Adobe Photoshop Graphics, Vectors, Backgrounds & Tutorials

We are HUGE fans, and we mean huge fans of Adobe's Photoshop. We use it to create everything that we can think up and it does the job without even twitching! Whilst looking around for tutorials, we came across PSD Graphics. This website is invaluable to anyone who uses Photoshop on either a daily basis or once every now and then! It is a very clean website but this is key and really works for this type of site. It is easy to navigate and all the posts are very well laid out, which is so nice to see when you are trying to concentrate on the tutorial ahead of you.

Firstly, the graphics are of the highest quality around. Downloading the graphics are a breeze and include all the files used. This makes learning so much easier. There are an array of very different objects but you can guarantee that the item you are looking for is on there and will give you the motivation to build it!

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Our Affiliate Marketing Story

Join NOW! Click the 
image to get started!

Today, we started to experiment with affiliate marketing. We had heard mixed reviews on affiliate marketing but decided to take the plunge and see what all the fuss was about! We wanted to test it and see whether our readers enjoyed seeing targeted adverts or whether they got in the way when reading our posts. We were also confused on the issue as we enjoy focusing on reading, yet if we see an ad for something we may be after or want to investigate, we will click on it, as it may benefit us, its human nature! 

We anticipated that it would take us a few hours to sign up, agree to all the terms, wait for our account to be set up, find our way around the control panel and get on our way to implementing them on our website! We signed up with Affiliate Future which took around 25 minutes, a pleasant surprise for us! The control panel is very easy to use, its a simple process to simply choose a merchant, view the programme details and then implement the banners onto the website. We must say that all the banners that they have on their are very good quality and were already coded so it was a simple cut and paste job!

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Technology Trends in Reading

By Kev Henley

How many of us spent memorable portions of our childhood carrying around a favorite book? It matters not if the books were science fiction or thrillers or computer manuals—they were still edifying (if cumbersome) to us. Current generations are enjoying changes that allow them to power their needs (from instructional sites to creativity-pumping fiction) in more effective ways. Quicker, simpler, more educational.

Even adult reading trends have been changing quickly, when compared to a single lifespan. Led by giants like Amazon (via Kindle), Fictionwise (who is part of Barnes and Noble), and Apple, this electronic world has dismantled the exclusivity of the major publishers. The current landscape is more open—more free range than fences—a breeding ground for new ideas that are nearly always tech-driven. While experienced authors like Konrath/Killborn claim traditional publishers have been replaced (by the way, he just coauthored and coordinated a major release that’s 100% electronic), most believe publishers will adapt to this paradigm shift. Regardless, it can only mean more choices for readers.

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Our Hunt For Sporting Goods, Etc!

The team are set to embark on a trip soon (team bonding!) and we have all decided on a hike of some kind! As we are completely unprepared for this we needed to go on the search for some outdoor gear! Whilst their are many sites that we found, we found the best to be a site called Makais.

They offered a wide range of outdoor products that seemed ideal for our little trip! We were impressed with their prices, they were very competitive. I wish i was more into sport as their sporting goods section was also very extensive (i'm sure a real sportsperson would have a great time browsing!)

We will continue to update you of our trip as it commences (be prepared!) and if your looking for sporting goods or outdoor gear for a trip coming up soon, head on over to Makais.com for very low prices and FREE shipping! We love a bargain and know one when we see one!

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Finding Your Blogger Sitemap!

Seeing as we have just set up our blog, we wanted to submit our sitemap to all the major search enginges in order to get indexed nice an quick so that we can hofefully start appearing on some search results! 

Blogger accounts dont appear to have the same sitemap address that most common websites do. Adding /sitemap.xml to the end of your url returns nothing. 

To find your sitemap for your blogger account, please use these steps:

1. Add robots.txt to the end our your url. 

2. You should now see some text. In there will be Sitemap - http://www.yourblog.co.uk/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

3. You have found your sitemap address! You can now use this in you Google Webmasters account to start gaining important data from your website! 

