Converting a Photoshop image to a coded web page is kind of like using chop sticks - pretty freaking hard if you’ve never done it before. That’s why I love the name “PSD Chopstick” for a service that turns your PSD file into a standards-compliant, coded web page.

I also love PSD Chopstick because they have an affiliate program that pays a cool $29 for each referral! So if you click here and place an order, I just nabbed $29!

Want to nab $29 for yourself? It’s simple. Just find some graphic designers that don’t know jack about building a proper website and pitch them this idea:

Hey Bobby, I saw you selling yourself short in some design contest, and since I genuinely like to help others even if I get nothing in return, I thought I’d take the time out of my busy schedule to let you know about this cool service I found.

It’s called PSD Chopstick, and if you send them a PSD file, they will turn it into a coded web page.

What could you do with that? Well, let’s say you do a design for $200. Then your client has to get it coded somewhere, probably paying someone another $100 or $200. Instead, you do your design, get it coded for $129, then sell it to your client for $500. It’s like creating an extra $171 from nothing, just by saving the client some hassle.

Now I know this tip is great and could lead to thousands upon thousands of dollars in added revenue for you, but all I want in return is the feeling of satisfaction from helping someone!

Oh yeah, here’s the link: www.psdchockstick.com

In case you didn’t notice, there are two very important parts to that pitch.

1) Emphasize how great of an idea it is for them and how you aren’t getting anything from it.
2) Add your affiliate link in there every chance you get.

It’s just a little fib, it’s not like it’s a lie…

OK, it’s a total lie, but how else do you expect to make money online?

Now that your pitch is ready, we’ll move on to the PSD Chopstick sales material…

See, your own sleazy tactics only go so far. Once you get the click, it’s up to the merchant to seal the deal. So before I promote a merchant, I analyze their sales process on my patented Sales Process Sleaziness Scale (SPSS for short.) The scale goes from 1 (couldn’t sell water in the desert) to 10 (could sell buckets of sand in the desert.) A merchant needs at least a 5 to pass.

Let’s look at PSD Chopstick:

Testimonials. Check. You have to have testimonials on your site, because to the visitor, that means someone else got suckered into buying this, so even if it sucks, they won’t feel so bad about buying it.

3D e-cover. Nowhere to be seen. That’s too bad, because even though they aren’t selling an ebook, they could make a little portfolio of “before” and “after” screenshots. The first would be the PSD, and the second would be the website they built. The graphics would be virtually identical, but it gives them a chance to impress visitors with 3D graphics, reflections, and drop shadows.

Hidden ways to make extra money. Check. Just take a look at their web hosting page, which recommends HostGator. Their HostGator link is “http://hostwithhostgator.com/” which is almost guaranteed to redirect through their HostGator affiliate link. Not only does this bump them up on the sleaziness scale, it shows they’re smart enough to diversify their revenue sources.

Huge order button. Nope. Just a simple form that does NOT scream “click here and give me all your money!!!” Too bad.

Catering to stupid people. Check. They sell Blogger themes for $209. Anyone paying $209 for a Blogger theme qualifies as stupid! (Not that I dislike Blogger or anything…)

Pricing. It’s good. They’re the cheapest I’ve seen and look very professional. There are other services that do the same thing but sound more complicated and are more expensive.

Overall… they get a 6.5 on the SPSS scale. Good enough for me

If it’s good enough for you, click here to take a look at PSD Chopstick. And sign-up for the affiliate program while you’re at it, so you can use the pitch I gave you!

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Even though it’s rumored that average people bring in big money with crappy websites, you would think that a big time internet marketing guru and super affiliate with his own ebooks would have a nice site.

It wouldn’t have to be a wonderful site, not even Web 2.0, but it should work…

Which is why I was astounded at this monstrosity that is Ewen Chia’s site:

(Click the image to see a full-page screenshot, and here to see the original page.)

The screenshot is from Firefox, so perhaps the page worked in IE, but c’mon, that’s bad terrible!

Couldn’t his huge income from affiliate programs allow him to hire a designer? He could have at least traded an ebook for someone to come in and make a few CSS tweaks.

Whatever the case, it’s pretty funny to see an internet guru with a site like that!

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Want to create that Web 2.0 look without the hassle?

You probably do, because once something becomes popular, everyone wants to copy it. Even squeeze pages are getting a Web 2.0 makeover!

The problem is, it looks like a Web 2.0 look would take work. You need a striped background, logo reflection, rounded corners, star bursts, and a “beta” attached to your logo. And that’s just for starters!

