Gleam WordPress Theme by Elegant Themes

Check out Gleam: Demo » More information »

One of the most unique WordPress themes that you’re bound to stumble across, Gleam offers a beautiful design and creative features that will truly make your site stand out.

With a very cool ajax integration, the design places an emphasis on the aesthetic qualities of your blog or website with big, beautiful, full background photos or images and a ton of features and cool enhancements that you may not have seen in other themes out there.

When clicked, each section of your site is loading in a lightbox-type popup that maintains the creative elements of the design while still allowing you to present your content. Whether it’s a photo gallery, blog section, or portfolio – you’ll find that it is a great choice for a variety of different topics or industries.

Theme Features Include

Check out Gleam: Demo » More information »

Smooth Real Estate Theme by Gorilla Themes

Check out Smooth Real Estate: Demo » More information »

Perhaps one of the most full-featured WordPress themes for real estate agents or websites, this design features a myriad of functions that aren’t currently found in some of the other themes currently available on the market. With unique tools that are already built into the theme like a mortgage affordability calculator and an advanced, multi-option property search box – it has everything you might need to run a powerful site.

It even includes all of the sections you might want integrated into a layout that include a Twitter stream, Facebook “like” box area, and a blog section.

Easily one of the most versatile and feature-rich themes for your site, this template would make a perfect candidate for any serious professional in the real estate field.

Theme Features Include

Check out Smooth Real Estate: Demo » More information »

AgentPress Theme by StudioPress

Check out AgentPress: Demo » More information »

From the makers of some of the most popular WordPress themes, StudioPress has put together an exceptional and powerful real estate theme with the appropriately-named AgentPress.

Featuring a simple layout and design that places and emphasis on real estate listings and properties, this theme is aesthetically-pleasing while also being beautifully functional.

The home page features not only features an image slider that highlights some of your most important listings, but an advanced search box that allows visitors to filter listings based upon multiple criteria (type of unit, location, price, etc.).

In addition to the powerful real estate-specific features that are built into the theme, AgentPress also has a blog section integrated into the design as well as an area for client testimonials and an email sign-up box.

Released by one of the premiere WordPress theme shops, this theme is sure to convey a professional image to your site’s visitors and something definitely worth checking out if you’re in real estate.

Theme Features Include

Check out AgentPress: Demo » More information »

Whether you’re an individual agent or a real estate office, this theme, design, and layout offers just about anything you might need to build out a full-fledged site that incorporates all of the components you might need.

It was built and designed exclusively for the real estate industry with several cool sections that allow for easy maintenance and updating. Whether you’re using it to power your realty office or as a portal on which you feature agents and listings – it has just about everything you would need.

Real Estate Theme

Real Estate Theme by Templatic

If you’re looking for a high-powered, feature-rich, real estate theme then this is one you should definitely not miss.

Check out Real Estate: Demo » More information »

Theme Features Include

Check out Real Estate: Demo » More information »

Featuring a prominent content slider on the home page provides the perfect design for nearly any business. In addition to the large content slider, the layout also features recent posts, a “services” area, as well as a Twitter updates area that highlights your most recent tweets.

While the theme places a focus on your services or products, it also has integrated a blog section where you can post updates.

iBusiness Theme

iBusiness Theme by Templatic

For a simple, clean, and straightforward business design – this might be just the right theme for you.

Check out iBusiness: Demo » More information »

Theme Features Include

Check out iBusiness: Demo » More information »

It’s rumored that Albert Einstein once said:

“The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.”

The compounding principle also applies to blogging – the more content you create, the more traffic and income you can generate.

HubSpot conducted a study that revealed that businesses who blog regularly (at least 5 times per week) receive 6.9 times more search engine visits than those who don’t.

Aside from managing reader expectations, a consistent posting schedule is one of the easiest ways to boost your blog’s traffic and income.

Every new post that is published on your site gives you one more opportunity to show up in the search engines, which in turn drives more traffic and more chances for your content to spread on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Let’s Crunch Some Numbers

The easiest way to see how compounding effects your blog’s growth in revenue and traffic is by outlining a made-up scenario.

For this example, let’s assume that you make only one blog post per week – and each post generates only 2 extra visitors per day and an extra $0.10 per day.

Here’s how the traffic and income might break down over time:

By looking ahead, you can see that the initial investment of time and money starts paying off. While $12.00 a month is certainly a tough number to get most people motivated, by the end of the year you’re up to nearly $300 a month – a figure that is much more motivating.

Persistence & Patience Pays Dividends

Just like investing money, when you continue to add content – the returns start compounding, growing your income and traffic exponentially.

The best part, is that it doesn’t take that much to start seeing results over a period of time – and the results outlined above are certainly achievable.

While you might not be able to monetize every page of your site to receive $0.10 per day, you should have a breakout post every once in a while that contributes more than its fair share to the overall growth of your blog.

Hands-Free, Passive Income Generation

This approach to making money online and growing a successful blog has worked for me on several occasions.  Even blogs that I have long-abandoned or may not have touched in months continue to generate income because of the initial work I did in the beginning.