Any problems, remember to get in touch with us so that we can help!

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You're An Expert!

Could you be an online expert and not even know it? The word "expert" has a lot of connotations attached to it and its most meaningful definition often depends on who's interpreting it. For some, an expert is a person with a PhD and years of experience in some field. For others, an expert is a person who has generations of experience in a particular field and a myriad of influential contacts. What about you? What qualifies a person as an expert in your eyes? Is it a written book? Is it an impressive record of live seminars or speeches? Is it simply being able to consistently solve a problem?

In my opinion, an expert in "something" is someone who can consistently solve a certain type of problem no matter how differently that problem presents itself. If you agree, and you have the same problem-solving skills, you too, may be an expert. Even better, you may be an *online* expert if you have a knack for consistently solving problems related to online issues. 

How good are you at getting rid of Wordpress bugs? Do people always ask you for help with their MySQL problems? How about CSS issues? Do you spend a lot of your time answering emails and forum questions about this part of web design? It doesn't matter whether you solve problems as complicated as systems networking or as simple as formatting email, if you help others on a regular basis, it might be time to not only redefine your role, but to take advantage of it as well.

How?

Set up a blog and introduce yourself. Put an informational resume online if you don't have a professional one and link to all the places where people can find you on the Internet. Upload a few articles a month and provide a space where people can publically get answers to their questions. In doing just these few things, you'll carve out a small area of the internet where people can and will refer others for help (as opposed to you chasing them down in forums, chat rooms, social blogs, etc.). 

We're all an expert in something, and it may be high time you recognize the expert in you. Fortunately, setting up a serious online presence is one way to emphasize that expertise. Enjoy it!

Nicole Miller writes for dixons.co.uk discount codes where you can find Dell discount vouchers.

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Top Blogger Tips & Tricks

When choosing blogger as our main host to make this blog, we started to search all over the web for tricks that we could add to our blog!

Alot of them are selling SEO software, etc but some of the blogs that we came across we very well lad out and provided really easy to follow content and tutorials.

Here are our recommendations if you are looking to increase your blogs technology and functionality.

1. http://www.bloggertricks.com/ - Very good website with many tutorials!
2. http://www.allblogtools.com/ - Some great content & some really nice templates on here!
3. http://www.mybloggertricks.com/ - Helped us with our meta-tags, some good reading!
4. http://www.bloggertipsandtricks.com/ - Great site, made clear by the number of followers!
5. http://www.bloggertipandtrick.net/ - Clearly set out & gives a HUGE number of tutorials!

If you are looking to do some modification work on your blog then this list will come in very handy. Even if you aren't looking to modify, there is plenty of design inspiration waiting for you over at these sites.

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Best Ways To Get Quality Backlinks

In this post we are going to share with you, what we think are the best ways that your site or blog can receive good quality backlinks that will help both your page rank and your positioning in the search engine results. One way links are very important to your blog or website and the more backlinks that you have pointing to your site, the better. If you can improve your google pagerank, then the amount of traffic that you receive may go through the roof!

The hardest part of this is...of course.....getting those quality backlinks to link to your website or blog. Here are our best tips on getting these backlinks:

1. Being active in forums and discussion boards with your niche are good ways to start getting backlinks. It definitely helps if they are related to your website. In your signature make sure that you add a link to your website with some quality anchor text. Anchor text is the part that the users see when they click the link. E.g - The Best Blog Ever! <<< That is the anchor text. One thing that is also important is that you write quality content in your posts and don't just spam every topic that you can find. This is a good way to get traffic to your site. 

2. Submit your website or blogs url to web directories that are very well know and have good page rankings. Being listed in these will improve your rankings but also bring you a shed load of traffic to your site. Directories that are the most popular and highest ranked are Yahoo and DMOZ. They do take some time to review your submission, so try not to submit too often. Some of the directories are free to submit to whereas some are paid. Be careful when submitting to paid web directories.