But since Web 2.0 is sooo popular with the “in” crowd, free tools to give you that required 2.0 look are popping up everywhere. Here are 25 that will transform your site the easy way:

Backgrounds

1: Stripe Generator creates striped backgrounds with or without gradients; no Photoshop skills required.

2: Tartan Generator (from the creators of Stripe Generator) lets you make cool tartans that work as page backgrounds.

3: Gradient generator for doing gradients in page backgrounds.

4: Gradient generator is… another gradient generator.

5: Tile Machine makes tiled backgrounds with various designs.

6: Background Image Maker has a few options for background images.

Layouts

7: Full Layout Generator which actually creates the framework for a Web 2.0ish site.

Rounded Corners

8: Rounded Cornr makes rounded corner images.

9: Google’s rounded corner generator makes neat rounded corners, too.

10: Even Corner Shop does too!

Image Effects

11: Reflection.js is a little piece of Javascript that will add reflections to all the images on your site.

12: Canvas Corner uses a little Javascript to add nice rounded corners and drop shadows to images. (more)

13: DropShadow lets you easily add a drop shadow to your picture.

Logos

14: Logo Creatr will create a sweet 2.0 logo and even add the word “Beta” to it. (It doesn’t matter if your site is 3 years old - if you want to be Web 2.0, you have to be in beta.)

15: Web 2.0 Styler makes nice 2.0 text logos, with more color options than Logo Creatr.

Buttons, Badges, and Icons

16: My Cool Button is a way to make, well, cool buttons.

17: Buttonator makes buttons, but you have to pay $10/month for it.

18: Button Boost is another site that will boost your button skills.

19: Glassy buttons does buttons although they’re not quite a 2.0 level.

20: RSS Buttons is another button maker, but for those small, rectangular buttons.

(There are a ton of these. Blogflux button maker. Button maker. Brilliant button maker. Pixel Button. RSS Graphic Tool.)

21: Feed Icons provides those neat orange RSS feed icons in multiple sizes.

22: Starburst badges are another variety of image that is virtually required for a Web 2.0 look.

23. Tabs Generator will create sleek tabs for you.

Cool Ajax Stuff

24: Loading icons using Ajax are also required for all Web 2.0 sites to tell the visitor “not only is this page loading, this page is loading with style.” You might even want to slow down your page loads so that visitors can admire these neat icons even more.

25: Prototype Windows are neat Ajax pop-up windows. I’ve seen them used nicely by designers for showing larger images of past projects, but I have a feeling internet marketers will use them to get past pop-up blockers.

26: Transparent Messages are great for displaying little confirmation notices without loading a new page.

27: Grey Box is an Ajax pop-up window that lets you display content, including other sites, beautifully.

There you go. More than twenty-seven resources to make your Web 2.0 transition easier!

Now for the fun stuff:

2 Resources That Didn’t Make The Cut

28: Web 2.0 Button is another button generator with various backgrounds that will make for a great Web 1.0 logo that everyone will laugh at.

29: Hot Shadow can create a custom Google search engine with a logo, but you can also just use it for creating text effects. Or will you be the next Google?

And here’s some further reading for those of you willing to put in a little elbow grease:

Further Research

Mini Ajax
A collection of all kinds of neat Ajax tools to do just about anything, from file uploads to website heat maps.

Web 2.0 Header Tutorial
Making your own header, including a logo and navigation bar.

Web 2.0 Logo Tutorial 1 and Tutorial 2
Doing your own logo.

Mashable
The source for anything web 2.0

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Here we go with the first installment of the I Tell It Like It Is series. This will be fun

The other day I was drawn to a post claiming I could get thousands of extra visitors with just a couple minutes of work. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

But it turns out, the big secret was to use alt text on your images. Yep, that’s the secret.

It might work, but… I see alt text as a part of web design, not SEO. And considering that specifying an image location, alt text, and width are all required to be standards compliant, the W3C must agree with me.

I was using alt text on my images to make proper websites long before I ever heard of SEO. Even my very first sites in Frontpage had alt text on the images. Hell, I probably read this “secret” in a How to Use Frontpage kind of book.

If you didn’t know, the point of alt text is to describe the image for those who can’t see it. Either people with images turned off or blind people (because screen readers, much like Googlebot, can’t ‘read’ an image.) And using alt text is a very easy way to accommodate everyone.

And I have a feeling that neither Googlebot nor a blind person would want bombarded with keyword stuffed alt tags, in case you were going to pull one of those tricks.

So if you have a properly designed site, you would already be getting image search traffic, which means that you can disregard such trickery.

However, traffic from Google Images is notoriously bad, because they just want to steal your image and leave. Even worse than social media traffic…

So… this trick might come in handy.

