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Graphic Entrepreneur Art Blog
Business website review, website design showcase and entrepreneur resources
Are you using stock photography for your projects regularly? If so, this little contest might interest you 
123rf, one of the well-known royalty-free photo libraries has started the 123RF Search and Win contest on September 2008.
Here’s how the contest works:
All you have to do, is search for images on 123RF.com. While you do so, you might ‘accidentally’ found the ’special’ thumbnail.
The special thumbnail is displayed at random times every day. If you are lucky enough, you need to click on the thumbnail to access the prize claim form.
Successfully completing the form, you are instantly declared a winner and can take home a very, very cool Wacom Bamboo!
If you are less lucky, you can also win 20 123RF credits - not bad at all.
What’s more, you can win one for yourself when someone you referred through the 123RF referral program wins too!
The contest runs from September 22 to November 21, 2008. So, you better get going!
But, wait… what’s so special about Wacom Bamboo? If you are a graphic designer and never heard of it, you might missed one of the best tools in creating graphics with handwriting recognition tech.
Current Mood:
Cool
Here is another question for you - If you use your website to accept order and showcase your projects, should you monetise your site with advertisements and ads from ad network?
My answer - Yes, you should. But do it in an elegant way.
Partnership with similar or complementary services provider will actually add value to your site. However, having banner ads and ad network ads like Google Adsense for your design portfolio site is questionable, even damaging your site’s potential, in my opinion.
Why? Because people visiting your design portfolio sites to see the work you’ve done, with the possibility to win their project. If you put ads that are suppose to be visually attractive, on prominent places of your site, your site visitors will be ‘confused’ and distracted from their main focus - your portfolio.
Have your say by commenting on this post
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Flirtatious
This post is GEArtBlog.com’s 100th Post! Yay!
Thanks all for the visit and support - hopefully I can improve my posting quality from now on
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Ecstatic
Many told me that graphic designers are slackers. They are often seen sitting around in the park doing nothing, they say.
I’ll say, whatever you think of graphic designers, we are one of the hardest working people in the world 
We are not only need talent and passion to be productive and successful, we also need creativity and inspiration. Those two are hard to come by, sometimes. We are also often find ourselves working for 2 days - 48 hours non-stop to work on a project.
Slackers don’t do that.
What’s your opinion?
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Mischievous
Designers who consider their work as the work of pure art might place money in lower priority than satisfaction, self-actualisation and peer’s positive review.
Some designers I know told me that money is distracting the fun and satisfying design works.
However, they admit that they need to master the balance between money and design - If they focused too much on money, they will lose passion in designing; If they focued too much on design, they will live in a bootstrapper world their entire life.
What’s your opinion?
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Happy
Are designers rich? Should designers be rich?
My answers - “Not all” to the first question, “YES, definitely!” to the second question.
If you are a designer and bootstrapping your life, there’s something wrong with the design industry!
Of course, some consider design as, well, design - it is to be enjoyed, not to be capitalised and monetised. However, in our capitalistic world, you have to admit that money rules - no matter how bad money is, it buys you more opportunities.
Designers have all the creativity and capability to make more money than most other industries, no matter whether you are a freelance designer, a design firm owner, or a designer reporting to a boss. Why? Because almost all things in the world is value added by design. Even your garbage plastic bags is a work of a product designer. You simply can’t escape design!
So, what’s holding your back in securing more opportunities in your life?
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Playful
I heard people claim, “Oh, my background is in graphic design… So I can design really well.”
Um, not a guarantee, I suppose.
What exactly makes you called ‘designer’? In my opinion, your portfolio speaks LOUDER than your background. Yes, background is nice, but knowing all the basics doesn’t mean you can design well.
Design is highly related to passion, creativity and skills - learning graphic design hone your skills, but not necessarily makes you a good designer. Many graphic designers I know has non-design related background, yet they produce better quality works than the ‘design-educated’ designer.
What saith you?
Current Mood: Flirtatious
You may be passionate about design, but are you happy with your job as a graphic designer?
