In this fifth and final article of our series as we wrap up our discussion to optimize WordPress and look at Paid WordPress Themes

But first lets wrap it all up.

• Day 1 we improved our site with proper WordPress Maintenance,
• Day 2 we setup our site to rank well in the search engines with WordPress SEO Optimization
• Day 3 we changed our WordPress Layout to make more money.
• Day 4 we saw how we can promote our blog with 3 cool WordPress Addons

And now its Day 5 – Premium Paid WordPress Themes. Yes those themes that you actually fork out your hard earned pay for!  (gasp!) But…

Are Paid WordPress themes worth the cost?

Paid WordPress themes are becoming a more and more popular way to help your blog stand out from the crowd, yet there are still plenty of free themes out there. If you’re wondering whether it’s worth paying, here are the pros and cons of doing so.

Pro: No Credit Links

One big benefit of buying paid WordPress themes is that they don’t require you to link back to the person who created it. Some free themes will require you to do this in their license for use, and some may even link back to sites that you don’t want to be associated with.

Most free themes, on the other hand, don’t require this link back due to the fact that you’ve paid for the right to be able to use the theme more freely. Though do check the individual license before you buy!

Con: The Price

It goes without saying that you do have to spend money with paid WordPress themes! Some are relatively cheap, but they can cost hundreds of dollars for a good theme with a developers license. It really depends on the particular features of that theme as to whether it’s worth the price or not.

Pro: Better Support

Another benefit of choosing a paid theme is that they’re often better supported, and you’ll get upgrades in the future (useful when WordPress keeps on changing). This does vary from theme to theme, but generally there will be support.

Free themes, on the other hand, may get updated or they may not. It all depends on the owner and whether they have the time to do so. Without the monetary incentive for upgrades, many theme owners don’t support the theme into the future.

Con: Not Being Unique

Buying paid WordPress themes doesn’t automatically mean that your blog will be unique. In fact, some themes are so popular that you’ll see many different bloggers using them. The good news is that paid themes, can be customized, however, to help differentiate your site from others.

Pro: Extras

A massive benefit of choosing paid themes over free ones is that they usually come with extra features. This could mean additional menus within the WordPress dashboard that make the theme as easy to customize as possible. The options are usually a lot more detailed than with free WordPress themes.

Con: Complicated

One downside to the fact that there are more features included in paid WordPress themes is the fact that this means there’s more for you to learn. Some themes are more user-friendly than others, and some may have a huge learning curve before you can create the site you really want. Thankfully there are usually very detailed tutorials to make this easier.

Pro: Increase Your Site’s Value

Paid themes are a good way to boost the value of your site when it comes to selling. As long as you have the license to sell the theme along with the site, you’ll find that you can command a higher sale price just by emphasizing the fact that you’ve used a premium theme.

As you can see from the above, paid premium themes have many benefits, and also some drawbacks. The type of theme you choose really does depend on what exactly you’re looking for, and whether paid WordPress themes with extra features will ultimately end up saving you time and money in the long run.

Today is day four in our five part series to optimize our wordpress websites.

In day 1 we improved our site with proper WordPress Maintenance, then we setup our site to rank well in the search engines with WordPress SEO Optimization, next we changed our WordPress Layout to make more money.

Today we need to spread the word about our site using:

WordPress Addons

WordPress addons have been created for just about any purpose you can think of. One way to make use of them is to promote your blog without any extra effort. As long as you take the time to set them up correctly, here are some ideas for addons that’ll help boost your blog without you even trying!

1) Tweet Addons

If you hadn’t realized it yet, Twitter is a huge platform for your blog. You should be taking advantage of this with a range of available addons.

Before you begin, note that you’re going to need to sign up for an account. Go to http://www.twitter.com/ and create your profile before connecting with people in your niche to start building a following.

Now you can set up some of the following WordPress addons to help promote every post you write.

Tweet Old Post: This post will allow you to promote your older posts to your Twitter following. It’s extremely easy to setup and, once you have, your blog will start tweeting old blog posts at the interval you choose. You can also use hashtags with these tweets for extra promotion. Find the addon here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweet-old-post/

TweetMeme: This plugin doesn’t actually require you to have a Twitter account. Instead, it adds a button that’ll allow your readers to tweet the post to their own followers, if they think it’s worth sharing! http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetmeme/

Tweet This: This post is essential if you want to tweet out a link to every new blog post you write, but want to save time by automating it. The Tweet This plugin will automatically send a link to your followers as soon as your new post goes live, after you’ve taken a few minutes to get it set up: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweet-this/

2) Facebook

Facebook is among the top few most popular websites in the world, so it makes sense to also focus here if you want to get your blog noticed. Here are some excellent WordPress addons that’ll help you do this as easily as possible.

