Our series of simple WordPress themes are being release again. We are hard at work on five with the plan of releasing eight, along with our current WordPress theme.

Netjelly themes are based on the principles of minimalist design with the intention of bringing content to the forefront. They get the job done without the fluff and annoyance that comes with cluttered themes. And they are totally free.

John; Frank; Peter; Lee; and Adam.

Be ready.

I was approached recently by Chickens in the Hood – a local business, promoting self sufficient food sources in urban environments. Now, I’ve always been a bit picky about whom I work with, but I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to brand such a unique concept.

They wanted the works; website, logo, Facebook page, t-shirts, business cards, vinyl banners, coffee mugs and even a promotional video.

A hefty load on my already full plate.

But, with a couple weeks of hard work the web site was finished.

I’m big about consistency.

All the work followed the same color scheme and design style. It resulted in a cheerful look, but kept to my roots of simplistic design and functional frameworks. I believe this evident that you can achieve a lot without use of heavy imagery.

What do you think?

By the way, if you get a chance, like them on Facebook. Great group of folks!

When Twitter first starting I was marketing hosting services. Twitter was the only network allowing you to share with people that you didn’t know. This created the perfect climate for product promotion. Good days I was making upwards of $500.

But aggressive marketing by spammers ruined the market by creating thousands of accounts solely intended on spamming users into oblivion with cheaply made eBooks.

People caught on.

We’ve seen the effectiveness of others forms of marketing decline as well.

Banner ads don’t work anymore and Google Adsense is even becoming less lucrative as internet users become more savvy.

Society is learning, but it seems marketers never will.

Bottom line – if you want to make money online, start a blog, build an audience and market products that don’t screw them.

Blogging for me started back in 2007 while I was writing web design content for Netjelly. I had hopes it would turn somewhat lucrative over time. Sadly, it didn’t work out. By the time I got involved in the niche, it was basically overflowing with supply without a real demand.

I was receiving 10,000 to 15,000 visitors weekly by using a few social media tricks in late 2008, but couldn’t find any promising way to monetize the audience. After spending years working on the project without any results, I jumped ship to focus on other ventures.

That’s where I began having some luck.

I figured out that success in blogging was all about having an effective plan.

Changing course

At the start of my blogging career, I was misled by self-proclaimed SEO experts with a build it and they will come mentality. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Making money online isn’t as simple as starting a blog. It takes knowledge about the supplies and demands of your target market. I put this new found knowledge to work, and by late 2009, I owned a hand full of lucrative web sites.

Believe me, without a plan you’re on a ship without a destination.

This leaves me with one question.

I’ll answer that soon enough.

Small chance of winning

On average, chance of winning is 5.34%.

Unrealistic demands

Contest holders develop a super-human mentality that other designer feed. This leads contest holders demanding unrealistic time and devotion to a project without compensation to back it up.

As an independent designer, you have the ability to set rules and exceptions on you and clients. In a contest setting these don’t exist, if you piss them off, kiss “winning” goodbye.

Working for nothing

99designs is similar to asking a stadium full of people to work and only paying one. If you spend the time developing unique concepts and exceptional work would be better off flipping burgers.

Nearly no client interaction

I love sitting down with clients daily; face-to-face interaction adds to my commitment and affects finished work. 99designs kills this interaction by believing it’s as simple as ranking designs on a 1-5 scale instead of clients expressing themselves.

Design is easy and cheap

99designs believes with $200 and a brief design summary everything is possible. But this mindset only devalues public perception of the industry. Good design is understanding your client’s needs then designing and developing unique concepts.

Local supporting local

As a small design studio owner, I rely on other local businesses to keep my doors open. The buying local first mindset has landed me great gigs and continues supplying word-of-mouth referrals. Always try a local source!

99designs breeds the shotgun effect; enter as many contest as possible, as quickly as possible, in hopes of winning one, if possible. Sadly, this isn’t helpful to designers that waste hours or small businesses ending up with stolen or poor results.

Even though the community has made it clear they don’t support 99designs, Sitepoint continues pushing the service ultimately ruining clients perspective of the industry.

The idea that purchasing a ready-made company logo is beyond me. Shouldn’t your companies first impression be worth more?

