BLOG DESIGN FOR BLOGGERS ON A BUDGET: THRIFTY LITTLE GRAPHICS

I've been ignoring one of my lesser known creative outlets - Blog Design and Graphics! For me, it's just like painting and creating, done digitally. I've been doing logos and graphic design for websites and blogs since 2002. Blog Design for Bloggers on a budget became more of a passion in 2010 as I was in the thick of the blog boom and building my first successful blog myself.

For the first few years, I did full website design (blogs weren't quite in the realm yet!), entire website coding, photo retouching, store building,etc. for individuals and companies. While the income was great, I quickly realized that it was another avenue to turn a passion into a J.O.B. ...you know, something you dread and have to make yourself do. From that point, I laid down my photoshop brushes and only picked them up when I needed something for myself, for friends or family.

As a blogger in 2010, I quickly realized that blog graphics are very personalized, fun and most bloggers cannot afford to pay the type of fees formerly charged by myself and by most graphic artists. Being a blogger myself, I know it took 2 years to create a livable and predictable income from my first blog.

That said, I found the fun in working in Photoshop again and using my creativity for a less demanding and more personable group of clients. Bloggers, like myself!

As you can see above, (very bare bones of new work!) Thrifty Little Things is getting ready to get a new logo and design for 2015. I'm having fun with it and it will really reflect my own personality and everything I share on this blog.

Does your blog need new graphics for the upcoming New Year? Take a peak below at just a few of my former client work and contact me if you're ready to take your blog to that next level!

BLOG DESIGN FOR BLOGGERS ON A BUDGET : THRIFTY LITTLE GRAPHICS

A few samples of my design work for web & print. Physical stores, websites & blogs including Logo design, blog headers, sidebar icons and custom graphics, facebook page covers and more.

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ThriftyLittleThings.com is a personal blog written and edited by Wendy Kohn. The majority of what I post is based on my own ideas, thoughts and projects, for the sole purpose of sharing my passion. However, as a full time Blogger, there are times that I do selectively accept various forms of compensations such as cash advertising, sponsorship, or paid topic insertions and/or products and other forms of compensation and incentives from companies and organizations that I feel compliment the blog, and offer value to my readers. Compensation will never influence the content or posts made in this blog. All advertising is in the form of advertisements generated by a third party ad network. As the owner of this blog, I am sometimes compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though I may receive compensation for posts or advertisements, I always give my honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely my own and will NEVER be influenced by any form of compensation.

HOW TO GET PAID TO TWEET: SPONSORED TWEETS EXPLAINED

Over the past week, I've had so many requests to share more about getting Paid to Tweet! I'm enjoying a little extra income utilizing Sponsored Tweets with Twitter. Many of you had signed up from my previous posts and had questions on exactly how it worked and setting up your account, so I hope this post will help you make the most of this opportunity for extra money!

Once you signup with Sponsored Tweets, click on the Brown Tab at the top of the page where it says "MY ACCOUNT". Your page should look like my screen capture above. Your settings on this page will determine what type of tweets are offered to you, as well as the pay rate.

There are three main features you want to make sure you have setup here:

1.) First and foremost, make sure you have your account set to "Notify Via Email". When I first set up my account, I didn't do this and missed out on many paid tweet offers because I didn't know about them! You want to set this to the email that you check most often, as your offer for a paid tweet will expire within 3 days if you don't login and accept.

2.) "Charge Per Tweet" - I recommend using their suggested rate. When I first started in 2010, mine was only .13 cent. I actually got many more paid tweet offers at that rate and it gave me time to get used to approving tweets and what type of tweets I wanted to approve or decline. As your twitter followers number increases, so will your suggested rate per tweet. Yours might even be higher than mine!

3.) "Keywords" - This will absolutely determine the types of tweets you get as well as their amount of clicks. You want to match this up to your blog genre or your interests. Since "Thrifty Little Things" is all about DIY, Deals, Coupons, Free Stuff, etc. these are the type of keywords that I selected. When you begin typing in each keword ( you can choose up to 10) it will autofill a recommendation and show you an average popularity for that phrase. The higher that number, the more offers you will get in that category.

Those are the 3 MUST DO Items to get started with Sponsored Tweets. I've found it a very simple & quick way to make a little extra money on a regular basis. All I do when I get an offer via email is login and approve the tweet or reword it. They will tweet for you automatically. Whenever you like, you can request payout via Paypal and it transfers automatically. I love getting paid to tweet!

If you're on Twitter and you're not getting Paid to Tweet, this is another Thrifty Little Thing, highly recommended!

CLICK HERE To Signup with Sponsored Tweets or Login and setup your account to start earning extra money !



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HOW TO CREATE A CUSTOM FACEBOOK PAGE URL - THRIFTY LITTLE BLOGGING TIPS

This is a post for beginning Bloggers and basically anyone who has a Facebook Business Page (NOT a profile page)! I get lots of email questions from new bloggers and this post is going to focus on one of the most frequently asked questions!

How To Create a Custom Facebook Page URL

Having to copy/paste the annoyingly long url for your Facebook page is just one reason why you might want to do this.

The other reason would be to secure your Blog's name or what you might call your Logo, Trademark or "Brand" before someone else does. For me, that would be "Thrifty Little Things". I have no clue what I would have named my page if that had been taken! It's nice for it to match your Blog name, so your readers can easily find you across the board with that same "name".

Having your own custom url also makes it very easy to list this on your
Business Cards, email signatures, etc. As you become more advanced in blogging, you'll also realize that it helps with search engine rankings! Google DOES index Facebook Pages & Links! It's really a no brainer.

However, not everyone realizes how easy this is to do, so I'm going to break it down for you and hopefully those of you that have not done so, will be able to implement this change very easily for your own benefit, as well as that of your readers!

STEP 1: CLICK HERE and you should see custom url options for your personal profile (possibly already set) and also below that, the option to "Set a Username for your Pages"

STEP 2: You will get a dropdown menu listing your Facebook Pages - select your page from this list

Step 3: Select your page username / check availability **NOTE** Very carefully check what you've typed and make sure you are set on the name! Once you set this username, it can NEVER be changed!

Once you have done this, you will now see your new Page url in the custom format like my own: www.Facebook.com/ThriftyLittleThings

See how simple that was! It's just one of those things that is not widely announced, but has great benefits!

If you have any problems, I'm happy to help, just leave me a comment below!



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