Note that the best thing about using these Facebook plugins is that you don’t need to have a fan page, or even a Facebook account, for your visitors to come to your site and like or share any of your posts with their own Facebook friends!

Socialize: This plugin isn’t just perfect for promoting your site on Facebook, but it’ll also give users a chance to share your posts with any of their favorite sharing sites (including Digg, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and more). You can control where you want the “like” buttons to go, but by default it’ll place them at the top and bottom of your posts to get the most exposure. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/socialize/

Facebook Tools: if you do decide to go ahead and create a page for your website, then Facebook itself will give you a number of different promotion tools to help get it noticed. All you need to do is copy and paste the code they create for you: http://www.facebook.com/

3) RSS Feed

If you run a blog then it’s easy to create an RSS feed for it. This is just a way for people to read it and subscribe to it so they never miss an update. It’s a good idea to help them do this as it’ll create loyal readers and repeat traffic.

FeedBurner: FeedBurner is the easiest tool for promoting your RSS feed as well as tracking how many subscribers you have. When you sign up, all you need to do is enter your URL to get started. FeedBurner will do all of the hard work for you and will provide you with a number of different buttons to place on your website and (hopefully) increase your blog subscribers!
http://feedburner.google.com/

The best thing about all of the WordPress addons mentioned in this article is that they’re complete free to use. They only take a few minutes to set up. Once you have, you’ll find it easier to get other people to promote your blog posts for you!

Today we continue our series on making WordPress better.  In our previous two posts we reviewed:

WordPress Maintenance

WordPress SEO Optimization

In this post I think its would be a good time to talk about…

WordPress Layout

Although content is extremely important for the success of your website, the WordPress layout also plays a key role in how much you can earn from your blog. After all, if you don’t lay it out correctly, your visitors aren’t going to stick around to read what you have to say! Here are a few ways in which you can improve your layout to boost the earning potential of your website.

Google Adsense Tips

Do you use Google Adsense on your website?  Then make sure you read the Google tips for maximizing returns with the layout of your ads. This is important for boosting commissions as well as ensuring you don’t break any rules (for example, you should never trick your users into thinking the ads are menus).

Here are some tips to boost ad clicks the legal way:

• Use the large size square ads,
• Place ads at the very top of your posts,
• Use complementary color schemes to match your site’s design,
• Use plugins such as “WhyDoWork Adsense” to make it easier to insert your ads.

“Above The Fold”

“Above the fold” was a term originally used in newspapers, about content going on the top half of the page, above where the paper would be folded over, so that more people would notice it. The same applies to websites, except that the fold is now the point at which the user has to scroll down to view more content.

This means that you should always put your most important elements “above the fold” in your WordPress layout. Things like ad blocks, opt in forms and so on – whatever you want visitors to notice right away.

If It’s Important, Put It On Every Page

This is another tip related to those things you want visitors to really notice, such as newsletter sign up forms. The good news is that WordPress makes it easy to put things on every page – just place it in the sidebar to make sure you get as many eyes on that element as possible.

Keep Things Simple

Sometimes, webmasters opt for complicated designs because they think they look better. This may be true, but making things overly-complex isn’t going to help your visitor experience. Instead, keep things as simple as possible.

If you have ads, you’ll probably find that fewer ads convert better than ads all over the place. With Adsense, for example, research shows that people command higher costs per click when they have fewer ad blocks on the one page. Make sure you bear this in mind when designing your WordPress layout.

The Basic Elements Of A Website

Last, but by no means least, you want to make sure that you have all the basic elements of a website. You can choose between a huge number of WordPress themes, but make sure the one you choose has the following features:

• A link back to the homepage from every page of the site,
• A top menu for navigating every page of the site,
• A search form to help users find what they want,
• Defined sections that show where the content begins and the navigation menu ends.

The best thing about creating the perfect WordPress layout is that most blog themes already have what you need. If they don’t, consider using a different theme instead.

Today is our second article in our series to improve and teak our WordPress websites and blogs. In yesterdays post we discussed WordPress Maintenance.   Today we are going to look at tweaking our website or blog to improve it ranking in the search engines.

That’s right we’re talking about …

WordPress SEO optimization

One of the reasons why so many bloggers and webmasters are drawn towards WordPress is the fact that WordPress SEO optimization is so easy! Even the default WordPress settings will still let you rank in the search engines, but if you really want to see the best results, then make use of these free plugins and settings.

1) Change Your Permalinks: Before you even install a plugin, you’ll want to change the setup of your blog for the best WordPress SEO optimization. Go to you permalinks settings under the main “Settings” menu, and use the custom setting /%postname%/. The reason for this is that it helps feature your keywords in your URL to rank higher in search engines.

