I'm not going to pretend that I'm an expert on covers- because I most definitely am not, nor will I ever be.

However, I do make my own covers, and I quite enjoy it! I'll give you some of my tips to making effective and simple covers.

TIP 1- keep it simple
Trust me, some of the best covers are simple.
However, don't think that means you can just grab some fan art from the internet without even putting your title on it.
Using fan art is fine, but always put your title on it!
If you want inspiration for this (advice for fanfics only) look at the covers of your source material, and base yours off of that.
An example of a largely simple cover is the cover for my book Flicker.

TIP 2-make it stand out
I know this may seem contradictory to the previous point. But it is important.
Your cover is the first thing that readers will see, and to make it stand out from the rest it has to be different. So don't use the same fan art as everyone else, the same format or text. Try and make the cover represent the book.

TIP 3- cosplayers
Cosplay is amazing! If you've read my Criminal series, you will know that I have used Cosplays on those covers.
If you look hard enough you can find a cosplay for just about anything, and they can make your covers look really professional.

This cosplay is @aletheia_cosplay (her Instagram), all of her Cosplays are amazing! And you definitely should check her out!

TIP 4- Editing
The magic of editing is a wonderful thing. As I said, it is absolutely fine to use fan art on you cover, but you can change it up, find new stuff that you haven't seen before, or even edit a few different ones together, as I did with my cover for The Exchange.

TIP 5- face claims
Face claims are very useful. You can find an actor/actress/model/other wise famous person, who fits your character's profile and use them on your cover. This can be a bit more complicated, ie you editing their photo into a location from your chosen world, or it can be a simple promo photo that you have added your title onto, an example of this is the cover for my book The Daughter Of Night.

The main apps/computer programs that I use to create my covers are:
-Photo Pos Pro. This is a free alternative to Adobe photoshop (which I use because I can't afford photoshop itself). It contains most of the same tools as photoshop, and I have used it on quite a few covers (I.e Venus and The Exchange), if you can afford photoshop, then I definitely recommend that, but if (like me) you can't, then Photo Pos Pro is a very good alternative. It had both Novice and Expert modes, that allow you to develop your skills as you get mire used to the program.
-Canva. Canva is wonderful! It even has a special template for wattpad book covers so that you can get the dimensions right! It allows you to add text, photos and graphics to your covers, and gives them an overall quite professional appearance, I highly recommend it!

Normally I use a combination of the two programs, which gives a pretty good result, if I do say so myself :). The result is something like this:

I used Photo Pos Pro to edit the photos together, and I used Canva to add the text.

These are just a few tips that I have found useful whilst making covers. There are of course many other ways to make covers. And there are also incredibly talented people in this community who can make you covers if you don't want to do it yourself.

I hope you found this useful!
~Em xx