This is the ninth week of Friday’s Inspiration. This week we take a look at award winning website from CSS Design Awards, Awwwards and the Best Designs.

CSS Design Awards:

Made by Fibb:

Winner 12th June 2013.

Made by Fibb is a portfolio website of Fabian Irsara who is a developer and Bernd Baumgartner a designer. The website looks to be inspired by Microsofts Windows 8 Metro live tiles. The site is very interactive the fonts moves while the mouse hovers over it.

Trionn Design:

Winner 10th Juner 2013.

Trionn is an India based creative and web design studio. The website is multi award winning and yet to win some more. The site is single page layout and responsive. The front banner and the contact page has impress me the most. The three headed wolf with the head moving in the home page banner is very impressive.

Alpina:

Winner 6th June 2013.

This is a promotional website of a famous Swiss watch maker Alpina. This is a single page website. The site have played a lot with triangle while featuring the different model of the wrist watch. The site have used very nice background to show the inspiration of the watch.

Awwwards:

Legwork Studio:

Winner 13th June 2013.

Legwork studio is a design agency, the website have rely heavily on animation. The agency believes in open sauce so they have put up few of their work code on Github for download.

The Best Designs:

Rabbit Hole:

Winner 11th June 2013.

Rabbit Hole is a U.K. based creative studio with client like Evernote, Deadmau5, EMI and many more. They have used black as the main colour and dark nature background. The website is responsive.

For creating responsive, clean and effective web site have a look at our Web Design and Intermediate Course.

Are you passionate about something? Do you have a lot to say on a certain subject? Are you an amazing cook or fitness guru? Running your own niche website is a great way of expressing your opinion and making money through things like Adsense, banner advertising and sponsored articles. This article will show you how to get started and hopefully make some extra income.

Find a Topic Your Care About

When your thinking of your niche website pick something that you know there is an active community for as you always want to encourage engagement. Through inviting people to comment and send in their own thoughts it helps you create a community around your own website which will then bring in even more visitors.

Always put a unique perspective on what you’re talking about. This can be done through research, questionnaires, reading books that have been lost for years, interviewing people or just coming up with your own theories and putting them out to the world.

One thing to remember is that you should always keep a notebook handy so when you do come up with a great idea for an article you have safe place to remember it.

Consistency is Key

I spoke to a wonderful gentleman who runs a long term blog here in Thailand and he said that the most important thing was consistency of posting i.e what and when you post. He always posts his articles on Sunday afternoon without fail and his readership expects this too.

Creating a content schedule is a great way of helping you keep on track. First choose how many articles you can consistently write a week, second space them out over the week (or month if your writing only a few articles) and then write type of article you will write into the calendar. For example Monday = article on ESL teaching, Wednesday = Book review and Friday = funny stories from teachers.

Just remember to be honest yourself and map your content writing around your daily life.

Know your Voice

Before you embark on this quest think the angle and kind of voice you want to bring to your topic. Are reviewing, informing or condemning? Are formal, free, fanatical or friendly? Choose early and stick to it as people tend to warm towards characters.

To get started first define your personality in a sentence. Then think if your writing style was say a drink what would it be? A glass of aged red wine? A fruity cocktail or even a cool glass of easy going beer? If you get stuck then try different personalities and write say 200 words in that persona and see which one feels right.

Think of your favourite author or column in the newspaper and how look forward to reading articles from certain critics. Well that is the feeling you want to give to your readers.

Are you Ready to Make Money?

To cut a long story short you need over 30,000 unique visitors a month to warrant charging for exposure on your website with the norm being around 50,000 to 100,000. However! If you can show potential customers that your site has a highly active and focused readership then they may consider paying you for advertising.

Business owners like me want ROI or brand exposure. Businesses they will want to know your CTR (click through rate) so they can work out how many potential customers they can expect. It is easy to do a Google Analytics PDF export of your sites stats so keep that handy to send to customers.

How to make the money

Selling Banner Space

First you will need to page on your site advertising what banner sizes and types are available. Be sure to include information about dimensions in Pixels and the size of the file e.g. keep under 100Kb. Your pricing will depend on the length of time, placement and size of the banner. Start cheap and work your way up e.g 460×60 full banner, on the homepage for one month is 3000 baht.

Need help selling? Then try signing up for http://buysellads.com as they will sell and manage your spaces for you. You could also offer banner design services by learning photoshop and offer a full package.

Installing AdSense

Another way to make money is through Adsense which puts Google ads on your website dependant upon your set criteria or the keywords on the page. Be careful when doing this, less is more so don’t spam your own website with too many ads.

