Personalizing Your Empower Network Blog
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Now that you have an Empower Network Blog you will want to take the time to personalize it so that your readers get to know you as the face and person behind your blogs.
This is incredibly simple, and I will walk you through it step by step.
The first key is to understand what you want to personalize and why.
You DON’T want to waste any time persoanlizing your background color, layout, or formatting. Empower Network is designed to be appealing to the eye, easy to read, and keep readers from being put off by your site.
Remember, it’s designed by the experts who actually MAKE money in the industry, so even if you have a different opinion or preference just trust that they have made every decision with the full intention of getting readers to your blog and money in your pocket!
The good news is that makes your job even easier!
You really only need to make one simple tweak when personalizing your Empower Network blog.
Change the header picture.
You want your audience to know that you are the “real person” behind the blog. That you will be a good person to follow, and that you are genuine.
First you will want to find a good picture of yourself, preferably one where you are smiling, a candid rather than overly posed shot, and something natural looking.
Avoid shots where you are dressed in a suit or in any way resembling a used car salesman, LOL.
I find the types of pictures most people tend to use as their Facebook profile picture work really well.
You will next need to edit your picture to the correct dimensions to fit the Empower Header. This is 277px by 277px.
If your picture is a different size it wont fit in the box properly and will look poorly done.
Edit your picture using Paint or a similar program (if you have a PC paint will have come with your computer).
-Right click on the picture you want to edit and click “Open with paint”.
-Once in Paint begin to Resize by using the resize option in the “image” section.
-Select “pixels” so you are resizing a specific number of pixels. Please note that you will not be able to simply implement 277 x 277 without badly distorting your image. See which number is SMALLER (either horizontal or vertical) change the smaller number to 277.
If your picture is already smaller than 277 in either direction I would recommend picking a different picture as it will come out grainy and badly done.
Now your picture should look the same only smaller. It will be a little bit WIDE or a little bit TALL depending on which side was changed. You want it to end up being square.
-Use the “Selector” tool to create a box around the portion of the picture you want to keep, at the bottom of the screen you will see a box telling you the number of pixels in your box (this number changes as you drag the selector tool). You want to make sure your final selection says “277 x 277″.
Here’s a screenshot of a photo I have no selected the correct portion on:
Notice that the dimensions on the LEFT lower box show 277 x 277px.
-Next hit “crop” in the Image box above.
You should have your perfect picture now ready to go!
We just need to save it. Hit “save as” and ensure the picture is being saved as a .jpg file.
Make sure you remember where you save your picture as you will need it for the next step.
Now log into your Empower back office and hit “login and start blogging”.
In your blog you will see the option “Homephoto” under the Appearance section:
Click this button and it will take you to a box where you can hit “browse” and find the picture you just saved on your computer.
Once you’ve located it hit Upload and it will upload your picture.
Note: It can take up to an HOUR for your picture to show on your header. Don’t contact support until you have given it time.
Come back in an hour and refresh the screen on your Empower Blog to see your new picture in action on your Blog!
That’s it!!
While you may be tempted, don’t do any further personalization. Just get your picture up and your “about the author” box done and then start blogging!