That’s the appeal of passive income – you do the work and put in the time in the beginning and you reap the rewards down the road.

So get out there and start posting, you’ll thank yourself a year from now

A Quick Side Note

While we’re on this topic, I just wanted to bring up investing real quick.  If you haven’t done so, I highly encourage you to start investing (even if it’s as little as $10 per week).  Set up a side stock account, fund a retirement account, or choose an investment that can grow over time – this is one of the keys that is crucial to building wealth as it also uses the power of compounding to grow.

There are more 71+ million WordPress-powered sites & blogs

There’s huge potential to make money online with WordPress themes – as I write this, WordPress.com states that there are 71,822,299 sites (that’s sites – not pages) that are currently powered by the popular blogging platform. I’ve heard numbers thrown around that WordPress actually powers between 10-25% of all sites out there – whatever the number, the figures are unbelievably impressive.  Each year the service continues to grow exponentially, meaning that the target audience continues to grow with each passing month and the demand for products or services for WordPress continue to grow as well.

Because of the large number of blogging, design, and programming sites out there – making money with WordPress themes can be applied to many different niches or topics.

Capitalizing on the WordPress Theme Market

This phenomenal growth has opened the doors for the ambitious money-makers who provide marketing, programming, or design services for those using WordPress. With this post, we’re going to focus on the design aspect – specifically, the income opportunities that are available by creating or promoting WordPress themes. To capitalize (and profit from) the WordPress theme market, there are basically two options that you can choose to pursue:

Each option has their advantages and disadvantages when it comes to making money and the skills involved.  Designers and programmers would likely lean to the designing and selling your own themes, while marketers and content producers would steer more toward the promotion aspect (i.e. affiliate marketing).  What’s interesting is that while there are thousands of free plugins and themes out there, people are willing to pay a premium for features, functionality, and support they might not otherwise find in a free theme.

I believe that whatever choice you make (to create themes or promote them) the ability to generate good money is basically the same.

Creating Your Own Themes

If you’re a programmer or designer, there’s a ton of money to be made by either creating and selling your own themes or by doing custom work for select clients.  There have been multi-million dollar design businesses built around this model: ElegantThemes, WooThemes, and StudioPress are just a few examples that pop up.  Each of those companies has sold thousands (even hundreds of thousands) of WordPress themes and have built thriving, sustainable businesses around them – all of which can be very profitable.

ElegantThemes creates and designs their own themes, relying on their own traffic and an army of affiliates to drive sales

There are thousands of people who make a living by solely designing and selling their own WordPress themes.  Whether you only have one theme on the market like DIY Themes’ Thesis Theme or you’ve released dozens like the three companies just mentioned – there’s a limitless number of designs that you can create (and if good enough, make some serious cash along the way).  You don’t even need to have your own site as theme aggregators like ThemeForest allow designers to publish their themes directly on their site in exchange for a cut of the sale price.

The Pros

The Cons

When you design your own themes, an in-depth knowledge of how WordPress works is required.  Testing for compatibility, debugging, and plugin conflicts can lead to a large amount of time and effort needed to support your customer base.

Promoting WordPress Themes of Others

I have run several sites (and even on this site), that shows the affiliate model can be a very passive and hands-off income stream.  However, the promotion route requires either up-front money to fund PPC campaigns, some time to achieve good results from SEO, or a lot of traffic from your content to generate clicks that result in sales.

The Pros

The Cons

I’m not a designer, so the affiliate model has been the option I’ve always pursued.  It can provide a good, passive way to generate some nice income – provided you are able to generate the traffic to make your efforts worthwhile.

Making Money With WordPress Themes

Whichever model that you decide to go with, know that there are people making some serious money (thousands or even hundreds of thousands) with WordPress themes.  It’s a market that’s constantly evolving and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.  Get a little creative with your approach and you can generate some great income off WordPress themes no matter which route you choose.

ThisIsWhyImBroke.com features cool products that you can buy online

With over 85,000 Facebook “Likes”, thousands of visitors per day, and a viral component that spreads like wildfire – ThisIsWhyImBroke.com is a terrific example of a successful Amazon affiliate site.  Launching in mid-2011, it has grown exponentially over the months since it has launched, and in the process, garnered a lot of traffic and media mentions during that time.

While we don’t have direct access to the traffic, stats, or revenue – the site provides a brilliant example of how to draw thousands of visitors to your website or blog.  A quick overview provides insight into what makes a site like this so intriguing for affiliate marketers or those wanting to make money online.  It has all the components and pieces that make up a successful, money-making web property: a built-in viral component, a simple & creative idea, a focus on products, and (potentially) little upkeep – all of which could make for a very passive income stream.

An Overview of ThisIsWhyImBroke.com

ThisIsWhyImBroke features unique, bizarre, and one-of-a-kind items from around the web.  The products featured on the site range from the inexpensive to the ultra-high-end, aggregated from a variety of online stores and shops.  Each product has a photo, a brief description, and a link visitors can click to buy the item.  The home page is simple and straightforward, featuring all of the items listed on the site – while there are filters that allow you to refine your results.

