Top 5 WordPress Themes for Blogs

Filed under Advice by on March 29, 2010 at 11:21 pm {16 comments}

Top Five WordPress Themes For Adsense Blogs

When I first started to blog, I was a little intimidated by WordPress. It was my first time dealing with this software and I did not know a lot about HTML or CSS. I liked a lot of the themes available, but had no idea how to edit them to achieve the ideas in my head. Instead, i would spend hours going through themes on the official WordPress site. I looked through hundreds of them, downloaded dozens of them, and loaded them to my sites. Within a couple of days, I would become dissatisfied and eventually change to another  one that I found worked more to my liking. As time progresses, I became more familiar with WordPress, started reading the author and theme homepages trying to get a better understanding of what could be done within the WordPress design.

Now, it is a year later and I am still messing around with various WordPress themes and have narrowed down my list of my top five themes for use with Google Adsense blogs or any other blogsite.

Some key points first:

1. Try to stick with one theme – when choosing a WordPress theme, try to use one theme for all your sites, that way you can streamline the learning curve for each new theme and spend less time on design and more time blogging.

2. Choose a theme with a lot of customization – this goes along with the first rule. If you choose a theme with a lot of custom features, it is easy to change them to make ever site look unique while at the same time keeping your learning to just one theme.

3. Use only approved WordPress themes – I only get my themes from WordPress.org because I know there is no hidden code that can mess with my Google Adsense or other things i am not familiar with.

4. Keep it simple stupid – until you understand how to change your WordPress theme around, stick to one simple theme that can get your blog up and running without to much hassle. There is always to change it later.

5. Don’t spend a lot of time on themes – look, I’ve spent way too much time messing with my themes. That is time I can use to work on making money with Adsense blogs. Choose a theme, leave it up for at least six months, and move on.

Number Five WordPress Theme for Adsense Blogs – SWIFT


Ease of customization is the key to any WordPress theme you plan on using over a long period of time. With a theme that has the ability to change the background, headers, columns, and layout goes a long way to maintaining original looking sites without having to keep learning the nuances of a new WordPress theme. Another important feature is the ability of a page to load fast.

SWIFT is just one of these themes. It comes right out the box as a SEO optimized, Adsense ready theme that features a magazine layout with a post slider and magazine layout. it is a great theme for those who like to have a powerful and easy to customize layout to maximize their CPC rate for Google Adsense. SWIFT also has a great community to help those who want to do more with this theme than just load and go.

Number Four WordPress Theme for Adsense Blogs- Arras Theme

Arras borrows its name from World of Warcraft and was originally designed to work as a blog for this market, but it has since evolved into a dynamic theme that works great with CPC campaigns and also affiliate marketing as you can have product showcases in the slideshow.

For those that are designing Adsense blogs designed to provide product reviews, the Arras Theme produces a very stylish design that rises high above the traditional blog and places it in the realm of a top-notch review site. It is a magazine style layout with various post layouts, a featured post slideshow, alternate styles and many other easy-to-use customizable features.

For those wanting a different look for their blog, Arras Theme is definitely the way to go. When I first used this theme, it was hard to change the header, but I believe this has changed. Check out the Arras themepage for more support.

Number Three WordPress Theme for Adsense Blogs- WP-Creatix

For those looking for a WordPress theme that is more business oriented, but still offering a stylish approach to Adsense blogs, then WP-Creatix might be theme to choose.

Maintaining the same level of customization as the other WordPress themes, Wp-Creatix has a Javascript drop-down menu and comes with pre-loaded with Lightbox portfolio plug-in and a customizable slideshow. The variations to this theme are almost limitless as it has a wide range of color options and looks really good right out the box.

I guess the biggest problem I have with WP-Creatix is the lack of support in English for this theme. It seems to be a German-language based design and I couldn’t find the proper help in changing the features I want. But for those that are familiar with CSS and HTML, especially as it relates to WordPress, then I would suggest using this theme.

