International Investment Newsletter needs a new website look

The Sizemore Investment Letter (http://www.sizemoreletter.com)

I am the editor of a financial newsletter and a money manager. In this website, I'm trying to market myself and my newsletter by trying to present a certain image (well-read, worldly, well-traveled international man of the world, student of history, etc.) I'm the guy that studies the world, sees the "big picture," puts all the pieces together, helps the reader understand it all, and ideally gives them some good investment recommendations and stock picks to profit from it all.

In technical accomplishments, I'm a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), a graduate of the London School of Economics, a Phi Beta Kappa Scholar, have worked side-by-side with renown financial strategist Harry S. Dent, Jr., have lived and worked on three continents, have been published in various magazines, wrote two books, etc.

I'm a voracious reader of everything from the Wall Street Journal to academic white papers to history books to classic novels.

So what I'm trying to project here via the website is that I am the "go to guy" to make a complex world easier to understand: economics, investing, politics, demographics, international relations...I'm wanting to project myself as the guy who makes sense of it all and that you can trust with your investments.

I attached a copy of the newsletter to give the artists an idea of what the product is.

My target audience is readers of financial publications. These are generally (though not exclusively) white-collar males over the age of 40 with higher than average incomes and net worths. I would expect mostly retail investors but certainly quite a few financial professionals too. This demographic also tends to be (but is certainly not exclusively) conservative/libertarian in political bent, has interest in the news and in politics, and generally some interest in world news/geopolitics.

I'm targeting the kind of people that read newsletters published by Agora Financial (http://www.agorafinancial.com), Stansberry Research (http://www.stansberryresearch.com), and John Mauldin (http://johnmauldin.com/) and to a lesser extent the kind of people that read Stratfor (http://www.stratfor.com), the Gartman Letter (http://www.thegartmanletter.com), and even the Economist. (http://www.economist.com/)

In the attachments, you can get an idea of what I am going for. The buttons and links you see in the header are the ones I am going to want in the finished project, though I'm VERY ready to let the graphic artist experiment with placement, style, etc.

Both examples have prominent "sign up for our free newsletter" and "subscribe to our premium newsletter" sections. These are VERY important, because the purpose of the site is to funnel readers first to the free content and then to the paid content.

In the lower right section of both examples, I want a list of "favorite articles" that my tech guy will update from time to time. And at the bottom left, I want an RSS-type thing that rotates my 4-5 most recent articles. Again, these are designed to pique reader interest in the paid material.

The main difference between the two examples is that one has a more elaborate tool bar and the other has a prominent graphic. This is where I'd like to see the graphic artist really show his stuff. These could go one of two ways. See the attached Word Doc for guidance on the graphic.