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How to make the most of your email marketing efforts

Unless you live under a rock, you would have heard all about email marketing being the go-to when it comes to nurturing potential buyers. Even in the vast world of Facebook, email marketing is still considered a superior option to getting to your buyers. Why? Because with email marketing, you control access to the people you are targeting. With the likes of Facebook, you are at the mercy of their diabolical algorithms which limit your reach to a maximum of 5% of your page likes, unless you pay for advertising.

Starting from scratch

If you’re just getting started with email marketing, and you haven’t even begun with it yet, I can highly recommend this article on how to build an email list by Jason Zook. He walks you through his vast experiences on building email lists, what works, what doesn’t, and how to do it in a way that doesn’t feel skeevy. Jason even briefly outlines his favourite email marketing companies.

If you’re just starting out, only need something straightforward, and are looking for cheap or free options, I personally recommend Mailchimp. It’s free for the first 2000 subscribers, and it’s been around a long time. Now the downside of it being free is that if you need customer support, you only have access to email support for 30 days, and then you have to rely on their documentation. If you aren’t tech savvy, the documentation can all feel a bit much. My favourite course for learning all things Mailchimp is Chimp Essentials by Paul Jarvis. Paul only opens the course up a couple of times a year, but it’s worth every penny. Video training means your eyes don’t glaze over like they do when you peruse Mailchimp’s training docs.

Alternative options for email marketing companies with free plans are:

There are many other companies that offer free plans. Here I’ve chosen three with a strong history, and offer the most features on their free plans.

So you’ve typed up an email…now what?

Test the design

Send yourself a test email (all good companies should offer this). Once you’ve received it, you can see where you need to fix up any styling issues. You might receive the email, and upon looking at it on mobile, find the text is too big, or something doesn’t line up right. This gives you the opportunity to go back to your email editor and fix it up before it goes out.

You may find that an image you’ve inserted is soooooo slow to load, because you uploaded one that is too big. When uploading an image, bear in mind that optimal email widths are no wider than 600px. Any wider than that, and they don’t fit neatly into email inboxes. So your images should be no wider than that, and if you’re only looking to make it half as wide as the email, no wider than 300px. You can resize your images before you upload them by using either a photo editor on your computer or mobile, or using an online option such as BeFunky or Image Resize.

After you’ve resized the image, you then want to compress that image down as much as possible so it will load fast in your recipient’s inbox. Image Resize also has a compression option, or alternatively, use my favourite, TinyPNG.

Ok, so now you have the email looking how you want, what’s the next step?

Test the content and the subject lines

The reason you want to test the content and the subject lines is for deliverability. You want to make sure you land in as many inboxes as possible. No one wants to spend all their time typing out an email just to have it land in the spam folder and never get opened.

Testing your whole email with Mail Tester

Send your mail to Mail Tester. On the site you’re given an email address to send it to. You want to send a test email to that email address, wait a couple of minutes, and then click the “Then Check Your Score” button on the site. Mail Tester will give you feedback on what’s good, and what sucks.

Testing your email subject lines

It’s a good idea to test your subject lines separately to the overall content because that is the first thing people take notice of when your email arrives in their inbox.

Try the Net Altantic Email Subject Line Grader. I like this one because you don’t have to sign up for anything, so you get immediate results. To test it out, I tried the subject line Find out how you can take advantage of this month’s beauty offer, and this is what the results looked like:

Subject line results of a test of Net Altantics email grader

Results of a subject line word count test

Results of an email grade for word mixture and balance

Alternatively, try CoSchedule’s Email Subject Line Tester. You do need to sign up to get the results on this one, but CoSchedule has been around a long time when it comes to content marketing, and is highly regarded. For the sake of showing you how the two compared, I signed up myself, and these are the results I got for the same subject line:

result of testing a subject line on the CoSchedule tester

Quality of words used in the CoSchedule email subject line tester

The results of CoSchedule testing an email subject line for sentence structure

Coschedule's email subject tester takes into account word, character and emoji counts

CoSchedule’s tester shows quite a different result to that of the Net Atlantic option, and offers some different ideas. Next to the results for “Words that Increase Opens” and “Words that Decrease Opens” there is an option to see their ‘Word Bank’ of good and bad words to use. It’s a good idea to click on these and download the lists so you have them handy.

As you can see it is worth testing with both subject line testers to maximise your subject line results.

Once you’ve got your email to a point you’re happy with it, schedule it to be sent off!

