WordPlay I Make Your Own Avatars and Clip Art

When you’re creating written content for yourself, it’s pretty easy. It can get hard, though, when you undertake content writing for other people, for other websites or blogs. Writing for someone other than yourself can make you a freelancer, a copywriter, or a ghost writer, or all three of them at the same time. It can also make you just a guest author, which is what I am today and I’m going to tell you how I tend to proceed.

Research about the Subject at Hand
Most of the time, I’m invited to write an article or two. I usually decline if I know nothing about the subject or if it’s going to take me more than a day to research it. On the other hand, if I find the subject interesting, whether it’s for a specific niche or not, I’ll usually go out of my way to create something unique and informative, regardless of how long it takes me to do the research.

Most of what I do is ghostwriting, which means my name and links to anything I do are not attached to the article at all. I’ve written articles for small fees and sometimes for free because it’s someone I know. I prefer guest articles because then I can get a link back, which is usually worth more than any fee.

How to Research
It’s hard to describe, so I’ll use an article about an old movie as an example. The first thing I would do, if I hadn’t seen it, would be to watch it somehow.

The next step would be to glean as much information as possible about it at IMDB and Wikipedia. Plagiarism isn’t my thing and that information is used only to give me ideas on what to focus on.

If there isn’t a lot of information about a specific topic available at well-known sources, I’ll fire up Google and perform a kind of search and destroy mission. The destroy part is when I have to ignore the spammy websites to get to the gold, so to speak.

Rewrites
There are people who are never satisfied. I tend to deal with people like that one time and one time only. If you’re writing to earn a living, it’s one thing. When you’re not, you can be choosy.

Rewriting what you’ve written shouldn’t be an issue if it’s a sentence or two. You should always put yourself in the shoes of the person reading the content and if it doesn’t make sense to you when step away and read it later, it won’t make sense to them either.

If something you’ve written requires a complete rewrite, every time, then you may want to consider writing for yourself only. Not everyone is cut out to be a writer for other people. On the other hand, practice makes perfect if you’re trying to turn it into a freelancing career.

About the Author
RT Cunningham writes for himself at RTCX.NET as well as a few other places. You can find him all over the place if you search for his name using Google. You’ll know it’s him if you see a picture of him and his wife next to the results.

If you aspire to create your own clip art, you’re not limited to just using graphic elements. As you can see in the gallery below, you also can alter photos to achieve a variety of effects. Don’t know how to use Illustrator or Photoshop? Don’t worry; you don’t need to. You can use the free online Web application Picnik and still achieve professional results.

If you’re unfamiliar with Picnik, you might want to read the previous post detailing how it can help you make your own clip art. In this post, I’m only going to cover how to alter photos. Some of the methods that apply to making clip art from scratch are used with photos, too, so I’ll link to the other tutorial from the word Shapes any time it’s applicable.

1. To begin, you’ll need a photo. If you don’t have any in your personal collection, I suggest downloading one from Stock.Xchng. (See WordPlay’s Stock.Xchng review for the very liberal parameters surrounding using photos from their site.) Most of the photos below came from StockXchng, and as you can see, the quality is excellent.

Even if you don’t have a great photo to start with, the good thing about using Picnik for making clip art is that you could even turn a bad photo into something beautiful. Another great Picnik feature is that if you’re a Firefox or Internet Explorer user, you can just right-click any photo you find and have it open in Picnik. (Click here for more information.) If you use Stock.Xchng to get your photos, though, I recommend also saving a copy of the photo to your hard drive with its original name. This will allow you to go back to Stock.Xchng later, enter the photo name into the search bar and find the photographer. You can then leave a comment in the photographer’s Comments box with a link to the photo’s location. Not only is this the right thing to do, but some Stock.Xchng photographers make it mandatory if you use their images. But there’s a benefit to you too. Each time you leave a link in a comment, you get a link back to you from Stock.Xchng.

2. Once you have your photo, either right-click and choose the option to edit it in Picnik go to Picnik.com and click the Get started now! button, and then the Upload Photo button. (If you decide you don’t want to use that photo at any time, click the Home navigation tab and you’ll be given the option to delete that photo and upload another.) The photo will automatically open into the Edit screen. Unless you need to make adjustments to your photo (crop, resize, fix red-eye or other edits), click the Create navigation tab.

