And if you want the best way to showcase any music related product- Your wait is over.

Now you can create a stunning image of any CD in minutes with Digipack CD Cover Software. Sell first, play with paper and ink later. Just hope your competition never finds out how simple and fast it is. Watch this..

If you’re selling information products, you want a quick and smiple solution for getting your customers familiar with your product, and increasing sales volume.

The buzz about using ecover software and Photoshop as a time & money-saving alternative started around May of 2003 when several web marketers found thier nitche, and the idea was successful.

Andrew Jackson of MGI Software, an Internet software and services company, says that “there is a 30% increase in sales and a 50% reduction in returned goods with the use of 3D imaging.” – Los Angeles Business Journal, December 17, 2000

Do a search on DVD Cover Designs, CD Cover Designs, or eBook Covers, and you’ll find a handful of website that sell a kit specifically designed to save you time and money.

Photographers and Graphic designers charge you between $50 to $80 per hour for the work.

When a highly respected product photographer takes a photo, more than likely it will be digitized into Photoshop for color correction and enhancement. Using photoshop for making ecovers just makes perfect sense.

“A growing number of e-businesses are experimenting with the rapidly emerging field of three-dimensional web technology. Others are counting on 3-D to add new levels of excitement and realism to e-commerce websites (…) Photo realism really enhances believability.” CIO Magazine, “3-D Finally Gets Serious”

Some of what you may find are packages containing pre-made Photoshop templates and Photoshop Actions that let you add your own text, have full control of fonts, background images, colors, and even add effects that best match your product or company brand.

Photoshop actions work well because the actions are nothing more than a series of recorded tasks that have already taken place in order to create the stunning ecover.

The awesome combination between premade photoshop templates and actions work much better than the ecover generator sofware for several reasons:

1) You’re working with relyable software from a wellknown company like Adobe. You know that the software is stable and is used by design industry professionals.

2) Free Trial Versions are most always available to try for free.

3) The people behind the photoshop ecover designs are more than likely graphic designers. Check thier work for attention to detail depending on how realistic and professional looking you want your ecover to be.

4) Unlike software “generators”, where you are limited to the effects and options that are available- cover software actions yield more freedom, flexiblility, and produce better results overall.

Where product photographers require you bring your products and to come to their in house studio and pay around $50.00 per hour (not including setup fees), automated product cover software allows you to design and upload a professional image of your product in less than a few hours.

With the speed of automating a 3 dimensional image that looks just as good as the real thing in under 5 minutes, that is cost effective!

But buyer beware. Some automated product cover design packages are not created equal. Most only allow you to make images of your products at only 72 dpi, while others like Grant’s 5-Minute DVD, CD, and Ebook Cover Designs and Actions for Photoshop (http://www.designbygrant.com/marketing-products.php) allow you to create images at up to 300 dpi.

This means that you can take full advantage of almost every marketing effort you can think of, including:

-Product Posters & Billboards
-HDTV Broadcast Comericals
-Trade show banners and backdrops

What’s the best part you ask? That’s simple. The best part is that if you already have Photoshop, you can save hours and even days to effectively market your product on the internet, and anywhere else you can reach your customers.

If you don’t have Photoshop, download it directly from the Adobe website and try it free.

© Copyright 2010. Freeman Creations

About The Author
Grant Freeman has been a Freelance Graphic Designer, Web Designer, Photographer, Video Editor, and Creative Director for over 13 years. His most noted clients include Sony, Bertolucci, Land Rover, and various International Recording Artist in the U.S.

More information, products, and cover software services at www.freemancreations.com

Still, most that are new to cover software are not getting the most- from the most powerful part of an ecover- the headline.

Professional copywriters and authors use compelling headlines to grab the reader by the eyeballs, and get them to read the sub-headline. And of course, the sub-headline gets them to read to first paragraph of the story. The question is..

Can an ecover headline do the same thing? My answer is yes.

And since you’re using a colorful ecover made by cover software, an ecover headline that has legible text multiplies the attention grabbing factor. Especially if that headline includes a benefit or a call-to-action. That is, a statement your prospect has that answers the question “What’s in it for me?”.

In addition to the headline of a sales page, an effective ecover headline gives you yet another opportunity to grab the attention of your prospect. This short report will guide you to a:

I’m assuming that you’ve already identified your target market. I won’t go into detail about it here, but please don’t skip this most important step. If you’re not sure how to go about identifying your target market, you need to learn how.

Step 1. The first step (after you’ve identified your target market), is to take the coolest, or best possible benifit that your customer can experience from your product or service, and include this in the headline. Imagine the ultimate experience.

Imagine for a second that your prospect wants to become better at a sport or his favorite video game. Now, what do you think is the best thing to learn about it? It could be a powerful combo move, or a technique that gives them the ultimate advantage over their opponent.

Got it? Ok, good. Now..

Step 2. Put whatever that is in 7 words or less.

Example-

Sport: Baseball

Ultimate Technique to learn: Hit a Home Run

Possible cover software headline: How To Hit A Home Run Every Time At Bat

Step 3. Create the subheadline. Now, for the subheadline, think of an alternative way of saying the same thing, while using more mystery, only from a different perspective. It doesn’t have to be profound, but must create curiosity. It simply explains more about the main headline.