Number Two WordPress Theme for Adsense Blogs- Suffusion

If it wasn’t for my liking of Constructor, then Suffusion would be my favorite theme. For a WordPress theme, Suffusion has a great degree of customization that allows for each of your Adsense blogs to have an unique look without having to learn a new theme. It has a fixed-width design that can include one, two, or three columns. It comes with ten pre-defined templates with over 16 different color schemes. It is loaded with extras like a featured post section, magazine layout, multi-level drop-down menus and built-in widgets for social networks like Twitter and Google translation. It also has a great community of support for those needing help tweaking Suffusion.

I would highly recommend Suffusion for those who want a dependable WordPress theme to use with all your websites.

Number One WordPress Theme for Adsense Blogs- Constructor

My favorite theme used to be Mystique (In fact, Mystique is used in this site.) I felt it had great easy-to-use customization and worked well with my Google Adsense campaigns. But for some reason, other than on this site, it loads unbearably slow. This can be a overall bad feature for any theme.

So, I went looking for another theme that I could use in all my websites. A while back, I downloaded Constructor but had found it too hard to work with. I have since changed my mind. I don’t know if this is due to my growing experience with WordPress or that they have updated the theme to make it more user friendly. Whatever the case may be, I have found Constructor to be one of the best themes to use on my Adsense blog sites.

Two features i look for in a good WordPress theme is the ability to change the header and background image. A blog site can look exponentially original by just changing these two features. Constructor not only has the ability to change these but has a feature to layer images for all areas including the footer, sidebars and inside the posts. Constructor has tons of customizable features to make every blog unique and different without the user having to know a lot of HTMl or how to alter CSS. I would suggest Constructor for anyone who has some experience playing around with WordPress.

Other Ways to Add Money to Your Site Besides Google Adsense

Filed under Reviews by on March 22, 2010 at 8:03 pm {17 comments}

Google Adsense Is Not The Only Game In Town

Let’s face it, sometimes Google sucks. I know it is the premiere place to make money online through Google Adsense and through their search engine listings, but if Google gets a bug up it’s butt about your site, it is either sent to the sandbox or to the grave without you even getting a chance to defend your site. Once their bots have given your blog a negative pass, you are screwed.

It is definitely a hypocrisy as Google will take money for ads that they will not allow sites to post content for them like male enhancement or poker sites. Also, they take money for sites that promote make money through Google Adsense, but will not let you run ads for this same information. In the last year, I have had several sites that Google has either banned or just straight hit them with public service ads without allowing any response from my end.

So this led me in search of other CPC style campaigns that work similiar to Google Adsense by allowing me to make money online without having to wait for affiliate commissions.

Two that I have found to work quite well are InfoLinks and AdBrite.



Other Ways To Make Money Online: Infolinks Review

If you have several blogs dedicated to making money online through SEO and CPC marketing, then InfoLinks might be another way to monetize your blogs. While you will not make as nearly as much as a good Google Adsense keyword-driven blog, the steady nickels and dimes do add up. Currrently, I am averaging between a dollar or two a day with InfoLinks on top of other ads like Adsense or AdBrite.

if you are not familiar with InfoLinks, chances are you have already bumped into their underlined tags on sites you have visited. with InfoLinks, little sticky notes pop up when you hover over underlined words within your blogs. By clicking on these, you are then directed to the website listed in the pop-up and you get a some CPC change for the visit. Your blog can be covered with a dozen of these links per page or just a couple and you can customize where you want them to appear.

What is great about InfoLinks is that it can supplement whatever ad campaign you are running whether it is Google Adsense, AdBrite, or affiliate links because these little links run within your blog and do not take up valuable space used by banners or squares. Plus, if you link InfoLinks through PayPal or their pre-paid Mastercard, your payout threshold is fifty dollars instead of the industry standard of 100 bucks.