3. Once in the Create area, the three tabs you’ll use to create the effects shown below will be Effects, Text and Shapes. I went over Text and Shapes in my previous tutorial, but many of the looks below will also require the use of the Effects menu. Fortunately, Picnik has marked each effect clearly, so it’s easy to choose the one you want. If I’m undecided, I often “audition” each effect on a photo until I see something I like. You can find some surprising and wonderful new looks this way. You also can combine effects by saving each one and layering others on top, and making adjustments to each look by using the features within each effect. If you ever don’t like the look you get from Effects or any other Picnik feature, just click the Undo button at the top right of the page to remove it.

4. Once you get the basics of using Effects, I suggest playing with them to become more familiar. There are myriad ways each can be manipulated, which leaves endless possibilities for being creative once you’ve gotten the hang of it.

Visit Picnik

Here are the images I created with Picnik:

Click any of the photos below to see a larger version.

Original Photo	Photo Altered with Picnik

Want to start making money right away?
Check out RevResponse

There are few bloggers who aren’t interested in monetizing their blogs. After all, you probably spend a lot of time pouring forth your wisdom and a significant piece of yourself onto those digital pages. And if you’re a WordPlay reader, you also might spend at least a little time working with clip art and photos to make your blog look attractive. I know from experience that all those things take a lot of effort.

Personally, my strategy has been to take these steps: build my blog content and image, thoroughly understand search engine optimization, achieve stable Google rankings and then monetize. That’s why you’ve rarely seen ads on this blog. I’ve experimented briefly with various programs, but I’m just now dipping my toe into the waters of real monetization.

One of the methods I’ve identified for WordPlay is RevResponse, which I already use on my editorial consulting Web site. What is RevResponse? It’s a classy, painless way to be paid for generating leads for a variety of quality publications, white papers, etc. And RevResponse actually adds value to your blog by providing free information to your readers. I particularly like that aspect, because WordPlay is all about enhancing content.

RevResponse is unique because it helps you promote their information sources by creating a custom mini-site with graphics that match your blog or Web site. In my case, they created the site to match my business Web site. (Click the image to the right to see a live sample page.) I can link to the mini-site in any way I want, which gives me the flexibility to place links to it where they fit best. RevResponse helps out in this respect by offering a Promotion Wizard that lets you create graphic ads that rotate links to publications relevant to your niche. Or you can create your own text links. You can see an example of links I created if you look in the upper left corner of WordPlay’s sidebar.

Another great thing about the program is the quality of the products; they represent only the cream of the crop. For example, you can get paid to refer people to Website Magazine, which is free for subscribers. As one of their subscribers, I can vouch for its quality. I’ve learned a lot from reading it. There also are many other publications, such as eWeek, a guide to e-commerce technology, and the Vulnerability Management e-book, which helps you understand how to protect your Web properties in the sometimes hostile world of the Internet. (This is a subject close to my heart, since I just discovered there was cross-site scripting, also known as XSS or malicious code, in all four of the free WordPress templates I use for my blogs. I learned to spot the code and remove it, and I highly recommend that you educate yourself so you can do the same.)

The only caveat about working with RevResponse is that your blog or Web site must qualify for the program. To do so, you have to have an audience that would be interested in what they have to offer. To see if you qualify, click on this page and look at the sidebar to determine whether the information categories fit your blog or Web site. If it looks like they might be a good fit for RevResponse, click here to apply.

If you apply and your blog or Web site isn’t appropriate, RevResponse let you know! But that’s a good thing. Even though the time needed to implement the program is fairly minimal, you don’t want to to spend any time at all if it’s not going to produce revenue. And if you are accepted into the program, you’ll be glad they’re a little picky. That means the other affiliates in the network will be quality Web properties like yours, rather than spam blogs or sites.

See RevResponse in action

You might also be interested in these related articles:

• Keyword Analysis 101
• Search Engine Optimization 101

Image via Wikipedia

The title of this post is actually a misnomer. Search engine optimization (SEO) — the art and science of getting your site or blog ranked in search engines — can’t be covered in one post.