3. Content is king! Try to write the best quality content that you can on your site. This will rub off on the people that read your text. If they find your posts useful they may share the content with their friends giving your site more exposure. They may also link to your blog giving you another back link. This method can take some time...be patient! New blogs or websites often don't receive high loads of traffic so unfortunately, you will be playing the waiting game, but, good quality back links will pay off in the long term.

4. Finding other blogs that are related to yours and commenting on them is a solid way of gaining backlinks as well as exposing your blog to readers that are obviously interested in your content. Similar to forum posting, put a link into your signature. Remember, don't spam, you will either get banned or people will refuse to click on your link.

5. If you are interested in writing then create different articles that contains high quality content and then submit them to the best article directories out there. We think that the best directories are goarticles and ezinearticles. We think that this is one of the best methods as you will get a backlink from a top directory that has a high page rank. You will also gain other backlinks if people use your article on their sites.

We hope that you can use these methods and build some very good quality backlinks to your site! If you have any questions, please contact us. Keep checking back as we will update this post as we find more proven methods of getting high quality backlinks.

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Apple iLife '11 Review

Whilst watching the apple keynote like hawks on wednesday to see what new goodies Apple were to announce, we had been waiting for an updated version of iLIfe since the day it came out in '09! There had been a lot of rumours floating about that a new iPad could surface, etc yet the more stable rumours suggested what we saw.

We have since upgraded to iLife '11 to test out the new features. iMovie has been really impressive so far, the movie trailers are great and it is running very smoothly on my iMac. At just $49 to upgrade, if you are a regular user of iMovie, then it is worth the money, just for that. 
HOWEVER, the update of iPhoto has left some people cursing at their macs. People are reporting that their photos are being lost during the upgrade or initial installation. We had no problems, but this certainly doesn't mean that there aren't any! 

We saw no update for iWeb or iDVD, which was a shame. We always rated iWeb for its simple to use interface. For someone that has no interest in learning HTML or CSS, then to simply drag and drop images, text, etc is really a nice tool to have. The main feature of the keynote was the introduction of the new MacBook Air, with a new screen size added of 11" as well as an updated 13" screen. It has tons on new features as apple seemed eager to show off its resemblance to the iPad. Reports have been posted on the web and the unboxing videos are already appearing on YouTube. They look fantastic and i can't wait to pop into my local apple store to have a play on one. If you are after a lightweight laptop for browsing the web, basic imaging, light gaming, they these should be in your consideration list. 
They are pricey but wow are they beautiful! 

Another new introduction was the Mac App Store. Following the success of the App Store, this has potential and we can't wait for it to launch to see what apple has done with it. 

Head on over to YouTube to see some unboxing videos and definitely checkout the Apple website for some high res images of the new beauties! 

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Want to Write For Us?

Do you have a flair for writing?
Do you enjoy blogging?
Want to get your articles and opinions out there?

Then you should write with us. We are offering anyone the chance to submit their articles for posting on our blog. We say anyone, but we want good content and very eager people who are very knowledgeable in their chosen areas.

If you are interested and would like to get started, please send us an email at hello@reviewmonsters.co.uk and we will get back to you as soon as we can!

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The Social Network Review

Yesterday evening, we all visited the cinema to see The Social Network. If you haven't heard what this film is about or can't guess from the titles....its Facebook! This review will be brief as i encourage you to go see it instead of us spoiling it for you!

We had already heard mountains of reviews about this film, but wanted to ignore them and make up our own minds on this eagerly awaited film. As a facebook user myself, to learn a brief history on how it was all set up and the journey that the Facebook founders went through. Popcorn in hand, lights down.....let the film begin!

I must admit, i was glued and focused from the start and it really was a film of 2 parts in my opinion. The first part was how Mark (founder!), played by the guy that we all love from Juno has the idea of FaceSmash, a site where the guys can rate all the girls that attends Harvard, etc. Turns out, its a hit! It causes chaos within campus.....the idea of FaceBook is born! The second part really starts when Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) appears and starts to advise as to where the company should relocate to and what direction it should start to specialise in. From here on, its all work and play as the founders start to become icons and embark on the journey of a lifetime!

