Imagine an affordable stock photo solution where creativity reigns supreme… At Ideas and Pixels we’ve made the switch to Thinkstock. Thinkstock is the freshest and one of the most affordable solutions on the market right now. Thinkstock places the budget and control of a project into the hands of the client; all the while offering a wide array of royalty-free images.

Why I&P Decided To Switch To This Amazing Stock Photo Site

Unlike iStock Photo and partner stock photo websites that sell individual images at a huge mark up, Thinkstock delivers all your design needs without the added hassle of budget constraints. A simple subscription fee is all that is needed for you to have countless images at your disposal. You can even choose to have one invoice a month or be invoiced annually.

Picture your next project – do you really want to be hindered by budget constraints, have low resolution preview comp’s or not see an idea brought to life simply because the cost of a licensing fee is too high?

Regardless of your budget, big or small, Thinkstock places you on the same playing field as your competition. You can even utilize up to 100 images in one design if you wanted! Enjoy any image, at any size, and it won’t affect the price! No more watermarked, low resolution images either.

The bottom line is we’ve been saving time, money and energy by making the switch to Thinkstock. No more sifting around for a license hoping that all is in the clear – full legal protection is provided.

What makes Thinkstock even more unique is the vast portals of images offered. Full access to premium image collections and a growing collection of illustrations, along with countless new images added daily.

Quality Stock Photos At Affordable Prices

At Ideas and Pixels we’re all about adding distinction and class to your next project. Thinkstock is just one of the many tools in our arsenal to help bring your next amazing project to life.

Oh and best of all FREE weekly photos!

Have you tried Thinkstock? If so, tell us how your experience was with it in the comments below!

The post Affordable Stock Photos With Thinkstock Images appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

What is Ideas and Pixels?

We’re a web marketing company although we are better known for creating and executing high quality websites. When I first started the company, I made the mistake of telling people that we did web design. Without a doubt, the best decision that we ever made was to start calling ourselves a web marketing agency. I think it’s because people consider marketing an actionable, proactive thing, while getting a website made sounds passive and static. We have a lot more to offer companies than just building them a site.

How did you come up with the idea?

It was 1997, I was 9-years-old, and the realization that the internet was probably going to be around for the foreseeable future was just coming to fruition for most people. Microsoft had just released the newest version of their budding Windows platform, and like millions of other middle-class American families thriving through the booming 90s, my family had just purchased our first home computer.

“This internet thing is going to be big. You just wait and see,” my dad would tell me. “And the best part about it is that if you start learning it now, you’ll be two steps ahead of most adults. They barely even teach this stuff in college yet. Heck, you have a chance to be better than the teachers that will be teaching this years from now.”

Eventually that really began to make sense. After much poking and prodding, I finally accepted his logic, and went with him to purchase my first book, Web Design for Dummies. It’s very ironic in retrospect. I read a book called For Dummies, and it was the smartest decision I ever made in my life.

What was the biggest surprise in starting your business?

Finding out how much of a micro-manager I was. That and actually getting out of the way of the expansion of our business. I think when you work 12-hour days building up a company from nothing, it becomes very dear to you–almost too dear. And when it comes time to relinquish tasks to others, we all have a tendency to hover over shoulders, making sure things get done right. But you can only hover over so many shoulders until you’re stretched thin, and your business suffers because of it. Letting go isn’t easy, but it’s necessary for strong growth.

Where did you find your first employee?

When Ideas and Pixels was a one man show, I would occasionally hire out developers from websites like Elance, but eventually I realized that there were some things that had to be handled in-person, so I set out looking for someone with a vision and drive. Don’t let me confuse you; that also meant someone who would work on the cheap with the promise of a shared future of success.

I finally began working with a friend that I had went to high school and college with, Matt Valvano. We had known each other for many years, but had somehow never realized that we both worked in the same field. After a few conversations over coffee, I knew I had my business partner.

What does a typical day in your business look like?

Each day couldn’t be more different. I can tell you that it always starts and ends with emails, really early and very late, respectively.

What are some of the advantages to doing business in Ohio?

We enjoy working in Ohio with other Ohio businesses. Coming from Cincinnati, a city with both a major league baseball and football team, hometown pride has never been hard to come by, and I think that’s probably the greatest advantage. People in Cincinnati, in Ohio for that matter, have a certain respect for their neighbors. When we do business with those companies in and around our city, we never miss a chance to chat about last night’s game or talk about next week’s marathon. I think the personal and professional camaraderie you get from that really does have value.

Can you share a funny or amazing entrepreneurial experience with our readers?

The first time someone from Dayton told me they had heard of our company, which was pretty amazing. Then from Louisville, followed by some partners from Cleveland. Knowing people hundreds of miles away are hearing about the work we’re doing is very exciting for me.

What inspires you?

