Blog Design History In The Making – The History of Elvis
Over the last two months I have made become a really good friend with Mark Mason. I have to tell you that this is one very smart guy. Mark has a very demanding job working as some kind of freakazoid engineer at Texas Instruments and does Internet marketing only about one to two hours per night.
Amazingly he has learned quite a bit. He knew a lot when we first met, but talk about rolling a the snowball down the hill. Within the last two months, you wouldn’t believe what this guy has soaked in. His brain is a sponge.
Anyway, I do a little bit of web design work for Mark. In fact, his flagship site, Mason World dot Com was designed by yours truly. Recently though, he hired me to design another site of his. This site that I recently designed for Mark was the same site that he called to ask for my advice back on March 5th of 2008 which allowed for us to actually start talking more on a regular basis and eventually lead to us doing quite a bit of work together. Not only do I do design work for Mark, but he also helps me with quite a bit of things with Internet marketing. What the hell? Taking advice from a noob!! LOL!!! Needless to say, Mark is very talented and someone I would strongly recommend pairing up with.
The site that I redesigned is called History of Elvis. It is really a prime example niche site in my opinion. While his site is very much an experiment, I have always felt it has a very high potential for success. I think after redesigning this site, it will soon start to really bring in the dollars for Mark. Which it’s deserved… Mark works very hard.
Here is a screen shot of what the site looked like before:
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Here is a screen shot of what the site looks like now:
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Here is a screen shot of the header graphic I made in Adobe Photoshop Version 6.0
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Previous Design Work By Garry Conn
Here are some additional screen shots and examples of my previous work I have done for myself on some blogs that I own.
The Airplane Blog
This is a personal blog of mine where I publish uniquely written content about aviation and airplanes.
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Website: www.airplaneblog.com
Beechcraft Aircraft News and Information
This is a personal blog of mine where I write uniquely written content related to Beechcraft aircraft.
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website: www.beech-aircraft.com
Celebrity Access
This is yet another personal blog of mine uniquely written content is published about celebrity news and gossip.
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website: www.celebrity-access.com
Blog The Internet
This is a personal blog of mine where I write content about all kinds of deals, sales, holiday or seasonal specials and finding the best deals online.
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website: www.blogtheinternet.com
Hire Garry Conn For Your Blog Design
I am available for hire. All my blog designs come packed with very practical and search engine friendly code, superior level of custom CSS and amazing layouts and formats. Graphics are done in Photoshop Version 6.0. Themes are optimized for WordPress 2.5 and the Cost is only $250 dollars.
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20 comments
Those are great designs Garry, I use your free SEOAdmax theme for a number of my sites and it dramatically increased adsenes clicks, these look like they could do the same thing while looking great at the same time!
Hi Matt,
Great to hear that SEOAdMax is working well for you. That is great news. The theme on Blog The Internet is called AFFAdMax, this is my next free theme that I will be releasing in the next week or so that will come coupled with my free eBook!
WOW Garry, this are great news !!!
You know who i love your themes.
The only suggestion is that sometimes IMO your headers looks a little bit dark. Look at the one of the Airplane Blog: the airplanes nearly disappear in the dark, I would have done it a little bit brighter.
Just my 2 cents
ciao
alex
I absolutely love your work. I only wish I could design as well as you. The header graphic you created looks absolutely amazing. Nice work.
I read that post about you on Antonio’s blog and I have to say you are one amazing individual.
Thanks Alex,
And you are right about the headers. You are not the first person to tell me. I’ll try to lighten them up a bit. If I have to tilt my laptop screen to see the graphic that must me that people with stationary monitors would have to do the same.
That is a great comment coming from a random web designer. Drop me a comment anytime you have wonderful things to say about me.
Thanks man! Antonio is nothing more than a little ant trying to bite at my toe and get himself in the limelight.
Hey Garry,
Your web design skills are great. You definitely have your own style which is solid and works very well. I think I am a good designer but sometimes struggle with complete web sites so you are inspiring me.
I started with SEOMax on one of my blogs and have been able to use the basis of your web design to begin to learn how to incorporate and build graphics around your theme.
I’ve always thought you’re designs were some of the best I’ve ever seen. And we’ve discussed the headers before, so I won’t go there.