It goes live, users increase, people get mad and claim ideas have been stolen, it expands, those people sue, new people emerge, people are forced to leave, offices are set up, it expands, punches are thrown, have we convinced you to go and see it yet?!

It really is an interesting, entertaining and in some places, very funny. All the cast play superb roles and really give an insight as to how Facebook began...if it reflects the actual truth though, well who knows?

From a simple idea that started with just $1,000, Facebook is now worth an estimated $25 billion if memory serves me rightly!

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How To Add A Re-Tweet Button

Re-Tweet Button On Your Blog!

With the rise of Twitter continuing to grow, we thought that we better add a way for our fantastic readers to re-tweet our blog posts to all of their twitter followers! We went searching around for a good way to implement this to make it noticeable yet discreet enough when reading a post.

So, here is how to add a re-tweet button to your blogger:

1. You need to find a piece of code. The code that you are looking for is <data:post.body/> in the "Edit HTML" part of your design panel in blogger. 

2. Once you have found the piece of code from step 1, add the pieces of code below BEFORE it:                                                                                                            
<div style="float:right;padding: 6px 0px 6px 6px;">

<script type="text/javascript">

tweetmeme_url = '<data:post.url/>';

</script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"> </script>

</div>

3. This will float the button to the left, like it is on our blog! If you wish to move it over to the right then all you have to do is change float:left; to float:right; and it will move to the right! Magic!

4. Now, save your changes and you will see it appear on your blog posts!

Any problems, email us at hello@reviewmonsters.co.uk and we will be happy to help you out!

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Best Ways To Promote Your Blog

In this post, we are going to cover some of the best ways to get your blog noticed. Using these methods, your blog will gain traffic. If your content is very good and unique then you will be more likely to receive more followers and have people come back and view your other posts. This is very important for any blog.

So lets get started so you can start receiving more visitors/traffic to your blog today:

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) - This is key for anything relating to the web. For the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc to know that you exist, you will need to be indexed by them so that they have a copy of your blog to show on any search results. Add your RSS feeds to the search engine accounts. Simply log onto the individual websites and add your feed. Another key point that relates to SEO is your titles url. This should be keyword rich yet relavant to you post.

For example - www.blahblahblah.com/promote-your-blog/

2. Social Media Networking Sites - Create an account on the best social networking sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Use your blog name as your username if you can. Make sure you include links to your blogs in your status' and posts. Make sure you update regularly and ask people to retweet your posts!

3. Blogging Communities - Your blog should be submitted to all the good communities out there. Good communities will have have good page ranks and be worth submitting to. Some good examples are BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. You should start to see an increase in traffic once you have submitted your blog to relavant sites like these.

4. High Quality Content - By far the most important method of any blog. Writing good, unique content will get you noticed and followed by people. Good content = high levels of traffic. If you have good knowledge of a subject, create a blog and write about it. If people are looking for information on a certain subject, they will often look in many different places until they find what they are looking for!

5. Social Bookmarking Sites - Millions of people read these sites as they are a very good source of good quality content. Sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious are very good. Creating an account with each of these will enable you to update your account with your latest blog posts. One very important thing to remember is to use relavant keywords for all your bookmarks. For example - If your post is about SEO, remember to use SEO as a tag!

6. Broadcast Your Blog - Ask your subscribers to leave comments, share your blog posts with friends and ask new people to subscribe. Word of mouth in our opinion is the best form of advertising so this is a very good technique to use! Asking subscribers to sign up to your newsletter is another good way to let your readers know when you have updated your blog with new posts.

