Paid WordPress themes are becoming more and more popular, despite the fact that there are still a huge number of free themes out there for you to try. If you’re wondering why anyone would pay when there’s so much available for free, consider these pros and cons of paying for themes.

Advantages of Using a Paid Premium WordPress theme

Remove Credit Links – Some – though not all – free themes will have footer links back to credit their original creator. This seems fair enough. After all, the designer has gone to a lot of effort to provide something completely free. But, as a user of that theme, you may feel it unprofessional to link back to certain sites. Even worse, a minority of free themes link back to random niche sites that you have no control over. Accidentally link to a site in a “bad neighborhood” and you could find yourself punished by Google.

With paid themes, you usually have the rights to remove footer credit links and avoid these issues altogether.

Continued Support – When you choose to use paid WordPress themes you’ll usually find that you’re paying for upgrades in the future. WordPress is updated so frequently that certain features on themes may stop working unless they, too, are updated. Of course, you should check to make sure how many updates you’re entitled to, and how reliable any theme creator may be before buying.

Creators of free themes still often update their work but, without the pressing issue of paid users waiting on them, it often takes a lot longer. And, in some cases, the author just loses interest or doesn’t have time to work on the theme any more.

Extra Features & Ease Of Use – A growing trend in the world of paid themes is to include an easy-to-use options area that lets you customize a number of elements of the theme. While a free theme will usually come with a couple of color options or layouts, paid themes have a huge range of features to choose from. Some of the top paid offerings let you create ad blocks on different pages, change the navigation menus, add extra sidebars, have complete control over widths, fonts, colors and more!

Boost Resale Value Of Your Site – There’s no denying the fact that, when it comes to selling your website, paid WordPress themes are perceived to be more valuable than free ones. Simply noting that you have a paid theme, and how much it would cost to buy, will help boost the final sale value should you decide to sell your website in future.

Disadvantages of Using Paid WordPress Themes

Cost – Paid themes are going to cost you, there’s no getting around it! They can cost anywhere from $30 up to $200 for some themes with a developers license. Only you can decide whether this is worth it for your business, based on the benefits of owning the theme and its features.

Looking Like Everyone Else – Just because you pay money for a theme doesn’t mean it’s going to be unique to you. In fact, some creators of paid themes market their creations so well that you may start to notice many other bloggers using the same designs as you! This is less of a problem if you use a theme with more customizable options, as many paid themes now offer.

More Features = More To Learn – It’s true that more features can mean there’s more to learn when it comes to paid WordPress themes. Although designers try to make them as newbie-friendly as possible, this isn’t always possible when you consider the huge capabilities of some of these themes. However, there will usually be extensive video tutorials and forum support to get you through just about any issue you may face.

As you can see, there really is no clear cut answer when it comes to the question of whether you should buy paid WordPress themes or not. They can be expensive, but they can also be seen as an investment that’ll pay for itself down the line. It all depends on the specific needs of your website, and your own creative vision for how you’d like it to function.

Do you write dry content? I know that i have been accused of just that in the past. I just found a free Firefox plugin called Zemanta that adds a bit of a sidebar applet to your WordPress Write window that gives you one click access to adding pictures and links to articles. On a meta basis it will also add ideas for keywords and of course this may help give you more ideas for the articles and posts that you are writing in WordPress. Best of all it does all of this on the fly.

Installation of this Firefox plugin is of  course very easy. Just go to the link, download the add-on and then after Firefox is restarted you will notice nothing new until you go into write a new blog post, then Zemanta sitting is in the right hand side of your Firefox as if it was a piece of WordPress. [Read more...]

Marketing on the Internet won’t be the same for any two businesses because all businesses have their own set of unique goals to achieve. With this understanding you can appreciate why detailed planning and design is a vital first step to launching a successful online campaign.

Crafting a detailed plan and monitoring the results will allow you to develop a strategy that fits your company’s needs and budget, chart the progress and measure the return on investment (ROI). Having a strategy in place will also moderate risk and the lessen cost over time.

While developing the strategy, you’ll want to consider the following important points:

Demographic -Who is your audience?

Once you identify your audience you can establish the best way to reach them online.

Budget – How much do you have to spend?

Your budget will largely depend on how important the Internet is to your service or product’s success. Prioritize your budget always looking forward and continue to expand your marketing plan as your revenue increases.

Execution – What if your marketing plan is bigger than your budget?

Consider executing a few strategies at a time. If your budget does not allow for you to follow through with the entire plan at this time follow through with only one or two objectives. This will allow you to stay within your budget while taking a few steps toward your ultimate goal.

Search Engine Detection

Launching your website is only one step in several that it will take to make your business visible on the World Wide Web. There are billions of websites on the Internet, so you can see why it’s crucial to determine how people can specifically find your business.

The majority of website traffic comes from search engines and directories and this is why you will want to focus your initial marketing strategies on search engine optimization. Google and Yahoo index billions of web pages and rank them according to complex algorithms. For this reason it is vitally important to create a content rich website. Make your content relevant based on the specific search terms you believe best describe your service or product. Search engine optimization (SEO) consists of a series of techniques woven into the coding of the website. SEO is not an exact science. SEO specialists typically employ numerous and assorted methods to attain search engine recognition to achieve the best possible ranking for your business.

Below are a few simple tips to keep in mind before you start.

• Use “search engine friendly” coding methods such as adding descriptive search terms to your images.
• Research search terms and search term phrases that is appropriate for your service or products.
• Implement search term-rich content into your website
• The website title and description should reflect your most relevant search terms.
• Submit your website to the search engines.
• Incorporate inbound links.
• Encourage interaction by including “share this” buttons.

Social Media – What It Means To You

Social media lets you communicate in a more casual environment. You can use this opportunity to alert clients and prospective clients to new products and services and even offer special discounts if they take action by a specific date. Participating in social mediums also allows you the opportunity to network and establish yourself as an expert in your industry. Now I can go on giving you examples and continue to show you the advantages of using social media in your daily marketing however, it really just boils down to this: This is where everyone is at and you have to decide if you’re going to wait at your house for the party to show up or walk down the street and join the one already in progress. That said include your company in as many interactive and social opportunities as possible.

The Boomerang Effect

The boomerang effect stated simply means that anything you do should draw people back to your website. A blog can serve as an excellent boomerang. Once you write your post you can drop headlines on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, etc with a call to finish the article, see the product in action, get an instant quote or consultation. Your daily emails should include a call to action just under your signature pointing the reader back to your website. Be creative and think about all the places you’ve overlooked where you can place a call to action and draw people back to your website.

Blogging with WordPress

Once you have your blog set up and you’re ready to post you’ll want to make sure your new blog posts get recognized immediately each time you add new content to your blog. For this to happen you’ll need to setup a ping list. Adding a ping list to WordPress is probably the single best way to optimize your blog so you’ll want to build a lengthy ping directory to ensure you’re alerting as many ping lists as possible who in turn will notify Google, Yahoo, the news sites, many global sites and numerous other directories.

Now by default WordPress includes a handful of sites to ping every time you add a new post but I recommend performing periodic searches to find the most extensive set of ping directories you can. Then add your new ping list by logging into WordPress through admin and on the left side click on “settings” then go to “writing” once you’ve clicked “writing” go to the bottom of the page and under “update services” you’ll find the box where you can add your new ping list and save the changes. Once that’s done you should be on your way to sharing your blog with the world.

SEOKATZ.com is a proactive marketing and search engine optimization consulting firm that applies a guerrilla marketing approach to help small and medium sized businesses maximize their presence on the web.