Monitoring results and using that to improve your future content

Analytics

Once your emails have been out for a few days, your email marketing provider should offer you analytics on the performance of your email. You’ll have access to information regarding open rates, and click through rates (where they click on a link in your email, and which one they clicked). You’ll also get information regarding those that don’t open your emails, demographics, location, people that buy a product from a link in your email, etc.

All of this information can be used to improve the targeting of your emails. For instance, if you’re running a promotion, and you notice a large group of people didn’t open your initial email, you might want to try a follow up to those people with a different subject heading.

Automations

You can set up automations that send follow-up emails based on whether someone opens your email, or clicks a link. With automations, it is normal to see a drop off in open rates throughout an automation sequence, but tweaking your subject lines and content over time will enable you to test and improve your results. If you see a large number of people unsubscribe after a particular email in a sequence, then you know it doesn’t resonate!

By analysing the open rates on your emails, you can get a feel for the type of subject lines that work well for your email list, and those that are less successful. In doing so you can improve your subject lines to improve your open rates. By watching your click-through rates, you get an idea of whether your content appeals to your recipients enough to take action.

A/B Testing

When you have a large enough list, you can try A/B testing. This is where you create two or three different subject lines for the same email to see what gets the best open rates, test different email content with the same subject lines to test click through rates, or even test different sending times to see when your recipients are most likely to open your emails. Your email marketing provider splits your list up into groups to receive different content, based on what you’re testing. You can then compare the results to see what works and what doesn’t.

Find out more about writing good emails

You might have tried the testers above, and you aren’t happy with your results. You may also feel stuck for ideas on how to improve things. The great news is, plenty of marketing companies have done the hard yards when it comes to email subject lines, and here are a few links to get you started:

Improve your email subject line – Hubspot
100 Email Subject Lines We Actually Clicked – Hubspot
37 Tips for Writing Emails That Get Opened, Read, and Clicked – Copyblogger
The Best Email Subject Lines – Sumo

Fotojet–an alternative to Canva or PicMonkey

I was recently (OK, a couple of months ago *cough*) asked to review Fotojet, an online graphic design and photo editing platform that is similar to Canva and PicMonkey. I’m all about finding stuff I can refer others on, so I was more than happy to take a look.

Full disclaimer: while I was asked to review Fotojet, I wasn’t given anything in return, other than a temporary Fotojet Plus account so I could click around and look at all the features without restriction.

Getting Started

If you’re familiar with either Canva or PicMonkey, you won’t have any problems navigating around Fotojet. The layout is very similar to both platforms, and the basic features are also comparable.

It’s really simple to start a new project. On the homepage of Fotojet, you are immediately given the option to create a design, collage or edit a photo. If you are just using the free version, then click on one of the buttons to get started. If you have the premium account, log in at the top of the page first.

Fotojet Home page — The Fotojet makes it super simple to start a project, with links in the navigation and also huge buttons above the fold, which you can’t miss.

The Design Screen

The first part of the Design section is choosing the type of project you want to create. Popular items are placed at the top of the page for quick selection, with categories below. The categories are:

Marketing – for flyers, business cards, logos, posters and Facebook ads
Social media headers – for Youtube, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr and Email newsletters
Social media posts – for Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest
Events – for invitations and cards
Magazine cover

Fotojet Design Templates — Placing the most popular design options at the top of the page means less time scrolling, and more time being productive.

Once you are in the design screen you have a choice of templates you can start with, or you can create from scratch. There are a number of free templates, and premium templates are marked with a crown symbol (similar to PicMonkey’s icon).

You can add photos from your computer, from your Facebook account, or you can use the Pixabay search feature, which gives you access to more than 580,000 images.

Like Canva, you can choose from Headings, Subheadings and Body text, which autopopulates a default font. Once your text box is added to your project, the editing feature pops up. There are a number of fonts to choose from in the free version, and again, premium fonts are marked with a crown icon. You can edit the colours, size, etc, and you can also move the text up and down layers, change the opacity, and give the text an outline or glow. You will also see that there are some text templates that have already had these features applied. I personally wasn’t a fan of the template options available in that regard, and preferred to tinker with the text on my own terms.

There is an assortment of clipart options available, along with a search function to look through 93,000 clipart files online. The in-built clipart images are grouped by category, and then by free and premium. The effects enable you to change the colour of the clipart files, along with opacity. You can also flip the layer, copy it, and move the layer back and forth, the same as you can with your photos.

Finally, backgrounds are a simple matter of clicking on them to apply the pattern or colour. You also have the option to create your own gradients or colours if the default options don’t work for you.

Once your design is finished you can save the file to your computer as a JPG or PNG, share it straight to social media, or print it. To save the project to Fotojet for later use, you need to upgrade to a premium account, which is a downside from Canva’s free option. This means that if you want to jump from one design to another, you need to finish your current design first, download or share it, and then move to your next project.

