A new project

May 22, 2012 by Emily

One thing that I have learned as I have started pursuing online passive income is that the learning curve is steeper than I thought. I have always considered myself decently savvy with a computer, but the WordPress website development has not been an easy undertaking for me. There is tons of new lingo, abbreviations and things to learn. Although I love the beautiful themes from Nick Roach over at Elegant Themes, it has still been a whole new world to learn how to get one up on my hosting platform and with the correct information inserted.

So to practice my skills, I started with something pretty simple. My mom, Kathleen Day, has recently published a wonderful children’s book called The Sweet Song of Rainbow Bird. I offered to help her set up a website to promote the book. It is still in its early phases, but here is the link — The Sweet Song of Rainbow Bird.

I used the Sky Theme from Elegant Themes. (They have pages of gorgeous themes like this that you can access for only $39 per year!) So far I have only set up the landing page and the About the Author Page. Everything seems to take longer that I would hope, but I am learning and I am happy with the results. Check out the cute drawings — my mom did those all too!

For the picture above, I played with Photoshop. I am sure many of you are much more adept at Photoshop than I am, but I had a good time. Photoshop also seems to have a steep learning curve — I don’t find it at all intuitive. One of the books that I have really relied on as I have tried to learn Photoshop is Scott Kelby’s book on Photshop CS5. It has some great projects to walk through with my own photos.

If you haven’t picked up the full Photoshop because of the price barrier (currently over $600 on Amazon,) consider whether you may qualify for a student or educator discount. This is how I purchased my copy last year. Adobe has a really generous program in which you can qualify to buy one of their premium products per year at a discounted price. You can qualify if you are enrolled as a full-time student or an educator. Because we homeschool, we can each (parents and kids) qualify for one product a year. You can still buy off of Amazon (make sure you select the Student and Teacher version) and then you have to submit proof to Adobe. It is all done online and only took a couple of days to receive the codes to unlock the program. Right now the discounted version is only $241 on Amazon! Check out the Adobe website for details. I also used this program to buy a discounted version of Adobe Lightroom, which I really like.

So, although the Rainbow Bird website is not a way for me to make passive income, it’s a great way to support my mom and increase my skills. I hope you will go check it out and let me know your thoughts…