Best Free WordPress Themes
Professional And Blog Themes
DailyPress Theme
Demo: http://wpthemes.blogohblog.net/
Download: http://www.blogohblog.com/wordpress-theme-dailypress/
DailyPress Theme
Wp Premium Theme (the one I am using)
Demo: http://cssace.com/?preview_theme=WP_Premium
Download: http://cssace.com/free-wp-premium-theme-is-here/
WP Premium Theme
ProLogic Theme (released today)
Demo: http://prologic.vivsin.com/
Download: http://www.vivsin.com/2008/10/prologic-aqua-free-wordpress-theme-from-vivsin/
ProLogic Theme
DarkZen Theme
Demo: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/demos/
Download: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/darkzen-wordpress-theme-released/
DarkZen Theme
WordPress Vibrant
Demo: http://customthemedesign.com/demo/
Download: http://www.gabfire.com/wordpress-vibrant-theme/
WordPress Vibrant Theme
Simple Balance WordPress Theme
Demo: http://demo.blogsessive.com/index.php?wptheme=Simple+Balance
Download: http://blogsessive.com/blogging-tools/simple-balance-free-simple-wordpress-theme/
Simple Balance WordPress Theme
BizFresh
Demo: http://demo.premiumthemes.net/?preview_theme=BizFresh
Download: http://premiumthemes.net/freethemes/free-bizfresh.html
BizFresh Theme
Magazine Themes
Mimbo Magazine Theme
Demo: http://www.darrenhoyt.com/demo/mimbo2/
Download: http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2007/08/05/wordpress-magazine-theme-released/
Mimbo Magazine Theme
Guzel Magazine
Demo: http://www.customthemedesign.com/guzel/
Download: http://www.gabfire.com/guzel-pro-magazine-theme-is-released/
Guzel Magazine Theme
Arthemia Theme
Demo: http://michaelhutagalung.com/arthemia/
Download: http://michaelhutagalung.com/2008/08/arthemia-20-released-the-updates/
Arthemia Theme
Branford Magazine Theme
Demo: http://www.wp-themes.der-prinz.com/magazine/
Download: http://www.der-prinz.com/2008/01/20/wordpress-magazine-style-theme-branfordmagazine/
Branford Magazine Theme
Reformasi Theme
Demo: http://www.blogger-template.info/demo/index.php?preview_theme=reformasi
Download: http://www.blogger-template.info/reformasi-theme
Reformasi Theme
WP Magazine Theme
Demo: http://wp-magazine.gabfire.com/index.php?wptheme=Wp-MagazineTheme
Download: http://www.gabfire.com/wordpress-magazine-theme-released/
Wp Magazine Theme
MassiveNews Theme
Demo: http://www.wpelements.com/demos/massivenews/
Download: http://www.wpelements.com/2008/01/15/introducing-the-massive-news-wordpress-theme/
Massive News Theme
Options Theme
Demo: http://themehybrid.com/demo/options/
Download: http://themehybrid.com/themes/options
Options Theme
The 5 Keys To A Successful Blog
If you’re reading this post, the odds are that you are one of 2 types of people:
- The owner of a successful blog.
- The owner of an unsuccessful blog.
But what is it that is the deciding factor between the two? What have the successful bloggers done that the unsuccessful bloggers haven’t?
I call them:
The Five C’s
- Committment
- Connections/Communication
- Content
- Commenting
- Contests/Competitions
Commitment
Most bloggers are committed (or at least start out to be). They realize that a blog is not just something that they can spend an hour a week posting to. However, after a few weeks of this commitment, they don’t see results and fall away, and so too does the blog. Remember, good things take time. A blog will not become successful over night. To keep yourself motivated, set yourself some goals and track your progress, or get yourself into a routine.
Staying committed is probably the biggest factor in determining a blog’s success, as it entails all of the other factors: frequently writing good content, dropping comments on lots of blog, having contests and establishing connections.
Connections/Communication
Connections
When I was playing around in the world of affiliate marketing (months and months ago now) one major thing seemed to frequently spring to my attention: Each big marketer was constantly scratching the back of other marketers (in other words, they all helped each other grow to be bigger, more powerful marketers). What I have learnt is that bloggers are all the same. Take a look at this example I have for you of big blogs and how they interact. I see this almost everyday: John Chow is promoting Yaro, who is promoting Shoemoney, who is promoting John Chow. See the pattern evolving? Yes, it’s a circle of promotion. No wonder they are all big… they each have a huge force behind them giving them readers. Now I’m not saying to try and push your way into this circle. What I am saying is to take the time to have a conversation with some other bloggers and you might be talked about by them on their blog. Share them a bit of link love and there’s a good chance they will return it.