Designing Collages

I was pretty impressed with the Collage options. Not because of the choice of templates, but because of the style of them. With the exception of the comic book and fun photo options, nearly every template incorporated clean design, and modern design features. The template thumbnails show images, but when you load the template those images aren’t there. The thumbnails merely give you an idea of what the potential is for that template.

Designing a collage in Fotojet — Collage templates make it simple to add a photo and make simple changes to achieve a killer, modern look. At the same time, you’re not limited to the layers provided. Add more photos, clipart or text to really customise your project.

You can switch between templates, and you have the option to keep your photos as you move around templates. This saves you from having to reimport those images with every template change. As with the design screen, you have the option to add photos, text, clipart and backgrounds by clicking on the tabs on the left hand side of the page.

Photo editing is a breeze

Photo editing is really easy with Fotojet. With a choice of basic options in the free version, you can quickly crop, resize, adjust the colour and exposure. There are built in effects that you can immediately apply, and a myriad of options for overlays, frames, text and clipart. You can also adjust the amount of the effect, so you can soften it if you want it to be less apparent. And of course, there are premium features that are worth upgrading for, including adjusting the focus, adding or reducing noise, vignette and a sharpen tool.

Editing photos with Photojet — This is probably my favourite feature of Fotojet. Quickly jazz up your photos in seconds with in-built options, and if you want more control, you can make manual adjustments.

In a matter of a couple of minutes I was able to change a simple photo of a cat to something that artistic, simply by using the in-bult textures in the premium version.

Fotojet photo editing has some really cool features — No lie, the ‘after’ image literally talk me a couple of minutes to produce – much quicker than doing it in Photoshop

Using Support to get a handle on everything

Fotojet has done a pretty good job of providing support articles to help you navigate around its platform.

You can also access the help docs when you are using Fotojet by clicking on the gear icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.

How to find Fotojet Support — If you need to access the help documents while you’re in the middle of designing something, the gear icon has you covered.

Free vs Fotojet Plus

With the free version you are restricted to the default sizes available when you choose your project option. You need Fotojet Plus if you want to create a custom size project.

With a Fotojet’s Plus account you can save and load projects from your computer. This means you can’t access your projects if you are on a different computer. This differs from Canva, where the projects are saved in their system, which means that you can access those projects anywhere, from any computer. It’s a small, but important difference for people who rely solely on cloud-based software.

Fotojet Plus also entitles you to have access to hundreds more templates and resources, priority support, and you won’t have to view ads.

Price Comparisons

The key thing about Fotojet Plus is that it’s cheaper than Canva or PicMonkey. So if you’re on a budget, check out Fotojet first!

Pricing for Fotojet Plus

Billed annually, you will pay $US34.99 ($2.91/month)
Billed monthly, you will pay $US4.99/month

Pricing for PicMonkey Premium

Billed annually, you will pay $US47.88 ($3.99/month)
Billed monthly, you will pay $US7.99/month

Pricing for Canva for Work

Billed annually, you will pay $US119.49 (US9.95/month)
Billed monthly, you will pay $US12.95/month

I would say that in terms of premium features, Fotojet is closer to PicMonkey than Canva. FotoJet has a very similar feel to PicMonkey, and the one thing that currently stands out is PicMonkey’s ability to use fonts from your computer. PicMonkey Premium (and the next level Supremium) enable you to save your projects in their “hub”, rather than saving the project files on your computer, like you have to with Fotojet. With PicMonkey, you need to have an account if you want to export or save anything, whereas Fotojet conveniently lets you use the free version without creating an account.

Canva has a few additional features that make it a little more superior, such as the ability to make multi-page documents for e-books that can be exported to PDF. Canva for Work enables you to set up your branding to use across the board, including uploading your custom fonts and logos. It also has the capacity for team sharing–which is key if you have a small team, ability to create image folders, and magically resize your templates to save time creating a new image for every social media platform.

If you are designing simple social media images or quickly editing photos, then Fotojet is a fantastic option to start with. With its ability to create images and save or export them without creating an account, the free option is a great starting point. Fotojet Plus takes you to the next level with a cheaper price point than PicMonkey, which makes it the ideal option for those who are on a tight budget, or who despair over currency conversions from the US Dollar.

