BloggingWorks

Sub-note: I’m not really sure if this is common question number 8 or not. After number 1, I am just going to guess at everything else.

Ah, this is definitely a controversial question and I’ve seen many different bloggers say conflicting things. I’ve seen all sorts of blogs out there with all different sorts of looks and different levels of popularity, ranking etc. There are blogs that look plain Jane and that just used the standard Wordpress theme that are very highly rated and receive a lot of traffic — see Steve Palina’s Blog as an example of this (although Steve’s updated the look a little bit since he started) and I’ve obviously seen some flashy blogs that aren’t generating much traffic at all.

I think as a general rule that the look of the blog isn’t as important as other factors. The most important thing to me is content, because as the old adage goes: “Content Is King”, I’ll talk more about this in another post.

However, I think that a good looking blog can’t hurt, in fact, it many push some people to stay and keep reading your blog compared to if it was plain looking. This doesn’t apply to everyone but if you kept one person to stay reading that would normally click away if your blog looked plain, then it was worth it, wasn’t it? I am sure there would be more than one as well.

The general rule here is don’t spend too much time on this step. Like the rules of successful real estate (just a little plug for another of my blogs!:) ), don’t over capitalize on your blog especially if you go out and hire a web designer to do some pretty graphics. Don’t do this at the beginning - if your blog is successful you might want to do this later, but at the beginning just look through Wordpress’ theme directory and choose one that suits your niche subject. You might just want to change the header with a graphic that suits and you can pick this up from one of the many photo stock sites. Try to spend only a small set amount of time on this so that you can get stuck in to creating great content for your blog instead.

I personally, like to make my blogs pleasing to the eye - well, at least to my eye because what looks good for some, doesn’t always look good to another. But I try not to spend too much time on this. What I do was take a couple of hours to sift through Wordpress’ theme directory and download about 10 different themes that I liked and saved them in a Wordpress Theme Folder that I could then use for any of my blogs. Saves me time looking through the directory again and I get to know these themes so its easy for me to customize and optimize for new blogs. I also subscribe to a few photo stock sites that allows me to download some nice graphics. I’ll talk about how to change your header & what sites to use in another post.

Some good rules of thumb that I believe should apply to most blogs. Try to always use a blog that has a white background where the text is. Ok, I admit that some of my blogs don’t do this, but generally the background has to be a light colour with dark text as its much easier on the eye and allows someone to stay reading your blog for a longer period of time. If you know how, increase the font size of the posts to at least 12 points. Some blog themes have their fonts way too small which isn’t good on the eyes and visitors may click away sooner rather than later. Also, steer clear away from animated gif’s - I think these went out with the old brick phone. They are tacky & make your blog look amateurish. If you must have animation, use flash if you know how or wait awhile until your blog is making good money & pay someone to do it. I personally don’t think animation adds any real value to a blog unless of course your niche is about animation!! Another rule of thumb is, if you can’t design a reasonably professional looking header, just leave on the one that came with the Wordpress theme. I’ve seen some really tacky looking headers out there and if the blog wasn’t highly ranked, I just clicked away.

Of course, once again, these are generalisations and will not apply 100% of the time. But that’s why I use the term “general rule of thumb” so I can C.M.A!

Hope that helps….

I blog, therefore I am!

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