RORY HANSEN

When launching a new WordPress blog, one of the first questions you have to ask yourself is:

Do I use a free theme or pay for a premium theme?

What I’ve learned over the years is that, depending on the niche that your blog is targeting, it’s often very cost-effective just to purchase a premium theme and get your content online as quickly as possible.

For personal blogs, sure, use a free theme. But if you’re launching a blog targeting a professional or corporate audience, buy the premium theme and you’ll be happier in the long-run. It’ll be easier to gain the trust of your blog audience, plus you’ll be pleased with the raw power that many of these premium themes have under the covers.

New Corporate Themes for WordPress

Here are a few corporate themes that caught my eye at ThemeForest, arguably the top premium WordPress theme site on the web.

Debonair Corporate WordPress Theme [View Demo]

I think Debonair looks fantastic. The green and grey color scheme is totally trendy for corporate websites these days. I was this close to buying it today, but instead, decided on Glide which is shown just below.

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You’ve probably heard of Vistaprint before; they’ve been one of the largest sites offering custom printing services online for a while now. You’ve probably even heard that they offer free business cards.

But did you know that they also offer free custom printed t-shirts?! This was news to me when I found out just a few days ago.

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I’ve collected over 80 “Your Ad Here” 125 x 125 banners from Google as examples of what you can use on your website to fill those blank ad spots. Use them on your blog or website to entice potential advertisers to learn more about your site and ad rates.

Note: Each of these 125 x 125 banners are owned by their respective owners; none of them are my own work.

Click into the article to browse through the gallery of “Your Ad Here” images.

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It’s key for all bloggers to have a basic understanding of search engine optimization and how simple SEO drills can increase site traffic and search engine rankings. Even if you’re blogging for pleasure rather than profit, regularly spending at the very least a few minutes each month on SEO activities is the first step to taking your blog to the next level.

I present to you the 5 Minute Long Tail SEO Drill. You’ll learn how to quickly and easily implement some simple on-page SEO techniques to improve your Google search ranking positions (SERPs) and, ultimately, boost your blog’s traffic.
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When developing apps for the iPhone, there are a few lasting decisions you’ll need to make with regards to overall application architecture. These generally have to do with API and core features available in the new version 3.0 iPhone operating system that don’t exist in version 2.2 and lower. One such example is Core Data.

Our startup company needed to decide if we were going to write our apps for the 3.0 OS only or support the older OS versions as well. But we wanted to make an informed decision, so I went hunting for data.

Luckily, AdMob has collected a lot of this data in their monthly reports. Here are a few facts that I’ve gleaned.
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We’re halfway into December, and getting closer to Christmas with each passing day. I thought I’d take a minute and highlight some of the great contributors to this website.

So far, for the Month of December, the Top Commentators on my website are:
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Even if you aren’t a fan of the Alexa Traffic Rank, you can’t deny it’s influence on the web for ranking and comparing website traffic. Along with Google Page Rank, the Alexa Traffic Rank is one of the key Internet indicators of website authority and overall success.

It’s for this reason (and for the fact that I’m near dead-last on the list of Internet Marketing Top Blogs) that I’ve been experimenting with ways of improving my Alexa Traffic Rank.

And I must say, I feel that I’ve been successful. Over the last 2 weeks, my Alexa Traffic Rank has improved significantly.
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Market Leverage is running a brand new contest with Zac Johnson and a few more bloggers, giving away prizes such as a Flip Mino HD, an iPod Nano, an Amazon Kindle and gift certificates. It’s easy to enter; just write a blog post or create a YouTube video.

The idea is to choose one of Market Leverage’s CPA offers and share how you’d market the idea. From the submitted blog posts, a few winners will be chosen: 1 winner by Zac, and the rest by Market Leverage.
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In October, my buddy Keith launched his 1-Week PageRank Experiment for his KickJoey.com domain.

The Goal
To attain a Page Rank of PR1 within 1 week.

The Reasoning
Although from a search engine perspective, Page Rank may be losing relevance, from a marketing perspective, Page Rank is still a useful and necessary indicator of website authority. For folks offering paid links or posts from their blog, the Page Rank value is not only important, but often necessary even to get the conversation started.

Keith’s goal was to begin using the KickJoey.com domain as a platform for paid reviews, so, attaining a Page Rank was deemed a necessity.

The Result Read more »

November Recap
Early on in November, I realized that this was going to be a challenging month for my Internet marketing efforts. Natural search engine traffic for my most profitable niche site was way down, which has affected both AdSense earnings as well as affiliate earnings from Clickbank.

I attempted to remedy that by driving targetted search engine traffic to the site via PPC advertising with Findology, only to discover that the Findology traffic was difficult/impossible to convert.

In the end, I fell well short of the earnings mark I set last month when I earned a profit of $718.21.
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