Those who truly seek to understand and implement SEO know it takes study, a time investment and even some experimentation to achieve good results. It also helps if you can follow the advice of someone who has already achieved that success. Actually, that can make all the difference in the world.

When I began this blog, I had no idea what I was doing. I made every mistake in the book, SEO-wise. And I thought I didn’t care whether I got traffic, because I created WordPlay as a showcase for my editorial consulting business. I just wanted a blog that looked somewhat pretty and had interesting content that I could link to my company Web site. But then I made a few tweaks that brought me more traffic. Before long I was hooked on hits.

I made those traffic-drawing tweaks because of a kind soul who actively prodded me to do so: Grizzly Brears of Make Money Online with Griz. As I followed his advice, I watched my hits go up and my whole online experience changed. Now I have numerous blogs that rank well for popular keywords I never thought I could achieve rankings for.

There’s a lot to be said for watching your hits grow; I highly recommend it for increasing your self-esteem. To achieve those results, however, I had to begin at the beginning. And it took some work; I won’t kid you about that. For me, most of the work was between my ears. I needed to change my thinking in order to change my results. That led me to read everything Grizzly had to say on SEO. Now I put myself in the “doing quite well, but still learning” category. I think Grizzly might say he’s still learning in some areas, too, because things change all the time online. The difference is, while he’s learning, he’s cashing AdSense checks in excess of $11,000 a month.

As I said before, you can’t cover everything needed to achieve Grizzly-sized online success in one post. But you can begin at the beginning and work toward that goal. I can almost guarantee your head will hurt and you’ll get confused, but keep going. Many of your questions will be answered in subsequent posts or in the comments fields.

After everything I’ve just written, you might be thinking, why write an entire post on SEO and not give one bit of SEO information? What a cheat! Well, not really. It’s not my niche to teach SEO, yet I know it is of great concern to my readers. The best favor I could do is to refer you to someone who can give you exactly what you need.

Friends of Grizzly and WordPlay:

• Richard from Philippines Nursing School
• Simonne from EZMoneyOn.Net

You might also be interested in these related posts on WordPlay:

• Keyword Analysis 101
• Easy Blog Monetization

I’ve been conducting research and compiling images for a comprehensive review of a great free online imaging tool. But you’re not going to read about that now, because I woke up with a cold. Instead, I’m going to refer you to some tips for getting something on the page on the days when the content just ain’t happening.

Tip #1
Create a resource list using other people’s work. This post is an example. I found some posts that address finding inspiration for blog articles and voila ! Instant blog post.

Tip #2
Scan this exhaustive (and when you have a cold, exhausting) content resources list from Lorelle on WordPress that will surely have an idea or 10 that will point you in the right direction for content creation.

Tip #3
Check out these 18 types of blog posts from Darryn at ProBlogger. One of these ideas might jar your thinking process a bit so you can come up with something new.

Tip #4
Use Zemanta. If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog and you don’t already use Zemanta, you might want to start. Once it’s installed, simply go to the editing area of one of your old posts you think might be expandable (preferably a long one so Zemanta will have a good idea of the subject) and see which articles Zemanta recommends. One of these might inspire a new idea or give you stories to link to for your very own post like this one: a resources list. Read our Zemanta review for more information about how it works.

Tip #5
Use social networking sites to see what’s hot. You can get a quick idea of the latest buzz by seeing what everyone else is writing about. If you write book reviews on your blog, check out social networking sites devoted exclusively to book lovers.

As always, it’s a good idea to make things look pretty by using images in your posts. Images can also do wonders if you don’t have time to write a lot. You can use Zemanta for this. But if Zemanta doesn’t have what you need, see our free clip art collection, free cartoons or Stock.Xchng review for links to lots of quality free images. (The image in this post is from B S K of Stock.Xchng.)

I hope this resource list helps you stay on top of your content!

If you’re interested in relevant anchor text links for your content, visit R.T. Cunningham’s ConnectContent.

I recently read about Zemanta’s ability to deliver free graphics and other resources right to your browser and thought, yeah, that might be cool. But then I saw it in action and I truly got excited.

