A New Start: Banner's and Profile Pictures

To get started I'd like to give some pointers along with examples of great banners and shop appearances. It is truly important for the images to be relevant to what you are selling, and they must also correspond with how your listings appear.

Take a look at how nicely all of the colors and themes match so perfectly. The use of green and the outdoors for an eco friendly product is smart!

This banner is for a vintage shop. It is nice and simple with a hint of vintage. It is simplistic yet pleasing to the eye with the juxtaposition between the vintage garment and the name of the shop. Note how the background also matches the color tone of her listings.

Another great example of simplicity would be this banner. It has a nice splash of color and it clearly states what the shop sells.

This one is one of my favorites. In this the seller has used one of their photographs as the background and put their shop info overtop. It also has a nice color tone that looks good with the rest of their photographs.

Lastly, this banner is so much fun! It clearly shows off the kind of artwork sold in the shop!

Ready to start yours? Good! Remember, you can change it later if you make a better one! But you have to start somewhere! :D

Now it’s time to pick out the images you want to use in your banner. Grab a few to play with! Maybe you’ll use just one image in the background, or a couple around the sides, it doesn’t matter, just grab a few to start!

**ALSO PLEASE ONLY USE YOUR OWN IMAGES! Do not take other images from other people unless you have permission!!**

Now if you have photoshop, chances are you know how to use it. Just make sure your banner size fits within 760px by 100px and is no larger than 2MB. Also make sure it is in a .jpg, .gif, or .png format.

For those of you who are not photoshop savvy, nor have the means of accessing it, I have a solution!

http://pixlr.com/editor/

The best thing about this website is that it is free! Now to sit here and try to explain how to use this program would get very difficult. Especially since everyone is going to want to do something completely different with their banners. Instead I will get you started and then you can search my list of helpful links for more information!

Let's start by opening a new file!

Then I want you to fill in a name (1) that you can find later like “Banner” or “Etsy Banner”. Believe me when I say it’s no fun when you forget to label something nicely and can’t search for it later. You are then going to fill in the measurements (2) “760” in width and “100” in height.

At this point you should start bringing in the images you would like to play with for your banner by clicking "file" --> "upload an image".

Once that’s uploaded if you want to go back and forth between your banner template and your image click on the little arrow on the top right hand side and it will give you an option to which screen you would like to work on.