In this economy, many smaller businesses have been hit hard. For those that are still around, it is often a big struggle to survive. Part of making it as a small business is continual growth. But growth often requires investment capital beyond the means of most small business owners. The web design, public relations and ad agency business is no different from most others in this respect. However, they have significant advantage over more traditional retail business. The web design, public relations and ad agency model puts the small business owner in the position to be talking to their customers about digital marketing. This makes them eligible for a white label SEO reseller strategy.

A white label SEO approach is one in which the business partners with another firm to do the fulfillment of the seo services to existing or new clients. Different from traditional outsourcing, the white label approach (often called private label SEO) is one in which the end client is not aware that the work has been outsourced to another firm. This arrangement is extremely common in the food industry where a grocery store will often put their own label on certain food items. The grocery chain does not make the food product, but the manufacturer allows them to put their store’s name on the product (private label) or make it generic (white label).

Online marketing has evolved to the point where these types of white label SEO, PPC, Social Media and Email products are now widely available. The advantage to the web design, public relations or ad agency is that they can grow revenues without the required investment in product development. The white label approach allows them to maintain control of the client relationship in case things turn bad, in which case they can always pull the work back in-house. White label search engine marketing products are a creative way for business who already discuss digital marketing with clients to grow their businesses with relatively low risk.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a wordpress shortcodes plugin and decided to write a review about it because this was the first wordpress plugin that has actually impressed me. Even though I have been in the “WordPress industry” for some time now, I often seen shortcodes plugins, (free and paid) that offer a few service boxes, and maybe buttons and a slider, but nothing impressive. This one is a new-generation plugin, with thousands (yes, thousands!) of service boxes, thousands of button variations available, image shadows, tooltips, pricing table, accordion, video tooltips, jQuery horizontal tabs, jQuery vertical tabs, jQuery accordion, stylish quotes, jQuery info boxes, CSS3 tooltips, CSS3 frames, CSS3 buttons, custom unordered lists, layout columns, highlighters, dropcaps and more..

Cost: $19 – Personal License or $59 Developer License (for 1 client). If you wish to inbuild the plugin into your theme and offer it for sale on one of the big sites like WPmarket.net or ThemeForest.net you need to contact the author of LizaTom.com for a custom quote.

Advantages:

1. LizaTom Shortcodes plugin, despite having a trillion of options and images, is very lightweight (500kb installation file) which allows you to upload it directly using the wordpress interface, without connecting to FTP client
2. Cheap as hell. Well crappier plugins are selling for about the same price on CodeCanyon and other places, here — for your $19 you get the best plugin in the industry PLUS a few other totally professional plugins and beautiful wordpress themes that come included in your membership. The membership duration is one year (you can renew or cancel at any time) during which you will get access to all the upcoming themes and plugins that LizaTom.com is planning to release. On average there is 1-2 items added per month so you can’t go wrong with this price.
3. Flexible like never-before. With 2000+ service boxes, almost endless button variations (color, size, icons) and plenty of other features you will never need any other plugin.
4. Bonuses. While you might, at first glace, think that the other plugins and theme are just a bonus, if you look closer you will see that these are high quality theme that quickly became topsellers on WPmarket.net.
5. Free updates and support are included with each membership.
6. Easy to use. I personally hate the kind of plugins that look awesome but when you download and install them, you have no clue how to get started, or worse – the shortcodes plugins that you need to know the exact command and hardcode them in the body of your post. LizaTom Shortcodes plugin takes care of everything for you, just select the shortcodes you want from an easy to use drop down menu and the code will be generated for you in less than a second.
7. Pricing Table. If you ever used shortcodes plugins before (or even premium wordpress themes) you would know that a good pricing table is hard to come by. LizaTom Shortcodes plugin offers a CSS3 highly customizable pricing table that looks absolutely professional yet not overly web 2.0, so you will have no problem fitting it into any design.
8. Won’t clash with other shortcodes plugins. If you have any inbuilt in your current theme.

Disadvantages:

1. None that I found after using the plugin for 2 weeks on several websites and testing it on 3 different wordpress themes.

