JCD Gets A Slight Makeover + Gets Google Subpages

Written by Jacob Cass on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 – 12:26 pm

Changes

You may have noticed some slight changes to Just Creative Design over the past week which comes after I called for your feedback in the lucky dip draw that I held last month. On this subject when was the last time you asked what your readers wanted? Why don’t you offer a prize for some valuable feedback?

If you’re on a feed reader, why don’t you click through to see the changes to Just Creative Design.

Before and After

Below you can see a before and after screenshot of what JCD used to look like. Please ignore the half red circle on the before photo.

Before & After

Update:

After receiving feedback on this post I updated the pink sidebars to something a bit less bright. I used the old grey sidebars however I put a pink underline and a slight grey gradient on it. I also added a bottom graphic to make it more like ‘pods’.You can see the changes below, or refresh. Your thoughts?

Make Over

Side Bar Colour Changes

I changed the colours of the sidebar headers to JCD’s trademark pink colour as people suggested making the “site a bit less grey”, “more colourful”, “not so white”. What do you think?

David Airey also recently changed the colour of his website from a blue colour scheme to an orange one to reflect his work more accurately… Your website should reflect who you are. Lauren Marie from Creative Curio actually went a step further and redesigned her whole website to reflect herself more accurately. What is your website saying about you?

Remember that small gradual changes to your website overtime keep it fresh which in turn brings back visitors time and time again.

DeCluttered

Probably the most common complaint I had from JCD readers when I gathered feedback was that JCD was too cluttered. To declutter I;

  • Removed a lot of my advertisers (I had already given them 2 free months of advertising) and added an automated advertising system. Interested in advertising?
  • Cut down on how many categories I had from 19 to 16. This still needs work.
  • Cut down the recent articles from 10 to 6.
  • Removed the massive subscriber button that I used to have (not shown in the before shot).
  • Removed the ‘Subscribe to Just Creative Design’ text that used to be underneath my logo.
  • Removed and reordered some articles in the popular articles list on the left side bar.
  • Changed the size of my header / logo to much smaller.
  • Changed font size down a size.
  • Moved Google Search Bar up onto the menu.
  • I optimised some of my pages better for search engines using some tips from our article, 10 SEO Rules for Designers.
  • I will also be changing my post title images from the old pencil shaped box to a normal square box.

You may have also noticed that I added the Free Type Classification eBook badge and since then downloads have tripled. Are you offering anything free on your website?

Future Plans

I do plan to declutter JCD even more in the short future as well as add some new features however it all comes down to time… I really want to convert all the recent articles, categories and popular articles into one tabbed area to shorten the left sidebar as well as possibly get a community feed happening.

Google Sublinks

Over the past week Just Creative Design was upgraded from Google PageRank 3 to Google PR4 and we were also given some Google Sublinks (which you can see in the screenshot below). You can even reorganise the sublinks in Google’s Webmaster Tools, of which I am soon about to do.

To get your own sub links generally you have to have a certain amount of inbound links into your site, with a certain amount of authority in Googles search engine. I just got mine last week, after 7 months of being online so it did take a while.

Google Sublinks

Anyway just a short post to let you know of some small changes that I have made to improve JCD… both visible and some not so visible. What are your thoughts?


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Celebrating 5000+ Subscribers

Written by Jacob Cass on Friday, August 1, 2008 – 9:00 am

5000 Subscribers

Yesterday, Just Creative Design hit 5000+ subscribers for the first time so I thought it was time for a little celebration and to celebrate I am giving away two great prizes.

You can win $50 to spend on any design related goods at Creatives Outfitter. This prize is courtesy of the kind Jon Phillips of Spryre Studios - a small design studio that focuses mainly on blog design (among other things). I highly recommend him!

The other prize is a 30 minute design consultation via Skype or Email with David Airey, the much respected designer and blogger from Edinburgh, Scotland. David was actually one of the reasons I first started blogging.

To get the prize all you have to do is comment below giving us your best tip (or trick) about graphic design, or if this does not apply to you, your best tip about freelancing or business or something similar. The best two answers will receive the two prizes as chosen by Jon and myself.

While you’re here, why don’t you add me to Twitter and Facebook too?