7. Host Your Blog On Your Own Domain - Using your own domain is very benficial as it gives you more control over SEO techniques and custom settings. It also looks very professional to use a custom domain rather than a yourdomain.blahblah.com. For all of these needs, we fully recommend Foxita - Web Hosting if you are looking to buy a domain name, host your own domain, etc. They offer excellent pricing structures and very good customer service with instant help which is vital if you are not entirely sure what you are doing. They offer tailored solutions to meet every need so you will be in safe hands with them! Head over to their website now to secure your domain name and get yourself set up with web hosting if you require it!

We hope this helps you gain lots of traffic to your blog. If you have any methods that have worked for you, please share them with us and our followers (we will credit you, we promise!)

We will continue to update this page with new methods of promoting your blog and gaining traffic.

Remember to keep checking back at all times!

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Fiverr.com - New Website Review

Fiverr.com - Advertise & you could earn $5!

Whilst doing the usual web crawling, i stumbled across an interesting website. The website is called Fiverr (not affiliated!).

From initial impressions, it seems that the site allows users to register an account and promote their services at the rate of $5. No more, no less.

Wanting to know more, i decided to create an account to investigate. My initial impressions were spot on! With a simple update from your control panel, you can advertise whatever you would like to for $5.

Amazingly, it seems to be very popular. One users had 13 orders in the queue waiting to be completed and over 500 pieces of positive feedback! It seems that this could really be useful to some people whilst others are going to make some nice income.

Amusingly, one user was boasting that they could create a 10 page website, fully optimised (SEO, etc!) for, you guessed, $5! This guy could be busy for the next 15 years!

Its a very interesting website, definitely worth having a look at if you have the time. Some of the ads are very amusing and will certainly brighten your day up!

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Fragger Update - iPhone App

Just before i sat down last night i checked the App Store for any updates. I usually try to do this a couple of times a week or whenever i'm bored, hoping that something has been updated!

Fragger Update - Available on the App Store

Yesterday, Fragger had been updated and what an update it was. When i first bought this, i found it very compelling to play and often whizzed through the levels. The third pack of levels were much more challenging and i was eager to complete them (all with 3 stars was quite a challenge!)

If you haven't played Fragger before, the aim of the game is to blow up your enemies using grenades. Simple, yet somewhat very addictive.

The new update bought 30 new levels in a new world called "Atlantis" and is already looking very good. The developers have also added retina graphics, which is a great addition and looks great on my iPhone 4. With the added bonus of Game Centre leaderboards and achievements, this is a really solid update to one of my favourite games.

Fragger is available on the App Store for just £0.59. A lite version of the game is available. Try that first and if you like it, the paid upgrade is app heaven!

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Game Dev Story - iPhone App

Game Dev Story - Create games!

A game that is taking the App Store by storm! Game Dev Story is a very reto themed game that allows you to manage your own games company. You find yourself in a studio with the responsibility of employing developers and designers! You main aim in the game is to work your way up to a multi-million pound game empire, but man is it addictive!

Downloaded Game Dev Story on the wednesday night and finally put it down thursday morning to get some sleep! That is just a slight hint at how addictive it is!

After many hours choosing genres and different sports to make into games, i found myself at the stage where i could develop my own game console (i know, wow!) and take it to market! There are many, many features in this game which i fully recommend you try to find out! There is a neat system that allows you to change your staffs professions. e.g - your coder can become a sound engineer!

As your staff get more experienced, they will unlock more games that you can develop. Playing it made me experiment with different types of games. I tried a racing game with a golf theme, it was hit! Its very enjoyable when you see something you create become a number 1 selling game, even if you are sitting on the sofa!

I found that it is really important that you train your staff as they will need to grow with the company to produce higher quality games to achieve better reviews!

Game Dev Story is available now on the app store for just £2.39. It may initially seem pricey but i can assure you that you will not regret it!

Work hard and you may just be head of the games industry within years!

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Many Ways To Make Money Online

It's the question that everybody is asking about and can't get enough of these days - How do i make money online from home for fee?

We have put together what we think are the best ways that you may be able to succeed in making money online for free! Some of these methods can be done from home! Making money online from home has to be the best to make money online!