That’s a tough question. Political events inspire me. I think that the world of business is changing. It’s becoming much leaner, more efficient, and cutthroat, and unfortunately, creating gross disparities in wages between owners and their workers.

I once watched a documentary about a company whose CEO made roughly the same amount as even the lowest paid worker, effectively allowing everyone at the company to have decent, stable pay. Everyone who worked at the company held private stock in it, and consequently, everyone cared deeply about how it performed. I would like our company to follow a similar model, and inspire other companies to consider doing it as well.

What founders do you admire and why?

I admire when a mother who has lost her child to leukemia starts a charity run to collect money for research, or when a sister sells cookies and cakes at her school to help her injured brother coming home from the Middle East. Dedicating so much time, money, and care to help others so that they may spare others the pain that they went through seems awfully admirable to me.

What’s next for you?

With enough luck, a vacation!

The post I&P Founder Allen Gingrich’s Sit Down Interview With HVM appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

Reflecting On Your Website

We often lose sight of what the initial goal of our website was, months after the website has been launched and has become commonplace. It’s important to reflect on your website from time to time. With some brief consideration, most business owners will find their website can be improved in at least a few ways quite easily. There are a few things that you can do to ensure your website is performing to it’s greatest potential, some even without the help of a developer.

Collect More Of Your Customer’s Data

The most successful websites are the ones that use clear call-to-actions and data forms to collect as much information as possible about potential customers. Making sure your website has a contact form that’s easy to find is the first step. Many companies go further, doing things like asking for the visitor’s name and email address before showing pricing, or using services like HubSpot to track IP addresses of business and individuals.

Get Listed On The Large Business Search Directories

One of the easiest ways to get to the top of Google is to create a Google Places (now integrated into Google Plus) account for your business. This method is especially effective for local businesses, but some larger brands will also find value. Place accounts are like online storefronts, offering those searching for your company everything from your business’ hours, to your office location and phone number. And the best part is that Bing and Yahoo both offer similar listing sites, allowing you to gain visibility and quality backlinks at the same time.

Don’t Forget Bing

Many pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns forget about Bing entirely. Instead, they pump all of their marketing budgets right into Google Adwords (also known as “putting all your eggs in one basket”). What they don’t realize is that Google Adwords only reaches around 75% of web users. Bing advertising is a much more cost-effective use of your advertising budget, because the competition is much lower than on Adwords and per-click costs are almost always less expensive. Not to mention, Bing is a part of a major affiliate network including Yahoo and Ask.com — some of the smaller search engines — giving you much more reach for your buck. A combination of 75% Adwords, 25% Bing marketing allocation usually does the trick.

The post When’s The Last Time You Reflected On Your Website? appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

The other day, I had just clocked over twelve hours in the shop, and I went to post a status update to see if anyone wanted to go throw one back with me — and out of nowhere, a new emoticon option popped up!

It seems that Facebook has selected my profile as a candidate to test this new feature. Of course the first thing I did was spam everyone with all types of emoticons, and then proceed to wrote this blog post — which is to say, I never left work!

The user can actively share what they’re thinking, doing and so much more — without using words, but by conveying “tone” to an overall boring sentence. Then, you can hover over the abbreviation, and you are able to “Like” that interest, if you wish to stay up to date on it.

Could This Be Facebook’s New Revenue Outlet?

Mashable’s Samantha Murphy goes into more detail about these crafty icons. She is 100% correct that this should open up a new ad revenue for the company.

I foresee businesses wanting to build their brand into these icon sets, and have Facebook’s billions of users share their identity that way. As of right now, Facebook is just trying new concepts with their design and attempting not to clutter it — a challenging task for sure.

Needless to say, this is the best thing about web design — trial and error!

Could this Facebook’s new tactic to share business profiles? What are your thoughts?

I believe this could very easily parlay into a huge revenue increase for Facebook, but only if they can craft a way to allow business to share their brands’ logos, as icons.

New pay-per-click (PPC) outlets could be enticing for avid Facebook users to follow and “Like” brands.

The post Express Yourself With The New Facebook Emoticons appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

Google Plus has been channeling its inner child, and is now allowing custom text overlays to be added to images. You will now be able to create your own personalized memes on Google+.

Our Step Process To Make A Meme with Google Plus:

Step One: Think of an Idea and Find an Image

Once you have an idea, it is time for the best part &mdash finding your meme image! I absolutely love browsing through BuzzFeed for examples of memes and other crazy ideas.

Ideas and Pixels Cute Cat Photography

I suggest using one of your own images so that you can start your own viral meme. Cats are always a good canvas to start with, so that’s what we did! You can’t deny how adorable these casts are hugging (they belong to our owner)!

Step Two: Add Text To Your Meme

Once you have the image that you want to use for your meme, simply drag and drop it into your Google+ share box.