Milestones

Subscribers

Above you can see the last 7 months of JCD’s subscriber count - it has been a pretty steady rise. The hardest months were the first 3 - I had less than 500 subscribers for those 3 months but I stuck it out and it paid off.

These first 3 months were when I learnt about blogging - before that I didn’t even know what a blog was! Now, seven months on, JCD has over 150 posts with over 2700 comments - that makes on average, about 18 comments per post so a big thank you to all who have had their say here on JCD. On that topic, when was the last time you thanked your readers?

Other Highlights

Some other highlights over the past 7 months were when I had the opportunity to interview the logo designer Jeff Fisher as well as when I won the Logo Design Love Award (as voted by you) for this blogs logo.

Other achievements were when I was named #8 blogger in the world under 21 in May as well as when JCD was named the #12 Blog in all of Australia. We were also listed in How Magazines Top 10 Sites For Designers back in March and just recently was recommended by Layers Magazine in their weekly video cast.

Another big highlight was our $5000 Prize Giveaway Graphic Design Group Writing Project where we gave away an electric guitar and many other prizes. That was not the only time JCD has given away prizes… We have given away prizes here and here and here and here and here and here and again on this post!

Another highlight that comes to mind was our April Fools joke where I announced I was changing our font to MS Comic Sans. Oh the hilarity.

Just Creative Design and our design related articles have also been linked to by over 8000 websites worldwide.

Guest Articles

Over the past months I have also written for many other quality blogs and below are some of them.

Who knows where JCD will be in another 7 months time?

Once again, thank you to all JCD readers and commentators. If you are not a reader, why not subscribe?

Update: Winners will be announced Thursday 7th AEST in another post.


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FREE Lucky Dip Draw - Comment and Win

Written by Jacob Cass on Monday, July 14, 2008 – 10:22 pm

Lucky Dip

Time to give back to JCD readers! All you have to do is comment on this post saying what you DO NOT like about this website and why AND/OR you could suggest something you would like to see on JCD. I am doing this so I can improve JCD.

What can you win?

There will be one winner chosen randomly and the prize is also drawn randomly, hence the lucky dip. If the winner does not want their prize let me know and I will pass it on to another person.

You could win any one of these things:

  • $100 from PayPal
  • $50 from Paypal
  • $20 from Paypal
  • Professional Logo Design
  • Blog / Website / Product Review
  • Blog Header Redesign
  • Go Media Vector Pack - Ultimate Vector Collection 1 - 597 Vectors royalty free. (Worth $523). You can view what’s in the packs here: Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5
  • One month 125×125 advertising on JCD.

I will announce the winner around July 20th in THIS post so you must come back to this post to claim your prize.

Winner!

Congratulations to Harley of BaffleInc who has won one month 125×125 advertising on JCD! The winner and prize was chosen randomly by Random.org.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this post, I really do want to improve JCD and over the next few months I will take what you have said into consideration and make some changes. Thanks once again.


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FREE Month of Advertising for All

Written by Jacob Cass on Monday, May 19, 2008 – 6:39 pm

Free

As many of you know I am about to leave to go on holiday around Europe (want to guest write?) and this means that I will not be able to manage my advertising side bar. What does this mean for you?

If you buy one month of advertising, you get one month free! The deal is if you buy one month of advertising any time from today, your ad will stay there until July 21st! Click here to check prices and order.

Oh and for the continued support of my current sponsors I am giving them a bonus 2 months free advertising over the period that I am away. Maybe new advertisers could get a surprise like that some time in the future?

Why Advertise?

Apart from getting double the value, here are some more reasons why you should advertise.

  • All money made from advertising goes straight back into Just Creative Design and is not profit. This will help JCD grow and get more exposure.
  • With the cash I also plan to enter my work into design books and have recently just submitted some work into Wolda’s Logo Design Annual - Entries close 20th May so be quick!
  • Cash also helps to pay server costs - Last month you guys used 200gb of bandwidth!
  • Over the past 40 days we have received 200,000 unique visitors.
  • We receive huge weekly spikes in traffic from Social Media Sites (ie. 10,000’s of unique visitors per week)
  • We receive an average of 2500 daily regular unique visitors.
  • We receive an average of 10 000 page views per day.
  • We receive an average of 4 page views, per visitor.
  • We are ranked 9,347 on Technorati.
  • We have a traffic rank of 62,540 on Alexia.
  • Our main traffic comes from the USA, Canada, UK, Australia.

Click here to check prices and order!


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Win A Free Logo Contest + Our Achievements So Far

Written by Jacob Cass on Friday, May 16, 2008 – 5:41 pm

Birthday Cake

On June 6th, Just Creative Design is turning 7 months old, ie. 7 months since my first ever blog post and to celebrate I am holding a little contest. I know 7 months is a random number but I actually thought we were 6 months old (a bit more appropriate) but when I checked our archives to find my first ever blog post I realised we were actually 7 months old - Doh!

Oh and if you don’t get the joke in the geek cake picture above, I suggest you read about the 2001 Internet phenomenon All Your Base Are Belong To Us.

The Prize? A free logo design!

If you hadn’t already guessed it, a free logo design is up for grabs to one lucky winner. You can check out my logo design work in my portfolio.

How to win?

Easy. Leave a comment below with the reasons why you deserve / need / should win the logo - it may be as short or long as you  like -  try to tell me what the logo will be for if you can. I will pick the winner based on who has the best reasoning.

I will take entries up until 3rd of June and will announce the winner on June 4th AEST and I will design the logo after I get back from my planned holiday - aka middle of July.

You can comment now or you can read on to see how we got to where we are today.

Just Creative Design’s Journey So Far

Journey

Back in November I found out that blogging was more than just a personal journal and after finding that out I just had to start my own blog and I am SO happy I did. I have learned more about design from the blogosphere than I ever could in 4 years at University.

My main inspiration to start blogging was David Airey who started his graphic design blog much like me, without any knowledge of blogging. He now has over 4500+ loyal subscribers and his blog is a great promotional tool for his business. I believe Just Creative Design is following in his footsteps.

After only 7 months of blogging (of which I was on holidays for 2 months) we have grown to around 2300+ subscribers and I have generated upwards of $5000 from the blog so far through advertising (want to advertise?) and design work coming through the blog, gaining clients locally as well as clients in Malaysia, America and Canada. I am still available for hire.

Some Stats

Everyone loves a bit of stats so here we go.

  • 10.5 new subscribers per day on average. My goal was to get 2.5 per day back in January so very happy with our growth.
  • We average 8,000 unique visits per day.
  • Alexa Ranking Of 62,540.
  • 120 Posts (20 of them Side Blog Posts).
  • Google PR of 3. Used to be 5 though.
  • Currently ranked #1 on Google for “Logo Design Newcastle”.
  • Technorati Ranking of 9,468 (Favourite Us).
  • Average of 20 comments per blog post.
  • 190 Followers on Twitter. (Follow Me).
  • 80% of my visitors come from USA, Australia, UK and Canada together.
  • Main traffic is from Google Organic, Stumble Upon and Design Float.

Achievements

  • Interview with well known logo designer, Jeff Fisher.
  • Just Creative Design wins Logo Design Love Award
  • Jacob Cass Named #8 Top Young Blogger Under 21
  • How Magazine - Listed in How Magazines Top 10 Websites For Designers
  • Fox News, USA - Recommend on Fox News Website.
  • The Herald Newspaper, Scotland - Article featured in Scotland’s leading daily newspaper.
  • Layers Magazine, UK - Linked multiple times from the leading magazine on everything Adobe related.
  • All Graphic Design - Many articles linked from the world’s largest graphic design related site.
  • About.com - Featured on About which is a website sourced by hundreds of helpful experts, eager to share their wealth of knowledge with visitors. Quite hard to get onto here.
  • Communication Arts Magazine - The largest creative resource on earth has linked to us numerous times.

Showcases

My work has appeared in many galleries across the net and below is a sample of some of the ones that I am aware of.

And there we have it, a small summary of our achievements thus far.

Want To Write For Just Creative Design?

Earlier this week I called for some guest articles to be written for Just Creative Design as I am going away for 6 weeks. So far I have only received 2 articles so if you want to get onto JCD please send them before May 21st either in a html or word document!

Don’t forget to comment why you should earn the free logo design.


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