Our top ways that could make you money online for free:

1. Blogging - There are many companies now that enable you to create your own blog for free online. Companies such as Blogger (we use them!) and WordPress are amongst the most popular. You need very minimal HTML knowledge to start blogging. So how do i make money by blogging i hear you say! The easiest way is to implement adverts onto your blog. We have a few ads on our blog on the right hand side and down the bottom. Adsesnse is managed by Google and is automatically built in to Blogger, so for us to implement it took approximately 5 minutes! Every time you have a user or reader log onto your blog, they will cause an impression on your advert. If they then click on one of the ads that are on your blog, that will count as a click. The money that you will be able to make from this is entirely down to the ads that you choose to show on your blog. To start seeing a good income on this, you need good quality traffic coming to your blog. We think that the best way to do this is to create and write good quality content that people will be interested in. We write informative reviews that we hope our readers will enjoy and come back for. Once you have good traffic on your blog, you can then maybe offer paid advertising yourself for companies to advertise on your blog for fixed prices and periods of time.

2. Internet Domains - The internet is still a goldmine and there is very good money to be made in domain names. If you have the time, brainstorm some names that you think are worth having and purchase them. You will then be able to sell these domains on at a premium. Sites such as 123-REG sell domains relatively cheap now a days so if you get a good domain, there could be alot of money to be made from the sale of it! There are a lot of forums where you could advertise your domain name as well as auction sites such as eBay. Get your thinking cap on and start thinking about whichdomain names you could purchase and make a ton of money on! A good domain name (.com, .co.uk, .net, etc) is quite hard to find these days so some searching will be required!

3. Web Template Design - Web development is still very sought after. If you have a good knowledge of HTML and CSS, why not create some web templates and sell them? Submit the sites to sites that sell them and you can advertise to a broad range of webmasters at once! Some people don't have the time or patience to learn the skills required for web development so it seems a shame to put your to waste if you have them! There are many ebooks out there that are very helpful and get can you on the web development ladder very quickly. Patience is definitely required though if you are new to it!

4. Paid Surveys - There are many websites that offer you the chance to answer survey in exchange for credit. Once you reach a certain limit, they will pay you via bank transfer or cheque. They are normally interesting surveys and are relevant to the profile that you enter when registering for a new account with the provider. A good survey website is OnePoll as they offer a good selection of surveys and good pricing structure. They have also developed an iPhone app, so you can get paid on the move! To register for an account is FREE but it may take a while for your balance to grow to get paid. But still, it is essentially free money online from home for just a few minutes each day!

5. Start Your Own Country - No....you heard correct, we were shocked as well! You can start your own country and apply to sell domain names. Please see our no. 2 for more information ondomain names. If granted you could be selling millions of domain names! We haven't looked into this a great deal but it seems a very interesting ways to make money and having your own country! Sitting at home, making money online and owning your own country can't be that bad can it?!

6. Do Something Silly! - This one requires alot of thinking but can really pay off and earn you good money if it is successful. The best example of this has to be the Million Dollar Homepage project. Sometimes the most simple things are winners and can make you bundles of money from home! Get thinking about the next big thing, you can do it!

7. Write An E-Book - Writing an ebook is a great way to make money online from home. It is very easy to make an ebook and if you market it right, you could easily shift a few thousand! Using affiliates through affiliate marketing, you wouldn't even have to do anything, your affiliates would sell the book and take a commission from the sales for you. Affiliates also increase the number of people that will see you e-book, increasing your e-books exposure! Not sure of an ebook topic? You could do anything that you have knowledge of.....there are even ebooks out there, showing people how to write ebooks! This is an exciting way to make money online and we think that with enough hard work, it could work!

8. Enter Competitions - Competitions are happening all the time and if you do enough, you are bound to win at least one (you would hope!) which will give you a prize. If get a prize that you like, brilliant, enjoy it, if not there is a chance that you may be able to sell it on to a family member/friend or even put it up for sale on the internet on any of the popular sites such as Craigslist, eBay, etc!