Sponsored Articles

If you have a successful website you may start to get companies and individuals contacting you to do paid reviews or sponsored articles. Essentially the pay you to review their product or they send you an article to put in your site. In return they will ask for a link to their site.  With this you have to put the quality of your website first rather than a quick $20 shoddy article on your site.

Only post reviews and sponsored articles that are interesting and relevant to your users and don’t be afraid to ask the company to re-write an article or link back to your review from their website.

Last Thoughts

Building a successful website is all about amazing content, lots of quality imbound links and tones of social media. It takes time to build a successful website and it all depends on that passion you have in the pit of your stomach for your topic.

Write passionately and they will come.

We’ve seen these great videos of people traveling to exotic location, and creating a visual montage of their great adventure. First thing you’re thinking is that they have thousand dollars of camera equipment. I’m here to show you, that you do not need all these equipments, the best camera is the one you have with you.

Have your camera ready:

Always have your camera ready, leaving your camera at home or the bottom of bag is not useful to capture videos. Being ready at moments notice to capture the action.

Camera Settings:

Set your camera to the highest setting possible 1080p or full HD is the same, 720p is a smaller HD format still great quality. If you are not sure what resolution to use, just google it.

Make the most out of your environment:

Don’t have a tripod use your environment, use a bench, chair, friends shoulder.

Motion Technique:

To add motion to your video, using a skate board to put your camera on is a great way to give you smooth motion or rollerblade and hold the camera in one position and use the motion of the rollerblade do the work. Careful use of footwork can also help.

Use duct tape:

Always have duct tape, it’s a camera crew best friend, don’t have a microphone tape an iphone on your subject or bottom of table or around the corner to the wall.

Use smart phone as a light source:

iPhone and other smartphones make for great portable light sources, free apps are great ad-ons giving a bright light but just using you phone to light up some face at night is quick and easy.

Using car headlight for night shoot:

Shooting at night need a lots of lights, if you have access to a car, try using the car’s head light to light up your scene or subject. If the light is too harsh and your shadows looks bad, tape some tissues on the lights to diffuse them.

Adapting to city nights lights:

If shooting at night in the city, use the all the lights available like neon signs, restaurant signs, try to shoot under a light post. Think outside the box is all you need.

Important of DSLR Zoom lens:

Need to get far or close, and you have DSLR, beg and borrow or rent the lens you need for your shoot, you be surprise that you can rent a expensive lens you dream about for US$20. Make sure get the most use out it.

Plan what you want to show:

Think first, most production, big and small are carefully planed out, think about what you want to show on the video and shoot and shoot some more.

Now for putting all this together, use what you have at your disposal like iMovie, FCP, Premier, Vegas, you need to be comfortable with the program, save a copy of your project and play around. Don’t have music, try using vimeo music store they got great free music, just give the artist credits. We all have a friend that knows one thing we don’t, give then a call.

Happy Shooting…

Thanks to Eric for this Article, he is a instructor here at WCB and if you would like to follow one of his classes check out the Private Photography Course or Photography – Essentials.

We are back with the eight week of Friday’s Inspiration. This week we have some interesting website from around the globe, not just being from different country, the functionality of the site also differ from one another.

CSS Design Awards :

Frank Digital:

Winner 5th June 2013.

Frank Digital is an Australian based Digital and Website agency. The company’s website is clean, user focused one page website. The site is not responsive.

Eat Better:

Winner 3rd June 2013.

This is a site of a Italian Pizza Pasta supplier website. The web site have used subtle colours and simple navigation. The site also have tried to explain the different type of pizza crust and the topping. The site also provide PDF file catalogue  for downloads.

Index-STD:

Winner 2nd June 2013.

This is a multidisciplinary Graphic Design Studio based in France. The site is in entirely in French which makes it a bit difficult to navigate around, other then that the site is fascinating. The index page has a infinite scrolling menu which is cool.

Awwwards:

Diesel:

Winner 6th June 2013.

The new Diesel Home Collection website combines an immersive web experience with detailed technical information on products.The website tells the story of a party while you scroll.

The Best Designs:

Barkpr:

Winner 5th June 2013.

This is a non-profit PR firm. The site has used bold and bright colours. The site is easy to navigate and simple to understand. The site is also responsive.

For creating responsive and effective web site have a look at our Web Design and Intermediate Course.

This is the seventh week of Friday’s Inspiration, this weeks inspiration website is more of colourful and bright colours. We have a subtle site from Japan too.

CSS Awards:

Tequilla!:

Winner 30th May 2013.

