Video: Top tips for creative productivity - envato.com coupon

At Envato Live in 2013, we pulled some attendees aside to get their thoughts on staying productive as a creative professional.

Watch the video for succinct advice on staying productive from Power Elite authors, web designers, Envato staff and community members.

Thanks to everyone who shared their tips!

In order of appearance:

Andy Wilkerson
Dante Hamilton
Eric Kuznacic
Nicole Borens
Jami Gibbs
Matthew Mur
Raphael Barreda
Jen Klabis
Spencer Finnell
Jake Caputo
Curt Ziegler
Natasha Postolovski
Adam Pickering
Bart Troyer
Mauro Colangelo
Chris Molitor

_{This article was originally published on Inside Envato in 2014. Written by Natasha Postolovski, brand manager at Envato.} 

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Stock Photo Trends in Landing Page Designs - envato.com coupon

4 Featured Image Styles Guaranteed To Grab Attention - envato.com coupon

What Is Tropical House? Plus, 20 Great Stock Music Examples of It - envato.com coupon

Tropical House is a subgenre of deep house, which in itself is a subgenre of house music. It initially started out as a joke by Australian producer, Thomas Jack. But the sound quickly caught fire. Its breakthrough moment, according to GQ, was producer Felix Jaehn’s saxophone-infused remix of OMI’s “Cheerleader” reaching the top ten on iTunes in 18 countries, as well as the top ten on Spotify in 14 countries.

Unlike deep house, which can often sound very dark, Tropical House typically sounds more uplifting. It incorporates usual house characteristics like synthesizer instrumentation, and a 4/4 kick drum pattern, but adds tropical instruments like steel drums, marimba, guitar, saxophone, and sometimes even pan flute.

While some may think the genre “just sounds like Toto’s “Africa”, Tropical House’s mainstream popularity has extended to the stock music market. Its electronic sound makes it feel fresh, and the uplifting vibe it creates has made it a safe choice for projects that would usually use a Corporate track, but want their project to seem a bit more modern.

As a result, it’s quickly growing into one of the most popular new genres on the stock music market.

So, we felt it was the right time to compile a list of some of the best Tropical House stock music tracks around. And to help us do it, we asked the Envato Community to suggest the best Tropical House tracks available on AudioJungle, and tell us why.

Below is a curation of the tracks they suggested, plus what they had to say about them (the comments have been edited slightly for clarity).

And for the full thread of suggestions by our community members, head over to our forums.

Tropical House by LuxuryInc

A rich track giving you the feeling of the beach. It creates a very uplifting mood.

Tropical Summer by AudioPizza

A positive, sunny tropical track with modern vocals.

Uplifting Summer House by Top-Flow

Really great synth chords and bright piano in this track.

Tropical House by MantraRecords

A really original track. It features an interesting flute line, and overall is just beautiful.

Summer Tropical House by SelectedSounds

With its bright melody and soft sound, this track’s a perfect example of the tropical house style.

Beach House by edzzh

A well produced classy summer house track, featuring a horn section. Love it.

Tropical House by Indifferent_Guy

This track progresses very smoothly, slowly introducing layers into the arrangement. It’s got a cool melody, and the mood it creates makes you want to go to the beach.

Tropical House by Jovid_Sound

A well mixed, high quality track with a positive, summer feel.

Tropical Summer Pop by Alex_MakeMusic

This guy makes great tropical music. Nice drums, leads and chords! One of the best tropical tracks. Good sound and positive mood!

Tropical by LuxuryInc

A classical tropical house track with an elegant, light melody.

Summer Tropical Pop by LumenMedia

Great tropical house from one of my favorite authors on AudioJungle. It’s creates a really great atmosphere of summer, travel and beach parties!

Tropical House by TopTune

Positive and catchy vibe, this type of tropical house is what I like.

Tropical by Sokolovsky

Chilled, melodic, warm background summer music.

Uplifting Tropical House by ParallelRhymes

An interesting track. Positive sounding and great for dancing!

Tropical Summer by ModuleSound

Cool new track, like a light breeze.

Tropical House by LazaOaza

Beautiful track with great vocals!

Tropical by Indifferent_Guy

It’s fashionable and stylish.

Tropical House by EdRecords

This track creates a great tropical atmosphere. It brings happiness and the feeling of summer.

Tropical House by SunsetLover

An inspiring, uplifting, emotional and trendy sound that fits into both tropical and deep house.

Tropical by OlexandrIgnatov

I like the overall feel of it. It creates a happy and positive energetic mood through the whole song. It starts smooth and progresses as the song goes on. It features a great drop, a lot of cool catchy sounds, and it’s perfect for a whole range of projects.

Thanks to all the community members who helped curate this list, and to Adrien Gardiner from the AudioJungle team who helped curate the curations. And remember, for more suggestions on the best Tropical House stock music tracks, head over to the Envato Forums.

