Most affiliates can be put in one of two categories:

  • A good coder that thinks rainbow gradients and bevel emboss are essential for every design created.
  • A good designer that thinks PHP, CSS, and HTML are online gangs that write encrypted letters to each other hidden behind websites.

I’m the latter category. So for all you coders/misinformed designers here are some Photoshop tutorials relevant to affiliate marketing.

For all you seasoned Photoshop pros you probably know how to do all these examples below, so I left you a little game at the bottom of this post.

Resizing Images:

Resizing images is something you gotta be efficient at, especially if you are using Facebook Ads or Plenty of Fish Ads.  Here’s how you do it:

golf affiliate ad

  • Open your image.
  • Create a new image using the dimensions 110 x 80.
  • Drag your previous image into your new image file.
  • Press Command T (Mac) or Control T (PC).
  • While holding down shift+alt (this will keep the proportions of your transformation and will keep it centered), drag a corner of your image inwards to fit in the new 110 x 80 dimensions.

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Adding borders to images:

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  • Click on the “F” icon (Layer Styles) at the bottom right of your layers window and select “Stroke”.
  • The rest is pretty intuitive. For this example I used size 3px and “inside” position.

Raise images out from background:

When I have previously split tested flat creatives vs raised creatives, the raised creatives have always come out with higher CTRs. It takes a few extra seconds to increase you CTR by following the steps below:

affiliate 300x250 ad

  • Create a new image with the dimensions you want.
  • Click on the rectangle tool and make a white rectangle.
  • Select the rectangle then press the little “f” icon a the bottom of your layers window.

photoshop affiliate guide

  • Select “Outer Glow”.
  • Make “Blend Mode” normal. Select the color black. I like to have my opacity at 32%. Spread at 0%. Size at 6px. Now press ok.
  • Now just duplicate that rectangle by clicking on “Layer” on your menu bar then “duplicate layer”.

Button:

A juicy call to action button is key for any creative or landing page.

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  • Click the rectangle tool.
  • Your menu bar should change where you can select “rounded rectangle tool”. Make the “radius” 10px.
  • Now download these Web 2.0 Styles.
  • Once you have downloaded and installed the styles into Photoshop, select your rounded rectangle and click on the style you want in the window above your layers window.

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  • Now click on the “f” at the bottom of your layers window and use “Drop Shadow” moderately.

Improving Image CTR:

Another easy CTR booster is by just blurring the background and increasing the Brightness/Contrast.

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  • Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool from the toolbar on the left and trace round your subject.
  • Once you have done that, copy and paste that selection so that you have a new layer solely of your subject.
  • Now select your background layer. Click on “Filter” on the top menu bar then click “blur”. Select “Gaussian blur”. I usually opt for 1.5 pixels.
  • Try tweaking brightness and contrast settings for both layers to make your image stand out more. I can’t really give you any example settings here because it is really dependent on the image you decide to use.

Animation:

You can get really creative with animations. Photoshop only allows you to do really basic stuff with it. If you want to get more advanced I definitely recommend Adobe Flash.

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This takes a bit more explaining than I care to do. Plus these guys have already done a great job at writing this tutorial.

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Extra for experts:

Now for the Photoshop pros answer these two impossible questions and win a gold star.

How many times does Jean Claude Van Damme clap within a minute?

What does the girl in blue say to Van Damme ?

Jean Claude Van Damn Gif