Spice Up Your Profile

Want to catch a buyer’s eye? GraphicRiver user, HQM, is here to show you show you how you could easily spice up your Envato Marketplace profile with eye-catching graphics and ways to update your buyers. Take it away, HQM!

I’ll use a few graphics I’ve made myself for my profile and for this tutorial. The main thing is to keep the profile as clean and readable as possible, at all times. If we have to much or to little information we can actually lose a future client. This profile as your very own personal portfolio to show of what you do and what you have done. I know not all great artists out there have their own website or portfolio so this is actually a great place to show the world what you are able to create.

This is how my profile looks

See the whole profile here.

As you can see I’ve added alot of elements on my profile. I have so you are able to follow my product updates, too. How? Well, we’re getting to that.

Step 1. Make some nice graphics

We could really use some nice graphics to show on our profile; just to keep things more intresting and to encourage visitors to stay longer. But, the most important thing we should consider is to make it clean and with as little information on as possible. This goes for both pictures and profile information. I’ve made a lot of different pictures and added some information about myself.

Step 2. Format this profile

Now we’re going to dive into some easy formating so we can style our profile.

First we should start by going into the Edit tag on our Profile and scroll down to Personal Information. We’re going to begin by doing a little styling. We will start by adding a nice welcome note and a picture to our profile. (Note: By profile picture I mean a picture on your profile and not your Avatar or Homepage image)

This is how I added the picture: !http://www.imgsource.com/image.jpg! (Fill in your source information as appropriate.) Now you should add some information about yourself, making sure you don’t add too much. It should be easy and quick to read. The key is to keep it clean. To follow DannyOutlaw’s measurements you should have it like this. (Not necessarily in that order)

• 300 to 500 word intro about who you are as a creative
• List of and major clients you have had
• List and awards or press mentions you might have had
• Links to your most popular marketplace files
• Links to and client work you want to show off
• Links to and social networking sites you want to share
• Any additional contact information you may want to add

If you follow these guidelines you can’t miss.

Step 3. Provide some space to keep it clean

As you can see, I’ve added some spacing between my lines to keep it as clean and readable as possible. To do this we need to use some really back-to-school, basic HTML. All you need to do is write like the image below shows with the awesome red arrows I made.

Now I’m guessing that you’re wondering what the * and _ symbols mean. If you write asterisks (*) you make the text bold and you use _underscores_ to emphasize the text. Easy to understand and it’s actually written right below your profile edit area.

Step 4. Adding your RSS Atom product feed

You are able to add this feed to your profile and to your items description area. All you really need are a great picture to show that you offer your visitors to follow your updates by feed. I’ve made my picture like the image below shows. As you can see I’ve made it clean and really simple.

Now, how do we get this to be clickable? Well, it’s really easy. All you need to do is write like this: !http://imgsource.com/image.jpg!:http://graphicriver.net/feeds/users/hqm.atom if you write like that you are able to add your product feed to either your profile or on your items description area.

Step 5. Show off your items

This is made by the same principle as the Atom feed, really. All we need to do is rewrite the code a bit. If you write like this you shouldn’t have any problems to adding your thumbnails to your items. Like so:

!http://s3.envato.com/files/158727.jpg!:http://graphicriver.net/item/artistra/54441

And to show more than one item all you need to do is “copy and paste” and be sure to change your item numbers.I find it great when an author shows of their bookmarks collections with a nice picture. See the picture below to know were to click and how to add pictures and titles. And yet again with the red arrows.

Step 6. Finishing up

Now we’re nearly done with our profile. All you really need to do is check how your profile looks, and if it’s good enough to publish. I suggest you add some nice social bookmarking as well. This is made exactly the same way as when we added our thumbnail. Just change the URLs to the correct ones, and voila! We have our own really simple social bookmarking.

I wish you the best of luck with promoting your profile and if you have any questions at all please feel free to contact me by my profile.

Get some inspiration

Check out these profiles below to get inspired on how to design your content:

There are many other great profiles out there. If you find anyone else please give them a link in a comment below. And, if you’ve made an awesome profile let us all know in comments.

Thank you all for reading my little mini tutorial on how to promote your Envato Marketplace profile!  Credit to DannyOutlaw for giving me the inspiration to write this tutorial and to KLANDA for actually giving me the inspiration to complete my profile a while back. And of course Amanda for letting me write this tutorial. Thank you all! You are all great.