Determining Your Needs When Choosing a Blog Theme

Before shopping around for a WordPress theme, you should have a general idea of how you want your blog to look and function. Some themes have a two-column layout, while others are arranged with three columns. Do you want your sidebar to appear on the left or right? Is the theme you’re looking at “widget-ready?” You should also have an idea of your own ability to customize and tweak your WordPress theme. In our case, we can handle the basics but neither of us have the time or interest to become WordPress gurus. We are looking for something easy. Also realize that your blog doesn’t have to be perfect on launch day. You will be improving your business – including your blog – for years to come.

With that in mind, we were looking for a blog theme that’s easy to manage, has room to grow, and will allow us to get a business blog up and running quickly with as little headache as possible. There are plenty of flashy, shiny, eye-catching blogs out there. But for our needs, we’ve narrowed them down to [drumroll, please] Our Top 4 Picks for WordPress Themes:

…and yes, I’m saving the best for last.

Thesis Theme

If you haven’t heard of Thesis by now, you may want to come out of your cave for a minute and have a look around. Thesis comes from DIY Themes, and was recently upgraded to version 1.6. You can see a demo of Thesis and its new bells and whistles in this video. The big selling point of Thesis seems to be SEO optimization. From the DIY site:

Thesis boasts the strongest SEO of any theme on the market today thanks to its expertly-coded HTML + CSS + PHP framework. Not only that, Thesis also contains additional options that will allow you to fine-tune each and every page of your site. The days of worrying about your in-site SEO are over—with Thesis, your strategy is “just add killer content.”

After viewing the demos, Thesis looks like it’s pretty easy to manage from the control panel. The only thing we’re not too crazy about is that you can typically spot a Thesis-themed blog 2 miles away.

COST: You have two purchase options for Thesis. The “Personal Use” option will cost you $87.00 and for that price you can use the theme on one site, and you are required to leave the footer attribution link intact. For $164, you can choose the Developer’s Option, which gives you the ability to install Thesis on as many sites as you want, and you can remove the links in the footer.

Frugal Theme

Frugal Theme is the creation of Eric Hamm, and in our opinion Eric is doing a great job giving Thesis some serious competition! Frugal is a nice, clean-looking theme that also seems to be fairly easy to tweak. Eric provides a nice library of video tutorials to help you get started using the theme. What makes Frugal unique? Here’s what Eric says:

In its stock form, the frugal WordPress Theme is about as simple and clean as it gets, while still maintaining a sleek style that perfectly presents you precious content.  Right out of the box the frugal theme does nothing more than put ALL the focus on your words, images, videos or whatever you choose to display to your readers.  Almost invisible with its super simple framework, the frugal theme does nothing to distract from your pages and posts.

What attracts us most about Frugal is the design. It’s very simple, clean, and sleek. We also like the option of making a “static” homepage. Eric’s blog, Motivate Thyself, is a good example of Frugal set up to look more like a full-fledged content management system.

Frugal comes in two yummy flavors: Premium and Professional. You can see a comparison video HERE. You also have a choice of 3 licenses; Single-Use ($79), Multi-Use ($149), and Developer ($199). Check out the Frugal Store for details of all the options. For a limited time, you can get a “Combo” deal which includes the Premium and Professional themes for one price.

Affiliate Theme

This one caught my eye a while back, and although we won’t be using it for the blogs we’re developing right now, I will probably re-visit Affiliate Theme in the future, when I turn my attention back to affiliate marketing. This theme is designed with one thing in mind. You guessed it, Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate Theme is offered by Unique Blog Designs, and claims to be “the easiest way to set up and customize new affiliate websites using WordPress.” If you are promoting a lot of products and want a quick and easy way to get your landing/sales pages designed and published, I think Affiliate Theme is definitely worth a look. There are several purchasing options for Affiliate theme, ranging in price from $97 to $297. You can find details of those options HERE. But before you purchase, make sure you sign up for the newsletter on the home page. When you do, you’ll get a promo code that’ll save you 15%.

Headway Theme – The Future of WordPress Themes

I said I was saving the best for last, and here it is. Headway is so impressive and innovative that we’ve both watched the video numerous times just to be impressed all over again. Seriously. As far as I know, Headway is one-of-a-kind in that it offers drag-and-drop blog customization. I’m a drag-and-drop kind of person. It just doesn’t get much easier than this. You can get details about Headway’s features HERE. But what’s really exciting is that version 1.5 will be released soon and it looks amazing! Even if you’re not in the market for a WordPress theme, you should go watch this video. It’s just that cool.

Headway is a collaborative effort between Grant Griffiths and Michael Martine (Remarkablogger.com). If you want to be able to really customize your blog but you don’t know anything about code, you’ll be amazed at what you’ll be able to do with this theme. The simplicity and flexibility of the drag-and-drop layout editor put this one on our radar, and we have yet to find anything else like it. These guys are definitely onto something, and we think that something is the future of WordPress blog themes.

COST: The Personal option costs $87, and gives you the ability to install Headway on 2 sites. The Developer option costs $164, and allows you unlimited installations. With the developer option, you can also remove the footer attribution link. Very reasonable and competitive pricing for what this theme offers!

Right now we are definitely leaning towards Headway as the theme for our business blogs. We plan to make a final decision by the end of the week. And, once we get a behind-the-scenes peek, we’ll post a more thorough review.

We’d Love to Have Your Input!

Have you used any of these themes? If so, we’d love to hear about it! What would you like to change about the theme you’re currently using? What other theme(s) should we consider before making our final decision?