For those who haven’t heard about it, Zemanta is a plugin for Mozilla Firefox 2 and 3 that can be used with WordPress.org, Blogger or Typepad. (This is yet another reason to use the vastly superior Firefox browser. A version of Zemanta also is in the works for Internet Explorer though. You can e-mail Zemanta at info [@] zemanta.com if you’d like to become an IE beta tester.)

What exactly does Zemanta do? Well, it’s hard to condense into a few words. I’ve seen it described as a “content suggestion engine” and a “semantic layer” but I think it’s best to let the folks at Zemanta explain their virtues themselves in this excerpt from their Web site:

* Pleasure: It’s fun to see your words paired with great links and pix
* Content: Pictures, links, articles and tags
* Convenience: No more trolling the web for content for your posts
* Traffic: Links to recent blog posts frequently result in return traffic

Still don’t know what the heck it is? Check out the photos below that show Zemanta in action. I took these screen shots this morning as I prepared a post for my movie trivia blog, Tricky Movie Trivia. I figured, why not go for some shameless self-promotion while I try to enlighten you about this cool new plugin?

So, here we go:

Zemanta places an interface to the right of the window where you enter your blog post. In this interface is a gallery of photos that are either in the public domain or are tagged as “Non-free, could qualify as fair use.” The former option leaves it up to you to check on usage permissions.

The more you write, the more Zemanta tweaks its image offerings to match your copy. In my case, the more I wrote about Bette Davis and All About Eve, the more photos of both I was shown as options.

There were some great photos, but in the end I opted for one that wouldn’t have been my first choice because it was the only one in the public domain. All I had to do to select it was click on it and Zemanta immediately placed it in the upper right corner of my post with the photo source (Wikipedia) underneath it. This feature alone made me fall in love with Zemanta. I use graphics/photos in my posts all the time and I’ve never known how to get the image credits positioned underneath them without creating a table.

There are, however, several minor negative aspects to the photo feature. One is that you can only use one image. If you try to insert a second image, no matter where you place your cursor Zemanta always erases the first photo you inserted and replaces it with the new one. The other downside is that you have no way to control which nine images are offered up.

In the case of All About Eve, I was lucky because that subject lent itself to photography. While writing this post, however, I got an odd assortment of images that kept changing as I wrote. I started with six photos of Bette Davis, screen shots of the Blogger and WordPress login pages, and a very large Internet Explorer icon. By the time I was done, I had one Bette Davis photo, Firefox and IE logos, and screen shots of various Web pages having to do with random subjects in this story. But Zemanta is new and expanding, so I expect to see the selection widen with time. And how can I complain anyway? I was able to find an appropriate photo for my movie review without even opening another browser window. As a bonus, I also found an image for another Bette Davis movie I had already reviewed.

Related articles

Zemanta also presented a list of related articles in its “Articles” section, which is situated underneath the photo “Gallery.” Although I didn’t opt to use one in my All About Eve post, I did choose an article for this post from about Zemanta from techcrunch.com, which you can see at the bottom of the page. Like the photo described above, the article link and its surrounding border and text were inserted with one click.

Links and keywords

Zemanta also presents “Links” and “Tags” suggestions underneath the post. Similar to the related articles links in the “Articles”section, if you click on any of the words Zemanta presents in the “Links” section, the words will automatically be linked to the source from your blog post. For the movie review, the resources were Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database, but I understand from the Zemanta FAQ that these resources will be greatly expanded in the future, along with the photo sources.

In the “Tags” section, keywords were suggested. I found this helpful, as I hadn’t considered some of those that were listed. Although you obviously can’t see the impact Zemanta had on my blog’s keywords in the screen shot of the final post below, and I didn’t use any of their text links, you can see the tidy way in which the source was placed under the photo. In my opinion, it gives the post a professional look. Even better, it was incredibly simple to do.

Additional notes

Zemanta places a small icon at the bottom of any post that has been “Zemified” but you can remove it if you’d like. Personally, I found their plugin to be so helpful, I don’t mind giving them credit.

To read their FAQ, which explains more about where Zemanta gets its resources and how it plans to expand the service in the future, click here.

To download Zemanta, click here.

