It’s also important to have a nice looking header/logo for each site. This gives a professional look to your site and increases the trust and confidence people will have in your information. Trust and confidence will also make people more likely to trust your ads as well, so they are more likely to click them! This is what we want, right? Well, you don’t need to be a graphic designer to make a nice header or logo for your site.
Here’s what I do:
First, go to stock.xchng, this is my favorite free stock photo site. Now, let’s say that we are doing a site on hand quilting. Simple, let’s search for quilt pictures then. Type in “quilt” in the search box. Some interesting possibilities pop up. There’s a lovely one with a nice variety of quilt colors, we’ll use that one. Now, open up your trusty graphics program, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Gimp, any of these or your other favorite will do. I’m going to use Photoshop. First, we need to size the image down a bit. I usually make my headers around 800 pixels wide, with varying heights, usually around 150 to 200 pixels. Somewhere between there, makes a nice header that’s not too large or too small. Now, we need to size it down to about 800 pixels wide. Then, select a nice section of the image that you want to use for the header. Now, crop the rest out. I like to add a little border to my headers so that the border matches the color of my sidebars and footers, so add that if you like. Now, add the name of your site in an appropriate color and font to the image. Here’s my final image:
Ok, it’s not going to win any awards or anything, but for two minutes of work, it’s not bad. It’s also appropriate to the site and welcoming to anyone interested in home quilting. There’s no mistaking that the site is about quilts! If you put a little more time into it, your results will be much greater. I just wanted to show you how easy it is. There is no excuse for not having at least a decent logo/header on your content sites!