9. Play Poker Online - Only read this one if you are good at poker! Lots of people that are very good at poker make a good living and earn lots of money online from playing poker at home! It is risky and you have to be very confident and patient but if you are good enough you will earn money. There is one negative though which we must warn you about, you could also lose money.......its risky!

Make Money Online From Home!

10. Sell Photographs Online - If you live in the middle of the city or have been on a very nice holiday recently, taken lots of photographs, then you may be able to earn lots of money online, right from home by selling your photos online. Site such as iStockPhoto and Getty Images allow users to post their photos online and set a price for everyone else to purchase them. If your photo sells, you will then receive your money. Photos can be sold more than once so you could earn lots of money. Graphic designers also post their work onto these sites as other designers may use their icons, etc on upcoming projects that they have. This can be very beneficial and financially rewarding if you have the right photographs and market them well! If you do, get them added and sit back and wait for the money to roll in! 

We hope that you have enjoyed reading this, we will be adding more and more ways to make money on the internet when we can so remember to keep checking back at all times! 

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iPhone App - Trainyard

Trainyard - On the App Store NOW!

Over the past few days, we have all been playing Trainyard. A game developed by Matt Rix for the iPhone. We must also say that the game looks very good on the iPad.

It is a simple yet hugely innovate way to spend some time challenging your brain. The aim of the game is to ensure that all the trains can successfully rail on in to the shelters...but they must colour match! The first few levels are very easy, but, this is incredibly useful as it really gives you the feel of the game and what it is about. The controls are very easy to pick up and i was soon making my way around the screen with ease creating very basic yet attractive railways!

The levels get increasingly harder, but in a nice way and i was still able to keep up with the pace and soon found myself ahead of all the others in the office! There are some great little features as the levels increase., but i wont spoil them for you! The graphics are very nice and the menu screens have a very clean feel about them, making them easy to navigate. The slider at the bottom which controls the speed of your trains is a superb feature and is needed when your on higher levels as there are trains everywhere!

Another really useful part of Trainyard is the website If you are stuck on a particular level and wish to get a helping hand, make sure you check out the Trainyard website as the user solutions section is very useful if you have been stuck on a level for the past 3 days!

The game is available from the App Store now for just £0.59 (absolute bargain!) and is definitely worth a play, if you aren't playing already!

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Zap Sweets - Online Sweet Shop

Our first website review of our brand new website goes to Zap Sweets!

One of the guys is currently working on a project and we decided to surprise him with a jar of retro sweets to celebrate a few months of VERY hard work!

So this is how the review came about, we was searching around for what we though looked like the best jar of retro sweets and we came across Zap Sweets. They offer a very extensive range of sweets (from both the past and present!), chocolates and plenty of gift ideas to surprise everyone and anyone!

Zap Sweets - Retro Sweet Shop Online

We found this website very easy to navigate around and soon saw ourselves whizzing from mouth watering retro sweets to bars of chocolates without any fuss at all. That is something that i think goes un-noticed sometimes, the pure ease of use of a website.

We also loved the bright colours! I found myself being instantly drawn to the pages, always wanting to know what was round the corner! I like the branding that is used and think the website design is perfectly suited around the logo.

After talking about our favourite sweets from our childhoods, we finally started to narrow down what we were going to buy. We selected the obvious retro sweets jar and added a few goodies for everyone else to enjoy! Checkout was a breeze and i love the fact that PayPal is accepted (i think it speeds to process up a great deal!).

Overall, we enjoyed spending time on here, i found the load speeds to be ok, which was surprising with all the images that were shown on each page.

Final Results (out of 10!)

Design: 9 - a real delight to look at.

Usability: 8 - easy to navigate, like the way the products flowed. 

Functionality: 7 - some simple yet very effective tech on the homepage really brings the site to life!

We hope that you enjoyed our first review and haven't got you thinking about sweets too much!

To visit this online sweet shop, please visit www.zapsweets.co.uk - over and out!

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