You might also be interested in these other resources on WordPlay:

• Free clip art
• Free photos
• Free cartoons
• Avatar Central, your home for free images, image software and information about avatars

“Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!”
Blazing Saddles, 1974

Clearly the bandito who uttered that immortal line from Blazing Saddles didn’t have a blog. If he did, he’d be thrilled to have access to these free graphics, which include some pretty cool official-looking badges and seals.

I’m a real advocate of lightening up when it comes to blogging, which is neither rocket science nor the cure for cancer (unless, of course, you actually blog about rocket science or cancer cures). But even if your subject matter is serious, it’s often still appropriate to have a little fun with your content.

The following free Web graphics applications can help you interject a little of that fun into your blog. They allow you to choose your own text and colors to create badges and seals that can be used as icons, to illustrate a blog post or even as part of your blog design.

The Says-It.com Official Badge Generator offers three badge styles: fire, police and sheriff. You can use any colors you can think of, because they have an intuitive HTML hex-code color selector for each component of the badge.

If the term “HTML hex-code color selector” intimidates you, don’t worry. As you can see from the image to the right, their color selector only requires that you drag icons to the color you want. For me, playing with the colors was part of the fun; there’s just something humorous about a purple and teal sheriff’s badge.

I played with this tool for hours because it’s like a coloring book for grown-ups. Except when I was done playing, I had a collection of cool usable Web graphics.

The Says-It.com Official Seal Generator is equally fun. I played around with this for my movie trivia blog and ended up with an icon I now use on the home page. Here are some of the designs I came up with:

The Official Seal Generator uses the same interface and tools as the Official Badge Generator, so once you’ve used one, you’ll know how to use the other. They’re oh-so-easy to use, so as a newly appointed member of the Web Police (and I have the badge to prove it), I command you to go and have fun with these free Web graphics tools!

Update (5-21-08): New designs have been added, so there are now five badge and seven seal designs.

You might also be interested in these other resources:

• Free clip art
• Free photos
• Free cartoons
• Avatar Central, your home for free images, image software and information about avatars
• Guide to online social networking

Anyone who reads this blog knows I’m a collector of free clip art and free photos. That’s why I fell in love with the Image Chef online free images generator. It gives you the opportunity to turn Image Chef’s large selection of photos into your own personalized clip art, and even create animated video clips with the text of your choice.

Image Chef’s slogan is “just add words and serve” and they aren’t kidding. If you can point a mouse and type a word or two, you can create amazing custom-looking graphics, perfect for blog posts or avatars.

The easy-to-use Image Chef interface >>

You can use Image Chef even if you don’t sign up for a free account, but you’ll have to save your images to your hard drive before you leave the site. (They only store images for account members.) But it’s worth signing up for, because members receive other free benefits. For example, you can e-mail your images or easily post them to MySpace, Hi5, Blogger, TypePad widgets and your Friendster profile. You can also use Image Chef photos on mobile phones for image-based chat, personalized wallpapers, video greetings and video ringtones.

Visit Image Chef

My Image Chef gallery
Here are some samples I created for WordPlay:

_______

_______

And here’s an image I created for my cat Joseph who has recently started peeing all over the house:

_______

Visit Image Chef

Thanks to FronTools for bringing Image Chef to my attention.

You might also be interested in these other resources on WordPlay:

• Free clip art
• Free photos
• Free cartoons
• Avatar Central, your home for free images, image software and information about avatars

Although content really is king, it doesn’t hurt to have your blog look good too. In fact, it can make all the difference in the world when it comes to making readers feel at home.

But if you came to blogging through the wordsmith door and you’re not a designer, you might need a little help when it comes to creating images. WordPlay already offers resources for free photos, free clip art and cartoons, but if you’d really like your blog to stand out, the free BeFunky Web application can help you create free images that are uniquely yours — even if you have no graphics experience at all. You can use these free images in your blog header, in posts and, in some cases for your avatar (depending on the resolution in the image).

The Uvatar maker

BeFunky allows you to create strange and wonderful graphics. They feature two types of image modification applications: a Uvatar maker and a Cartoonizer. An example of a BeFunky uvatar is shown above. As you can see, the application allowed me to capture the moment when Woody Allen joined me at my palace while I was relaxing in my Catwoman outfit. I also made uvatars that chronicled my visits with other celebrities and a furry animal friend, which you can see at the bottom of this post.