What to Prepare for Your Website Design Project

HOW YOU PREPARE FOR YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN PROJECT WILL DETERMINE HOW SMOOTH THE PROCESS IS

Before your website design project can begin, a number of things need to be in place. It may seem obvious to you, but believe me when I say that some people get completely lost beyond knowing that they need a website for their business. Below I outline the critical things you need to get started. Having these in place will make the design and development process run smoothly, and will prevent hold ups that have the potential to cost you more money in the long run (many website developers will charge a “restart” fee to book you back into their calendar if you are running behind schedule and they have to push you back).

At the bottom of this file is a checklist, so you can check off your website design project “to-dos” as you get everything organised.

THE DOMAIN

Your domain is the address of your website, or the URL. It is an important piece of real estate, because a difficult domain will make it hard for people to remember and type in. Likewise, it needs to reflect your business. Is your business focused around your name, or are you running a business that has the potential to grow into a full team? There are few things to consider when deciding on the domain name. Traditionally, a .com was considered the key to the end of a domain, but now .co and .net addresses are commonly used when a .com is either not available or is excessively expensive. It is also important to consider if your business is local to your area, or whether your business is likely to be more national or international. If you live in New Zealand, for example, and service the local area, a .co.nz or .nz domain is far more appropriate.

There are thousands of websites that offer domains, and the two that I usually use are Namecheap or GoDaddy, both of which offer domains at a reasonable price. When purchasing a domain, it is a good idea to find a site that will allow you to purchase in your own currency, because purchasing in US Dollars can add quite a bit to the bill after the currency is converted. GoDaddy, for example has a website for nearly every country, so you can get accurate pricing.

HOSTING

Next up is hosting. Some people buy a domain and then completely forget about the hosting. Think of the domain as the address, and the hosting as the house that sits on the property. The house (hosting) holds all of the important information and is what people see when they visit the address (domain).

So you must purchase hosting for your website design project. Some people find it easier to keep their domain and hosting within a single provider, so that they don’t get so confused. Often you can purchase your hosting and get your domain for free for the first year, which can save you $20 or so. Most hosting providers will also give you a heavy discount for your first year, which is great if you are just getting started and are tight on cash flow.

It’s not as simple as just picking any company to go with. Some hosts, while providing unlimited storage and bandwidth, which will seem like a bargain at face value, will actually be detrimental to your business, because their servers are slow. Slow servers = slow website. And no one has time for a slow website! The slower your website, the more likely someone is to get frustrated (especially on mobile, which most users are on these days), and just go elsewhere. The bigger your website, the more resources it will use to load, and that will slow it down further.

I personally recommend, and use, Siteground (referral link) for self-hosted WordPress websites. I have switched a few of my clients to Siteground after using other companies (such as Bluehost!), and their website loading times have dropped by half. By half. One of my clients was using cloud hosting on a different company, which is supposed to be faster than shared hosting, and Siteground’s shared hosting blew them out of the water. This is due to their SSD servers, which respond to the initial request quickly, and deliver the content really fast. For a brand new website design project most people can get away with their StartUp plan with no problems. Forget the size and bandwidth – 10GB is a lot of space for a brand new website, as is 10,000 visits per month. If you are concerned about it, The GrowBig plan is ample, and also has the added benefit of their SuperCacher, which will help your site run even faster.

If you are eyeing up using Squarespace, carefully think about the long game for your website. It is better to think about your growth strategy so that you can get your website right the first time around, rather than having to re-do your whole site later on, or use a number of external companies to do what you want. Make sure that Squarespace is going to offer everything you will need.

Squarespace (at time of writing) is good for sites with simple needs, and can also do e-commerce. If you are planning on building a membership site Squarespace limits you to using Memberspace or an external provider such as Teachable or Memberful. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, aside from being quite a bit more expensive than what you are likely to spend on a WordPress plugin.

THE CONTENT

Great, so now you have your domain and hosting, it is time to think about what you need on your website. If you haven’t thought about a theme for the design, don’t worry, that is what your designer and/or developer is for. Your primary concern is to think about what you want your website to say and convey.

What do you want your website to do? Why?

If you have multiple products or services to offer, which is your primary product? If someone is not ready to purchase that service or product, what do you want them to do instead? Do you want them to sign up to your list? Do you want them to reach out for further information?

Who are you targeting?

Men? Women? Teens? Mothers? The demographics play a part in what colours should be used on your site, and how the design should flow. For instance, men are more likely to favour strong colours and favour blues, whereas more feminine women will respond strongly to softer colours. Teens may favour a “fun” website design over something that will appeal more to a businessperson.

How many pages do you need?

At the very least you can expect to have a home page, a contact page, an about page, most likely a sales page for your primary product, and maybe a blog page. You may also want a separate opt-in page. Make sure you know exactly what you want, because this will factor in your overall cost. Suddenly realising you need a couple of extra pages part way through your project is going to add a significant amount to your budget.