Tequilla is Portugal base agency the website is base on dark background and bright foreground colours. The site is a single page scroll and the site have used more of images or work done by the company to convey the message rather then having long boring text to do so.

Goosebumps:

Winner 28th May 2013.

Goosebumps is an Australian Design and Branding firm. This is also an single page scroll website. Like Teguilla they also have used bright colours for the website. They have used an attractive bright yellow as the base colour.

Don-guri:

Winner 27th May 2013.

Don-guri is a Japanese art direction company. It is a subtle and neat website even not knowing the language it was easy to navigate and surf throw.

Awwwards:

Polecat:

Winner 31st May 2013.

Polecat is an iPhone and iPad apps making company. They have created great apps for “What I eat” and “Time and Place”. The website is minimal and the animation is base on retro bitmap animation.

The Best Designs:

Summer in Tennessee:

Winner 31st May 2013.

Summer in Tennessee site tells us what the site is all about ! the site is bright and colourful. The navigation is simple and its eye catching.

For making beautiful websites and design take our Web Designing Basic and Intermediate course.

The largest social networking website, Facebook, has currently launches the “verified pages and profiles” offering a greater variety of authenticity for popular personalities and high-profile businesses. When a page or a profile is verified by Facebook, a blue check will appear beside ones profile name. Facebook have thousands of fake accounts and millions of people follow them. It is also a one way of giving the opportunity to the people to follow the verified personality that they idolize, or maybe a huge company that they look forward working to.

Another social networking site, Twitter, who already has the ‘verified’ feature, recently had a problem dealing with people who request their profile to be verified. Verified pages and profiles on Facebook will not be upon request or special letter, just like what Twitter did after the problem occurred. The social networking site itself will determine who will receive a verified pages and profiles.

As Facebook becomes the ultimate center of information and news exchange, it is a big step for the social networking site to have authenticated profiles and pages. The social networking site also now serves as the fan base of celebrities the world over. Privates groups use it for contest (most ‘likes’ wins), surveys, information transfer, event invitation, and even use as their own website.

Verified pages and profiles did not literary give much to most of its users. It is only enabled to specific people with huge number of ‘likes’. There are roaming news as well that the criteria for having the blue check beside a profile name did not have specific basis. Just like the famous band Guns n’ Roses who have 22 million likes do not have a blue check beside the name of their fan page but the Jazz singer Michael Bublé who only have 6 million followers have a blue check beside his fan page name.

The mere fact that Facebook is across the globe, there are certain local personalities that need to be acknowledged with a blue check mark all over the world.

Learn Social Media Marketing in Bangkok

If you want to learn more about social media and its environment, or have a business and want to establish a page on social media, come and take a look at our Social Media Marketing Workshop at Web Courses Bangkok. 

An organic link is a link from someone else’s website, blog or social account where they linked to your site without being asked to. These links can be within the content of the article or listed as a reference at the end of the article. They are a great way to drive targeted visitors to your site because the person that linked to you has vouched for your article or page.

An organic link is a link from someone else’s website, blog or social account where they linked to your site without being asked to. These links can be within the content of the article or listed as a reference at the end of the article. They are a great way to drive targeted visitors to your site because the person that linked to you has vouched for your article or page.

Participate in the Community

One of the best ways to get links is to participate in the community, the good way is to answering questions for example if some one has a problem and you know the answer to it, you can help the person by answering it by doing this in the future he/she will remember you and when they see your link they might visit your site. So participating in the community, answering questions and help other people can be a big way of getting links.

Content

Building great content is still the most important way of getting links, if someone just did a little bit of work to dig into a subject is more likely to get links to his site. This would leave a good impression on the mind of a reader all because of original research and a good content writing.

Newsletter and Articles

If you already have audience visiting your website or blog, make it easier for him by creating news letter and articles assigned to his mail-inbox so that can drive traffic and conversions to your site.

Social Media

Participating in Social Media like Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare can be another grate way of getting links, if people are spending at least five hours on Facebook, then maybe you should spend some of your time on Facebook, because getting to know those people can pay in lots of ways not just links maybe you get to present at a conference, if you are doing conference presentation its a great way to get links because people will live blog, its a great way to get links.

Blog

Another great way to get a link is to established your self as an authority is by getting a blog! the good thing about a blog that you don’t have to update them all the time if you want you can use WordPress, tumblr, Blogger we dont have to maintain the software. Its really simple to maintain a blog, if you see a funny picture or something interesting to your reader you can post them to your blog you can get a lots of links very quickly. You can also use your blog to establish your self, your online business card, your profile you can use that to project how you want to be on the internet.