2) SEO Friendly Images: Words aren’t the only things that can send free search engine traffic your way – images can, too! Use this plugin to fill in the image tags to give your SEO a boost – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-image/

3) Robots Meta: If you want to have complete control over various robot tags on your site then this plugin will make it as easy as possible - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/robots-meta/

4) All In One SEO Pack: This has long been one of the most famous and popular of the free WordPress SEO optimization plugins available. It works by making it very easy for you to set the title, description and keywords of your pages to help the search engines know what they’re supposed to be about - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

5) SEO Pressor: This is, in fact, the only plugin on this list that you’ll need to pay for. But it’s included here due to how useful it can be. It lets you know exactly what you need to do in order to improve your on page SEO - http://www.seopressor.com/

6) SEO Smart Links: One way to help improve your search engine rankings, and get your readers to stick around reading your content for longer, is to interlink various pages and posts on your blog. This plugin makes it easy to do by linking certain pages according to the keywords you choose -
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-automatic-links/

7) Simple Tags: If you want to make use of keyword tags in your posts, but find that it’s taking you too long, then this will make it far easier for you to do -
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-tags/

Google XML Sitemaps: Although the plugin name mentions Google, this is actually useful for all of the search engines. It creates a sitemap to help them crawl your pages better -
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

The truth is that WordPress SEO optimization can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. A plugin will exist for just about any purpose you can think of, meaning there’s really no excuse not to make your site the best it can be for the search engines to find you!

Today I wanted to start a series of posts designed to help you tweak and improve your wordpress websites.

But before we talk about changes that you make when you first build a website, lets talk about some things we need to think about for your websites that are already up and running.

WordPress Maintenance

WordPress maintenance really isn’t much work at all, thanks to its many inbuilt features. However, there are a few things you should do to keep it running as smoothly as possible.

1) Back Up

Just as with anything stored on your computer, it’s important to back up anything stored on the internet. This may not technically be a WordPress maintenance task, but it’ll make things a lot easier to put back together again should things go wrong.

Firstly, you should backup your database. This is the element of your website that stores the posts, pages and settings, but it doesn’t store your design and uploads. To back up this portion of the site you can automatically email the file to yourself using a WordPress plugin – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/. This pretty much makes it a hands-free backup method.

Now you need to backup the files and the design. To do so, login to your website using FTP software or your cPanel file manager. Copy the whole of the “wp-content” folder to your machine and you’ll have everything saved that you need in the event of a problem.

2) Checking Plugins

Every time you install a WordPress update you’ll need to check that all of your plugins are still working. The newest version of WordPress means you can automatically update your plugin whenever there’s an update available – just follow the instructions from your dashboard.

Another thing you’ll want to do is deactivate and even delete the ones that your site isn’t using. All that these unused plugins do is slow down your site and take up disk space, so doing this can help improve the way it runs for your visitors and the search engines.

3) Updating WordPress

The latest versions of WordPress will now notify you when there’s a new update available. It’s important that you perform this number one WordPress maintenance task, as these updates often improve your blog’s security. Remember to always backup your blog before you update!

4) Check Your Links

If you link to other websites or affiliate products on your blog, make sure you take some time to check that the links are still working every now and again. Pages are changing on the internet all the time, so you don’t want your links to end up going nowhere. The Broken Link Checker plugin is an excellent, automatic tool for this purpose -http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/

5) Improving Security

If you haven’t taken extra measures to improve your site’s security already, then you may want to do so now. Change your password so it’s not the same as any other passwords you use, and switch the username away from “admin” (hackers know to use this default username!) You can also install plugins such as Secure WordPress to further boost security – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/secure-wordpress/

Now you can see that regular WordPress maintenance really needn’t take hours of time! There are tools and plugins available to help. Make sure you use them, because you’ll regret it should anything happen to your website!

Are you backing up your WordPress blogs?!?! If not you really should be. It is fast, easy and free. Here’s a cool way to easily backup your WordPress blog to a Dropbox account for safe offsite (read: third party) storage for free.

Lots of people use Dropbox for backing up important files and documents, but did you know you can actually backup your WordPress blogs to Dropbox? You can with WP TimeMachine. WP TimeMachine is a WordPress plugin that will backup your WordPress files and database to a remote storage provider.

That’s right! Remote storage of …

1. All of your data
2. All of your files (and uploads) — everything in your wp-content folder
3. Your .htaccess file
4. Plus it includes instructions for a quick recovery

Check this out. To get started you will need an account with Dropbox. If you don’t have one yet, you can get it here. Its free and comes with 2 gigs of storage.

Next you need to go out to the WordPress repository and download WP TimeMachine. It’s free too. Of course donations are appreciated. The easiest way to install this is directly from the plugins page in your WordPress dashboard.

