A Small Icon To Make You Money

One of the most overlooked, and seldom used icons that can make you money is the favicon. This is the little tiny icon that shows up in the url bar next to the web address and in your bookmark list when someone bookmarks your site.

Branding is something that you would associate with a cereal or something tangible most of the time, however it is just as important on the web. Creating a symbol that is easy to recognize will help create memory patterns for your visitors. Subliminally the brain is taking notice of this icon, even if the end web surfer is not completely aware of it.

If you take a look through you're bookmarks, how many of the links in there have an icon associated with them besides the dull boring system file icon? I'm willing to bet its not too many. You should create an icon for your site, to further impress your branding upon people browsing your site.

An easy way to create a favicon is to go over to htmlkit.com and use their free tool. Once you've got this done, upload it to your website images folder (or wherever) and then call it from a page with the following code:

<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/name_of_icon.ico">

this should go in the header section of you're webpage or blog.

Now the trick to this is to make it as simple as possible, but something that will stand out in the surfers mind. Some sites use a single letter, or a solid color with one other color shape on top of it. Play around a bit with it until you get something that you can visually see and associate with your website.