If you have spent time reading blogs on how to make money online you are probably well aware that a lot of bloggers emphasis on how important it is to have a unique theme. This is only half true and I will now tell you more about how important it is to choose the right theme for your Wordpress site.
Earlier this week I told you how to install Wordpress on Hostgator and wrote a post with recommended plugins for Wordpress.
Few things to consider choosing a theme for Wordpress:
Below you will find a few things I think is important to think on every time you create a new site independent of if it’s Wordpress or not.
1) How will you make money from the blog?
This is probably the most important question to think about when choosing a theme. Will you create a niche site and make money through Google AdSense and affiliate networks or do you want to become personal and build trust?
If you are interested in using a small niche site with Google AdSense I recommend you to find a theme where your visitors will be, not tricked, but persuaded to click at your ads. There are different methods to do this and I will hopefully release one of my personal theme later this year.
If you are interested in creating a niche site making money of affiliate networks I recommend a theme with a more minimalistic style and personal header. By doing this you will not scare the visitor away but instead persuade him to read through your information and make a order. I recently fell in love with Tropicala which I will show you tomorrow.
The third alternative is to create a personal blog and build trust with recurrent visitors. Here I recommend you to use a unique theme which looks interesting and compelling. I personally prefer Thesis since it builds trust, but I recommend you to customize thesis to become a bit more personal.
2) How many blogs use the same theme?
If you are creating a simple niche site and making money through Google AdSense this doesn’t matter. But if you are trying to build trust I recommend you to find a bit more unusual theme which will characterize you.
If you have the money I recommend you to buy a premium theme or maybe even order a customized theme made for you. This will cost you a few hundred dollars and if you instead decides to go with a free theme, try to research how many other bloggers are using the it.
3) Is the theme search engine-friendly?
Even though you can get a lot of traffic through referrals and social media I recommend you to try getting free traffic from search engines. You can do this by simply writing a bit more search engine optimized posts and of course finding a theme which is search engine-friendly.
How do you know if a theme is built for search engines though? Well, this could be a bit tricky if you don’t know how SEO works. Later on I will publish a guide on how to optimize Wordpress for search engines which will help you, but until then I would recommend you to ask a friend or simply contact me.
4) Is there free support?
If you know some HTML, CSS and PHP this will probably not matter for you, but for everyone else it could be important to know if there are any support when you need to change something or your theme break.
Even though there is a forum it may not be active. If it’s a free theme you can make sure by simply asking a simple question through their forum or contact form. By doing this you’ll know if the support will cover your need. If it’s a premium you can make a post at Wordpress forum and ask for experiences.
Your opinions on choosing a theme for Wordpress
Now I would like to now what you are looking for when choosing a theme for your new Wordpress site. Support, design or maybe something else I didn’t write about? Share your thoughts below.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
When selecting a new theme for my blog, the first thing I interested that is the places to put advertises.
Thanks for awesome post!
You should probably not use this as your first demand, but I agree that a place to put advertising is important if you try to make money through it.
@ Toan Nguyen Minh – Not trying to sound like a dick to you, but that is probably why you dont have many visitors who actually come back the second time.
Well, great list that will guide me well when choosing a theme. Thanks.
Choosing a theme is the number one point to any website. It depends what you want from your site. Example SEO, advertisements, layout options, comments (threaded), supports gravatars and how easy it is to update and customize.
I agree with you George that there’s so many more things to think about when choosing a theme for Wordpress. My main point in this post is that there are differences in your theme-choice depending on how you will make money on your site.
3 things I’ll consider before purchase a theme: Unique features, user friendly, and support provided.
Good addition Jacob.
please help me the niche a bit….. a confusing topic to simply pinpoint at times…. How to combine low niche topic search engine friendly
I’m not really sure if I understand what you mean Chris. Could you please elaborate?
I recommend to have a custom theme atleast after the 6 months of blog start. Free themes i love to use only 2-column ones
I also recommend everyone to have some sort of unique theme but there are some great free and premium themes out there which you can customize into becoming unique.
i love 2 column and to use free theme
I spent aqges looking for a good theme, one where the design fitted my needs, and that was easy to understand. I finally settled on the one I use on my blog (and 3 more besides, although they all look different).
This theme was relatively easy to understand because it was well coded, and I managed to enhance it so that some fo the hard coded features in the sidebars are now soft coded.
I am still trying to perfect the theme, with my limited PHP knowledge, and would like to change the fonts etc, but I think it works fairly well.
I think anyone would be hard pressed to find a theme that exactly fitted their needs, so you need to find something that is either flexible enough to be tailored to your needs, or easy enough to understand so that you can edit the code yourself.
Thank you for your comment Tony. I agree with you and this is one of the reasons why I love Thesis. It’s extremely flexible and there are new guides, on how to customized it, published every day.
Selecting best theme for your blog is sometime difficult but its very important…
IMO one should first make a layout of everything blog design and ad placement …
Then think of color and how you want your blog to look like.,.
A nice footer …..and so on…
Once you have all the requirement start searching for your theme or hire a custom designer to code it for you or redesign any existing theme…
I agree with you Harsh. If you have the money to hire some premium designer the best thing is to draw up a outline on how the information should be presented.
Stefan,
Choosing a theme, for me, is like giving birth. LOL It takes a long time and I labor over my decision. While looking at themes, I’m trying to get ideas on the color scheme I’ll use, the layout that I think will serve my needs, if the theme seems user-friendly and is easy to edit, and probably several other things.
I’m not really good at editing themes, so I have to factor in how I’m going to get changes made if I need them. I don’t mind paying for a premium theme, but that also depends on the reputation of the person selling the theme. For example, do they have a reputation for good customer service? Do they offer customization services at a reasonable price?
Choosing a theme is really not a simple matter for me. It could probably be far easier but I guess I’m very demanding…but I’m okay with that.
Cheers,
Scott