You could talk about exploiting a weakness of your opponent much like poker players use to uncover physical signals of a bluff, or finding a mental train of thought that catches an opponent off-guard. Or both!

Example of subheadline: “Secrets of identifying and reading the hidden signals of any pitcher like an open book”

Headlines with the words “Secrets”, and ”Discover”, still work. Use them, but make the subheadline believable to your target market.

Step 4. Create Better Readability With Good Color Contrast

Too many headlines get lost in the background image of an ecover. This is most common with cheaper “Generator” cover software, and it’s one to avoid. Anyway, what happens is that the reader pays less attention to the headlines benifit because it’s too hard to read.

To avoid this happening with your products ecover, you need to create more contrast between the background image and the headline/subheadline so it stands out and is easy to read. Here’s how..

-  Choose a bold, san-serif font for your ecovers headline or title, and smaller (but legible) text for the sub headline. Best BOLD fonts to use are:

Arial, Tahoma, Impact, and Futura

- Include at least one benefit in your ecovers headline & subheadline.

Any time you can make a process easier for your prospect, your chances of a sale increase. This is true for just about anything-including ecover headlines. And anytime or anywhere you can state benifits that your target market appriciate, you make it easier for them want what you’re selling.

-Try bluring the ecover’s background image a little. Yea, the whole thing, or just the part where the headline & subheadline is. This will create more contrast and seperation between the two.

Your ecover can be much more than just an image. It gives you the opportunity to share more benifits so you can attract more customers. It increases your conversions. And it also makes your product stand far above the rest. I hope this gives you much success!

-Grant

If you are looking for the best promotional strategies for promoting your intangible or tangible product, this article might give you information that could take your small business to the next level, and leave your competitors in the dust.

Promotional advertising has changed due to some very powerful cover software products that, for your benefit, many small business don’t know about.

These software products are called “Photoshop Actions” – otherwise known as cover software and this article will also show where to get them, and how they can increase your bottom line..cash. More. Not less.

First and foremost, it’s important that you know that the “Old” way of showcasing your product for your business is dead. The new way I’m about to show you, is all about streamlining or “automating” one of the most time consuming & costly promotional advertising efforts.

What any smart business owner knows, is that there are simply two ways of looking at money..

Your businesses’ money is either coming in, or it’s going out. I’m sure you’d also agree that any time you can spend less rather than more, you’re maximizing your promotional strategy, as well as your profit potential.

The old way of promotional advertising the online product you want to sell means spending lots of time searching for expensive graphic designers, and finding and paying a product photographer.

The new way is using computer software that automates this process, so you can save time and money. In other words.. spending less and not wasting time. Let your competitors do things the old way.

The software I’m talking about uses Photoshop Actions that automates and streamlines 90% of the process from your product idea, to getting a professional photograph of it online so you can sell it.

The faster you do this, the better. The less you spend, the better.

Here’s how you go about making this an important part of your promotional strategy:

1. Point your web browser to Adobe.com and download a trial version of Photoshop.
2. From here, it’s best to plan out your products so you can create as many product photos you can before the trial expires (30 Days). This will allow yourself to get familiar with the basic tools in Photoshop.
3. Get cover software. freemancreations.com is a great choice. They let you create stunning, photo realistic images from a flat, 2D image in less than an hour. You bypass the need for designers and photographers.

Here’s how you’d go about using this new promotional advertising strategy for your business:Lets say you have an idea for a software product that you want to sell from your website. You use a payment processor like PayPal to capture funds (money coming in from product sales).

You want to market test this product to see how well it will sell. So, you use cover software to design an “ecover” of your product so people can see what they are buying.

You attach a price to it, connect it to the payment processor and use the images you created in advertisements, and anywhere you can. The idea is to get the most professional looking image you can in front of as many people as possible.

With cover software, you are maximizing your earning potential, and you’re cutting the time it takes to prepare a product for promotional advertising from 2-4 weeks- down to less than an hour. That’s right.

The old way of promotional advertising is dead. The best promotional strategy is one that uses cover software. It will save you time, money, and lots of headaches dealing with designers and photographers. And I don’t even have to mention how much it will increase your opportunity to make more money.. not less.

© Copyright 2010 freemancreations.com all rights reserved

If you do any selling whatsoever, and you’re not a skilled graphic designer, you’ll know that e cover actions are one of the best ways to create a great looking 3 Dimensional product “photo”. without hiring a photographer or waiting for a graphic designer’s schedule to open up.

An ecover action is created mostly in Photoshop by the author. All you have to do is load the action in Photoshop, play it, modify a template, play another step, and it automatically plays back a sequence of events that creates what looks like a realistic photograph of your product in minutes.

The Most Rewarding Marketing Approach:

The only design “work” you do is with the template. Just design it the way you want it to look. Unfortunately, this is where most think that because it looks good to them, it will also look good to their target market. Not so.

The actual result is an ecover that has the wrong colors, text that’s too small to read, or other elements in the product image (ecover) an unpleasent to the eye. As a result, potental prospects click-away &  turn to a competitor immediately. Sale lost.

