Sunday Sharing - Create your own Grab Button

I want to thank Tara over at The Waterwaif for teaching me how to create my own grab button.  While I've been grabbing other people's buttons for years... LOL... I never knew how EASY it was to make one for myself so other wonderful websites and blogs could link back to mine.  We'll I'm here to tell you, it's a piece of cake... an in my case, raspberry coffee cake with coffee 'cuz that's what I"m all about while I write this post! :)  So thank you Tara for being a great teacher and sharing your knowledge!  Please stop over an pay her a visit at her blog.  She also makes beautiful, custom crafted jewelry and really is a great inspiration to work at home moms!

This is a great way to reciprocate traffic among blog friends and be able to share the blogger love!  Any website or blog can grab your button and advertise for you, regardless of if it's a blogger, wordpress or typepad account.  These instructions to create a grab button however are written for people using blogger as their blogging platform, because that's what I did mine in, so that's what I learned! :)  Feel free to grab my button over on the right!  I appreciate sharing the love!  You are also welcome to post links to your blog, website or online store over on my Facebook Fan Page for Designs By Dawn Marie.  I have a discussion tab that has a "Link Love" discussion started and it's for anybody that wants to share their website URL with other Facebookers.  So you're welcome to share there as well!

How to make your own Grab Button.

1. First, make sure you have an ad or a button. The easiest way to do this, as I did, is to take a photo of one of your products and add your name or link to it with photoshop or a similar program. Personally, I use Photoscape as it's a free photo editing software that can be downloaded online.  It works great and it's really easy to use.  It's best to keep the image size under 200 pixels wide so it will fit in most sidebars.


2. Upload your new ad to any hosting site. Many people use http://photobucket.com because it is free, but there are a lot of options out there for web hosting.  I have a hosting account with Bluehost for multiple websites that my fiance and I run.  So I just uploaded my jpg ad to that account.


3. Now, open a new tab or window and go to your blog. This tutorial is designed for Blogger blogs as that is how I learned it.  I'm sure it's similar on other platforms, the names of the tabs and commands may be slightly different. Log into your blog, click "customize", then "Layout", then "Page Elements". Select "Add a gadget" and then choose 'HTML/Javascript'.


4. Copy and paste the following in the text area:
------------------------------------------------------ 
 <img src="http://YOURADURLHERE.jpg" /> <br /> <textarea style="text-align:center" rows="5" cols="20"><a border="0" href="http://YOURBLOGURLHERE.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://YOURADURLHERE.jpg"></a></ textarea>
-------------------------------------------------------
5. Keep that window open and go to Photobucket, or  whichever photo hosting you are using, and copy the direct link URL for  your ad. Then come back to your blog window and paste that URL in both  places where I've written YOURADURLHERE. Make sure you leave the  quotation marks as that's what keeps a link active in HTML.

6. Then, see where I've written YOURBLOGURLHERE? This is the website you want anybody that clicks on your button to go to. So whether it's your  blog's URL, or your Artfire shop or Etsy store, or whichever site you want to link to.  Put that web address in that spot.

7. Make sure you save. Once it's saved, you should be able to bring up your blog and you'll see the image of your button with the code underneath that people can copy and paste on their sites to link back to you.

Hope this helps! For me it as like an "AH HAAAAAAAAAA" moment!  Thanks again Tara for sharing with me and reciprocating links! Hope your Sunday is absolutely superb!

{Hugs!}