This is the upcoming star of the wordpress industry. Take my word on that! Here are some more screenshots:

Today we are going to create an extremely beautiful text effect that you will love, I guarantee. It will look good on both dark and light backgrounds (slightly better on the dark ones) and it will look equally impressive at any font size, though again, because of the perfectly thought-through details, big and curvy fonts will present this effect significantly better. So, let’s get started!

Important! When purchasing the PSD file, please click the “Return To Merchant’s Site” orange button once you made the payment, otherwise the download will not start automatically. If anything went wrong, just email me to the paypal address email. Font is not included in the download.

Step 1 - Create a new canvas of any size you wish, we used a relatively small one and filled it with dark blue #3b434f. Select a curvy and nice font that will be able to show beautifully all the details for this text effect. We used Renaissance font and went for a really big size!!

Step 2 – Go to Layer Styles and apply the following settings:

We set the shadow to black and reduced the opacity to almost half, this will look amazing on even bigger font size and grained or busy background.

Set the inner shadow to black and full opacity. The curve quality is called “chrome” and it is one of the default ones in most Photoshop versions.

Set the Outer Glow to Linear Dodge and use a crazy blue hue as we did – #00e4ff.

Pay attention to inner glow, using semi transparent white color and Linear Dodge effect as well, we are getting a very nice look…

Cove – Deep, this is the curve you will use for bevel effect, note that this text effect doesn’t look bevelled at all, yet the mild settings we use give it full depth and 3D feel.

We are using “Gaussian” countour for Satin settings, with mild and beautiful mauve hue.

Gradient overlay – #808080 to black, and then once again #808080 to white. Note that we are using “Reflected” style, but even any other will look great!

Almost invisible #003e73 dark blue 1 pixel stroke will add wholeness to this pixel perfect text effect.
That’s it, viola! The effect is ready. If you like the way it looks but can’t get the settings to work (though I encourage you to try, it’s very easy!), feel free to purchase my PSD file for $1 only, and the download is instalt, if you don’t forget to click the “return to merchant” orange button at the end of the payment. Scroll back up for details. Enjoy!

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WordPress themes are considered premium, regardless being free or so-to-speak “paid” themes. 2 years ago, we all could only dream about having a wordpress theme for our blog with Ajax and JavaScript features, where featured posts slide, portfolio items fade in and out, and, of course — the comments are posted without refreshing the page. All these things were sought after and cost a lot of money, requiring plenty of custom development. Could we guess back then that cu3er will be offered on free wordpress themes? Well, today I made a selection of best wordpress theme that make the neatest yet most powerful use of the javascript integration… enjoy!

Since late 2007 however an increasing number of WordPress theme developers have been offering premium WordPress themes – themes which are offered for a fixed price. These premium WordPress themes are usually sold for between $50 to $250. Originally only a small number of talented and well-known WordPress theme designers created paid premium WordPress themes which were well designed, highly functional, top-quality themes that transformed a WordPress installation from a simple blog into a powerful content management system. However as the premium WordPress theme business concept spread, more and more WordPress theme designers have hopped on the bandwagon trying to cash on the new trend filling up their portfolio with premium (paid) wordpress themes. However with greater variety and numbers of paid premium WordPress themes also comes varying levels of quality. So what specifically makes a premium WordPress theme premium? Some characteristics that should set a premium wordpress theme apart from a free theme are listed below:

Quality and Unique Design
Premium WordPress themes should be just that – Premium. They should look better and be of a much higher quality and unique design than compared to those available for free.

Features
While all themes are different, in general premium WordPress themes should have more “Features” than their free counterparts. What that means depends on the theme in question. However some features may include: “Featured Posts” areas, Multiple layout options for the home page, drop down menus, multiple customs templates for pages, custom field options, print style sheets etc.

Customization Options and Flexibility
People want options, so Premium WordPress themes should be customizable. Buying a premium theme will set you apart from the crowd significantly, but since other people will still be using the same theme, premium themes should be able to be easily customized further, whether it be for the layout, colours, images, or all of the above.