Other Ways To Make Money Online: AdBrite Review

Another source of monetization is AdBrite. AdBrite works in similar ways as Google Adsense and InfoLinks as it has banners, squares and in-text advertising, but also AdBrite offers those great annoying page fades that pop up occasionally when visiting a site. With Adbrite, you can choose to use all three or pick and choose which methods you want to use for each site.  So far, I have had no problem placing banners on sites that Google has disapproved of (i.e. poker sites, male enhancement, Adsense blogs) but I wouldn’t try to use AdBrite if you make porn sites.

Also, some might take offense to the site fades, so it all depends on what type of audience you expect on your site. So far, I have not earned any real money with Adbrite, but is does have a nice feature that rates your traffic and I still don’t have it up on all my sites. On this site, Adsense Blog For Beginners, i use both InfoLinks and AdBrite since Google has slapped me on the wrist.

Since discovering these CPC sites, i have run across others and will be experimenting with them throughout 2010. If you have any experience with these or other monetizing options, please share your comments.

A Year In Review For Adsense Blogging

Filed under Advice by on March 22, 2010 at 7:01 pm {2 comments}

My First Year Trying to Make Money Blogging

It has been close to a year now that I started trying to make money online blogging. Since then, I have been a negligent father to all my websites and have left most in a state of disrepair. i now own over twenty-five domains and I can only say that there are only a couple that I am satisfied with right now. I have not made any serious money doing this, but I have to say the fault is my own and not in the methods that are taught by people like Griz or Court. Had I stuck with it all year, I am sure I would have had a decent head start in earning a living make money through blogging and Google Adsense.

So far, I have earned around 300 dollars through Google Adsense, affiliates, and other source of monetization like Adbrite and Infolinks. I will be writing a review on these two sites, so just follow this link to learn more.

Now, 300 bucks doesn’t seem like a lot, but that is all passive income; I mean really passive income because I have largely ignored my sites over the year. In fact, some of my sites have no Google Adsense on them at all because i chose to either remove the ads due to lack of quality in the site or that Google chose to ban the site from ads. (Like this site!!)

But overall, i feel that in 2010, I can take the valuable experiences from the last year and help make my sites grow bigger and more profitable.

Some Advice on Blogging and The Mistakes I Learned From

The first thing I got to say about trying to make money blogging is that you can’t be afraid to fail. You can’t spend all your time searching for answers to your questions and reading every blog possible before you try something. You just have to jump in and prepare to fall on your feet. Look, I have made dozens of mistakes over the last year from simple editing errors with WordPress to having subpoenas served on me for copyright infringement, so i can say I am an expert on errors. i have had sites that Google has removed their ads from and I have had some articles pulled off of sites because they violate rules of content. I have posted duplicate content, scraped websites for information and just plain put together crappy sites. But in all this, I learned to make nice sites that can make money while at the same time offering exclusive well-written and SEO styled writing.

Here is a couple of pointers about making money blogging:

1. Learn to maximize your time

Over the course of blogging, you are going to write and rewrite hundreds of articles unless you are lucky and have the money to outsource your work. I am one of those unlucky bastards who has to make all my own content for not only my Adsense blog sites but for my link sites and other places i have to submit content. I used to write all my blogs in Word and then transfer them into WordPress, but have since stopped this habit.

Mozilla Firefox has a built-in spellchecker which works perfectly well with the spellchecker that is built-in to WordPress. With these two features, there is no need to write your work in Word, then transfer to WordPress. In fact, almost all of your blogging can be done in the formats that most blog sites come with. Ezine, HubPages, and Squidoo allow you to just type way right into the editing tools to design your blogs.

You have to understand that you are a blogger now, not a writer. The difference is that you must learn to just push out the content with lightning fast speed and shave off time by constantly transferring and storing files in different areas. You should write your blog as a draft and go back later to edit it, but you should not be spending an extreme amount of time trying to get it perfect.

Also, you must limit the amount of time you spend reading blogs. yes, it is good to read some blogs to get information and tips on how to make money online through blogging, on the latest on Google Adsense, and tips on how to get the best SEO for your site. These things need to be done in moderation and should only take up about 5% of the time you use to develop your blogs.