I think anyone who hires you to design their sites is getting more than their money’s worth. I know my site is more than perfect since you got your hands on it. LOL
I highly recommend you for any and all blog designing. I’ve had a couple people ask me who did my site, and I send them to your site. I’ve never been disappointed with your work.
I can be challenging to make a site look the way you want it to while also maintaining a good level of being search engine friendly. I am glad that you enjoy SEOAdMax… which blog do you have that running on, I’d like to see it and I am sure other readers would too.
How much do I owe you for that comment?
$$$$$$$
Hold up a minute! Did I misunderstand? Did you say you do these themes for $250? Now way?
By long and far, you have create the best themes I have ever seen. I never asked you about a Wordpress design because I was honestly thinking these things were a couple grand.
Ah…. yeah!!! Did I forget a ZERO that the end. Hehe…
LOL
Joking…
I charge $250 for custom WordPress themes of equal quality as shown above.
Now that you know, order yourself about 10.
Drop me a line anytime to discuss this service. Talk to Mark Mason from http://www.masonworld.com for a reference as well as Johnny Goad from http://www.clarksvillehomeinspection.com
Hey Stak. If you look at these designs you will realize one solid thing. They work well for their purpose and the graphics Garry chooses suit the target audiences very well.
I believe that designers often get in the rut of designing for other designers and not for the general public. This causes all sorts of problems if you are trying to create a site such as a deal site then you are looking for the kind of graphic that the average buyer will appreciate. BlogTheInternet does this very well.
BTW Stak, I like the clean design of your blog.
Garry, I think Stak should explain his opinion a bit more….
Here are some general design tips for everyone.
When producing drop shadows, gradients or beveled edges try to go slightly more subtle than your brain tells you initially. When you look back on the complete design it will be just that little bit more professional.
Don’t just settle on the first design that you produce. Try color variations and play with the positioning of all elements.
Always study the spacing between letters in your logo. Fonts, especially free ones are not always set up quite right and sometimes it makes the world of difference just to adjust the spacings a little.
Always revisit your web designs a few weeks after and get a trusted friend who is not afraid to give an honest opinion to look over it. Sometimes you get so involved in your own work that you are too blind to see even the most obvious flaws.
Get a color wheel from the net…. I have not done this yet but will very soon. It helps you match colors that go well together. It’s not fact but will help get you started.
I believed we agreed on $5000. ;p
Yeah I definitely agree, I always show my work to friends and get their feedback and oftentimes they notice obvious flaws that I end up missing. And I do think Gary’s designs are quite good, I just think they could be better, wasn’t trying to insult anyone.
Hmmm, I think I’m living in the dark ages. I really need to start upping my prices
I just installed, customized and SEO’d a blog for $100. Thanks for the heads up.
Thanks to the article, Now there is more reason to comment than ever before! Everyone should participate. I am incorporating what your wrote to our project!
Just so that you know…. I approved this comment just to tell you what a piece of dirty shit you are for spamming my blog as well as many others to promote a medical center. You have absolutely ZERO regard for the health and quality living of people. You are a piece of shit and one day you’ll really see the damage you are doing when you fall sick and turn to the Internet to research your illness and and put your life and faith towards the resource that pulled up UN-NATURALLY in Google because of some other asshole like you that manipulated a natural and organic ranking search engine by spamming blogs and getting your link forcefully plugged.
So my question for you Mr. Texas Medical Spammer Asshole, how many people are you going to kill by promoting something that very well might NOT rank well in the SERPS before you’ll stop spamming? How many parents discover medical resources in the search engines that where thrusted in the SERPS by assholes like you?
It really really pisses me off to see people like you in this world. My brother-in-law just got diagnosed with cancer and I can’t begin to tell you how much is pisses me off when I try to research his disease and get bull shit web pages returned to me because of assholes such as yourself.
About Central Texas Medical Foundation, “Central Texas Medical Foundation (CTMF) is a Not For Profit Education Institution devoted to the promotion and enrichment of Medical Technologies and Enhancement through higher education. We offer a variety of scholarships and endowments to worthy candidates through generous donations of partner corporations.”
I guess they forgot to add the part in where they pay people to spam the blogosphere in attempt to pass PageRank towards trying to get their web site to pull up better in Google.
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