Well, we seemed to have turned a pretty cool corner on our journey to getting our businesses started. We have finally waded through all the legalities and paperwork! Now, everything is all “official” and our businesses are separate legal entities with their own bank accounts, licenses, and permits. As Scott said last week, we’re planning on actually launching the sites in January. Scott’s business, New Mind Insight LLC will be focused on the “motivation and behavior niche,” while my business, Earthen Motion LLC will be focused on the “eco-friendly living” niche. It’s a huge relief to have all that not-so-fun stuff out of the way so we can move on to the more creative, hands-on, interesting tasks involved in getting the websites up and running. So, here’s an update on what we got accomplished this week and what fun stuff we plan to tackle next week. Also, a little more detail about my current job situation, or lack thereof…

Goals we accomplished this week:

• Registered with the Department of Taxation
• Signed up for hosting for our business sites
• Installed WordPress
• Installed the Headway Theme
• Niche and keyword research
• Blog design

Registering Our Businesses with the Department of Taxation

After talking with a CPA last week, we were ready to register our businesses with the Virginia Department of Taxation. Fortunately, we were able to get that done online and the process was fairly quick and painless. I think most states probably offer the option of registering online now. To find out, you would just do a search for your state’s department of taxation website and follow the instructions for registering a new business. Basically, the process involves telling Uncle Sam that you have or will be starting a new business, what type of business it is, whether or not you’ll have employees, and who should be contacted when the state wants to take their portion of your profits.

When you register your business, you’ll have to designate a NAICS code to describe the type of business you’re operating.  The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS, pronounced Nakes), is a standard set of numerical codes used to classify business types.  You can find a database of the codes on the NAICS website.

The online registration process also allowed us to register for the taxes we’ll need to be responsible for. This will vary depending on where you live and what type of business you operate. Since we have an LLC and we’re going to be selling online, we registered for Pass Through Entity tax and Sales and Use Tax. Registering for the Sales & Use tax is what allows you to collect tax when you sell a product to someone in your own state. It’s also how you get a reseller’s permit. If you have any plans to buy physical products from wholesalers that you will resell, you’ll need a sales & use tax ID number or reseller’s permit. Different states call it by different names. Basically, any legit wholesaler will require you to have this number before they’ll sell you anything at wholesale.

When we finished filling out the online form, we immediately got all our state account numbers. Gotta’ love the Internet!

Hosting for Our Business Websites

We both used GoDaddy as the registrar for our business domains. Scott decided to get his hosting through Bluehost, and I stuck with HostGator.  Both seem to have decent reputations. A friend and online entrepreneur recommended Bluehost to Scott. I stuck with HostGator because I was already familiar with them, and because they offset their carbon footprint with certified renewable energy credits (REC’s). Not the perfect eco-friendly solution, but at least a step in that direction.

Installing WordPress and Headway

A couple of weeks ago we were shopping around for WordPress themes and had narrowed it down to four. We decided to go with Headway Theme for its drag & drop customization and a ton of other features. But mostly the drag & drop thing. I mean, how cool is that? If you haven’t already, you can check out a video of the new Headway release here. The WordPress install was easy enough. Many hosting plans now include Fantastico, which makes the installation so easy, even a caveman could do it. However, if you’ve never done it before you might find this quick tutorial by Stephan Nilsson helpful.

Niche and Keyword Research

As we move forward, we’ll get into more detail about what kind of research needs to be done and what resources we used to do ours. We began the process this week, mostly using the Google Adwords free keyword research tool. We also started studying other sites in our niches for market research and to learn what we can from sites that are already successful. Why re-invent the wheel, right?

Blog Design

We started work this week on brainstorming the functionality of our blogs. Again, we scoped out some of the blogs in our niches to get a better idea of what we like and don’t like. Looking at other blogs in the same niche is also a good way to start figuring out what major categories you’ll need for your content. And, by reading comments on those blogs, you can get valuable feedback from your future customers before you even get started! Of course, we want our blogs to be unique but looking at what’s already out there is a good way to get the wheels turning in the early stages of designing your site.

A Not-Too-Revealing Update on my Job Situation…or Lack Thereof

In my August Update post, I hinted at the fact that I was going through an interesting turn of events with my “day job.” At the time, I couldn’t go into much detail. I still can’t go into all the details, but I haven’t worked since the end of August due to a work-related injury. The good part of the situation is that it’s given me more time to work on getting our businesses started. The bad part is…well, pain isn’t much fun, and having no income kinda’ sucks (Did you hear Christmas is next month? How’d that happen?!)

Now, your initial reaction might be that you think I’m lucky because I got out of the “Rat Race” and that’s what I wanted, right? Well, one thing you should know about me is I’m somewhat of a control freak and I like for things to happen on my own terms. This didn’t happen on my terms. Our plan was that we’d both keep at the “day jobs” until our Internet businesses were making enough money for us to quit. When the time was right. When we were ready. But it didn’t happen that way, and because of the situation (and these are the details I can’t really go into yet), I’ve had to apply for at least 5 jobs every week since I’ve been out. Isn’t that kind of ironic? So, depending on how the planets align I may be re-entering the Rat Race at any given time. That is, unless I can get my business running and profitable really quickly. Wish me luck!

Our Goals for Next Week

With the holidays coming up, we’re trying to be realistic about what we’ll be able to accomplish next week. It’ll be a hectic week but we plan to keep moving forward. Hopefully, we’ll at least be able to…

• Keep working on the appearance and functionality of our sites
• Continue studying at Internet Business Mastery Academy (By the way, if you’ve been wanting more in-depth info about that, we posted our Internet Business Mastery Academy Mid-Term Review this week)
• “Experiment” with Headway (because “play with our new toy” doesn’t sound enough like work)
• I will be working on my monetization plan for Earthen Motion. Particularly, learning more about buying from wholesalers through Worldwide Brands.
• We will be eating more turkey than any two people have a right to.

If there’s any particular part of this process you’d like us to write more about, let us know!

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