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.

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.

So, all this started one day when I got the idea to make a site about the swine flu. After doing some research, then discovering Court’s School, I realized that this might not be a great keyword to buy when just starting out. First, all the good domains had already been scooped up. Secondly, if people didn’t start dying by the bucket loads, then this site would be dead within a few months.

That is the problem with fresh keywords. If you stumble upon a keyword that is so new that Google Adsense information has not been determined, you must decide if it is worth the risk in building up this site.

The advantages to getting these Adsense blog sites is that you will have the top keyword positions and probably will hold that position forever especially if static pages haven’t even been built yet. If most of the top links come from news articles and no pages with authority, then you might have a gold mine down the line. But if that keyword does not get popular, then you have a dead website with no traffic.

That is the big disadvantage to using fresh keywords. There is no way of knowing if that keyword will ever payoff. It is the biggest risk with the chance for the best potential in the long run.

If you do find a fresh keyword that does have a decent CPC of at least a dollar with no competition, but still very little traffic, this might be a great site to own if, and only if, the related keywords have a high traffic value because as your new site is building off the fresh keyword, you are going to start getting a lot of traffic off those other keywords, especially if it is a long tail keyword that pays money.

For example, let’s say your keyword is “octopus eyeballs cancer cure” and it is generating a 2 dollar CPC because some scientist has determined that they cure cancer and there is a lot of buzz about them but nobody has a website on them. You notice that there is a lot of traffic for octopus, cancer and cancer cures. With proper SEO work, you could get the traffic for these other keywords while you wait for the buzz to build over you new Adsense blog on Octopus Eyeballs Cancer Cures.

You must do your research before giving these fresh keywords a try. Also, if you can’t get direct domains with your keywords then I wouldn’t advice buying into them.

Ever since Google took over the information world, there have been two kinds of people.

Those who pay for you to visit them and those who chase this money.

For those who get it, Google Adsense is the new gold rush as keyword density is the gold pan and Cost Per Clicks are the precious nuggets people are fighting for.

We begin this tale with two websites. For their protection, and mine, we will call them Mister Net and Mister Com.

You see, these two websites have a peculiar problem of sharing the same name for their product. While Mr. Com had the name first, it is Mr. Net who, over the years of presenting a slid product line, has turned the moniker into a solid multimillion dollar company with international brand recognition. While this was going on, Mr. Com stayed at the bottom as a small outfit offering similar product.

Well as time went on, and the internet gained in popularity, a strange thing happened. People sought out the services of Mister Net, only to find Mister Com. In the true nature of all bottom dwellers, Mr. Com decided to profit off of this misunderstanding. He invested money in making a website similar to that of Mr. Net. So when customers came seeking the esteemed gentleman with the exceptional product, they were instead duped by the nefarious schemes of Mister Com as he would deny that his competition ever existed.

So this went on for years, legal battles ensued, millions of dollars were spent, and Mister Net could not convince the courts that his good name was besmirched.

Then along comes Google.

As people sought out these two companies with the same name, the competition for that name escalated. Pretty soon, Mister Net and Mister Com both drove up the value of their Cost Per Click to over thirteen dollars for anyone seeking their dual identity.

This struggle between their two websites continues everyday with neither declared a winner, except Google.

It is at this point in the story I show up, strolling between those two sites in my rakish desire to profit from their feud. I once had a close personal relationship with Mister Net and got to know deeply his tale of woe. I also know that this gentleman refuses to play in the street with the commoners when it comes to making money online. I also know that Mister Com is happy just leeching off the back of his enemy.

You see, during their feud, each side had done their best to overtake the other. They have fought over various keywords, have snatched up domain names and have driven away any other competition. And during these years, the esteemed Mister Net has pulled away from his nemesis, making his name immediately associated as the best product related to that name. For example, if people wanted to look up Pepsi, they would never search for soft drinks. They would just type up Pepsi.

So what is the moral of this story, you say?

Well, you see, Mister Net’s greatest strength is his greatest weakness. If you type his brand name in Google, he holds authority at number one, and the nefarious Mister Com number two. But after those two ranks, there are no other authorities, just a broken landscape of relevant links with no keyword density or page rankings.

It seems that this third position is ripe for picking. Plus, in their battle, they forgot to secure one domain that has valuable keyword Cost Per Clicks of over ten bucks a pop.

