Money From Blogging

I love changing themes on my WordPress powered blogs. I keep visiting many sites built on WordPress blogging script. There are thousands of free WordPress themes. It is not easy to choose a theme, specially when there are many high quality and good looking themes available.

I normally choose WordPress theme with following characterstics
1. If it has tabbed widget

2. I prefer three column WordPress theme.
3. It should have white back ground, or at least the main content should have white background and text in black color.
4. It should load fast and SEO friendly.

Now, I had been changing theme quite frequently, may be once in three months. But I realised that changing theme frequently is not a good thing to do. For some reasons, whenever I changed theme, my blogs slid in Google search results. So, I think Google did not like my changing of themes. I do not know why, but it happened with me.

Changing a theme always meant some extra hard work for me. Once I changed a theme, normally, I had to add widgets again, had to insert Google Analytics code in the footer again and much more! It was still and work and it consumed some of time. I did not find any increase in revenue or visitors when I changed a theme. In fact, some time, number of visitors decreased after I changed a theme!

So, according to me, one should choose a nice, SEO friendly theme as per blog topic when he starts the blog. One may keep changing theme initially for a month or two trying out with many themes, options. But once theme is finalised and many posts added, one should avoid changing theme frequently.

Readers, specially the regular readers develop a liking of the theme or start remembering or identifying the blog with the theme. If you suddenly change the theme, regular readers may find themselves unable to connect to the new theme! So it is better not to change.

The main reason for changing a theme should be change in usability due to introduction of new feature of the blog. Suppose you want to add a job board in your blog in order to monetize it, then one should consider changing a theme!

It may be difficult to get unique theme off the shelve, specially free themes! But making some changes in theme is not that difficult! Who knows few CSS, HTML, PHP, he can easily modify a free theme to give an unique look. The other option is to go for a premium theme which has many customization option to give it a unique look as per requirement.

Finally, I think it is good idea to change blog theme when one finds a better theme with better look, better usability and better chance of making money! If some theme gives you options or space for putting for advertisements without harming presentation of contents of the blog, why not change ?

Topic : blogging tips