Basic Photo Editing with Aperture 3
Here is a quick video tutorial on how to use Aperture 3 to do some photo editing. Aperture 3 is software designed for Mac computers and does a beautiful job editing photos. In this tutorial I go through some of the basic steps to edit a photograph to make it look more clean and professional. Don’t have Aperture or would like me to do your photo editing? Use my contact page to request a quote for my services.
Want to see this video in High Definition? Go to YouTube directly for more Web Savvy Mama tutorial videos featured in HD.
See the finished photo and others at Nate Paul Images, my husband’s online photo gallery where he and I display some of our favorites!
My Eyes, My Eyes! Big Blog Sale!
So I got the all-clear that my eyes are healed, yay! For those who are a little late to this party, I recently suffered corneal abrasions on both my eyes that covered the majority of my corneas. They were chemically etched. Yikes is right! After 4 days completely blind, then another week of just ok vision I now have my vision back and eyes are healed. That is a lot to celebrate!
I’m passing on my excitement with a big blog sale! Its my opinion that business web sites can benefit immensely from blogs being incorporated. Any web site for that matter! To celebrate being back to designing and to also help raise funds to cover the cost of expenses related to my eye injury I’m having this sale.
When you purchase a web site design package and add a matching blog design to your order I will take %50 off that matching blog! I’ll design a theme to match the web design you ordered and install it to the associated WordPress blog on your new site! You’ll have a fresh new blog to chronicle all your excited about your fresh new web site.
How do you take advantage of this sale? Simply add your design package using the package picker (Get Started @ top) and check the “Add a Matching WP Blog Theme” option. After you add that to your cart you can use the coupon code: BLOGTASTIC at checkout to get your discount.
eCommerce site owners start here | Informational site owners start here
That’s it, its that easy! So check out the design packages and get your BLOGTASTIC savings on your matching WordPress blog theme.
New Photography Site
My husband has been doing photography for a bit now and finally asked me to create a website for his photos. I spent the weekend finishing the setup and loading a sample of his photos.
What does this mean for my web design clients? Custom stock photography! We will be slowly building a large collection of images that can be used for stock photography for everything from web sites to advertising. Our goal will be to offer stock photos that will be of use to WAHMs and other small businesses for a reason price, with out needing to buy large amounts of credits to do so!
Eventually we may decide to expand this to product photography to go along with my graphic editing services. You’ll be able to have Web Savvy Mama not only design your website but supply the images to go along with your products! Of course, this is still a bit in the future, but the white box I made my husband build is just itching for use!
In the meanwhile, what would you like to see pictures of?
SEO Services from WSM
A while back I posted that I don’t offer SEO, the reason behind that I feel Search Engine Optimization is a long term relationship between the site owner and the web site. SEO is a process that not only includes the basic set up, but also the continual attention of the site owner. Its not something you can just “do” as a one time thing and forget about. With that said, I’m getting a lot of requests to help with SEO type services. I’ve decided its time to make these services available for those who need a bit more help getting started.
What I’ve decided to offer are starter services that will jump start the SEO process for the web site. I still encourage site owners to learn more about how to optimize their site and work towards reinforcing the optimization with long term efforts. In the Add Ons – A la Carte category of my online ordering area I’ve added some basic SEO services to help get you started.
Some of the services listed include adding meta tags or pages and products, keyword research, full product optimization, site map creation and submission, search engine submission, Analytics creation and integration, social networking setup and integration (including Twitter and Facebook) as well as various WordPress social networking plugin setups.
A few of these are offered as stand alone add ons and the rest are part of the SEO services customized package where you can pick and choose which services to add.
All SEO services are for sites and blogs designed by me, Web Savvy Mama. If you have a site designed by someone else please contact me using my custom quote form to inquire about the cost for your SEO package.
Web Design Package Picker Now Here
It was time for a change or two, just wait until you see what I’ve added. The Web Design Package Picker is here and ready for use! Instead of filling out the quote form you can simply follow the prompts to get information and package details for your upcoming web design project. Start with a basic package and then add on items from the A La Carte Menu for an even more customized experience. Still prefer a custom quote? The Custom Quote Request form is still active and available for use as well.
Once you are satisfied with your choices you can even choose to order right away to get your design project started. Of course, this feature will only work when I have room for new clients. When my schedule is full the ordering feature will be turned off.
Need to just order maintenance units for an update? You can now do that as well! Just email me first to find out how many units your updates will require and you can pop right on the website and order them instantly!
I’m hoping the new setup will help answer some commonly asked questions and make the quote and ordering process easier on new clients. Let me know what you think and what else you’d like to see added to the A La Carte menu!
Change in eMail
Because of spam issues related to the kristine @ websavvymama.com email address, I have deactivated that account and will no longer be checking it. I was receiving over 100 spam emails a day. For the past year I’ve been switching over to 2 new email addresses that I now use with WebSavvyMama clients. And, as always, I can still be reached via the contact form: http://www.websavvymama.com/contact.php
If you email me and I do not respond, please double check to make sure you are using one of the active email addresses listed on my contact page. And this is a good lesson to all, have a backup/spam email account that you use for creating all accounts (even message forums). Yahoo and Gmail are both great options for free ones to handle your “spam accounts”.