Add text to your image to make your meme

After it is uploaded, click the “Add Text” icon. Don’t forget you can change the alignment and font options before you share your meme!

Add Text To Your Meme Using Google Plus

Step Three: Share Your Meme Photo

With your new meme in hand, share it to the world! Who knows — maybe it will catch on and you will start a viral trend. Below is our cute cat meme, and please, feel free to share it! Cheerio.

Share Your Memes and Make Them Catch On!

The post How To Make A Meme With Google+ appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

With the positive results from this one insert, we have learned that if you provide the knowledge and insight – potential customers will follow!

The Reason: Over 85% of our clients we meet  in person or are referred to us through word of mouth. We wanted to expand our creative reach towards other potential clients.

The Objective: Reach out to businesses, which are not active on the web and tend to stay away from social media outlets.

The Solution: Produce new informational print material that can be sent through the mail or handed out as inserts, within our larger brochures.

Details: The high gloss front cover of the insert was designed to captivate the notion of moving forward. This is portrayed with the large bold tag line – Is your online presence getting you business? – overlaying a background scene of downtown Cincinnati. Since the back of the insert is a mat finish, your natural instinct is to flip the card over and see what is on the back. We provided four ways to generate more business online. This showcases information that any business can use – to gain more results and business online.

The Result: A strong print marketing insert that can stand alone or together with our other brochures. Take a look below, what do you think? Marketing Insert Front – Online Presence Getting You Business?

Marketing Insert Back – Generate More Business Online

The post Print Marketing Material | Tips to Generate More Business Online: June 2012 appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

April flew by before we knew it, here at Ideas and Pixels. On top of our growing clientele, we have been tidying up our presentation skills. We were recently invited to Antonelli College to have two lunch and learn speaking events, with their students. Our presentations went into detail on how to market yourself online and what your online presence says about you.

Here is a snippet of our speech. Enjoy: What are some things that come to mind when I say social media? Social means “Of or relating to society” and media means “through the means of mass communication.” One thing is clear though: there’s a social media revolution going on.

We’re all a part of it. But more than that, it’s a media revolution. Companies becoming more transparent, more human – and like humans, they are networking. Networking is something people have been doing ever since the first caveman met the second one. It’s a word you’ve heard in business for years. “Build your network,” “Expand your reach,” “Grow your prospects.”

So how important is social media and will it land you a job? It’s not everything it’s cracked up to be. Hundreds and thousands of SEOs and Social Media experts purport that it makes the world of difference, but that’s most-likely just them justifying their jobs and fat paychecks.

Social media experts should not be seen as “experts” or paid as such, but they are. This will most-likely normalize over time. The most basic and important thing to remember when contouring your social media presences for the business world is that most of the effort you put into grooming your profiles is not beneficial; it is to curtail any negatives that may come about from scouring your pages.

The post Speaking Events | Antonelli College: April 2012 appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

In the past few months I have tried to get away from the computer and hit the gym more frequently. A few days ago, I went into my local gym with a diet coke – it’s always functioned as a great pre-workout stimulant. I was in for a rude awakening when the lady behind the counter told me that I should throw it out, going on to explain what she knew about diet products. After hearing that, I decided to do a little investigating and conducted some research of my own.

Of all the material I’ve read for leading a healthy lifestyle, it appears that drinking any type of diet product means that you’re also becoming a test subject for the world’s largest social experiment! Diet soda has only been around for a few decades and scientists are completely unsure of its side-effects in the human body in the long term. Here is just a taste of what I found out about why diet soda and other products are bad for your health:

Number one – Weight gain

Researchers agree (uncertain of the exact reasons) that there is a major link between weight gain while drinking diet soda. These studies are based from a few reasons, but mainly because most diet soda drinkers probably have poorer habits towards exercising and eating properly. The other reason is that artificial sweeteners tamper with the human body, causing it to crave something it is deprived of; in this case real sugar.

Artificial Sweeteners within diet soda and other everyday products:

• Aspartame – or aspartic acid and phenylalanine; used as a calorie-free sweetener and was discovered in 1965 while developing ulcer medicine. Presumably it’s the reason I have had headaches for over a week when I stopped drinking it.
• Neotame – a chemical derived from aspartame. The chemicals that are bonded through manufacturing make it even more toxic than aspartame. Sucralose – C12 H19 Cl3 O8 or compounds that are merged together and chlorinated, aka bleached.
• Acesulfame Potassium – or a creation from acetoacetic acid. This is linked to stimulating the body’s insulin secretion and aggregates the reactive hypoglycemia, in turn causing low blood sugar attacks or diabetics in humans. This was found not just from lab rats, but from the medically examined deceased.
• Saccharin – a chemical that has been determined to cause cancer in lab rats and was uplifted by the FDA in 2001. The FDA even removed the use of a warning label, “The use of this product may be hazardous to your health” that was required to be used with this chemical.