2. Have a Game Plan

Before you decide to make money through blogging, make sure you have an idea of what your expectations are. You are not going to get rich overnight. You need to put in the legwork, lots of legwork if you plan on making a living through Google Adsense blogging or any other from of affiliate programs. You need to decide how much time each day you are going to assign to this project, how many sites are you going to start with, and what keywords do you feel are the right ones to build your blogs behind.

You got to make sure you do not get to far ahead of yourself and make sure your sites are supporting your costs.

This should be your first goal. All your sites should be making back the costs you spend on maintaining them. If you only spend ten dollars a year on the domain and ten dollars a month for hosting, then your Adsense blogs must recoup this cost or you need to rework them. if you are outsourcing your work, then this expense must also be added into the projections for your site. If your blog is not making money after a year, then you must either rework the site or move on.

My game plan this year is that each site must make double its cost in 2010. We will see how that goes.

3. Don’t Get Ahead of Yourself

This was my biggest mistake. Before I had successfully developed my first Adsense blog, I was already buying up other domains. Before I knew it, I had already own over twenty domains and did not have the time or energy to work on any of them. The good news is that these sites now have a little age on them and they shouldn’t be too hard to monetize. The bad news is it gave me an overwhelming feeling of burn out when it came to working on them.

When you first start, I would suggest that you do not buy more than five domains for Adsense blogging and wait and build these sites for six months before getting more. Just keep your research in keywords and use this knowledge to expand your base. If anything, write blogs on these keywords for sites like HubPages or Squidoo and use these links later to build your new sites.

4. Understand Your Limitations

i think most of all, you got to understand exactly what you are capable of doing. if you have very little experience writing or working with webpages, then you should start off small and simple. Find one nice keyword that you feel will make money with Google Adsense while at the same time not completely bore you to death and build a simple WordPress around this keyword. Work with HubPages, play around with Squidoo, submit to Ezine, and just build your links while at the same time doing some reading of SEO tips and read up on the themepages for other WordPress themes to get an idea of what is capable.

Building blogs for making money with Google Adsense is not just about passive income but it is also passive education. The more you work with the blogs, the more you learn, the more you know, and pretty soon, you will find yourself giving advice in the same way you were seeking it in the beginning.

2010 : A New Year, A New Look, and New Sites

Filed under Adsense Blog News by on March 22, 2010 at 5:21 pm {no comments}


My Plans for Adsense Blogging in 2010

Nothing gets your blood boiling and your fingers tapping away at the keys then when your websites come up for renewal. I may have been slow (almost turtle slow) from putting in the work on my blogs for the second half of 2009, but when I got a noticed that it was time to pay the piper to keep my blogsites I realized it was time to reevaluate my Adsense blogging.

I had to look at the disaster I created for myself and then decide what to do with all these sites I own.

You see, over the last year, I bought close to thirty domains, all with the intention of monetizing them to make money through Google Adsense and other sources of income. While my vision and plans were high, I didn’t consider two factors.

One, that life happens.

Two, that burn out happens.

Life Goes On While You Try to Make Money Blogging

Of anyone deciding to start blogging and blogging for the sake of making money online, then you must understand this saying. In fact, develop it as a mantra and mumble it day in and day out, especially when you decide it is time to research some new keywords and put more time into blogging.

No matter what your goal is or plans are for your websites, life just sometimes takes over. I have a newborn who is now one year old, I have gone back to college, so has my girlfriend, and our house that we live in had hung on the edge of foreclosure. These things have taking priority over putting in time to develop my Adsense blogsites. I have had very little time, or effort to put in the maintenance, the linkbuilding, and just the overall work to develop these sites into primo Googl;e Adsense real estate.

Over the last year, i have left a trail of destruction across the web of unfinished blogsites, quickly thrown up hack jobs, and URLs parked with nothing but Apache listings showing up when clicked on. Most of my main blogs have gone into the Internet Wastelnads, My HubPages have not reached my goal of 100, and my Squidoo lenses are cracked.