What images do you need?

Book that photographer if you are using images of yourself, and allow plenty of time in advance for these to be edited prior to your website design project being started. The majority of designers/developers will ask for your content up front. If you are using stock photography, do some research on which images you want and consult with your designer with what is appropriate for the site. Purchase those images in advance, or if the option is available, arrange for your designer to purchase them as part of your package.

What copy do you need on each page?

Say what? By copy I mean text. How short or long your text is will help determine the overall design of each page. Designing a web page without the copy is difficult, because if the text doesn’t fit in the designated area, then the page has to be redesigned to fit it all. So have the copy written and finalised first. If you aren’t sure how to convey what you want to say, a copywriter is your best investment. It is better to have a very simple website with well-written copy, than it is to have a fancy-schmancy website that says nothing.

CHECKLIST

Use this quick checklist to make sure you have everything ready for your website design project.

Purchase domain
Purchase website hosting
Organise content
- How many pages?
  - Home page
  - Sales page
  - Opt-in page
  - About page
  - Contact page
- What needs to be on each page?
  - What images do you need on each page?
    - Images purchased or photography session completed.
  - What copy do you need on each page?
    - Copy written or copywriter booked.

Download a PDF copy with clickable list

Apps and Websites That Help you Decrease Distractions and Increase Productivity

Updated 28 December 2016

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.
Douglas Adams

With all the emails, constant social media updates, and news updates available at our fingertips today, it’s no wonder we get distracted so easily. Not to mention “shiny new object syndrome” that has us looking for the latest and greatest items via Google, or checking out some new course that our peers and colleagues have splurged out on. Suddenly, a quick search for something online becomes a vortex of lost time and productivity. Ten minutes turns into two hours, and before you know your coffee is cold, it’s break time, and you’ve achieved stuff all.

I’ve spent some time hunting down apps to combat the vortex, and help you win back your time and increase your productivity. I’ve taken my favourite apps and explored alternative options. There are hundreds, or even thousands of productivity apps out there, but you could waste days looking at them all, so I have kept the numbers small.

Blocking apps

Whether you are easily distracted and need some help getting your act together, or you need to block your kids from certain websites so they get their homework completed, there are some fantastic blocking apps out there.

You can set these apps up to permanently block certain websites, or you can set them up to block them during certain times. For instance, if you work from home, and you need to keep off Facebook between 9 a.m.- 12 p.m., and 1 p.m.-5 p.m. during your work days, you can use these apps to block your access.

You can add an extension to your browser, or you can download a desktop app.

Google Chrome extension

Stay Focused

Firefox Extension

Leechblock

Desktop app

Cold Turkey – The free version of Cold Turkey enables you to set up blocking for three days at a time. You can set up multiple blocking groups, set a timer and block websites.

Cold Turkey also has a premium, paid version for $US14.99. The premium version will enable you to block desktop apps – handy for keeping family members off excessive gaming, setup unlimited blocking, and also scheduling. At the time of writing, this price also entitles you to a copy of Forcedraft Pro (Forcedraft is mentioned further down).

Pomodoro technique

The Pomodoro technique is a great technique for anyone that can only focus for short periods of time, and is widely popular. Designed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, the idea is that frequent breaks help maintain mental agility. You commit to a 25 minute work period, and then have a five minute break. Then you repeat this three more times. After the fourth 25 minute work block, you take a “long” break of 10 minutes.

Obviously, if you only have a short task to complete, or you only have 15 minutes to fill before a meeting, then the Pomodoro Technique won’t work for you. But for longer tasks you need to focus on, it can give you a goal to aim for.

To make it easy, a number of sites have been created to track the time, and alert you when the time period is up. My favourite is Tomatoes.

If you want to set your work periods different, you might want to consider Moosti. Moosti is based on the concept of the Pomodoro technique, but enables you to set your work periods for 10-60 minutes of time, short breaks for 3-5 minutes and your long breaks 10-30 mins of time. This allows more flexibility, and is good for those shorter tasks. It is available in the browser, or you can add it as a Chrome extension.

Time Trackers

If you don’t know how much time you are wasting during the day, and you need to get a better handle on it, you can track your activities with free apps. These are also good if you need a free way to track time you spend working on client work.

Toggl is simple to use. There are also mobile apps so you can track time on the go. This one is ideal if you need to track time spent on client work. You can organise your time with projects or tags, and good reporting is included in the free account. Toggl is already designed for basic project management and teamwork in its own right, but integrates with your 92 of your favourite apps, such as Asana, Basecamp, Trello, and even enables you to track time spent on client emails in Gmail. Need integration with something that isn’t in their list? They integrate with Zapier to increase your options. If you want more features in your reporting (such as project time estimates), and the option to mark whether or not your time tracking is billable or non-billable, there are paid upgrades starting at $US10/month/user.