The post What Is Tropical House? Plus, 20 Great Stock Music Examples of It appeared first on Envato.

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How To Write a Terrible Marketing Email - envato.com coupon

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools you can have in your arsenal. It allows you to establish a personal connection with your readers and lead them through a sales funnel whenever you launch a new product or a service.

But, marketing emails are also responsible for 70% of spam complaints which means if you don’t take the time to ensure your email content is engaging and relevant, chances are it will wind up in the spam or junk folder.

Unfortunately, there are a few other mistakes that can help your email land in the spam folder or simply cause your subscribers to delete it without even opening it. Avoiding those mistakes is easy, when you know what they are.

In this post, we’ll show you what makes a terrible marketing email so you can avoid writing emails that nobody reads and instead ensure they drive traffic, leads, and customers for your business.

1. Write an irrelevant or generic subject line

Your subject line tells the recipient what they can expect in your email. It should encourage them to open your email and read it. If your subject line is irrelevant to them or generic, they won’t bother reading your email, let alone open it.

Use your subject line to prepare your subscribers, engage them, and encourage them to take a few minutes out of their schedule to see what your email says. Use your brand’s voice to ensure it stands out from thousands of other emails that land in their inbox.

The following examples demonstrates an irrelevant subject line that doesn’t tell the recipient at all why this diet is the best and the email itself doesn’t offer any way of actually checking the book discussed in the email:

2. Ensure your subscribers have no way of replying to your email

Sending a marketing email from a Do Not Reply address is a great way of ensuring you get no feedback and lose out on sales. You’re effectively creating a one-way conversation and nobody wants to participate in those.

Even if your email is sent from a generic reply@ or info@, chances are nobody will reply to those either, because it looks like the email is coming from a robot. It’s cold, it’s impersonal, it scares your customers away. In other words, don’t do it.

If you want your emails to be the first step toward building a more meaningful relationship and turning them into actual clients and customers, use an email address that has your first name in it. Seeing an email that came from mary@ or jonathan@ looks more personal and makes your brand appear more human.

3. Don’t personalize the emails

Another way to ensure your email looks generic and cold is to start it off with a simple Hello or Hi. Even if you opt for Dear, it looks plain weird.

No matter which email service provider you’re using, their built-in tools allow you to build a form that asks for your subscriber’s first name. And some of the best opt-in plugins will allow you to insert a name field into the form.

Use that information to personalize the email and insert it after the greeting. It will make your subscribers feel like it was written for them and with them in mind.

This example from a book marketing company uses a generic opening line that shows no level of personalization:

4. Send the same email to everyone on your list

Have an awesome new product coming out? Great! Be sure to notify your entire email list about it because that’s a surefire way to get more sales, right? Well…not exactly.

Your email subscribers are people who are at different stages in their lives or their businesses. As such, not all of them will be interested in the exact same product that you have to offer. Someone who opted in for a free checklist to write better headlines will not be interested in your high-end course to master writing sales pages. But they might be interested in a low-cost course that helps them learn the basics of copywriting.

Use the segmentation tools in your email marketing software to learn more about your subscribers and create different groups or segments of your list. This will ensure you can send a more targeted campaign and know which subscribers to email to achieve the best possible return on investment.

5. Avoid formatting and spell checking at all costs

A good way to ensure your email gets sent to the trash and results in no sales or engagement is to condense all the information into one long paragraph. If you want to make sure it gets sent to the spam folder, be sure to include a few grammar and spelling mistakes, too.

Typos happen to everyone, but not checking your writing prior to hitting Send just shows you don’t really care what your subscribers think. It also leads to a lack of trust.

There are plenty of online tools that will help you check your writing and save you the embarrassment. Formatting, on the other hand, doesn’t require a lot of extra effort–it’s a matter of keeping your paragraphs short and making use of bullet points to make the content easy on the eyes.

6. Avoid calls-to-action

Just because you know what you want your subscribers to do doesn’t mean they know it too. Avoiding calls-to-action for the fear of coming off too salesy is the biggest mistake you can make and may leave your subscribers confused.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you need a call to action after every sentence, but do make sure to make it clear what the purpose of the email is. Tell them whether you want them to click the link and read your blog post or to click a button to get an exclusive deal in your online store.

This email breaks several of the rules mentioned so far: the email comes from an info@ address, there is no way to unsubscribe and the call to action is practically non-existant:

7. Omit the unsubscribe link

Assuming you are guilty of any of the mistakes above, complete the picture by omitting the Unsubscribe link. If you don’t give them a way out, they will be forced to stay on your email list whether they want to or not. Instead of opting out, they will simply mark it as spam and go about their day while your open rates plummet.

Not only can leaving out the Unsubscribe link hurt your relationship with your readers, it also violates the CAN-SPAM laws. Avoid hurting your reputation by making sure the unsubscribe link can always be found in the footer of your email.