Live Preview or Demo
There should be a live demo or preview of the theme so you can test it and check it out before buying. If there is no live preview or demo that should be a warning sign. You should ask why don’t they want you to test the theme first? All reputable premium theme sellers will have a live demo full of content for you to test. Explore the live demo thoroughly, testing all pages to see that the theme works properly and there are no errors or mistakes.

Full Support
If you’re buying a premium WordPress theme it should also come with a certain degree of support from the designer. The level of support can vary however and will range from personalized individual support from the designer, to the provision of forums or blog comment sections for asking questions and obtaining support from the designer and other people who have purchased the theme.

Supporting Documentation
Premium WordPress themes should come with an instruction manual or document. This should explain how to upload and install the theme and how to manage any of the options that are built into the theme.

Free Updates
Wordpress is continually being updated and improved and a premium WordPress theme developer should be offering you free updates of the theme when required.

Well Coded
There should be no coding errors, misspellings, X images, etc in a premium WordPress theme. The theme has cross browser compatible and been tested to work properly on all the major browsers, plus the theme should have clean and valid code and adhere to strict XHTML and CSS standards.

Guest post by Preecha Saisaard from www.free-templates-design.com and Kathleen Mulder from http://webhostingstar.us

Whether you’re starting a new business or refreshing the printed inventory of the old brand, ordering business cards from PrintPlace.com is the easiest and cheapest way to go! It will take you less than 10 minutes to customize your own new business identity: follow this link to request your coupon code, then select your options, checkout (standard shipping rates apply) and upload your unique design. That’s all.

By entering your email address, you’ll automatically be added to the newsletters from PrintPlace.com. (You can unsubscribe from this list at any time.) Once you have received your discount code, just place an order for business cards and use the code at checkout, that way you can get the business cards for the price of shipping only.

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You can order now and upload your artwork whenever you’re ready, so enjoy this deal. This is a limited time offer, so don’t let it get away!

Also, if you need business cards design, please don’t go thinking you need to pay 100$+ for someone to do that. You can buy the one Rossi Business cards design created by the authors of toptut.com for only $3 dollars (yes, that is right), or chose any other design around that price at Graphicriver.

12 Incredibly useful and handy HDR ready-to-use Photoshop actions for instantly improved photo effects. Fix dull, lifeless and dark photos in seconds! As you can see from the preview file, some actions give higher contrast HDR effect (designed for particularly dark photos), others add an artistic touch such as outline, noise here is a brief overview of what’s included in your download:

• Action 1 – Mild HDR effect, fix shadows and dark areas, enhances colors
• Action 2 – Classical, intense HDR effect
• Action 3 – Moderately mild HDR effect with sepia colors scheme.
• Action 4 – Very mild HDR effect, fixes shadows and unlit areas, adds artistic light noise.
• Action 5 – Very intense HDR with extreme colors enhancement, designed to fix extremely dark and colorless shots.
• Action 6 – High contrast B/W HDR with mild glow / blur effect
• Action 7 – Colorful HDR with semi-visible noise (less visible noice and more colors, compared to action 4)
• Action 8 – Highly artistic HDR with dark outline and vertical strokes.
• Action 9 – Highly artistic HDR with overall dark blue scheme and emphasis on light areas. Fixes shadows enhances colors.
• Action 10 – Vintage-HDR. Add stains and spots to your HDR effect, get artistic and very beautiful result.
• Action 11 – Intense HDR , and very visible glow / blur effect
• Action 12 – HDR + Noise + light sepia + even shadows, last action is once again classed as a more of an art-HDR, makes the tones even adds a vintage-style color

After you have successfully loaded the actions, just play around and enjoy! All the 12 actions are stored in 1 folder called “HDR pro”, click the arrow to collapse the menu with all the actions.

I am also enclosing 2 sets of examples, based on photos I took myself, together with the original images (unprocessed). Feel free to use them as a base or use them anywhere else, crediting me is You will notice that, just like any HDR photo effect, it works best for dark, dull and lifeless photos, particularly – landscapes, however, I tried them out also on portraits and other photos – in any way the result is incredibly impressive.

If you have any questions, please drop me a line.

Download Now!