Some people I know stuck to a situation where graphic design is more job and less fun. They said that as long as you make money out of graphic design, you’ll find ‘passion’ less relevant anymore.
That is a sad fact, but true. If you asked me about the situation, I’d answered ‘get out of your design job, get a new unrelated job, and consider the design as your hobby or interest only.
The point is, as long as you are passionate about what’s you are doing, being a design professional or graphic entrepreneur is very, very rewarding, both financially and creatively. If not, then stop doing design for money - perhaps doing so will give you a reality check to decide your next move.
Do you feel uncreative and live in boredom? Are you staring blank at your laptop screen and can’t do a single thing creative? You need to get fresh air - definitely!
Get out of your office or wherever you do your work, and do a little travel with whatever transportation mean you have - biking, driving car, motorcycling, walking, etc. Do sightseeing, explore the coutryside, or even sit on a bench in a park.
Something will jump out from your mind, somehow, eventually. When it comes, you’ll know that you are back on track and ready to put your creative juice into your work. Happy day!
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As a graphic designer, you need all the help to promote your service, while focusing on creating great design.
Perhaps you would like to consider to join an affiliate program, where you can manage your affiliates easily.
There are plenty of affiliate program manager available, but I would like to recommend E-junkie, for the ease of set up and straightforward affiliate management.
In my opinion, sharing your income with your affiliates is way much better than trying to hog all clients by yourself, which you can’t - you need as much help as possible.
Current Mood: Playful
“A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.” - David Ogilvy, advertising genius
‘Nuff said.
Effective advertising - that’s what most clients want. In essence, they want to sell more through their advertisement, regardless what you put in them.
On a more extreme case, flashy graphics are useless if the advertising you design can’t sell the advertised products well.
Current Mood: Cool
I’ve received quite a plenty offers from freelance graphic designer and design firms alike to create or redesign a logo for my websites.
They usually offer their services free of charge, but a request for me to create a link back to their business websites.
I think this is a good idea for a win-win situation, as surprisingly, logo works are often in less-than-acceptable quality. Logo is your business image, and need to be taken care of well.
For the designer, offering free logo for a link back that could say, “Logo by …” can only mean one thing - free advertising for you! This, in my opinion, one of the best guerrilla marketing tactics for graphic designers.
If you haven’t think about it, I encourage you to start offering free logo or design to good websites that you think need an improvement or two.
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Design showcase site like this one is potentially visited by many design enthusiasts.
Monetising the traffic appears to be the logical way to go. However, take heed of what you choose on monetisation methods.
The use of CPC ads, such as those of Google AdSense or Adbrite is not recommended. They are visually ‘annoying’ and will only break your site design, in my humble opinion.
Affiliate links with your custom-designed banners are much more appreciated. I recommend you to create your own, rather than taking other showcase site owners’ affiliate banners. This is to command uniqueness in your design, as well as enticing site visitors to view the banner design.
Last but not least - never, ever, use pop-up ads - this will definitely turn-off your visitors.
Current Mood: Happy
Balancing content and graphics in one site is challenging, and it is what make or break a web designer. Leaning toward one will leave the other weak.
Content-focused sites pros and cons
Content sites are those that focus heavily on content over graphics - some examples of this are Home Improvement and Cancer Signs.
Content sites major benefit is definitely their wealth of content, that cater both information-hungry visitors and search engines.
Information-hungry visitors that seek on the abundant text will enjoy the fast loading and text-rich content sites. The search engines fave text-rich content sites, resulting in a better ranking in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
The weakness of content-focused sites are obviously the lack of ‘visual break’ and eye candies - both purposed to help organise content, as well as give your eyes break - the idea is to make your site visitors comfortable.
Graphic-focused sites pros and cons
Will online printing do you good? In my opinion, yes.
As a graphic designer, you will always want to do all yourself, with a hope to safe money.
Business cards, cover letters and brochure printing can actually be done yourself.
If you are that kind of graphic designer, here’s an astonishing fact: DIY might cost more money than if you outsource your printing jobs to printing shops, especially those that are online!
Here’s why:
