One of the most important tools a website needs to be successful is eye catching graphics, with the use of these any run of the mill website will succeed in capturing a customer. Fantastic looking graphics are sure to impress any website visitor, unlike paragraphs upon paragraphs of catchy text graphics are there right in front of you, as said before, a picture paints a thousand words, well now a header image can tell a visitor about your product/service possibly better than 10 paragraphs of block text. So how can I create these images?

Back in September 2005 I started my online venture by selling eBooks on eBay, nothing major but it helped put petrol in my car at the end of every week. After a month I wanted to expand, I needed more sales to start covering my eBay fees that were every growing! I looked around at the top seller's sales pages to see how they were selling their goods and making a profit from them. There were two things each 'top seller' had in common, these were a good feedback rating and awesome sales page graphics, these really blew you away, and I was amazed!

Since feedback on eBay was something that needed to be built over time I decided to set myself a goal of being able to create myself some pleasant, easy on the eye sales page graphics for my listings. I did a bit of research and found out that all the top designers used a program called Adobe Photoshop. So on I went and downloaded a 30 day trial from the Adobe website. After downloading Photoshop and having a small play with some of the features I could easily see why it was professionally used by a small minority, there were loads of features that I just simply couldn't grasp.

I did a quick search on Google and found some great tutorial websites, two of my best finds being Pixel2Life.com and Good-Tutorials.com. I studied each and quickly started to master the fundamentals of Adobe Photoshop. I quickly began to realise that it was not all that hard. I also discovered (after some time) that Pixel2Life had its very own forum where Photoshop beginners could ask experts any problems or queries they may have had, this was a very powerful tool and quickly transformed me from a beginner to an intermediate!

Now, 1 and a half years later, I have my very own graphic design business and I am taking orders every single day. It really shows what shear persistent can do. I set myself a goal and I reached it. From just a little bit of research, and practising, I became an expert in my field of graphic design, and you can too!