Tracking Time is available for the Chrome browser—using the app launcher on your desktop, for OS X and iOS, and Android. Tracking Time has a free option for teams up to 3 people that includes integrations, project management and timesheet reports. Paid options start at $US4.99/month/user, which allows custom reports, addition of notes to time entries, project duplication, and deadline syncing with your calendar. This one is ideal for team collaboration and project management, and you can also add your to-do list for time tracking, and even go so far as adding client information.

Time Doctor starts off with a fully featured 30 day trial, so you can see if you need all of their paid features. After that, if you don’t choose a plan, you are placed on their free, limited feature plan, which enables you to access their desktop app, but not their web dashboard with all of the reporting and statistics. For $US5/month (solo user) you have access to extensive reporting, ability to have screenshot monitoring to verify time logged for clients, 27 integrations (including Trello, Asana, Slack Basecamp, Github, Quickbooks, just to name a few!), client login so they can track the work, and even a popup that can tell you when you’re wasting time on unproductive activities.

Writing apps

Do you need to get a chapter of your book written? Or do you need to sit down and really just type your blog post without other distractions? Forcedraft is your answer.

Forcedraft is a simple, no-frills text writer that allows you to set up a minimum amount of time, or minimum number of words that must be completed before you can exit that app. It then blocks your access to everything else on your computer until you complete your goal. Once your goal is complete you can move on to your next task, or open it in another word editor for styling. There are no editing capabilities, so you can’t fluff around with formatting as an excuse to procrastinate, and it saves every 20 seconds so you don’t have to worry about losing your work.

Since you can’t access anything else on your computer while using Forcedraft, you need to make sure that any notes you need are accessible offline, or on another system.

Even better, it runs on a standalone .exe file, which is smaller than 1MB. So you could you can put it on a Flash Drive and use it on any computer you happen to be using.

I will admit, I used this to complete the content for some of my website, and it was because of Forcedraft that I finally completed my About page.

If you can’t stand the thought of losing that much control, you can also just set it up to run until you tell Forcedraft you’re finished.

With that in mind, if you do need more control, you can also try ZenPen. ZenPen is a simple website with limited editing features (bold, italics, quote and hyperlinking). On the site you just delete the text off the page and start working. You can save your work when you’re finished. To make it full screen, tap F11 in your browser. When you want to exit full screen mode again, tap F11 again. There is also an icon to expand the browser to full screen. You can set a target word count so you can track your progress.

Ambient Sounds

A peer-reviewed study by the University of Chicago revealed that a moderate level of ambient noise (70dB), can actually boost creative cognition.

From a personal standpoint, I can tell you that this does actually work. If for no reason other than to drown out background noise that IS distracting.

Coffitivity is one of the most popular websites out there, offers three ambient sounds, with the option to go premium for three more. It is also has Android and iOS apps. This is generally my port of call when I want ambient noise.

Noisli has a more comprehensive choice of sounds that you can choose from at your leisure, using one, or combining more than one for your ideal sound. You can also click on the “Random”, “Productivity” or “Relax” buttons for preset sounds. Noisli also has an app for iOS.

58 Free Resources for Stock Photos and Graphics

Updated 1 September 2021 – I’ve done a clean up of old broken links and those that have gone in a different directions. I have also added a few new links.

Regularly finding stock photos and items for creative projects that don’t require a money tree can be a right pain in the butt. Yes, people deserve to be paid for the photos they take, or the graphics they create, there are no arguments there. Unfortunately for most people, buying images and graphic design items regularly can become a financial headache. We all need a free boost up from time to time.

Thankfully, thousands of generous souls provide their stuff for free. While there are many more options out there, aside from the list below, I’ve included a number of my favourite places for finding content. This list contains websites where the content is available for both personal and commercial use – an important distinction if you are using content for clients, as well as yourself.

Where required, I have mentioned the sites where the stock photos and other items require attribution. That is, whenever you use their items, you must put a link back to the place you got the item from. This is how people receive recognition for their work. For the remaining sites, while attribution is not required, it is polite to acknowledge their generosity by linking back.

