Small Updates...

Hi,

Just a few small updates for you.

I’ve adopted a lil gummy bear named Mika. I wanted to adopt Mika because that’s my baby nephew’s name. And he’s the cutest baby. You can see my gummy bear at the bottom of the sidebar.

I have some new affiliates. Thanks to Jake and Stephine for accepting me.

I’ve been thinking about making a new design, but with all I have going on right now I just don’t have the time. So I think instead I’m going to focus on making this one work better for me. The sidebar is very sloppy and I want to clean it up. The navigation is pretty poor, too. I’m going to work on that, as well as see how impossible it would be to get my site validated. Hoping to release some new goodies soon.

I also wanted to bring on someone to work with where I can help them optimize their site. Help them make it look nicer, load faster, validate it, etc.. and then post the results on the site as sort of a guide. If you’re interested in this (a service that would usually cost hundreds of dollars), please let me know. You’ll need a couple of hours for about a week to work with me on it.

It’s Coming...

What’s coming? I think a new design may be coming. I’m not sure why, but I’m ready to move on from this one. There are some things about the navigation that are really bothering me. I may invest some time in making things work better with this template, but if I can muster up some creativity, I may just redo it all.

Since the last update, I’ve put up some new Jojo PSDs. They’re cute, I think. I tried to make a set of it, but I only ended up being able to do two of them. They match, though, so they should be pretty good for layouts or blends.

Today I put up some new stock photos, too. We went to the park for a while and I was going to take photos but the D60 was full and dead, so all these were taken with my p-o-s camera. They’re still pretty nice, though. I hope you can find a use for them. If nothing else, they’d make decent brushes or even textures.

I was playing around and made some new 88×31 buttons, too. So use’em and link me. Let me know if you do so I can link you back.

Tracking Leads...

One of the biggest issues I’ve had with advertising online is that I don’t know where links are coming from, what my visitors are doing once they get to my site, and whether or not their staying.  The goal of any online business (even just a paid blogging site) is to convert those visitors into customers or ad clickers. It’s important to know how and why they came to their site and why they’re leaving so you can give them the information they’re looking for without them having to search for it.

ROI Analytics is a website that offers you the ability to track these visitors to make the most out of your advertising budget. With a site name like “Lala Land”, you never know what people are going to show up. It’s important to make sure my advertising clearly states what you can expect from my site to make sure I only get visitors looking for what i have to offer. By tracking these visitors I can find out if a certain ad placement is performing well, or if people feel misled when they arrive at my site.

I’ve signed up for the free trial on this site and I have to admit, it’s a little overwhelming. I’m glad they offer training and even consulting, because it’s important to me to make sure my business can perform well for years to come. The ad placements I set up now will effect my company in the long run and I don’t want to waste money with the wrong ads. I’m glad there’s a solution to ensure a return on investment from my marketing budget.

Simple Photoshop Grunge Brush...

This is a video tutorial to show you how to turn a photograph into a grungey Photoshop brush. It starts with the raw photo and leads you through to defining the brush for use. Please let me know if you find this useful and/or if you have any suggestions for the next video tutorial. Enjoy!

My Technorati Profile

New Layout: _overcast...

I’m proud to announce Lala Land’s first layout release since her reopening! I spent the entire day working on learning to put this site into 100% CSS and getting it validated. Now it’s here for you to enjoy, and I really hope you do.

Can you believe there was no one online to get feedback from? I guess people have better things to do on a Friday night than sit here and critique for me. How dare they? Hah. Despite the fact that the layout was validated both in XHTML and CSS, there may still be some issues, so let me know if you find any. I checked the way it looks in both Google Chrome and IE7, but not Firefox or IE 8. I’m going to assume it works the same, unless someone tells me otherwise.

I also put up some new content yesterday, which was PSDs. I found a really easy to understand tutorial on my new affiliate’s site and decided to give it a shot. It’s much easier than I expected and I wish I had sat down to try it sooner. So the two new PSDs can be found in the graphics section, but here are the previews. I’m working on a whole set, which should be ready some time next week.

I set up a few affiliates last night, too. Welcome to Josh and Jana. Thanks for accepting me, even though my site is still fairly new. I won’t disappoint you! I put up some new adorable banners for you to link me with, too.