quality a non-issue.

  However, the problem of uniqueness exists when you use an online stock photo site. The solution is to use sites which show how many times the photo has been downloaded. This limits the chance that it’s been pasted all around the internet. Search online for free graphics

• Hire a graphic designer. This is a more expensive option however the right graphic designer turns a plain old PDF into a work of art. Take sure when hiring a graphic designer to find out if they create all of their artwork or if they too use stock photos. Ask for samples and make sure all your graphics are original and you have 100% of the rights to them.
• Use graphic software. There are a number of quality design software programs created specifically for e-book graphics. Additionally, screenshot software can create good cover art for technology books.

Of course for the do it yourselfer, you can take photos or create cover art using many of the drawing and graphic design programs. Before you get started with any of these options take a look at successful e-books. What do you like about their cover art? Plan what you want your cover to look like and then seek solutions.

• Email signature. Your email signature is more powerful than you might imagine. Think about all the people you email each and every day. If your conference is promoted in your email signature, you’re reaching a whole group of people who may benefit from your conference.
• Email marketing campaign. Speaking of email…email marketing is extremely cost effective. Plan an email campaign to promote your conference to your opt in list. No opt in list? Rent a list of email addresses who might be interested in your conference. Start the campaign at least a month before the conference to really get the ball rolling.
• Send reminders. Remind people a week before the conference, especially if there are passwords necessary to attend. Remind attendees again the night before or even the day of so they make time for the conference.
• Ask for reservations. Make the conference limited to a number of people. This creates a sense of urgency and motivates people to sign up. It also creates a sense of responsibility because when people have a reservation they are more committed to the appointment. They may feel a sense of obligation to attend as well because they’ve reserved a coveted space on the guest list.
• Focus on the benefits. When you’re promoting your conference tell people what is in it for them. They will learn______________ and it will help them because _________________.
• Make it during a convenient time. While it is impossible to make your conference convenient for everyone around the world, for example 6pm in New York is 11pm in the UK. Additionally even people in the same time zone will have scheduling conflicts. Do your best to make your conference convenient and if you have several interested parties who cannot attend during the scheduled time consider offering transcripts of the conference, audio recordings of it, or schedule a second conference to make attending easier.
• Offer it for free. Offering your conference for free has advantages. People feel less pressured to sign up and attend because they have no risk of attending. Their only cost is their time. Conversely, offering your conference at a price may imply value – we as a society tend to place a higher value on items that cost more. For example a watch that is free will be perceived as having less value than an equal watch that costs 1000 dollars.

Hosting a conference can have a tremendous effect on your business. In fact, as you host more and more conferences you can use the recordings of past conferences to promote future ones. You can use them to demonstrate the value of attending. Advertising, email signatures, and a marketing strategy specifically for your conference will add to your conference success.

Here is what you will discover during this information-packed webinar…

• How to define your contact types
• How to define your sales process
• How to work each step in your sales process

Reserve your seat for this month’s free webinar by completing the form below…

Step One. Answer the following question – What problems does your customer or prospect have?

Step Two. The next question to ask yourself is – What information can you offer to help them solve their problem?

Step Three. Ask yourself, what information do you already have that addresses this problem? Chances are you may have already written articles or reports on the subject. If you have, these can be compiled into an information product.

If you don’t have any information already written on the subject, ask yourself who you know who could speak intelligently on the subject? Often times an expert interview can be used to create a fantastic information product. Record the interview, have it transcribed and hire a writer to edit and smooth out the rough patches and you have an information product ready to go.

Take the Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen approach and have others write the product for you. The ever popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books are created by multiple authors and compiled into a comprehensive book with a common theme. Joe Vitale has published several books like this quite successfully. Ask several key figures in your industry to write an article or small report on a subject and put the contributions together into an e-book.

Lastly, if you don’t want to write the information product yourself, you can outsource the project. There are many skilled ghostwriters and software developers who can create exactly the product you need.

Step Four. Once the content has been created the next step may be to hire a graphic designer to spiff it up and give it a professional look and feel. Associates may be able to give you a referral for a good graphic designer.

Step Five. Marketing and making money. This is the next phase in information product development and creation. There are many decisions to be made here including how to distribute the product, how to promote it, and what to price it at.

Creating an information product is a great way to both drive business as a part of a marketing funnel or to give away for free as a marketing and list building strategy. The good news is it doesn’t have to take you months of hard work writing in your spare time to create a quality information product. There are creative and innovative ways to offer a valuable information product quickly and still offer tremendous value and benefit to your customers and prospects.

Step #1 - Get your website ducks in a row. Do you have a domain name, hosting company and a method for creating a web page? A squeeze page is a web page so your first step is to find or open whatever programming software or system you’re using. If you already have a website then you’ll just add a page to that site. If you’re starting from scratch then your hosting company will likely have templates you can use or you can hire someone to create a web page for you. You can also create a web page with software like FrontPage or a WordPress template.

Step #2 – Lay out your page. Your squeeze page will not want to have a multitude of graphics or flashy features. Everything on this page should be focused on getting your visitor to subscribe to your list, that’s it. You will have some formatting in the form of a headline, bullets, a call to action and a form. You may also want a color scheme, logo or image that helps brand your page to your business. However, before you publish this page, make sure everything on the page supports the task of motivating opt-ins.

Step #3 – Write your headline. Your headline, like a book title, has to capture the attention of your visitor in a matter of seconds and motivate them to read further. Make a promise, offer them something valuable, always make sure you’re keeping your visitor’s needs in mind when creating your headline.

Step #4 – List the benefits subscribing or signing up for your email list offers. Bullet points are the easiest to read and you can highlight keywords in bold print to draw the reader’s eye through the copy. Remember, benefits are not features. Benefits are about what signing up for your email list will do for your prospect. How will it benefit them?

Step #5 - Write your call to action. Your call to action is essentially a statement that tells your visitors what you want them to do – sign up now!

Step #6 – Create your subscription form. You can use a number of services to create this form, or if you know how to write code, you can do it yourself. You need to collect an email address and a name if you want to address future communications to this person directly. “Dear Amy” sounds much better and more personal than “Dear Reader.” Paste the code onto your squeeze page and you’re ready to publish.

Step #7 – Follow-up. You may want to follow up with a confirmation to make sure the person intended to subscribe and a thank you for subscribing.

Once your squeeze page is up and running you have three remaining tasks, test and track it for success, you may find that a little change in the wording of your call to action for example may motivate more opt in, or your headline could use tweaking. Test and track your page for results.

You’ll also want to market your squeeze page through various marketing methods like PPC advertising and finally you’ll want to provide your subscribers with all of the wonderful content you promised them. Once you have the ball rolling and have built a notable opt-in list, you can then focus on using that list to boost profits.