The Cartoonizer

As fun as the Uvatar app is to play with, the Cartoonizer would probably have even greater use if you’re trying to create images for your blog. All you need is a good image to start with and the Cartoonizer does the rest.

Just upload your photo or clip art and click the SKETCH button. This creates a black and white sketch of your photo. You can adjust the settings on this feature, based on the image you’ve uploaded. Once the sketch is created, click the COLOR button, which takes the colors from your original photo and inserts them behind your sketch.

To the left you can see an original photo of some kind of wild space happening and how it turned out after being run through the Cartoonizer. I also used the same process with a piece of clip art (below) to see how that would work. I suspect this had good results because I used clip art that was originally from a painting and had a lot of detail. But you never know how an image will turn out, so it’s worth a try, even if you only have low-resolution clip art.

The original image (left) was used to create a cartoon image, and then had one of many BeFunky borders added.____

As you can see in the sample above with the red curtain, the Cartoonizer allows you to add a border to your image. Many of their borders are geared toward use in e-mail cards, but they can also be used for blog images. The Cartoonizer also gives the ability to warp an image, which can create some pretty strange effects.

So, the next time you want to create an image that’s truly yours, hop on over to BeFunky. You’ll probably have a lot of fun and generate some interesting images at the same time.

My BeFunky Gallery

I tried to convince Snoop Dogg to go roller-blading with me near the canals in Venice, but he told me that tiny wheels scare him. He also was a little leery of the ferret on my head.

____

Here I am with Halle Berry, trying on dresses to wear to the Oscars. We both feel wearing fur isn’t cool, but that doesn’t apply to live animals, so the ferret stays.

____

Hugh Grant has a reputation as a ladies man, so I felt it would be best to supplement the protection provided by the ferret and wear a black shroud on our date at the aquarium.

Go to BeFunky

You might also be interested in these other resources on WordPlay:

• Free clip art
• Free photos
• Free cartoons
• Avatar Central, your home for free images, image software and information about avatars

Copyright 2008 WordPlayBlog.com

We’ve already discussed the importance of having a compelling avatar for your blog. Even if you agree it’s a good idea to have an image that represents the true you; it’s easy to put off creating one. You might even be stuck in the mud because you can’t think of an image that would suit you.

Well, this might give you some incentive to move that project to the front burner: There’s a great online application called GIFWorks that allows you to create free graphics you can use as avatars and have a blast while you do it.

GIFWorks is easy to use, even if you have no graphics experience. The only requirement is that you modify a .gif file. (You probably already guessed that from the site name.) It also goes without saying that you have to have permission to use the photo. You can use one of your own, or you can choose one from Stock.Xchng, which offers quality photos for no charge.

There are are a variety of looks that can be obtained through the GIFWorks application. To show you its capabilities, I’ve taken a photo of my nephew and turned it into the following five distinct icons. The GIFWorks features used to create them appear next to each avatar. There are different versions of GIFWorks for Firefox and Internet Explorer (IE), so I’ve included the features paths for each. Click on any of the icons to see the full-size image.

_____________

IE: Effects menu /Artist Medium / Cartoon Strip

Firefox: Effects menu / Cartoon Strip_

______

______

__________

IE: Effects menu /Artist Medium / Raster

Firefox: Effects menu / Raster

________

__________________

________________

IE: Effects menu /Color / Colorshift

Firefox: Effects menu / Colorshift

________

__________________

IE: Effects menu /Sharpness / Sharpen/Unsharpen, then Effects menu / Offset / Shadow, then Warp / Sphere

Firefox: All on Effects menu: Sharp/Unsharp, then Shadow, then Sphere_______

______

________________________

______________

IE: E: Effects menu / Offset / 3D Glasses

Firefox: Effects menu / 3D Glasses___________

____________

___________

These examples (plus many more that didn’t make the final cut) took under an hour — and I had a great time playing while I made them. I hope these inspire you to experiment with GIFWorks and create a little fun of your own!

You might also be interested in these other resources on WordPlay:

• Free clip art
• Free photos
• Free cartoons
• Avatar Central, your home for free images, image software and information about avatars

Copyright 2007 WordPlayBlog.com