It's a bit of cliche and not one that I subscribe to. An image is not worth 1000 words - but they certainly can help to make a potential buyer feel more relaxed when deciding to make a purchase. After all, a good looking site or product image is certainly better than some ugly site or poor product image right?

I'm in the process of updating some of my products and websites for 2008. Really it's just a general tidy and refresh as some of the sites are sstarting to look a bit "stale". I think that having an up to date look can only help with making sales.

With this in mind, here's an example which took me all of 5 minutes to make, let me know what you think:

If you compare that image to this one:

You can see that the difference is immense. Which do you prefer?

I know which one I prefer, and which one I'd be more likely to purchase…

Just how did I make the new eCover?

It was pretty simple. For starters I went to iStockPhoto and found a decent image of somethign going "fast" - the product is an eBook about making osCommerce faster - kinda corny I know, but what the heck…

I then added the text (title, name etc). Then I used a Photoshop action called "eBook 3" from www.diycovers.com (DIY being Do It Yourself)- which takes a flat 2d image and makes it into a 3d image (in this case an eBook). And the result is as you see above. Not bad, eh?

You can see just how I have progressed since my early days of making covers (the little "thumbs up" box image was made with a very early version of cover making software called Laughing Bird. As you can see it is not a patch on the actions available from DIY Covers. If any readers are interested in the package from DIY Covers, let me know as I can arrange a nice discount - I know the owners