Matt Doyle | Elated Communications
Web and WordPress Development
Website marketing tutorials, articles and tips. Learn how to increase your website traffic and make more money from your site.
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This website has been going, in one form or another, for the past 22 years. That’s really quite a long time, as websites go.
First there was The Elated Web Toolbox, built in 1997 with my jolly good friend and business partner Simon and packed with freebies for webmasters such as web templates, free images, and web design and Photoshop tips.
Gorgeous-looking social media posts. Super-slick webpages. Professional promo videos. They’re all essential for promoting your business these days.
But how can you produce all this great stuff? You can pay a creative pro to make them, of course. If you’re on a budget, though, the chances are you’ll be making them yourself!
However, if you’re not that creative, or you’re super-busy (and let’s be honest, have you ever met a small business owner that isn’t super-busy?), then it’s hard work to produce all this amazing content to promote your products and services.
That’s where Adobe Spark comes in! Spark is a set of free apps that make it ridiculously quick and easy to create awesome-looking content.
Want to know more about Spark? Keep reading! By the time you’ve finished this article, you’ll know exactly what Spark is, how it works, and how it can help you to promote your business.
[Read more…] about Adobe Spark Lets You Create Stunning Business Visuals in Minutes
Are you confused by all the techie language surrounding websites and online tools?
Maybe you’re baffled by bounce rates, dumfounded by DNS, horrified of .htaccess, or perplexed by PHP?
If so, I’ve put together this article just for you! It’s a nerd-to-English dictionary of common techie terms that online entrepreneurs have to deal with.
You’ll find a clear explanation of each term, and they’re all interlinked, so you can hop around the dictionary easily. I’ve also linked off to relevant websites where appropriate.
Once you’ve explored this dictionary, you’ll be chatting confidently with your web designer/developer and other techie types about your website and digital tools! You might also like to bookmark this page so you can refer to it in future.
I’m planning to update this dictionary regularly, so if there are any other terms you’d like explained, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll add them. 🙂
[Read more…] about The Entrepreneur’s Tech Dictionary: 88 Techie Terms Explained
Your email list is absolutely critical to your online business.
The bigger your list, the easier it is for you to sell your products and services. So it’s a great idea to grow your list quickly! One of the best ways to build your list is with an opt-in freebie.
When I say “opt-in freebie”, I’m talking about a free downloadable file — such as a useful PDF report, guide, eBook, or video — that acts as an incentive to get people to sign up to your list. Once someone becomes a subscriber, they automatically receive a link to download your freebie.
Hopefully you’ve thought of — or even made — a gorgeous freebie or two already! (If you haven’t, here are some great ideas.)
Once you have your freebie, the next step is to put it somewhere on the web so that your subscribers can download it. But this process can seem a little daunting. How exactly do you put your freebie up for download? And how do you link it up with your subscription process?
If you’re using MailChimp then I have some good news for you: You can do the whole thing in MailChimp. You don’t even need a website!
In this article I’ll show you exactly how to do it, in four simple steps. By the time you’ve worked through to the end, you’ll have uploaded your freebie to MailChimp; linked to it from your thank-you page and welcome email; and tested the whole thing to make sure it all works beautifully.
[Read more…] about Set Up Your Opt-In Freebie with MailChimp: A Step-by-Step Guide
Does the idea of selling eBooks online freak you out at all?
You know that eBooks can be a great source of passive income for your business. Perhaps you already have some awesome ideas for an eBook, or even have a finished eBook ready to sell.
But getting that eBook out there can seem daunting. How do you take online payments for the book? Do you need to set up a PayPal account? An internet merchant account? How do you keep people’s card details safe? How do you deal with accounting, tax, and credit card fraud issues? And once shoppers have paid for your book, how do you deliver it to them automatically?
So many headaches. And a few years ago, you would have had to deal with them all yourself. But not any more!
Thanks to amazing internet tools like Gumroad, you no longer have to worry about any of these issues. In fact, with Gumroad, you can make your eBook available for purchasing and downloading in just 30 minutes!
[Read more…] about Sell Your eBook on Gumroad: How to Do It in 30 Minutes
Would you like to know what your customers really think about you?
If someone has a bad time using your product or service, they might tell you about it. But often, they’ll tell their friends instead. Wouldn’t you love to be able to eavesdrop on those conversations, so you can find ways to improve your offering?
Or perhaps you’d like to know when people are saying good things about you. Then you could thank them directly, or maybe even invite them to write a testimonial or review about your products or services.
Gathering honest feedback about your business can be incredibly useful. But how do you find out where these people are talking, or what they’re saying? The internet is a big place!
Fortunately, there are some handy tools and tricks that can help you keep an ear to the ground — with very little effort. In this article, you’ll learn three easy ways to keep tabs on what your customers are saying about your business.
[Read more…] about What Are People Saying about Your Business? Here Are 3 Easy Ways to Find Out
You see them everywhere!
Posts on Facebook with lovely images and quotes that inspire you. Tweets with gorgeous photos that make you itching to share them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could easily create those images for your own social media posts?
Even better: What if you could create them for free, in just a couple of minutes?
Maybe you’re currently making your social media images using an image editor, such as Photoshop. If so, you’ve probably found the process to be fiddly and slow — and the learning curve to be steep.
If that’s the case, I’ve some great news for you. Using some fantastic, free tools — along with the tips and tricks you’ll discover in this article — you can effortlessly turn out social media posts with beautiful, captivating images that your audience will love to share.
The result? More fans, more audience engagement, and more traffic for you!
In this article you’ll discover inspiring ways to write quotes for your images. You’ll learn which image sizes each social network loves to use, and you’ll find out how to create a shareable image with text in just 30 seconds!
You’ll also learn how to use a free online tool to create amazing images that used to only be possible with Photoshop; and you’ll discover how to find fantastic free images online that are perfect for social media.
By the time you’ve finished reading, you’ll be a confident expert at making great-looking social media images!
[Read more…] about How to Make Gorgeous Social Media Images (Even If You’re Not a Photoshop Guru)
Dear readers and friends,
We’re delighted to announce that Elated is now part of the Smashing Network! This is an awesome collection of some of the best web design and development websites out there, and we’re honoured that Vitaly and the Smashing Magazine team have included us in the list. Thanks guys!
This means that our best content will now appear on Smashing’s curated network posts page, along with high-quality posts from the other sites in the network. You can also keep track of the best posts across the network via their network RSS feed. It’s well worth subscribing to this feed, as it’s full of fantastic web design and development articles.
This move will be a great way to introduce more readers to our content, and it will also ensure that we’re motivated to keep creating very high quality articles and tutorials for you here at Elated. So it’s all good!
Simon & Matt
Elated 🙂
Article marketing can be a great way to attract targeted traffic to your website, increase your sales and grow your online business. Although article marketing can be hard work, it can have a big effect on your traffic if you do it well.
In this tutorial you’ll discover how to get started with article marketing. You’ll find out exactly what article marketing is and why it works, and you’ll learn some useful tips for writing effective articles and getting them published.
Google Analytics is a great way to examine how well your online store is working. Once you’ve integrated Analytics with your store pages, you can access a huge range of useful reports. Many of these reports can give you a good indication of the success (or otherwise) of your store, and can help you to improve your store and increase sales.
In this article you learn why it’s important to measure your store’s performance, and how to install Google Analytics on your store and start collecting useful data. You then explore some vital metrics for measuring your store’s success, including conversion rate, bounce rate, goal funnels, and more.
[Read more…] about Measuring Your Online Store’s Success with Google Analytics