Number two – Risk of disease

Studies has shown by drinking diet soda, regularly, will increase the risk of a stroke, type two diabetes and even osteoporosis. Diet Soda study results:

• 61% more likely to have a stroke
• 57% more likely to get osteoporosis
• 25.8 million children and adults have type two diabetes (Jan. 2011)

Number three – Damaging to the body

I for one, could never figure why by teeth suffered. I always brushed, used mouth wash and even tried to floss as often as I could. However, every time I went to the dentist I had to get a filling or something fixed. I now know that it was because of my diet soda.

Through the years, diet soda has also become extremely costly to my personal health and wallet. This is due to the phosphoric acid in all soda, and its ability to dissolve tooth enamel. I even had a kidney stone, and I am just glad my kidneys are OK because this stuff rips through them overtime.

Here is what I learned: diet soda is still in its testing phase. We don’t know the chemical reactions that are occurring over the long-term in the human body. No one knows if any of the diet chemicals are damaging cells or destroying our organs. But science is actually favoring these outcomes – and that’s the scariest part.

I would compare this to the numerous marketing plans that my team and I have developed for all types of companies. Sometimes plans don’t work as well as we planned them to work, and they have to be changed, manipulated or even tossed away in order to find the perfect formula.

This is what is happening with diet soda. Soda companies are changing and manipulating the formulas now, without testing their long-term effects on the human body. The FDA is supporting these manufacturing companies, constantly supporting large corporate profits at the expense of our health and longevity. Links to the gathered information:

• consumerreports.org
• diabetes.org
• feingold.org
• sweetpoison.com
• mdhealthguide.com

The post The Largest Social Experiment | Why Diet Soda is Bad appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

To save you from scouring the entire web for April Fool’s goodies, here is a collection of 2012’s best April Fool’s Day online pranks:

Forbes Gets Google Good

Google’s gullible. Or at least its news aggregators must be. When Forbes broke the news of “Mitt Romney Drops Out Of Race; Backs Santorum”, Google seemed to think this was perfectly plausible. Before being removed, Google gave the following story its top, number one news spot:

“In a surprise move, Mitt Romney announced today that he is ending his presidential campaign and throwing his support behind Rick Santorum. The move shocked observers, including Senator Santorum, as Governor Romney seemed poised for a decisive victory in Wisconsin.

The governor, however, said he concluded that he has ‘no chance’ to win the general election in December and that a Santorum candidacy in 2012 would be in the ‘best interest of the party.'”

Mashable Acquired By Conan

I’ll have to admit, this was the first joke that I woke up to. The one that stole my sacred 2012 April Fool’s virginity. Mashable reskinned their entire website in commemoration of Conan O’Brien, of late night fame, who apparently had acquired the technology-news site because he couldn’t stand the “atrocious job they were doing”.

Google Maps Goes 8-Bit

Those of lucky enough to hit Google Maps last night and today have found that Google’s gone retro. Dropping their hi-res satellite maps for a more practical 8-bit look, Google got us with just one of dozens of jokes it had planned. I guess the hundreds of people Google employs finally found a day to earn their grossly high salaries.

Flickr Feeling The 80’s Vibe

Flickr’s users got a surprise today when they learned that their photos would be displayed in an 80’s black-and-white dither by default in the coming weeks. Some photographers prompty went “WTF” before realizing the date. Most people didn’t actually notice, due to the current Flickr collection of filtered vintage photography that already plagues the site.

The YouTube Collection

Since the online video portal now has over 13 billion videos, they thought it would be wise to address those of us who wanted to add every single video to our private home collections. Introducing The YouTube Collection: Including “Every Video Uploaded To YouTube, Ever”.

There’s been thousands of reports of pranks posted already today. So, we want to know: what’s your favorite?

The post The Best April Fool’s Day Pranks: 2012 appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.

Most notable of them, is our new “concepting room”.

Already, the new concepting room has been a hit for us and our freelancers. What really makes the room is our new, custom-built giant whiteboard. We also got to try out the new HP Officejet printer everyone’s been talking about. Over time, we see this room becoming the go-to place for getting work done in a crunch.

With our client projects stacking up fast, we’ve been venturing even more into hiring freelancers and acquiring co-op students to help us with our work. Next month, we’ll welcome Adam Waters as a new intern at Ideas and Pixels. Adam has a bachelors in Organizational Leadership and a masters in Getting Things Done.

Next month, we will be doing some guest speaking events at Antonelli College, speaking to students about what we’ve learned over the years and where we see the future of online marketing going. We’ll be sure to include some shots from the events.

The post Pretty and Powerful: March 2012 appeared first on Ideas and Pixels.