Creating Tutorials and “How-to”

The other good way how to get links is by creating “Tutorials” and “How-to?” like the other day my college he did a tutorial on “How to make an E-Commerce Banner“ with this people searching for a way to make a banner for e-commerce can find his articles, even if you don’t get a tons of links to that posts some times that long tail content is enough for people who are searching for it will find you even if you have two or three links to it. So it doest always have to be about links it can also be an exclusive resource where only limited or only you have it on the net. You can also run a servie which people really finds it useful, make a product release it for free or give it to the community, like Firefox or Google Chrome extension or WordPress Plugins. Services are good because people will come to you to try things out. Open Source are also great because people can download it. So you can do the work once and share it the people will be great full to you and this could get you links.

Site Architect

The architect of your site is also equally important, till lately most people don’t give importance to weather if the site can be crawled, can the site URL be bookmark or can Google get to all the pages on my sites? So make it easy to link to your site.

Videos

And the most easy and simple way to get links to your site by making Videos where you can talk about a “Tutorials” or “How-To” where people can watch it at any point they can get a lot of value out of it and importantly it should be enjoyable. So you can do the work once and its useful all the way down the line.

So those are just few tips on getting links to know join our Online Marketing Training or our Social Media Marketing Workshop.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m a 24 year old JavaScript developer and Open Source addict from Norway. I love solving hard problems and creating things.

2. Why be a web developer and what led you down this career path?

I was interested in computers early on, but nothing serious. I was mostly a designer using jQuery, but wanted to create products. I decided to try outsourcing, but wasn’t happy with the result. I then decided to force myself to learn programming for real so I could create these things myself. I started with JavaScript since it’s a pretty simple language and I had already used it a bit with jQuery. Some years down the road and I have no regrets. Programming is the future and the possibilities are endless.

3. What was the first website you made and how was that experience?

You won’t believe me. My first website was created in PowerPoint. Back then you could link between slides and export the presentation to some extremely ugly HTML. But it worked and it was easy to lay out the graphics. Though I soon after discovered HTML and went with coding HTML by hand instead.

4. If you can tell us, what are the projects you are currently working on?

My main focus these days is helping move the web forward by creating tools that makes developing web apps easier. I’m currently involved in TasteJS and TodoMVC, Yeoman, Grunt, Bower, AuraJS, and other projects. I also have my own fun pet projects I like to dabble in.

5. What are the best projects you’ve worked on? Tell us about them.

My most fun projects has probably been the most obscure and crazy ones which I only did for prototyping and fun, but which didn’t end up as anything real.

6. Could you tell us what’s in your personal “toolbox”? Software, apps, hardware, books

These are the only apps I can’t live without: Terminal (with TotalTerminal), Chrome, Sublime Text, Dash, Alfred, XtraFinder, Tower, git, ImageOptim. I also use Yeoman, Grunt, Bower and EditorConfig when developing web apps.

7. Tell us about your best experience as a developer.

Definitely Open Source. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s such an unique experience of learning, collaborating with other smart people in the community and producing great products.

Oh, and no better feeling than finally solving a problem after tons of debugging.

8. Tell us about your worst experience as a developer.

Non-programming time-wasters like emails, invoices, bad clients, etc.

9. In your opinion, what is the difference between a good web designer and a great web designer?

A person who pays close attention to detail while still being able to see the full picture, open to constructive criticism and always learning new things.

10. What advice would you give to our Web Courses Bangkok students?

Work hard and be passionate about what you do.

 Want to know more about Sindre?

You can follow him on his Twitter Account and his website Sindresorhus.com.

We would like to say Thank you to Sindre for giving us the opportunity to conduct this interview with him. May the future of Web be powerful through your contribution.

Want to learn more about Web Designing? Try our Web Design for Beginners course and Web Design Intermediate course here at Web Courses Bangkok.

Photographers have different conditions in form of income. If you are in photography industry for more than a decade and already made your mark as one of the professionals, you tend to charge more to your clients suitable to your expertise and experiences. But if you are a starting photographer and want to make your way up to the top of the photography industry, you start with low talent fee and even put extra effort just to satisfy your clients and for the sake of building your own portfolio. Proving yourself in photography industry is quite hard. You need to exert a lot of perseverance and creativity to your work. Earning a lot as a Photographer takes time as well. But as a starting photographer, there are some ways to make more money with all your capacity. Here are some tips on making money as a photographer.

Sell your photos online

If you have a lot of free time, grab your camera and take creative shots by the park, malls, or other interesting places. There are plenty of websites that would help you sell your photos to specific people who are looking for great quality image with specific criteria. My advice for you is to take a photo of one particular type of image. People who are looking for photos mostly look for the same type of photo collection. Here are some great websites to sell your photos.