8. Ignore mobile devices

The last mistake on our list includes ignoring mobile devices and not testing your email campaigns. Considering 34% of subscribers use a mobile phone to read their emails, sending them an email that doesn’t display correctly is a surefire way to frustrate them and cause them to unsubscribe.

Don’t make this mistake and take advantage of your email marketing software’s tools to get a preview of how your email will appear on devices with smaller screens. Your mobile subscribers will thank you and your chances of getting them to read your emails and click through to your site greatly increase.

Avoid writing terrible marketing emails

The mistakes listed above are great if you want your subscribers to delete your email without opening it, mark it as spam, or unsubscribe from your list. But, now that you know what the worst email marketing mistakes are, you can do the exact opposite and ensure your list stays healthy and your subscribers stay engaged. Use that knowledge to turn those leads into customers and clients and to grow your business. Best of luck!

Or, do more things terribly:

Worst ways to use PowerPoint

The post How To Write a Terrible Marketing Email appeared first on Envato.

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Everything you need to build a real estate website on WordPress - envato.com coupon

The real estate industry is massive and it requires a great website. Whether the site is for a realtor or a large real estate agency, both can benefit from a streamlined site on WordPress.

But how do you even start building a real estate website? Which features do you need to have?

In this post I’ll cover the basics that every great real estate website must have, all focused by building on WordPress. Different websites all have different interfaces but the end goal is always the same: to sell & rent property. And a great design is a great first step in the right direction.

1. Start with a killer WordPress theme

Few real estate agents want to create their own design from scratch. It’s much easier and more efficient to work with custom themes.

You can find dozens online, but I have a few that I recommend for launching(or updating) a real estate website.

Houzez

Clean, strong, and professional best describes the Houzez theme. It supports a number of different homepage styles with custom search features and property listings to boot.

For a small local agency you might try this homepage using the Google Maps feature at the top. This draws attention right away and encourages the user to engage. But other homepages focus on the properties, the photos, and even details about the real estate agent.

From luxury homes to nearby apartments, this theme offers something for everyone. And you get all these features(search, property listings) built right into the site.

Realtyspace

Another feature-packed theme you might like is Realtyspace. This comes with a drag-and-drop page builder so you can customize the exact look of your homepage.

The customized search feature is probably the most impressive resource. It lets visitors sort properties by features, area, price, bathrooms and a few other options. This gives complete control to the user which is usually a good thing.

Property listing pages also include tons of detail with a large photo slideshow, bullet point feature lists, and space to attach PDFs for descriptions & floor plans. These properties can also have agent profiles attached so visitors know exactly who to contact.

One thing I don’t like is the custom scrolling but this can be altered with a bit of JavaScript.

Reales WP

Reales WP works best for agencies that run high volume properties for sale in larger areas. This theme leaves a lot of space for property photos when searching.

On the property page you’ll find construction details, plenty of photos, and a live interactive map with a pin on the exact location.

Reales is feature-rich, fully responsive, and the perfect choice for a larger realty company looking to stylize their online presence.

Home Villas

One more theme I really like is Home Villas which supports traditional WordPress and WooCommerce.

This comes packed with features like team management, online tour scheduling, a mortgage calculator tool and a “walkability score” to find valuable places to shop/visit near the property.

But Home Villas can be a very simple theme too. It can be used for basic property listings with a search feature without all the extra widgets.

Definitely a versatile theme and this works great for individual agents or larger companies.

These are just my personal recommendations for real estate themes but you can find a bunch more on ThemeForest.

As long as your theme provides an excellent user experience you can’t go wrong no matter what you choose.

2. Showcase your property listings

Every real estate website needs property listings. This is true for individual real estate agents and larger firms.

Some realty WP themes come with listing features built right in. For other themes you’ll need a property listing plugin, and thankfully there are plenty to choose from.

Real Estate Pro

Real Estate Pro is the best real estate toolkit in plugin form. It supports online payments from Stripe/PayPal which can be used for local renting/lodging.

But more specifically it lets you track who interacts with certain listings and which properties garner the most attention over time. Users can bookmark listings for later and sort by dozens of categories.

This may be too much for a simple real estate agent website, but it will certainly work well on a larger agency site.

Uptown

For a cleaner Ajax-powered interface take a look at Uptown. This comes with a full backend admin panel with multiple settings views for listing types and user functionality.

Each listing appears in a grid with search options in the sidebar. Visitors can limit by specific options and view each property inline on the same page using an Ajax modal window.

Check out the demo page to learn more and see how this plugin works on a real website.

Realcon

With the Realcon plugin it’s easy to add property listings onto any page no matter what theme you’re using. This plugin has a ton of features with 3 listing styles(list, grid, and maps) along with a Google Maps API key for adding maps onto your site.

