6 Free Tools to Optimize Images and Improve Page Load Time

It’s 2010 and most Internet users have made the switch to broadband, right? Wrong, there’s still a large proportion of the web’s population chugging along with a good old dial-up connection. This is certainly a large enough segment of potential visitors you need to take into consideration when designing your website, especially when it comes to the loading time of your webpages.

The text on your pages will generally be loaded in a very short time – even on a dial-up connection. The guilty party, when it comes to a slow-loading page is mainly due to larger images. It’s therefore very important to implement a subtle balance between use of imagery, size, quality and loading time.

It needn’t be a huge chore to optimize images and make sure pages load in the least possible time. Using image editing software, you can remove any unnecessary information in your images, thus in effect reducing the file size – without affecting the image’s appearance.

If you don’t happen to own the latest copy of Adobe Photoshop or other similar image editing software, there are plenty of great, free alternatives online.

Gimp  is probably the most downloaded free alternative to photoshop, supporting the most common file types as well as special use formats. Gimp can be used for all types of processing and handling images.

Riot - Radical Image Optimization Tool – does a little bit more than some other compression software, including ‘in place comparison’, single or dual view, saving and optimizing Gif, Jpeg or Png with a simple user interface. Riot can be downloaded and has plugins available for Gimp and IrfanView.

If you’re using photoshop, saving an image as a Jpeg with a quality setting of 8 to 10 is good enough to preserve quality, while storing at a small file size.

A frequently used alternative is to save your image as a Gif file – image editing software trims away all the color information not relevant to your image, leaving you with the smallest file size possible. However, saving in Gif format will often compromise the appearance of your image.

Saving your image in Png format will result in the smallest file size and best quality.

There are also free tools that do the work for you.

SiteReportCard will compress any Gif, Jpeg or Png file with the click of a button, returning a variety of sizes and quality levels.

GifBot accepts uploads directly from your hard-drive, or enter a url and gifbot will return a list of all the images on that page. Results are displayed in Gif or Jpeg format.

Jpeg & Png Stripper is a downloadable app which, funnily enough, strips out any unnecessary metadata from Jpeg and Png files without any loss of quality.

Smush.it is no longer available as a standalone app, having been integrated with Yahoo!’s Yslow - a firefox addon requiring firebug installation – However, WP Smush.it is a plugin for WordPress, which runs every uploaded image through an optimization process, without any extra effort on your part.

It may take a little time to find the perfect balance between size, quality and page load times, experiment by saving to different formats and comparing quality and loading time. Your visitors will thank you when you get it right – especially those with a dial-up connection.

Free Wordpress Theme & A Happy New Year!

Just a quick post to wish you all the best for 2010! I hope you've been enjoying the holiday festivities and not working too hard ;0)

To celebrate the New Year, we'd like to give you a brand new Wordpress Theme to help enhance your blogging efforts...

The Theme 'Fabulus.001', courtesy of Fabulus Software, is a two column, fixed width, left sidebar template.

The theme comes in orange and white...

You can download Fabulus.001 here

All that's left to say is Happy New Year!

Cheers,

Steph.

Secrets of Effective Internet Marketing?

What are the secrets of effective internet marketing?

Since the dawn of the internet, entrepreneurs have been seeking the answer.

Truth is, there are no secrets – there; I’ve said it – There Are NO Secrets. Internet ‘gurus’ rely on hungry, would-be internet rock stars to keep searching – and spending.

How often have you responded to a promotion, desperate to get your hands on some new eBook, eCourse, dvd or software? But your credit card’s maxed out and you have to pass up the purchase. Now think about it, honestly, a few hours later (if not sooner), you’ve forgotten about this ‘missed opportunity’ to become richer than your wildest dreams and your business rolls on regardless.

Conversely, how many times have you jumped at a promotion, only to find your new acquisition isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and you really could have done without it – and you could have spent the cash more wisely?

There is however, an art to effective internet marketing - testing, tweaking, tracking, multi-platform promotion… None of which has anything to do with the traditional hype that surrounds internet marketing.

In order to closely monitor and re-evaluate your marketing efforts, a certain amount of technology must be introduced, in the form of tools and resources - auto responders, link tracking, blogs, training & support, affiliate tracking, web page authoring, statistics tracking...

Let’s take a look at the whys and wherefores of some of these tools…

• Auto responder – Capture emails, build a subscriber list, broadcast messages, follow-up messages. You’re not going to survive without a list of subscribers to build a relationship with, give massive value to and market to.
  

• Link Tracking – Track your ads to establish which ones produce the best results, weed out those ads that cost you money without producing any results.
  

• Blogs – Google loves blogs. Reach out to your target audience, encourage comments and interaction. Again providing valuable content your readers will love you for.
  

• Training – Could you fly a plane without being taught what all the instruments mean? Internet Marketing is just the same, you have to learn before you can do, but you don’t need the confusion caused by learning snippets from multiple sources, simultaneously.
  

• Support – Who’s your ‘go to guy’ when you get stuck? If you’re answer is nobody, you’re making things so much more difficult for yourself. Any problem you come across has been experienced by someone before you; prosper from other’s knowledge – don’t spend hours or days over something that could be solved with a quick question.
  

• Stats tracking – Do you know where your website visitors come from? Well, you should! Don’t waste your money or your efforts on anything that’s not working for you.
  

There’s a lot to learn and even more to do. Fast-track it whenever and wherever possible, but learn when Not to cut corners. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Do track everything you do. Do keep notes of strategies that work; and those that don’t. In short – don’t bang your head against a brick wall :0)

Being a Smart Marketer, you’ll realize that tools and resources don’t come cheap. The answer to the problem is to find all these tools under a single roof, with one low monthly cost.

If you want to know the resources I use to build all my businesses, you can check it out here. Your first 30 days is completely free – no credit card required and monthly fees start at just $9.

Accept PayPal Payments Without Creating a Button

With the explosion of Websites like Twitter and FaceBook, opportunities to sell products and services have also increased. You may be able to add a link, but you can't stick a paypal button in your Twitter feed,. So you link to a salespage where you've created, copied and pasted a paypal button. Is there an easier way? Funny you should ask...

PayItLink requires you to enter a minimum of information; your paypal email address, the product or service name/id and a price, with sixteen different currencies to choose from.

There's other times when a link could be more appropriate. Maybe you're selling access to an exclusive coaching club and you only want your payment details to go to certain qualified leads or you're making a special subscriber only offer, you outline the details in an email and insert a link that is directed straight to paypal.

Having entered your details, as above, just press Create a Pay It Link and you're presented with a link...

Go ahead and test it out, here's what ours looked like:

The only downside we can see, is you can't (at least not at the moment), insert re-direct instructions for a download, but as we've seen, this method is probably most useful for using on a small scale, which often requires a personal touch anyway.

Are there any other drawbacks you can see with PayItLink, or other useful applications for the service? Do you use PayItLink? Let us know about your experiences and comments below.

Check out PayItLink

Crop Pictures with a Free Online Tool

Cut My Pic is a very simple online tool that does what it says on the tin... 



Simple interface, simple instructions, simple operation.

To start, upload your pic...



We're going to cut my portrait, ready for christmas, lol.


 

 As you can see once uploaded, just drag the outline to cover the part of the picture you want to 'cut out' or keep.

There's only a couple of options to add effects to your pic - round the corners and add a drop shadow.

 
Now preview your cropped image.

Ok? Click Done. 

Download or use the provided form to send by email.

Okay, so CutMyPic has very limited application, but if you're short on processing power, it beats firing up photoshop just for a quick fix.

Check Out CutMyPic