Lets face it, if you are starting out to make money online, sooner or later you are going to need to take more control over the design aspect of your site or even your marketing campaigns. In the beginning, I admit that I tried to use Microsoft Paint with no success. Next, my cousin gave me a copy of Photoshop which I fell in love with.

Now I realize many newbie will be turned off to the idea of shelling out $700 or more for the latest of version of Photoshop but there is an alternative.

Bring Out The Gimp
www.gimp.org
Sorry, couldn’t pass up the Pulp fiction quote. Gimp is an Open Source Source image manipulating software that is FREE to download. It has many features that are comparable to Photoshop such as image resizing, color palettes, paint brushes, channel mixer, alpha channels, and layer support. Easily create your own animated banners for your sites rather than use stock ones. Gimp.org also offers tutorials on their site to help you get started down the road to being a graphic designer.

Although most people tend to outsource their graphic design needs, I highly recommend newbies take the time to learn some basic graphic design as you can save yourself some money and it can actually be fun to do as well.
Visit Gimp.org to download the Latest Version of GIMP