Once you have WP TimeMachine installed you simply need to configure it with your Dropbox account information. Simple add your dropbox username, password and the name of the folder you want to store your backup.

Once you’ve entered in your details simply click the “Generate wp TimeMachine archive” button. Wp Time Machines will begin to package your WordPress blog into a zip archive and upload the files to Dropbox.

When the backup is finished and success WP TimeMachine will let you know.

After everything is complete, if you back in to your Dropbox account you will see a new folder created with your newly uploaded archive of your blog files.

WP TimeMachine is great for not only backing up to Dropbox, but it can also save your WordPress files to Amazon S3 or to any other server you may have via FTP.

So what are you waiting for? Protect yourself and your business and make sure your blogs are getting backed up. Get WP TimeMachine and a Dropbox account and stop worrying!

If you have ever created a WordPress blog then you know how tough it can be finding the perfect theme for your blog.  The good news is that there are a ton of free wordpress themes to choose from.  But most of the time those wordpress themes are over used and it really sucks to be surfing around the web and find the exactly same theme on someone else’s web site.

So what do you do then?  Well, most people will turn to premium themes.  They aren’t too terribly expensive and most of the time they come with a ton of features.  The only problem is that premium themes can be just as bad as the free themes.  They are over used and EVERYWHERE.

So the only other alternative is to find someone to make a custom wordpress theme just for your blog.  Easy said then done though.  If you’ve ever tried to get a custom theme made you it can be pretty expensive, ranging into the thousands of dollars!!  Not good.

Wouldn’t it be great to find an easy way to make custom themes without having to pay for custom design work? Well believe it or not there is some software that can do this exact thing.  It’s called Artisteer.

Use Artisteer to create custom WordPress Themes

I’ve been playing around with Artisteer for a little while and I want to tell you it is really handy to have around.   I really love this little guy and with it you can quickly build a custom WordPress theme with just a few simple clicks.  Most every element in the theme is customizable, from button types, font types, colors, headers, even a bit of flash for that extra pizazz.

Check out the demo on there site here.

What is really cool about Artisteer beyond helping you creat your own custome WordPress themes is how much money you can make with Artisteer.

Here are a few example of ways to make money with Artisteer:

1. Offline Consulting – If you do any offline consulting this will be a godsend.  You can create a half dozen different designs in minutes to show your client.
2. Create a Product – Are you looking for a new product to promote or sell?  How about creating a set of PLR wordpress themes?  People love it.  Last year I created free Christmas themes and will be doing it again this year.
3. Build an email list – Again I did this last year and gave away a bunch of themes, all folks had to do was sign up to my list.  They were happy to do it!
4. Done-for-you websites – Create PLR websites and sell them as a product
5. Flip Websites – Quckly create custom sites and flip them on Flippa.

I’m sure once you check out Artisteer you will find your own ways to profit from it.  And if you don’t want to use it to make money.. hey, you have got some really killer looking custom themes on your blog that no one else has.

Check it out – I think you will be surprised how easy it is to make money with Artisteer!

More and more mobile devices are hitting the web.  With the advent of the iPhone and the 3G cellular network, browsing on the Internet with your cell phone is almost as fun and easy as from your laptop or p.c.

But what does this mean – should you optimize your website for mobile devices?

Here are some things you should consider about going mobile with your website:

• How does your website look on a mobile device?
• How do you do optimize for mobile devices easily?
• How fast does it load on a mobile device?
• Can your reader get to all of the information you are providing?
• Are you loosing money from mobile readers(adsense clicks)?

This all reminds me of the browser wars back when Microsoft and Netscape were battling it out for readership with the differing browser technologies. Webmasters always had to optimize for both major browsers.  It was a pain!!

Luckily today we have WordPress and a great new plugin from Brave new Code that will make sure we don’t go back to those dreary old times.   The plugin is called WPtouch and it does an awesome job of automatically optimizing your WordPress website for mobile devices. Oh and did I mention it’s free? (donations gladly excepted of course!)

As simply and easy as a WordPress plugin can be, WPtouch allows you to install it quickly and have your website ready to go for iPhone, Blackberry and Android browsers. It is truly amazing.

It basically works on the idea of themes and installs a new theme for your website the will only show for browsers(user-agents) matching mobile devices.  Don’t get me wrong,  its more that just a theme.   It also provides a way to add google adsense, ad customize icons for your content, and you can choose to include or exclude certain content not suited for mobile users.

So far the only issue I’ve seen with the plugin is that it has a bit of trouble working with caching or caching plugins.  So website with things like WP Cache, WP Super Cache, ot W3 Total Cache may or may not allow the mobile theme to display properly.  Most of these issues can be resolved with some simply tweaks to your .htaccess file.

With this aside, WPtouch is a really cool way to easily add a unique experience for your mobile readers that will entice them to return and read more frequently.