Back on topic though, I think the problem here is the onslaught of blogs. What I mean is that, thanks to Wordpress and Blogger, any idiot off the street can setup their site without knowing a thing about web design.

Since this new crop of webmasters does not understand basic web design, they start to spread hype about little things being SEO secrets. I see it all over the place.

Next they’ll tell you that the “title” attribute is an undiscovered miracle to add more keywords to your anchor text…

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If you have recently built or redesigned your website, you might be tempted to post it in a forum for reviews by other members. It seems like a good idea, right? Can’t pass up free reviews…

But free comes at a price. And in this case, that price is the time it takes you to make the post and check the responses.

Now that isn’t a lot of time, but you get nothing in return. And by nothing, I mean nothing worthwhile. If you grab some free samples at the store, at least you’re getting something to eat! But in this case, nothing.

You will just get a lot of responses like “Good site” or “looks good” or even “i like your site sir now please check out this affiliate link.” There’s no way you can say that feedback is worthwhile and keep a straight face!

But what if you state in your first post that you only want quality reviews and criticism and don’t want any “looks good” feedback? It might seem like a Nobel prize winning idea, but let me just present this evidence:

Good day everyone,

I would be honoured if you could give your expert opinions on my new webmaster site, —–.com. I’m open to positive and negative feedback, please just write something other than “nice site.” Cheers!

Sounds good, right?

Well, this was the first response:

good site mate

I rest my case

I mean, what do you expect? The only people that really hang out in those forums are new members with 3 posts so far. They’re just getting in a lot of quick posts so they hit the post count necessary to display their signature and get free advertising.

Also, there’s the fact that any advice is just plain terrible. I remember seeing an investment advice website up for review. I don’t know if it was a blog or an informational site trying to sell products, but it was about investing in the stock market and managing your money.

And it sucked. The site was plastered with links and banners for online poker and pharmacy sites. I thought common sense would tell you that no prospective investor would trust a site covered in casino ads, but apparently not.

However, the reviewers would have to point out such a glaring mistake, right?

Wrong again. All the reviews were “good site” or “nice colors.” I feel sorry for the person running that website.

But there is good news in all of this. And that is, now you know where not to get reviews…

If you want any real reviews, you’ll need to get in touch with smart people. Find some nice, quality websites (that aren’t direct competition) where you can contact the owner. Blogs work great for this. You’ll want to suck up to the owner and pitch the idea of giving you some advice, obviously giving them something in return.

It’s actually best if you already have some webmaster friends to talk to. Just so it’s someone with knowledge in the field. It helps if you trust them, too.

Just don’t bother with the forums.

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If you’re looking for scripts, there are a few places to go that will probably have what you want.

HotScripts, for example. But that’s obvious because it has “scripts” in the domain.

I have actually seen the best scripts at DynamicDrive and GentleSource.

While you might think that DynamicDrive is a new type of automatic transmission or that GentleSource sells baby products or personal lubricants, they actually provide really cool website scripts for free.

Also interesting is a directory of scripts at ScriptCopy, but in this case it’s what you’d expect: clones of popular scripts like Digg, Youtube, and Match.com.

(Yep, just a quick post, but I wanted to share these resources. Now go look around if you need scripts…)

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There’s a never-ending debate about how website design (as far as aesthetics) affects your site and its ability to pull in wads of cash. A lot of people say you need a professional, fancy, and clean design to earn customers’ trust. Others say that “content is king” and don’t worry what the site looks like, as long as it works.

I agree with both sides

I think that a well-designed site is great for some new Web 2.0 site looking to be purchased by Google. And a professional/corporate style site is great for a company like Delta Airlines.

But ugly, home-made sites can work well, too. Especially if you’re in a market catering to older people or industries that aren’t tech-savvy. It almost makes you more trustworthy if your site is plain (or even crappy looking.)

The best example I can give you is PokerChance.net, a site I heard about sometime last year. I have to laugh every time I see the site, but then I shut up real quick when I think about how much money this guy (Claud Dorton) earns.

“On a bad month I make $60,000”

At least that was the story at MarketingSherpa. I guess this retired guy just started writing some articles based on years of poker experience and then went to the public library to add them to his personal website. (He didn’t even have an internet connection at home…)

And now this dude supposedly pulls in at least $60,000 a month from poker affiliate programs. I do know that gambling affiliates get huge payouts, but his site looks like shit and the Alexa rank is well over 1 million.

I’m not sure if I believe it ($60,000 per year would be stretching it…), but if it’s true, you might as well not waste your time making your affiliate sites look too fancy!

But I have to wonder… if this guy knows so much about winning at poker, why couldn’t he afford a dial-up internet connection??

[This post originally appeared at InternetMarketingSucks.com]

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