The root of most lost sales comes from not understanding that YOU, are NOT your target market.

That simply means that just because your cover design looks “pleasing” to YOU, doesn’t mean your prospects will find it equally pleasing. If you find out what kinds of designs your audience likes and expects, the hard part is over, and you’re on the right track because you’ll be creating a visual connection they can relate to.

1. First identify who you are selling “to”
To put it bluntly, what you like doesn’t matter. Your customers want to know one main question:

What’s in this for me?

You can communicate part of that answer- instantly- with a main color choice. Do what most marketers do not, and find out. Do the research. For the highest conversions, choose colors that fit best with your target market.

Do THEY like blue? The color blue is the favorite color of lots of people. Blue conveys a mental feeling of trust. You could even use a royalty free photograph of a blue sky as the ecover’s background instead of a solid color or gradient.

Did you know that Indigo blue is also linked to the higher mind and our intuition (right brain function)? It has a cooling, calming effect and helps to us to release our fears and calm an overactive mind.

On the other hand, should you use Red?

Being a “warm” color as apposed to a “cool” color like blue, people who prefer red like entertaining others and want instant solutions. Now.

They want the stuff without the fluff. Want to get people excited? Then red is your color, AND your writing style should be as direct as possible.

The rock recording artist “Sammy Hagar” even has a song that fits. Guess what it’s called?

Yup. RED! Check iTunes for it. You’ll hear what RED sounds like in the music, and it will put your prospects in the right mood to buy. Sammy gets it. Marlon Sanders does too.

Do you?

Want to know more about how colors can help you identify what your prospects want?

2. Choose a bold, san-serif font for your ecovers headline or title, and smaller (but legible) text for the sub headlines and other text below it.

Best fonts to use?

3. Include at least one benefit in your ecovers headline or title.
I was helping someone choose the best ecover out of two that they were working on. It was for an ebook. The first had a bright blue background with a title that said something to the effect of “Website Biz”.

A few main reasons this was a huge mistake is because the title was NOT communicating an established brand (Like McDonalds), didn’t tell them what they were getting, and those were the only words on the ecover that were big enough to read.

You could see a sub headline there, but it was useless because the text was too small. So, you’re left with a headline/title that fails to grab the prospect by their eye sockets and pull them in with benefits that matter to them.

Without it, it’s just yet another ugly ebook that your prospects can’t read.

There’s lots of ecovers like those, and you can find them just about anywhere. If you just made those small changes, can you see that you’re already ahead of the game?

4. The smaller the font is, the more you need to spread out the letters. In other words, increase the font tracking

Not sure why I see so many ebooks and website written with text so small, the website they are on should offer free bottles of windex to clean off the nose prints from their visitors’ computer monitors.

This seems to have been going on ever since graphic designers started building Macromedia Flash websites in the late 80′s and early 90′s.

Those sites looked cool. But squinting to read the words was something people can do without. It’s all about “readability”.Try this simple test of readability..

If you thought that the last paragraph was easier to read, give yourself an “A”.

IMPORTANT MARKETING NOTE: Any time you can make a process easier for your prospect, your chances of a sale increase. This is true for just about anything. Including the foundation of everything- words on a page.

All I did was increase the font tracking so it separates the characters, making it much easier to read.

In almost any word processing software or image editing software, you can adjust the amount of tracking to the text.

Why is this so important? Because most marketers are NOT making their ecover text large enough & easy for prospects to read! If most marketers are not doing this so that their customers can actually read products’ benefits, they are throwing money away.

But you see these frustrated marketers in related forums saying things like “What am I doing wrong?” or “why isn’t my opt in page converting?”

If you happen to be one of those people, well, that could be one of the reasons why.. besides not having a clue about what you’re target market wants:)

Now you know how to fix it, and get that part of your message handled.

5. Decrease The Tracking On Larger Text
This should be simple now that you’ve done the opposite to the smaller text. Here’s the next pop-quiz..

Headline A is hard to follow because the text is big. The more you increase the tracking, the harder it will be to read. On the other hand, Headline ‘B‘ has DECREASED tracking. This brings the characters closer together so your eyes don’t have to work so hard.

You’ll also notice I’ve left something out…

I’ve also brought the LEADING, or the space between the lines closer together (vertically). This can easily be done with the text tools found in most software. Here’s a great example below. This is an ecover I did recently. Notice the headlines:

(By the way, this audiobook is available here )

6. Avoid Placing Text Over Busy Background Images
If you are ever in doubt of using a great looking background image over the words that will be used on your ecover, don’t do it. More than likely, if you do, it’s going to distract your prospect away from the words.

And I hope those words communicate benefits to your prospect.

In other words, busy backgrounds will kill the message.

I know that images that are used as backgrounds look really cool. You might try bluring the background image a little. Yea, the whole thing, or just the part where the words will be used. This will create more contrast and seperation between the two.

Your ecover can be much more than just an image. It gives you the opportunity to share benifits so you can attract more customers. It gives you another way of using color for creating a connection which relates with your prospects. And it also makes your product stand far above the rest.

I hope this gives you much success! Rock on,

-Grant