Stock photos

Snapwire Snaps – hasn’t been updated in three years. Photos taken from around the world.
Get Refe
New Old Stock – free vintage photos.
Unsplash
Albumarium – free with proper attribution.
Pixabay – images, vectors and illustrations. Requires signup.
Startup Stock Photos – a small collection of startup business stock photos.
Magdeleine – attribution required.
Gratisography – some good photos, and some…erm, odd ones
Stocksnap.io
Split Shire – this site also contains a collection of free stock video clips
Life of Pix – a collection of pics from around the world
Finda – for searching images across multiple sites. Check attribution on photos.
Foodies Feed – free food stock images. Every image on the site is good quality, so well worth checking out.
Pexels
Free Nature Stock – exactly what it says it is. Also has a small collection of free stock nature videos.
Free Range Stock – requires membership. Be careful when looking at the search results, as there are premium stock photos included above the free ones, and you will be redirected to another website if you click on them. Also, where the button says “Next Page”, instead of clicking on that, scroll down further to reach the pagination, otherwise you get an iStock popup.
Iso Republic
Jay Mantri
Je Shoots
Burst – Hosted by Shopify. Credit not required, but appreciated!
Foca Stock
Move East – Photos taken from locations around East Asia. Hasn’t been updated for a few years.
Photo Everywhere – attribution required. Photos from around the world.
Picjumbo
Pickup Image
Skitter Photo
RGB Stock
Stok Pic
Kaboom Pics – Attribution is not required, but is appreciated. Turning your ad blocker off is also appreciated, as it helps cover their costs for hosting the site.
The Stocks – The Stocks is a website that has many of the above image links (plus many others I haven’t listed on the site) built into it, so you can access photos, mockups and other visuals from within one area
Negative Space
PikWizard
Nappy – White people are over-represented in most stock photography websites. Nappy is a new site which seeks to correct this by offering high quality images of black and brown people.
Reshot – high quality images, which are displayed in a lazy loading gallery on the home page. Run a search for the images you’re interested in! Also contains vector images and SVGs
Freestocks.org – a small collection of high quality images, curated by a team of three photographers (and occasional friends). These photographers take the photos in their spare time and kindly share them with the world for us to use with no restriction.
Styled Stock – free styled stock photography featuring flat lays, beauty, fashion, lifestyle and more. Styled stock photography is popular with female entrepreneurs, but can get expensive if you’re on a tight budget, so take advantage of these ones! Attribution is appreciated, but not necessary.
RawPixel – free public domain vintage images and illustrations. Can also search for free images on the site. You will need to sign up for an account.
Vecteezy – contains a range of images and vector files that can be used with attribution. It is possible to buy a license for each item to remove the need for attribution.
Free Stock Photos by Canva – millions of images curated by Canva. Make sure to set the filter on the results to “free”, because it defaults to “free and premium”.

Other

Graph Berry – free PSD templates, mockups, UI kits and icons.
Freebies Bug – free fonts, stock photos, PSD templates, WordPress themes (bear in mind that free themes usually don’t have any support), Illustrator files, Sketch files, website codes and plugins.
Freepik – free vectors, PSDs, Illustrator files, images, etc. Have their own exclusive content (marked Freepik), and link to other sites that may require signup and/or attribution.
Vector Portal – free vectors, templates, logo objects and more. Check attribution for each one.
Pixeden – free mockups, textures, icons and vectors
Dry Icons – free vectors and icons. Attribution is required, or attribution-free items can be purchased for a small fee.
iconmonstr – high quality icons for personal and commercial use (see license terms for full conditions)
Creative Market – Each week Creative Market has a list of six freebies you can download for the week, including fonts, images, vectors, PSD templates, website templates, etc.
Flat Icon – free vector icons, icon fonts and PSD/Illustrator/After Effects plugin.
Texture Zoom – free textures for enhancing photos, etc.
Wow Patterns – free for personal use. Commercial use can be used with attribution, or purchased for a fee
Undraw – illustrations of people and other categories. Contains on the fly colour modification to match your brand before downloading.
Heroicons – Free SVG icons by the makers of TailWind CSS Graphics/Image Editing

Graphics/Image editing

Canva
Picmonkey
Fotojet offers a more affordable price point to Canva and PicMonkey, with comparable features
GIMP – free open source image editor. Like Photoshop, but with a few less features. There is a lot of help documentation available to navigate this software.
Inkscape – the free equivalent of Illustrator.
Photopea – an online alternative to Photoshop, with lots of features and the ability to open PSD, AI, PDF and .sketch files, along with normal image file formats

Five Fantastic Sites for Getting Cheap Creative Deals

Being a creative individual can be a costly exercise when it comes to sourcing content for projects. Sure, you could sit there and painfully spend your precious time creating your own, or you can take the easy route and pay for it.

Here are five fantastic sites to get cheap creative deals.

