Mr Beach Bum.com

Flash can really make a statement for your website and is very effective, when used properly, for advertising your site. The obstacle to flash, for many, is the upfront cost of Adobe Flash software (at $699). But even if you spend the money on the software, you are then faced with the task of creating your own flash projects, which can be daunting if you aren’t familiar with the software and can also result in less than stellar flash projects if you simply aren’t an artist.

I was faced with this same dilemma recently so I did some research and found a potential solution. It’s called Flash Ad Creator from a company called Laughingbird Software and the price is $39.99.  Sounds like a great price when compared to the alternative, but can this really do what I need it to do?

The idea behind the product is that you are given some pre-made flash templates. When you find a template that works for you, you can edit the pictures and text to make it your own.  The website claims that this is easy to do and that there are hundreds of templates to meet your needs. I decided to purchase the product myself in order to give this some real-world testing.

The purchase and download process is standard enough and resulted in no problems. I did avoid paying an extra $6.99 by un-checking a box that was automatically added to my cart for “unlimited downloads”. I don’t blame the author for offering it but for the $6.99 I will make my own backup copy of the download and take my chances. If, however, you are apt to lose downloaded software all the time then this might be something you’ll want to keep. As mentioned earlier, the price of the Flash Ad Creator is $39.99 via download. They also have options to receive the product on disc too if you really want that.

Now the fun begins…

Once my download was complete I installed the software quickly and within minutes I was browsing through their pre-made flash ads. There are 100 pre-made templates to choose from and I think just about everyone should be able to find a few good relevant templates for just about any application. I will say that I am disappointed that the author decided to include about 20 ads that have little cartoonish “monsters” of their own design which make it nearly impossible for any professional website to use. This, to me, is a total waste because unless you want to use monsters in your advertising or on your website, these templates are useless. That disappointment aside, I did find a few templates that I am sure to use in future projects. As a matter of fact, I created my first flash ad within 10 minutes of installing the product and was quite pleased with just how easy it was to do so.

When I was done looking through all the templates and had created my flash ad I decided to check out another portion of the software, which is the “bonus” section of non-flash ad templates. Oddly enough, this particular section opened up with a request for a code before I could use it. I was given this code via email when I purchased the main product. I found it kind of odd that the main product did not even require this code but the “bonus” section does, but oh well.  The non-flash ad templates were surprisingly well done. What’s more is that the included editor for this portion of the software is actually quite powerful and is practically a poor man’s Photoshop complete with pre-made but fully editable templates and images that are extremely useful. You can create banner ads or even logos using this thing and as far as I’m concerned this “bonus” is actually quite a nice standalone product. Actually it is, it’s called the Logo Creator. I think the full version of the Logo Creator may have more templates included but for it being a bonus product with my Flash Ad Creator purchase I am extremely pleased.

So what’s the bottom line? My overall impression of this software is that there is definitely room for improvement in terms of just how relevant some of the templates are, mainly because of the author’s use of his cutesy “monsters” and the 20 or so templates that try to use them. I do not believe you can remove these monsters from the templates so you have to really want to use them or else you have about 20 completely useless templates out of 100, which is a lot! However, I think if you find even 5 relevant templates that you can use and edit to your liking then this product has more than paid for itself. Think about how much it would cost to pay someone to create a customized flash ad for you… More than $39.95 I’m sure. I am also thrilled with the bonus product which was a very pleasant surprise for me and one that resulted in a new logo for one of my websites.  As far as I’m concerned, this is $39.95 well spent and I highly recommend it if you want to add some flash to your site or your ads.  Click the link below to check it out today!