You can edit listings right in WordPress so visitors see when a property goes up for sale, and when properties eventually sell. You can also add information for different agents and include nearby amenities to each property.

This is one of the richest property listing plugins out there. It supports any theme with a clean responsive design, an easy-to-use admin panel, and tons of optional features to take your real estate listings to the next level.

3. Add an interactive map

Since real estate is all about location it’s useful to include embedded maps onto your site. Even better if you can add interactive maps so users can search around nearby locations.

You can find tons of WP plugins for adding maps onto your site. These are usually free and pretty simple. But if you’re looking for something with more features check out these two plugins.

Progress Map

The Progress Map plugin can fill the void if your theme doesn’t support default map placements.

With this plugin you can select where to drop pins and embed these into any page. You can highlight the location of each property in your site, along with nearby points of interest like grocery stores or public services(library, fire station etc).

This can also help prospective buyers learn more about the neighborhood and even plan their route to visit if they setup an open house. But only use this plugin if you need map functionality because it can be overwhelming if you have a dozen other plugins running too.

Map Search

For a bit more functionality try the Map Search plugin built with Ajax auto-updating technology.

This lets the user search by keywords or location to find nearby properties for sale. Each search loads dynamically so the page never needs to refresh. And you can update property listings in WordPress for full control.

You may like this if you want a visual search component on your website. It’s certainly not required but it can definitely improve the user experience.

4. Make the sale: contact/booking forms

Every single website needs a contact page and realty sites are no different. You might have prospective buyers looking for more information about a property or someone who wants to schedule a tour.

The best WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7. It’s free, easy to setup, and it works like a charm. Plus it’ll blend into any theme you choose.

Any typical real estate website should do well using the CF7 plugin. But if you need something a little more powerful consider the VR Booking plugin made specifically for scheduling online tours/rentals.

This does cost a bit and it comes with a ton of features. I recommend it for larger real estate agencies that do a lot of volume and have dozens of scheduled tours per month.

Using this plugin you can even support online bookings during the weekends when nobody’s at the office. The user picks available dates from a calendar and chooses the best time for a tour. Then you get an email update whenever someone schedules a tour. Simple!

But for a typical realty website start small and add features over time. If you can get by with a simple contact form then CF7 is your go-to plugin.

5. Add beautiful photos that sell

Photography is huge when selling real estate. Photos are often the defining factor of what draws people into the site. This can include property listings on the site, but also photo headers and property photos used throughout your site as promotional tools.

When grabbing interior photos you want every room to look bright, spacious, and natural.

Study the photos on Houzz to see what they look like. You’ll find every type of room with thousands of photos to sift through.

Snapping your own photos can be tough but necessary if you can’t hire a photographer. Thankfully you can nail down the basics of photography with just a few months of practice.

Here are some intro guides to get you started:

• How to Photograph Real Estate: Lessons Learned
• Real Estate Photography – a Guide to Getting Started
• Photo 101: Five Tips for Shooting Interiors

Launching your site can be easy and if you build it on WordPress you’ll have the peace of mind knowing it’s secure.

I hope this post offers enough resources to help you get moving on your real estate site.

Browse bestselling & trending real estate WordPress themes. 

 

Need to promote your real estate business? We’ve got you covered – check out our best video templates and real estate flyer templates.

The post Everything you need to build a real estate website on WordPress appeared first on Envato.

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The best Apple Motion templates from videographer SebicheArgentino - envato.com coupon

If you’re looking for high-quality Apple Motion templates for your video, check out the work of VideoHive creator Sebicheargentino.

“They’re the hands down, undisputed leader of the Apple Motion category,” says one of our content specialists for VideoHive. With nearly 20,000 sales and almost 200 video templates in their portfolio,

“This guy clearly knows his way around Apple Motion, and the design quality is outstanding. He’s a regular contributor, and has single handedly raised the bar in the Motion category.”

Based in the United States, Sebicheargentino has been creating video templates for nearly a decade. Here are some of our favorite templates in the collection:

Openers

Top 10 Package: a premade template for your top-10 countdown list in video form.

Red Conference: A nod to TED conferences, perhaps? This flashy template is great for conference intros and promo videos.

Youth Conference: Similar in style to the RED conference template, but with a more colorful and bright look.

View all openers by Sebicheargentino

Logos

Splash logo: A bestseller in the logo category.

Arcade logo: A retro logo opener.

Aberration logo: A glitchy template that’s best suited for all-white logo designs.

View all logos in the collection

Other templates for Apple Motion

Facebook timeline: Great for highlighting a social media concept or even to demo a product launch. See also: Youtuber template.

Crazy colors: Change all the text and footage to your own, framed by bright colors and designs.

Track my TV: An MTV-inspired template.

Need more inspiration? Check out all trending Apple Motion templates. 

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