Honestly, answer yourself this question: Would you still check by John Chow’s blog if he was an unknown? All he talks about is food and blogging expo’s. People follow big bloggers because they are amazed at how big, popular and powerful they are.
Content
Ahh… What can I say. Content Is King. We’re all constantly reminded of this, so there shouldn’t be any excuse for not having quality content. If you don’t know, the reason why you need good content is so that the visitors you obtain from your marketing and promotion will want to stay and read, and become loyal readers. If you get floods of traffic but have low quality, grammatically incorrect content then you are wasting your time marketing your site.
Commenting
In my opinion, commenting is the best way to gain visitors that will actually read your content and comment on it. There are 3 reasons for this:
1. You are commenting on content related to your niche, and therefore visitors are targeted.
2. Most blog owners will check out the blog of someone who leaves a comment on theirs, and try to comment on that person’s blog.
3. You gain great exposure in your niche and establish connections.
Contests
Contests/Competitions
Holding, sponsoring or participating in a contest is a great way to gain short term exposure and many more readers to your blog. You can gain readers by asking them to subscribe in order to have an entry, and the exposure comes from other bloggers posting about it if the contest is big enough or has high value prizes. It’s also a great way to get links.
Sunday Summary: This Week’s Wrap-Up
Today marks another important time in the life of this blog – I’m starting “Sunday Summary: This Week’s Wrap-Up” as my weekly link roundup to be done each week from now on, to share some of the good stuff with the world and give some well deserved link love.
- StandOutBlogger made a great post telling us 5 Things He Hates About Bloggers and the way they act, thinking that success and popularity should be theirs straight away.
- LinkersBlog put together a Link Building Glossary of all terms you will ever come across when link building and their definitions. I’ll always be refering back to this.
- Syed from Balkhis finished a 4-part series on how you can increase your traffic through simple tweaks to your design and site structure. The first article was: The Most Effective SEO Move You Can Make For Your Site.
- Jason from TheUniversityKid gave us a Step By Step Guide To Promote Your Own Webmaster Product and generate some nice sales. I’m thinking of making my own product soon (free to my readers of course).
- Jay from SuiteJ gave us 5 reasons Why Website Flipping Is Too Easy. And I agree with him – the amount of resources and information free to everyone make it quite difficult not to have an easy time flipping sites.
- Ryan from SmarterWealth tells us What To Do When We Hit “The Wall”.I was actually going to write a post about this next week, but when I saw that Ryan explained it all so well, I don’t feel the need to anymore.
- Sly from SlyVisions is giving away 3 prizes of $15 each just for subscribing to his blog.
This week seemed pretty eventful to me in terms of great articles. Of course, breaking news in the blogging world was that Entrecard is for sale. I was one of the first to know about it but didn’t blog about it simply because everyone else was. Look’s like it’s not for sale anymore.
BloggerLee Review
This review is being given to Luna over at BloggerLee after winning it in the contest I held earlier in the month. It’s not paid or influenced in any way.
Before this competition, I had stumbled across BloggerLee. I expected it to be another blogging tips blog, but instead I found a great personal blog with funny content and images, news and a bit of content on how to make money online, such as this article on site flipping.
Luna is a university student, and this is a trend I have noticed emerge on the internet recently (I mean, I’m in highschool). She currently now owns two blogs, which I know can get pretty hectic if you don’t manage your time well, so I congratulate her on that. The second blog is WeblogEngineering.
Luna’s design is simple and refreshing, and really gives it that personal touch which I feel we all need. Go over and check out her blog at bloggerlee.com.
Vital Steps To Complete Before Launching Your Blog
Okay, firstly, just let me apologize for posting so little. It’s really hard at the moment to find time to write posts regularly, although in two weeks time I’m on holidays (:)) so I can kick up the posting to every day or so then.
Anyway, many people new to the blogging industry seem to just jump in after seeing some article or forum post about how they can make a lot of money blogging and they rush together a horrible blog and put no planning into it. For the sake of your blog and your reputation, please don’t do this. When first setting up a blog there are seven main things to consider and plan before jumping in.
They are:
- Choosing the right niche
- Choosing the right theme for that niche (although custom is always best)
- Creating a stylish logo to identify themselves with, for use in the banner, gravatars, advertising banners, or anything else.
- Creating advertising banners of multiple sizes.
- Planning a promotion strategy.
- Setting goals for the blog.
- Setting up a form of tracking your stats and recording your progress of achieving your goals at regular intervals.
1. Choosing the right niche: This should come as an instinct, and you have probably heard it millions of times before. “Your blog will not succeed if you aren’t passionate about what you write about” – and I totally agree with it. Don’t just jump into the insurance niche because there are high paying Adsense clicks if the content you will deliver is poor and unenthusiastic.