• iStockPhoto
• Getty Images
• Fotolia

Design photo albums for special occasions

Most photographers only provide the photo files and printed images for the clients. Then, the clients will look for someone who can create them a photo album or a greeting card which consist of the photos the photographer took. Why not you as the photographer of the event create the photo album or greeting card for them? Just learn some few techniques in Photoshop and you’ll be good to go. It is more efficient for the client to work with one person and mostly beneficial for you as a photographer in terms of making more money.

Teach Photography

If you think you are capable enough to teach what you know about Photography, then start advertising yourself online and get students to teach. You can tell your friends, classmates, and even post a poster at local markets or malls (with management approval, of course). You could sit down with your student and teach them the rules and how photography works. Then, take them out at some public place for a practical application of what you taught them.

Join a community of Photographers

As a photographer, it is better if you know more people who have the same passion and interest as you. You can take advices from the veterans and give advice to new photographers. Some photographers go to a photo shoot as a group. If you are having trouble as an individual freelancer, joining a group would work fine for you. One of the cons of being in a group is a divided income. But as I say, if you are having trouble to find clients, a divided income is not bad.

Do more freelancing

If you really want to make more money as a photographer, do more freelancing. Contact your former clients and ask them to suggest you to their friends. And also, one thing that satisfies a certified photographer is being in the field of photography. It’s exhausting at times but it fulfills the photographer’s passion for his work. If you really wanted to work on your own and have sufficient clients, build your own website and market it through social networking sites. Freelancing could take more effort and work but you can earn more financially and you can gather experiences and expertise from it.

Learn Photography in Bangkok

If you reside in Bangkok and you wanted to learn photography, check out these courses at Web Courses Bangkok and learn more about Photography Essentials and Lightroom Essentials. You can also check out the One Day Photography Course that will help you become the best photographer that you can be.

Having a banner for your E-Commerce website is one of the helpful ways in attracting consumers to check out your products and make a sell. E-Commerce banner is a creative way of telling people about your newly arrived products, on-sale items, buy one-take ones, and other featured products. In creating an E-Commerce banner, you need to align the texture, exposure, shadowing, and clarity of your product image to the text, logo and background that you choose. Producing a bad quality banner for your website gives a negative impression towards your service and products from your possible consumers. To avoid negative impressions, here are some ways in creating an effective E-Commerce banner using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

First – pick an image of a product and retouch it accordingly in Lightroom

1. Go to Adobe Lightroom, click “File” and add new Catalog. Rename it with your desired file name and click “Save”. (Creating a catalog will take a while to load.) If your new catalog is ready, click “Import” and choose your desired image.
2. After your image has been loaded, click “Develop” which can be found on the right top of Lightroom.
3. In Develop mode, you will be able to adjust the exposure, clarity, shadows, lights, etc. of your product image. You can also do some cropping and aligning the image. 
4. If you are satisfied with the editing you did with your image, click “File” again and click “Export”. Save the edited image to your desktop or assign a specific folder for your image.

Second – Create the banner by adding the edited image and text information of the product.

1. Open Adobe Photoshop; click “File” the click “New”.  Make the size 960 x 400 pixels and click “OK”.
2. When the Photoshop art board is loaded, click “File” and “Place” to locate your product image, or open the window box where your product image is located and drag the image to the art board.
3. Align your image using the Rule of Thirds for right composition. To get rid of the white background, click the Rectangular Marquee Tool and make a horizontal rectangle without touching any shadows or color of the product.
4. Press Ctrl + T to and make the adjustment by dragging the small box in the middle of the selected rectangle that you have made. Press Enter and Ctrl + D if you are satisfied with the adjustment. Do the same thing in the vertical area.
5. To create a perfectly aligned text with your product image, use Rectangular Marquee Tool to measure the size of the spaces. Also use some grid guides by dragging it from the ruler which is located at the side of the art boards. With the same space size of the product margins, you will be able to find alignment and balance for the next step which is adding text.
6. Now, select the Horizontal Type Tool to create text. Select the font that you would think that will fit your banner. Always make the brand name bigger and the description smaller with a thin font. If you want to change the size of your text, simply select the text and hold the control key and start dragging the small box.
7. Add some promotional offer (if you have one) and export it with the best quality.

Learn E-Commerce in Bangkok

If you would like to learn more about Photoshop, Lightroom, Alibaba E-Commerce, and E-Commerce Start-up, check out these courses at Web Courses Bangkok. All lessons are taught in English with professional instructors in a small class of eight.