What do you look for first in a theme?

First and foremost, I look for a theme that I think looks good and fits stylistically with the site I’m creating. The first few seconds of a new visit is where you either convince a user to stay or scare them off. I never want the appearance of my sites to drive away potential customers – because it will (case in point: Fabric Land).

You’ve got to remember that WordPress isn’t anything more than a vehicle to drive your vision home to your customers, readers, fans, or market. It’s a great bit of software – and like all software, what you intend to get out of it is as important as how you use it.

I also keep my wordpress installs up to date, and I test themes and plugins in a sandbox to make sure everything plays together well. This may be easier for me than some other folks, since I’m technically savvy, and have wordpress servers out the ying yang. I also have a full blown wordpress test environment on my computer, so I can try out new themes, plugins, settings, page templates, etc in the privacy of my own system. When I get things the way I want, I upload. Obviously, this is something that you want to outsource if you’re not doing wordpress development.

Some additional questions were:

Some themes make certain plugins obsolete. So which combination are you using?

I try to use the smallest number of plugins I can on each site, but here are some that I almost always include: Akismet, WPTouch iPhone Theme plugin, WP-SpamFree, Google XML Sitemap, All in One SEO Pack, Sociable, Twitme, Adsense Deluxe

The key is to only add plugins if they add to the business value of the site you’re building.

Some themes seem to have too many options and others not enough. I don’t want to have a theme with too many or it may slow the site down. What is a good balance?

This is a bit subjective – you need to know what you’re trying to get done on your site and then you look to see if the theme or a combination of theme + plugins gets you where you need to be. When in doubt – make a list of Must Have features, Like to Have features, and Can Live Without features for your site. At a minimum I make sure the Must Haves are in my site plan – and consider everything else gravy.

I want a theme that allows me to have a description of my site and services at the top and a list of posts below. Is that better to do it with a plugin or a theme?

Again – it depends. If you go with a premium theme like Woo Themes or Elegant Themes, then you’ll typically have more functionality in the theme itself – since they often bundle plugins with their themes. You’re always going to have a mix – right? You WILL have a theme, and there WILL be plugins. You need to find the right mix for you – or be able to describe what you need in sufficient detail that your guy in the Philippines can build it for you.

Can I change the header image easily?

Almost always, yes. Also, almost always, your mileage will vary. Many themes have options or instructions on how to change the header. It’s also not too difficult for a junior developer to change the HTML, CSS or PHP in your theme to make it exactly how you want it to appear.

How do I know how stable a theme is? Does it work consistently on all browsers?

Look for popular free themes for both stability and browser compatibility. Many premium themes need to be both stable and browser friendly, or they won’t sell. The bottom line here is to test, test, test!

Can I start out with a free theme until the business is bringing in income?

Absolutely. Most free themes also allow you to modify them under the GPL, so you can change this part or that to make it look the way you want.

There are lots and lots of great themes out there. I like the style of many of the themes on the smashing magazine list.
I’m even using a custom version of the Dilectio theme right here on my blog and twitter page.

First of all – there are several different definitions of the word niche. Most commonly, marketers use one that goes something like this:

A niche is nothing more than a small specialized segment of a larger market
-conventional wisdom

If you use that definition, you may well become successful, but I think you may be missing some opportunities. In the conventional sense a niche is a subset of a larger market – a smaller, more narrowly-focused group of potential customers for your product. In this sense, what’s important about the “nicheyness” of your niche is its relationship within the larger market – not the people who occupy the niche (the ones you want to sell to) – and certainly not why they occupy this particular segment. Maybe it’s the psychologist in me, but I like to focus on people.

For this reason, I tend to think about niches using something more along the lines of a biological definition:

A biological niche is a habitat in which an organism finds its necessary conditions for living, including food, air, thermal control, and breeding.

There’s some meat in that definition. First and foremost – we’re talking about “necessary conditions for living.” In the true biological sense, yes this is about survival. All species require physical safety, a non-lethal environment, access to a food/nutrient supply, etc.

But what about when you apply this to people; what happens when you’re a consumer that has already met these basic survival needs? Guess what, you still have necessary conditions for living – but they’re aligned with your hopes, your esteem, your goals, your plans for your future, your plans to provide for yourself, or your family. According to the psychologist Abraham Maslow, there is a hierarchy of needs from the very basic to the most enlightened. In a practical sense – almost all of us live our lives somewhere in the middle levels of this hierarchy – in relative safety and comfort, with many of our concerns revolving around maintaining our esteem among fiends and families.

In these levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of need, each of us still has “necessary conditions” – if not for survival, then at least for comfort, or satisfaction. Many of us find various hobbies and activities provide this sort of comfort. Depending on our tastes, we gravitate toward activities that make us feel good – and as we do this, we tend to find others with similar interests. People start clustering together in groups, and clubs, online and off – discussing and sharing their interests. In western societies, a large fraction of these people buy goods and services that allow them to continue seeking their best, or most satisfying interests. Because golf and skiing, and fly fishing can be so much fun, there are golf nuts, snow bunnies, and fly fishing bums born every day.

If you can connect with why people are motivated to choose to be in the niche you’re market to, you’ll probably find that actually selling to them won’t be that hard. The trick to finding your marketing niche – if it is a trick – is to consider what you like. What are you passionate about? Once you know that – explore where that interest comes from. Find out what is it about the things that you’re passionate about that make you passionate about them. If you do that, you’ll have a good idea about why others would be passionate about the same thing.

And THAT will make you a better marketer.

p.s. If you’re wondering, yes, the iDuck wireless speaker is a real product for people who like to play their iPods in the bath or shower.

The Collective Thoughts blog is about Social Media. Social Media to me is about using interactive elements of a website to get your proposed message across. What better way of getting into someones head then to let them see a little bit into your own mind. It is all about how you build your rapport.

Mark then goes on to request readers to imagine their own favorite flower, to reconnect with why it’s their favorite, and to then write a review of his post on stumbleupon. Yeah, I did all that, but what would motivate me to actually take time out of my increasingly busy life to review this guy’s post?

The answer is quite simple – he didn’t just ask for a link. Instead – he gave me something of value first. It might be that his simple effort to actively connect with his readers made me stop and think for a moment: What was my favorite flower?

And there it was – all internet marketing copywriting wisdom rolled up into one simple concept: write something sincere for your readers, and they might do something for you. He wasn’t asking me to buy anything, just imagine my favorite flower – and that’s all it takes to plant the seed in someone’s mind.

BTW, I really like sweet olive blossoms – they’re so tiny but smell amazing.