Happy Friday! This week’s custom theme is from Richie Caliendo at Caliendo Automotive. I love the header image in this theme, with its classic-car look and elegant black background. This is one of the best auto dealer custom themes I’ve seen yet! Also, Richie takes advantage of our Showcase layout for Craigslist (see picture below), which has a nice big photo at the top of the Flyer to give the prospective buyer a better view of the car. The Showcase layout is one of 9 Craigslist layouts available to business subscribers when they use a custom theme. Other information and photos of the vehicles are displayed below the huge photo at the top.

Great custom theme, Richie!

Once again, for a useful introduction to creating and using custom themes, take a look at this series of short video tutorials on our website.

We’ll be back next Friday with another Custom Theme of the Week, so if you’ve created or seen a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com.

We’re introducing a new blog feature, the “Custom Theme of the Week”. We have so many great custom themes that our members have created using the Theme Editor and their own creativity and resourcefulness, we decided we had to show them off to the rest of the world. This week’s custom theme is from Ryan Hinricher at InvestorNation. Ryan made great use of an uploaded background image and a header image that’s seamlessly integrated with the background. I especially like the upward-pointing arrow in the logo and the contrast of white and blue between the header and background; it gives me a whole new way of thinking about what’s possible with the Theme Editor. Everyone on my team is quite impressed by this custom theme. Nice work, Ryan!

vFlyer’s Theme Editor enables any user to create his or her own custom theme and any business subscriber to upload a branded header image to a theme. It’s a great way of making your Flyers stand out from the rest, and the branding capabilities for business subscribers provide a vehicle for putting your brand front and center on your Flyers. For a useful introduction to creating and using custom themes, take a look at this series of short video tutorials on our website.

We expect to post a new theme every Friday, so keep an eye out for more fantastic custom themes. And if you’ve created a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com!

Here is a great marketing idea that involves images enhanced with Watermark Plus and flyers: Creating a set of before and after images and including them in your vFlyers as an effective way to show-off your business skills.

A growing number of small business owners are using vFlyer to promote their businesses. Whether you are in the construction, home staging, health care, landscaping or provide other professional services to consumers or business, using before and after pictures helps communicate qualities that are otherwise difficult to “illustrate”, things like attention to detail, quality of work and the ability to deliver great results to prospective customers – try it today.

Tags: small+business, marketing, watermarks

This week’s vFlyer of the Week is this Hyper Blue 2006 Mini Cooper. Jeff does a great job with using both his great photos and the premium layout to give prospective buyers a complete “360 degree view” of his extra clean beauty!

Tags: vflyer, mini+cooper

I have written about the flexibility of vFlyer many times! With our support for custom attributes and fields you can use vFlyer to pretty much sell anything! The other day I noticed a company using vFlyer to sell cargo containers of all things! Their vFlyers do a great job of promoting 20’ and 40’ cargo containers for Safe & Secured Storage! You can pick up a container for as little as $1,950 and have it shipped overnight by FedEx! I wonder what it costs to FedEx a forty foot cargo container these days?

Michael Friedenberg of Frank Howard Allen Realtors uses the new premium flyer layout to market the Perfect Small Farm! I like Michael’s choice of layout and I like the “completeness” of his flyers including a great photo, large galleries, and a good company logo!

This week’s Watermark Plus image of the week comes from John Baker of the Lithia Internet Sales Center. Like other Internet-savvy auto dealership marketers, John uses Watermark Plus to add sales information to images that could help take them off the lot! It’s no surprise that Watermark Plus is so popular with auto dealers! Image merchandising has been used by auto dealers in automotive classified advertising magazines such as AutoTrader, Trade Magazine, Dupont Registry and Zoom Photo Ads. Watermark Plus takes the process online and allows car dealers to merchandise photos for free in a few simple clicks and then use them in online classifieds!

This week’s vFlyer of the Week for a 2005 Honda Accord EX Sedan comes from the very web savvy vFlyer professional subscriber Sonny Baird at Anderson Honda direct. Sonny’s use of the new premium flyer layout really set’s all of his listings apart!  Sonny’s elegant use of vFlyer also set’s him apart from other auto dealers when it comes to online marketing!

Some real estate agents have put Watermark Plus to particularly good use! By simply combining the photo of their property being listed with their own personal photo and an eye-catching message (Just Listed, Price Reduced, i.e.), they can make their property photos really stand out!

This Week’s vFlyer makes creative use of an artist’s rendering of the property as part of the listing. Small House, Big Opportunity! features a starter home in Oakland, California and real estate agent Nicole Bailey does a great job in highlighting her listing! Its nice to see so much attention to quality in a flyer (logo, personal photo, main photo, i.e.).

This Week’s vFlyer is a U.S. Army M548A1 All-Terrain Military Vehicle I found being sold using vFlyer! The ability to use vFlyer to sell a military vehicle is amusing but actually speaks well to the power and flexibility of our flyers!

This week’s Watermark Plus image of the week demonstrates a great idea – using the watermark feature to show a before and after photo. Watermark Plus allows you to add a logo, photo or image as a watermark on any corner of the image. You can use this feature for other purposes such as before and after images, showing other rooms or views of a property.

This week’s vFlyer of Week comes from vFlyer power user Bob Taylor of Bob Taylor Properties (who has over 25 properties listed with vFlyer) and is a very unique property at 5024 Lincoln Avenue, Highland Park (See Zillow)! Bob has covered all his bases – in addition to this great vFlyer, he has all of his info and the property info in Zillow as well! It reminded me a bit of a gingerbread house – in any case, a great looking property and a great price!

Have you wondered how you could go about owning your own little ATM machine? Kind of like the ones at the local 7–Eleven store – wonder no more – eBay’s the place! I recently found this vFlyer for a Hyosun 1520 Mini Bank ATM for sale on eBay! Its only $2,000 – which, if you think about it, isn’t that bad. Assuming you making a $2.00 fee on every transaction, the ATM would pay for itself after 1,000 ATM transactions! Consider that the average ATM in a retail environment (not a bank) does about 8 – 10 transactions per day or $480 to $600 a month. Based on this, you could actually make a profit on your investment in a little ATM machine in less than two months! Always amusing what people are selling using vFlyer – who knows, perhaps one day we will have a dedicated ATM product category.

Technorati Tags: ATM, vFlyer, eBay

As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the quality and quantity of Watermark Plus images continues to grow! It is always exciting to see users applying our technology in creative ways to solve their sales and marketing problems! One of the best uses of Watermark Plus to create information-rich pictures thay really “say it all”. The first photo from Dawn Graham Homes does this by marrying a high quality photo with the caption “Top Rated Schools” and a photograph of the listing agent that sends a clear message to prospective buyers! Elise Timpe of First Team “says it all” by including the property’s location, price, key feature as well as her phone number, photo and company logo all in the same photo – without obscuring or compromising the quality of the photo! These are two of many great examples of Realtors that are putting Watermark Plus to work for them!

Technorati Tags: Photos, vFlyerAdobephotoshopbling