The longer you can keep your visitor’s attention, the more likely they will be to share your content on social media sites, comment on your posts, click on your sponsor’s ads or subscribe to your list. Ultimately, it’s in your best interest to find ways to improve your blog so that these things can happen. Here are 4 very simple ways you can do it.

1. Link to other posts/pages on your blog

This is the number one way to increase the time visitors spend on your site. When you link to other places on your blog from a post,  it gives the visitor something more to read, therefore potentially increasing page views (the number of pages a visitor clicks on before leaving your blog).

This can be accomplished many, many ways, but one good technique you can implement is to link keywords in your post to a relevant page or previous post. This will also improve your blog’s search engine ranking for those keywords – but take care to not overdo it.

You can also try using a related posts plugin, such as LinkWithin, to auto-generate and display relevant internal links at the end of your posts.

2. Keep your blog focused

One of the main reasons for high bounce rate is irrelevancy. If people are coming to your blog expecting to read about a certain topic, make sure your posts are relevant to that topic. Otherwise, your visitors will walk away. If you find yourself wanting (or needing) to publish a post that’s a little off-topic, just make that clear in your post. Say something like, “I know this post is a little off-topic, but…” so your visitors will know that it’s an exception. They will probably stick around to find what they were looking for.

3. Use excerpts on your home page

This is not only a good technique for increasing page views and the length of time your visitor stays, it’s also just great blogging technique. When you use excerpts, you give people who land on your home page a nice overview of several articles, and they will mentally bookmark the ones they want to come back to during their visit.

The most important reason to use excerpts is that it will improve visibility into your other content. If for some reason your latest post doesn’t intrigue someone who visits, perhaps your other ones will. They won’t see them, though, if your home page can only fit the latest post. Consider either using a theme that truncates your home page posts automatically, or making good use of the More tag, which will truncate the post at a position that you determine.

4. Improve your navigation

Your visitors won’t be able to read your other content if they can’t find it, so it’s essential that you use good navigation on your blog. Try using an Archives widget or create an Archives page, or display your categories in the sidebar or footer. The last thing you want to create is a black hole, which happens when a visitor comes to a post through a link but then has nowhere else to go but off your site.

All of the above are simple, easy-to-accomplish tips for improving your visitor’s experience with your blog. Essentially, if your site has lots of great content that is easy to find, your visitors will stick around to read it, bookmark it for later, pass it on or decide to subscribe so they can keep up with you. If you have any questions or want more specifics on how to do any of the above, please feel free to reply to this post.

Defining the clutter

Clutter can come in many forms. I would identify it as any elements on your blog that are unnecessary for basic functionality or widely unused elements by users. For example, if your audience doesn’t make use of social media then it wouldn’t be wise to waste the space on promoting your Twitter account.

Keeping a clean blog is important

Clean interfaces will improve user experiences. It allows your readers to navigate and read content without the confusion caused by unnecessary elements on the page. Clean interfaces will reduce bandwidth usage and decrease load times.

Google has recently shown the love for simplistic design by now factoring load times into search results. Google wants to deliver content quickly and effectively. This change makes it even more important that you remove the clutter and let your content take center stage.

1. Removing unnecessary plugins – Plugins can add functionality to your blog, but with the vast amount available they can quickly become a way to increase load times and clutter your blog. Take your blog back to the basics by delete some plugins.

2. Reducing the space between the top and content area – Studies have shown that users spend 80% of their time within the fold. By reducing the space between the top of the page and content area it improves the chances readers will view more content.

3. Cutting out useless imagery – Imagery can help users quickly identify with content but don’t overdo it. Cut out all imagery that isn’t necessary. It helps reduce load times, bandwidth usage, and articles could appear higher on search results.

4. Revamping or deleting old content – Make sure to revisit old content because search engines drive traffic to even older pages. You should start by making content relevant and updated to current standards.

A clutter free blog is a happy blog. It promotes users to read content and reduces confusion. Google and other search engines realize that people are inpatient. They want content quickly. When managing your blog don’t get caught in the latest trends.

Keep your blog simple and clean.

Start with the traditional layout structure

When blogs were created they adapted a layout structure different from the traditional one at the time. This new layout bought content to the main focus of all web pages and ensured readers would not be detracted by other elements on the page.

Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Your readers will be familiar with the traditional blog structure. If you’re looking to make your blog unique don’t change the structure but change the imagery within that structure.

Content is always the focus

It doesn’t matter if you create the most appealing website in the world. If you don’t write unique, information-filled content within your niche, readers won’t be coming back. Your design should reflect that ideal by removing any unnecessary elements and bringing the attention toward your content area by effectively using headings and other hooks.

Good readability

Your blog must have a high quality of readability.

Start by using the basic color scheme rules, dark on light or light on dark. Secondly, make sure that you choose a reasonable size font with good line-spacing. Always make use of headings, bold, and other elements to break blocks of content up.

Keep advertisements few and simple

Many blogs are powered by the income generated through advertisements.

However, even with that being the case it’s important to place advertisements effectively by not allowing them to take over your content. Try marketing less ad spaces for higher prices, which keeps the focus on content without having to sale out your entire blog.

Lay content high on page

Recent studies have shown today’s Internet users spend 80% of the time above the fold and while they are scrolling, they tend focus attention only on 20% below the fold.

When designing your blog this information is very useful for making your design more effective in having readers actually read content. Keep elements above the content area minimal. This will place your content closer to the top of the web page and more within the fold; making users more likely to read the post.

Keep load times low

Visitors are impatient. You must have your web pages load quickly to avoid readers leaving. Blogs can are often weighed down by plugins and heavy imagery that really drives up load times and bandwidth.

Keeping your blog clean of unnecessary elements you will improve user experience and reduce the bounce rate.

Layout elements depending on importance

Effectively draw attention to important elements on your blog by placing them within the fold, such as popular post, and subscription information. You want to keep your web pages short and on point. Stay away from adding unnecessary widgets and other items in the sidebar. Display only what’s important.

Consistent formatting for post

Try to keep everything uniformed throughout your blog and most importantly within your post. You must spend time on designing your headings and the structure for how you will display content. Focus on typography, imagery, headings, lists, and other elements that will be included inside post. Keep everything very consistent.

Remember that your readers will tend to scan content rather than reading it word-by-word. To keep readers focused try breaking up content by using headings, lists, bolding on important statements (don’t overuse) and most importantly be brief.

All you need is a simple plan.

A simple plan

Start by choose a niche. Any topic will do as long as it interest you. Niche marketing is the smartest way to fast success. The key is writing all your content based on your niche which benefits you greatly with search engines.

Before you run off and create the next big thing, you’ve got to get off on the right foot. Folks fail because they don’t understand the important of selecting the correct domain and web host. Pick the wrong web host can cost you thousands of dollars and one big headache. For the past five years, I’ve trusted Bluehost.

Unlimited bandwidth & space, 24/7 phone support, plus a free domain.

It doesn’t get better than that. Bluehost rocks.

Now, selecting a domain is like an art. You want one that is easy to remember & spell, and most importantly contains your keywords within your niche.

I made the mistake of picking the wrong domain. Google thinks my website is about natural jelly. So, when picking your domain use the main niche keyword within the domain. For example, if you write about Cell Phones, then make a domain like cellphonelover.com or cellphoneguru.com; it takes time to come up with one nowadays since most are taken. Bottom line is, make sure that it contains your keyword niche and is easy to remember.

Now choose a WordPress theme that will pull attention to your content. A bold simplistic two column theme like Adam is ideal.

Building traffic and income

Finally, we need to two important elements for any successful money-making blog.

Content and backlinks.

Start by using Google Blog Search, then make a list of bloggers who write about within your niche. These are going to be the individuals who you befriend. Relationship building is important for the survival of any blog. The best thing is these bloggers have already established authority with Google, that means if your looking for help from them, you need to suck up. Start by taking a screenshot of their current design.

Now, for your first post, write a short review of one of the blogs on your list and make sure to include the screenshot you took. Be sure to include a few links to individual blog post to create some trackback links. Add tags to your post and include the blogger’s name within your header. Once you have finished the post, send an email to the blogger you’ve written about talking about the new post and asking nicely for a link back, if possible.

Rinse and repeat this process once a week on the same day.

Add a simple advertisement for an affiliate along with links to any other projects that you wish to promote. Stay committed and you will have a growing source of traffic and income.