1. Design Cuts

Design Cuts is my go-to site for creative deals. Every couple of weeks they put out a new deal, and they always smash it out of the park. My love for their deals has earned me the right to be a ‘Design Ambassador’ (that’s the short way of saying I buy enough of their deals to qualify for extra freebies). Whenever they release a deal they run a couple of tutorials to show you how you could utilise some of the items in the bundle, and create a freebie pack with those items, so you can follow the tutorials.

They have been operating for a year and are currently having a birthday celebration by opening up all of the previous deals a second time. Make sure to check them out HERE

2. Creative Market

You can get a lot of different things on Creative Market, including photos, graphics, templates, themes and fonts, all at very reasonable prices. Each week they release several freebies for the week, and they never disappoint. Well worth signing up to their newsletter and/or Facebook page so you don’t miss out on the details.

3. Deal Jumbo

Deal Jumbo offers several bundles at a time, all of which save you a lot of money on buying the items separately, and they have a Freebies page with PSD mockups, backgrounds, icons and templates.

4. Mighty Deals

Mighty Deals is another site offering bundled packages, and they currently have some awesome typography packs available for purchase (and we all know how expensive nice fonts can get!). They also have discounted courses available for learning web and graphic design.

5. Inky Deals

This is one site that I have just discovered today. Like Mighty Deals, they have several bundles available at one time, and a page of Freebies. From a visual perspective it isn’t compelling as the other sites, but really, who cares when you can save yourself time and money with the deals they have available?

The Mighty Deals and Creative Market links are affiliate links. That means that if you buy something on their site after clicking their links above, I’ll get a small kickback for sending you their way. If you don’t want to use the affiliate link, you can simply go to these alternative links and my affiliate reference won’t be attached:Mighty Deals Homepage | Creative Market

Why You Shouldn’t Source Your Images From Google Images

A common question I get asked is

Is it OK to use Google Images to find images for my blog posts?

In short, no it isn’t.

It can be really hard to find the original source of an image, and you don’t want to find yourself using a copyrighted image without proper permission. If you do, you put yourself at risk of legal action. For a genuine blog, you want to keep your reputation intact.

While browsing DesignSponge.com, I came across this awesome flowchart about image sourcing:

Clicking on the image above will take you to the original source Design for Mankind

Just as an example, I did a search for sunflowers on Google Images:

Naturally there are a gazillion results on Google, so I picked the second one, as I have indicated with the red box.

I then dragged that image up into the search box to look for all of the image results for that particular image. The idea with this is to try and search for the original source of that image. I then selected “All sizes” to get all of the results.

As you can see from this, the chances of finding the original image were pretty remote.

So then I turned to this wonderful reverse image search site called Tineye and put the url of the image into their search box. You can also upload an image from your computer and they will search for that image online.

The results show me that the best match for the original image source, is Getty Images, a paid image site:

Getty Images states that this photo is rights-managed, meaning it has usage restrictions. It also means that it depends on what you are using this image for as to what you will be charged for it. The image author is listed as Photo Researchers. Photo Researchers Inc can be found on Science Source Images, where you can also purchase the same image under the same rights management.

Sounds alright so far, doesn’t it? Image found, you know where it can be purchased from, you know what you can use it for.

It’s not quite that simple. Searching further, I found that this image is available for free on several other sites. Some sites claim that the site is freely usable with attribution (meaning that you give the author of the image credit). Other sites have it as a free downloadable wallpaper image with no attribution.

So the questions are:

Do you spend a fair amount of money for your right to use that image?
Do you believe the free sites that claim this image is free for use?
Do you take the risk that you won’t be penalised for using this image, given that thousands of other sites are using it (and I highly doubt most of those paid for the image)?

Well, I refer you to the Design for Mankind flowchart at the top of the page to make your decision.

And my opinion is that you should go to a stock photo site of some description and spend a couple of bucks to buy a similar image. Because you may never find the original source of the image that you really liked. So why take the risk by pinching it off another site that is using it?

Alternatively you can sign up for my free image resource at the top of the page and get a list of all of my favourite resources for free images that won’t put you up shit creek without a paddle. These are sites that I have personally used.

One last thing, if you do download images that require attribution, I recommend that after saving the image to your computer, you do the following:

Right click on the image
Choose Properties
Choose the Details tab
In that tab, save all of the attribution details that you need to have for when you use the image. Save the author, web address – anything you need to use the image.

Often, if you download from a genuine site, they will usually have these details included in the image file. But it is always a good idea to check. This way if you are saving the image for later, you aren’t going to have a problem remembering where it came from when you need that information.