The Built-In Viral Marketing Component

Because the site doesn’t offer thousands of products (only hand-picking the best of the unusual), it makes a great site for people to share with their friends (did you know that you can buy a water-powered jet pack?!).  The domain name itself (ThisIsWhyImBroke.com) is brandable and easily “likeable” on Facebook – “This is why I’m broke” because I want to buy ALL of the stuff on this site.  It’s not often that people would like to buy nearly everything listed on an e-commerce site.

Hand-Picked, “Curated” Content

As cliche as it sounds, this is a prime example of “curated content,” stuff that is hand-picked to represent some of the coolest things that you can buy online.  You’re not browsing through thousands of pool tables for something different, you’re presented with a few carefully selected pool tables that are unique and unusual.  The site’s unique content and products make it a prime choice for gaining links from blogs, websites, and social networks.

Focused on Products

I find that product-centric sites tend to be some of the easiest to monetize because you’re getting traffic to things people can buy, as opposed to creating content to which you sell ads against.  They’re targeting content that encourages visitors to whip out their credit card and buy something.

(Optionally) Passive Upkeep & Minimal Maintenance

One of the most attractive aspects of the site is the potential for it to be relatively hands-off now that it’s up-and-running.  Should the owner choose to do so, they could simply post a new product every once in a while and still generate income from the traffic that they have cultivated.

Perfect for Affiliate Marketing

Undoubtedly, ThisIsWhyImBroke.com has integrated Amazon’s Affiliate program with their links.  Whenever they create a page/post for a product that can be purchased via Amazon.com, they put up an affiliate link – every time someone clicks on that link and buys a product, they get a commission (not too bad, eh?).  The great part is that people want to see more of each product out of curiosity, creating thousands of cookies that will track anything that a person then buys on Amazon.

Wrap-Up

This goes to show you that expanding upon an existing idea and tossing in a little creativity, you can create an extremely popular affiliate site that could provide a great passive income stream for months or years to come.  If you have ever wanted to make money with Amazon’s affiliate program – this is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen.

For quite some time I’ve been fascinated when blogs or sites report on their traffic and revenue.  While there’s a bit of debate of what should or shouldn’t be shared (some believing that it comes across as braggadocios, pompous, or untrustworthy), it’s always served as a source of some inspiration and motivation for me.  I find that reading about their traffic, RSS subscribers, and revenue grow or change over time is educational – in addition to being highly intriguing.

I kind of view a blog income report as similar to Jack Stack’s open-book management philosophy (see his book The Great Game of Business), and that by sharing some of this information it might provide some insight on how a blog makes money (albeit relatively small compared to many other sites out there).

Personally, I’m doing this for motivation and as a way to keep track of Slashmarks.com’s progress over time – as the saying goes “if you’re not growing you’re dying.”

Before we delve into the first monthly report I want to let you know that this site has been around in some form or another for several years.  It’s been ripped, shredded, hacked, redirected, deleted, copied, and generally abused for quite some time.  I’ve lost, deleted, and rearranged more posts that I can keep track of – and what you see on the site is all that remains since the blog was started.

February Traffic Stats

Traffic to Slashmarks.com has been very consistent, hovering around 500 visitors per day for quite some time.  Since this kicks off the first of my monthly reports (and a desire to get back to blogging), I’m hoping to increase the number of posts each month which will hopefully help the number of visitors to the site.

Slashmarks.com February, 2012 Traffic Stats

Also, another goal I’m aiming for is to increase the number of RSS subscribers to my site.  I’ve always built or operated websites that didn’t rely heavily on subscribers or built regular readership – I’m hoping that I can start building this subscriber base and starting to gain some consistent readers.

February Blog Income

This blog makes money solely through affiliate marketing and at around $0.09 per visitor, I believe the earnings can be increased substantially.  Of course, this is the number that I would like to most like to see improve and it should hopefully grow as I continue to add more content.

Total Blog Income: $1,368.66

Wrapping Up

While I’m pleased with the results of the blog so far, I believe that there’s a lot of potential that lies ahead.  From growing a readership and building an audience to monetizing the site more effectively, my goal is to increase all metrics going forward.  Hopefully, detailing my progress will help me benchmark and keep motivated pushing forward.

Built into the design are a myriad of options, which means that you have to rely less on plugins to accomplish the features or functionality you need.  In addition to being able to upload properties and filter them by your own pre-defined criteria (e.g. price, number of bedrooms, type of property, square feet, or any other variable you would want to set up).  Additionally, the home page features a beautiful content slider that makes showcasing your best properties extremely easy.

To make things easy (and without the need to use a plugin), there is a built-in contact form as well as shortcodes – which make adding buttons and other cool features very simple.

Elegant Estate Theme

Elegant Estate by Elegant Themes

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use, affordable, WordPress theme for your real estate site – then this is something that you should definitely check out.

Check out Elegant Estate: Demo » More information »

Theme Features Include

Check out Elegant Estate: Demo » More information »