2. Choosing the right theme for the niche you chose: This is a mistake I see on so many blogs, and I can see how easy it is to make that mistake. If you have a webmaster blog, don’t choose a theme with really bright colours everywhere and images of fruit everywhere. Choose one that functions well and has good contrasting, but simple colours. I have made the mistake of choosing the wrong theme before. If you have been visiting my blog for a while, you would have noticed that I used a magazine theme. While this can work, it doesn’t really fit in with the feel of the webmaster niche. As I mentioned before though, if you can afford custom or design and code for yourself than that is so much better then using any free themes as it gives you so much more flexibility in customization and so much more control.
3. Creating a stylish logo to identify you and your blog with: This one is pretty self-explanatory. A unique, custom logo will give you a brand on the internet, and will make you a SOMEBODY, not a nobody. A great example of this branding is in JohnCow.com – from his domain name (a parody of JohnChow.com), he has created his blog with the main theme of cows (e.g. a slogan of “Milking The Internet Since 2007, the “Recent Moos” feature for recent comments, and the cow spots on the car and in the title). When you think “cows and internet”, JohnCow springs to mind. This is what it should be.
4. Creating advertising banners of multiple sizes: This one can cost you a lot of free advertising if you don’t do it before you create your blog. The reason I say that is that contests are everywhere, and you are bound to get some free banner spots. Some free banner spots go on a first come, first served basis. Therefore, if you don’t have your banners ready, you can’t get the free advertising. Another reason that you must create them early is if you are going to buy advertising on sites frm the moment your blog kicks off. You will need the banners prepared. Make them look spectacular, because if you don’t, you’re not getting the best return for your investment. if you suck at designing (like me), then outsource them. Just don’t skip over creating banners.
Planning A Promotion Strategy
5. Planning a promotion strategy: If you leave this blog today implementing only one of these tips, please, implement this one – it is THE most crucial. If you wish to launch a successful attack anywhere, you must plan it. Make a daily schedule that incorporates posting, link building, advertising, guest posting, social media, social bookmarking, and any other promotion strategies you can think of. If you stick to this, you will not only be demonstrating the qualities of a great blogger, but will also see great results for your blog, in terms of traffic, web relationships, free links, and revenue.
6. Setting goals for the blog: If you are taking your blog seriously, then setting goals for the blog is vital. Does the quote “you can do anything you put your mind to” spring to mind? That is exactly why you should set goals for your blog. They give you motivation to keep going, to promote more, to continue to get involved with others. Also, when you achieve a goal, you will have a great feeling, and thirst for more. This will push your blog to be bigger, better and stronger. Goals don’t have to be big or complicated. They can be as simple as “reach 100 subscribers” or “get an average of 8 comments on each post”. They just need to be something that will motivate you to do more for your blog.
7. Setting up a form of tracking your stats and recording your progress of achieving your goals: What I mean by this is to have all analytics codes set into your blog before launch or have your Excel spreadsheet set up so that you can easily record your daily progress. This simply help to take the load off your back later on, and gives you a better indication of where your blog stands from day 1.
Part 2: Getting Your Link Bait Noticed
The is part 2 in the two part series on link bait. If you missed the first part, you can read it at Link Bait 101: What, Why, How?
OK, I am really sorry about the delay in getting this post up – I’ve had a pretty hectic past few days and a pretty hectic week ahead. I’ve also been a bit lazy, but we all have to be some time.
So by now I assume you have written or planned out your own link bait, whether it is a controversial post, a free E-book you created (I will be making one in a few weeks), a competition, or anything thing else you think will work. The next step is to publish it up to your blog or website, so that it is there for the public to see. After all, if it’s not up it’s not going to bring you any traffic.
Many bloggers shy out here, but this is where your persuasive communication skills come into play. Gather a list of some of the top blogs in your niche (For example, Shoemoney, Entrepreneurs Journey, Blueverse, Balkhis, JohnCow, JohnChow, CarlOcab, TheNetFool and others). Once you have this list, it is time to select a few of them and head over to their contact pages, which you can find through the navigation bar very easily.
The next step is to write them an e-mail. Start by introducing yourself and your blog, and then explain to them just how much you love their blog. After this paragraph, tell the owner of the blog that you have just written an extremely helpful blogpost, and it is the kind of thing that their readers might be looking for or interested in. In doing so, politely ask them to give your article a mention to their readers.
Usually, the other bloggers won’t mind this, as they can include it in their link roundups or give them something to write about (600 posts can definitely leave you stuck for ideas). If all goes well, you should have at least one of the bloggers that you emailed giving a link to your post in their post, and you should start to see some decent traffic heading your way.
Feel free to share your thoughts about this 2 part series, anything you would like to see on this blog or any ideas you have.