Make a badge to promote yourself

Last August I posted a tutorial on using Flickr to design a Project Wonderful Ad. Today I'd like to expand on that and show you another neat thing you can do with the graphic you made in that tutorial.

If you are a more recent reader or would like to review, here's the original post:

Six Steps To Designing A Project Wonderful Ad

Picking up where the last tutorial left off, open a new tab or window and go to Photobucket. Don't have an account? It's free and you can't complete the rest of the steps on Flickr because of Flickr's TOS. (There may be other photo sites you can use; I'm familiar with Photobucket, though, so that's the one I'll explain.)

Photobucket allows you to link the image to any URL you want. Flickr only allows you to link the image back to its original page in Flickr. If you break this rule, Flickr could suspend your account, and that would be bad.

Upload your newly created picture/graphic to your Photobucket account.

Once the picture is uploaded, click edit, then select resize.

Change the dimensions to 125x125 for sidebar badges. You can save it in other sizes as well. I highly recomment naming it with the size so whenever you want to find it quickly, you can. An example of this naming technique would be something like : Feb promo 125x125 and if you save it in another size for another purpose, you could name that one Feb promo 250x250.

When you hover your mouse over the picture in Photobucket, you get some code choices. (You can click Link Options to see all the choices.)

So now you're ready to have some fun. Try inserting it in blog posts, emails, Craig's List, MySpace, Facebook, other forums and message boards (if images are allowed)... Think of it like a sticker. Can you think of other places where you can stick your image?

Here's the key: Whenever you post the image somewhere, make sure it points to you: your blog, website, Etsy store, or to what ever you wish to promote. Depending on where you're posting it, you can either click on the image and turn it into a link (just like how you turn text into a link) or you can change the HTML to link it to your preferred location.

To change the HTML of the link, look at the code. At the beginning of the code, replace the text in blue with your link URL.

<a href="http://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa39/PassItOnPlates/Web%20images/?action=view&current=giveaway1-09.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa39/PassItOnPlates/giveawaybadgefeb1-7-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

For futher tweaking, look where it says alt="Photobucket"

This is the text that will show up when your viewers hover their mouse over the picture. I'd recmmend changing that to the name of the item in the image, your site or shop name, or something that relates to what you're promoting.

That'll get you started. Come back Wednesday and I'll explain how to use what you've learned today to make yourself one of these:

<a href="http://not-a-real-namespace/http://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa39/PassItOnPlates/?action=view&current=giveawaybadge2-09-1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://not-a-real-namespace/http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa39/PassItOnPlates/giveawaybadge2-09-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Enter our Giveaway Feb 1-7!" /></a>

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