In general, I have created a mess of my plans to make money online and have just let my online real estate grow weeds.

Burned Out on Blogging

When I first started blogging to make money with Google Adsense, I was enthusiastic. It was a new, exciting frontier and I was putting in close to eighteen hours a day doing research on keywords, deciphering WordPress themes, and just writing tons and tons of content for my blogs and link sites. I quickly saw the cents begin to trickle in on my Adsense ads and I felt I was going in the right direction. But soon, I became suffered from burn out because I now had more sites then I knew what to do with and could not afford to outsource my work.

So, I started avoiding my responsibilities to my blogs. Several, I just could not touch at all. Most have not received any new content in months and I have even bought more URls to compound the work I was already avoiding. Eventually, I decided that i was through with blogging for awhile and pulled out my subscriptions to several sites and pulled my Google Adsense from most of my sites because I was afraid Google might sandbox these sites.

Time went on, my sites began to earn very little money but i was still get a few dollars a month through monetized sites that still had Google Adsense, Adbrite, and Infolinks. I went about pursuing other interests and would occasionally look over my blogs to see if there was hope,

Then, a few weeks ago, i started receiving E-mails that my websites were coming up for renewal. I was like, “Wow, a year has gone by already?” and now I had to decide what to do with these sites.

Should I keep them?

Should I let them go?

Getting Back On Track Making Money Online

So I had to make a decision. I really thought about just quitting, but then I thought about all the work I have done so far on my sites. It would be a waste to let that all go. I just needed to my a plan this time and stick to it. I had learned a lot over the last year about making blogs, learning SEO, and just a lot about the world of monetization, Google Adsense, and the Internet in general. I was now a veteran blogger with hundreds of hours dedicated to putting my words on the World Wide Web. It was time to get back on the horse.

So, now it is 2010 and I am back in the game. I have decided to give all my websites a new look since I have learned a lot about customizing WordPress, to add fresh new content and links, to get back into blogging on a regular basis and to see what 2010 holds for me in the world of blogging.

Rank Checker For Firefox Review

Filed under Reviews by on July 3, 2009 at 3:57 am {13 comments}

checker

Adsense Blog Reviews

So, i don’t know if you are like me, but I got a bad habit. I got to be constantly checking things. I got to check my Google Adsense, my Analytics, my HubPages ranks, my Squidoo lenses and my Statcounter. I try to tell myself to stop, to leave these things alone, but I always have to know.

The same hold true for my Google ranking for my sites.

That’s where PageRanker for Firefox comes in handy. You can get the download at tools.seobooks.com.

If you don’t use Firefox for some of your Adsense blog work, then I suggest downloading the search engine. Besides having a built-in spell checker and other features, you can download two of the most useful SEO tools like Rank Checker and SEO for Firefox.

Before I started using Rank Checker, I used to manually go through Google and look for my Adsense blog sites. If you own multiple sites, this can be a tiring and exhaustive search. With Rank Checker, it solves this problem by searching for targeted keywords related to your websites.

All you have to do is put in your URL and list a bunch of keywords you are tracking. Rank Checker can not only check Google and their other sites like Google UK, but it also tracks Yahoo and whatever other search engine you put in the options.

What is great is you can then save your search and try it again at anytime without having to reenter any information. You can also constantly add to your lists and track multiple websites.

Rank Checker can also be used to check the competitiveness of keywords on sites like HubPages and Squidoo by just typing in the URL of the site and the keywords you are targeting. Rank Checker will then list the highest available site in ranking for that keyword if one is ranking. This is a great way to see if any new keyword that you are trying to make a hub or lens for has any competition and if you are able to beat its ranking.

So, if you are like me and waste a lot of time worrying about your numbers, Rank Checker helps eliminate some of that waste, but in the end, only you can stop checking your numbers on your Adsense blogs to see if you are truly making money online.

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