So, now I have changed my name to Mister Net III and am making money off their battle for internet superiority by telling their story and leading others back to both of them since they exist in my Google Adsense box together . As long as they keep driving up the value of their dual name, as long as innocent people search out their services, I will be there with my gold pan out to collect the juicy nuggets.

My point is this is how you find the best keywords to make your websites. Don’t go for the latest trend, but look into your dark soul, look for those secrets you keep, those things you have learned and exploit the knowledge gained from an ex-employer, ex-friend, or ex-lover.

Just don’t violate any laws and make sure you register the domain under a private party.

Thus ends my tale.

If you’re like me, you don’t do just one thing at a time. You are part of the new breed of multitaskers who have fifteen windows opened at once and you’re plugging away at your latest Adsense blog while you’re IMing your girlfriend.

So somewhere in the process you might forget something you learned, especially when building multiple sites and it helps to have a checklist you can fall back on.

I’ll be in the middle of writing a blog and John will come in with a great keyword for me to search for (the dude is a serious gold mine of ideas) and then I’m off buying another domain. I’ve bought seven in a week and only two are in any shape to roll.

Now, this is in no way an end all-be all list. It is just a list of steps I learned from all the videos and articles on Court’s site. If I have left something out, I might not have learned it yet. So, please share it with the rest of us.

1: Set up your new name server numbers

Can’t do anything without that step. Also, if you have a new website, put it in your add sub domain section of your Cpanel first.

2. Set up Wordpress through your Cpanel

Go to the Fantastico Deluxe feature and install Wordpress. For new websites, don’t forget to change the domain name or it will be called the same thing as your last site.

3. Go to your Wordpress Dashboard and configure your settings

Remember to also change your Permalinks to maximize your SEO.

4. Go get your new nifty Wordpress theme

Download at least two or three, so you can test drive them.

5. Upload your new themes and your SEO All-In-One Pack

Might as well kill both birds with one stone here. Then go activate your plugin and configure its settings.

I’m not hip to other plugins yet, so if you jiggy with them, go crazy with your add ons.

6. Gather up all your Copy and Pastes

You know, go get your statcounter, your affiliate codes, and if you have content, throw up your Google Adsense blocks. I wouldn’t advise adding this code until you have up enough content in case those damn Google Techs hit your page and wonder what the hell is going on at puppyloveparlor.com.

It seems easy, but when you are building about five sites at the same time it’s real easy to over look something. I just realized today that I skipped over a video and had to go back and load in all those SEO packs to my pages.

Look, I know there is a tone of stuff I still don’t know, but for those just starting out trying to make money with Google Adsense, one site is not going to get you rich. You need to get up multiple sites, get a portfolio going, and sometimes it’s easy to miss a step.

And to all you experts who read this, I would appreciate any comments you might have.

Am I looking to make millions? No.

Am I an experienced computer technician? No.

Do I have any idea what I am doing? Maybe.

And maybe is enough for me right now.

Okay, if you haven’t clicked off my page by now to get some real professional advice, then let me tell you what I do know.

I have been surfing and playing on the internet for about ten years now and never knew anything about making money with adsense blogs. I have also been a writer for more than twenty years. Neither one of these pastimes has made me a lick of money but they have allowed me to get some ground work for this new adventure.

And I look at it as an adventure. You can’t look at it any other way. Either you jump in with your feet wet, with a big giant ball hurdling down behind you as you run forward looking for a golden rainbow, or you end up quitting before your first Google Adsense blog is posted.

Two things I have learned in life. There are three kinds of people and only one outcome. Whether you are one of the types that don’t try, one of the ones who do try but don’t follow through, or one of those who put their all into something, there is only one outcome.

And that outcome is determined by what you put into that outcome. Machiavelli said, “The end justifies the means.” And if in the end you want success, you got to put the effort into it. Period.

There is no shortcut to making money on the internet unless you plan on ripping a bunch of people off. There is already enough of those assholes out there already and the competition is even harder than making money legitimately.

So, what is this site about?

It’s about tracking my progress, my comings and goings, my shortfalls, my failures, and my advice to others who have found their way to sites like these and want a no-nonsense approach to making money with a Adsense blog and to see if any of this stuff actually works.

I think that is the key here. I have come across some nice sites that give great advice (hell, it’s how I got this far) but these guys are already professionals in this game. I wanted to cover the beginner’s path.

And that’s exactly what this site is about.

So, if you want to make money with Adsense blogs or learn about other ways of to make an honest buck, stay posted to this site to watch my progress or failure.

Either way, it will be fun.