Hey, guys. David Risley here with DavidRisley.com and today I want to answer another question that came from one of my readers. His name is Will Kennedy and he sent this question in, look into Gmail here about 11 days ago which was before my cruise so I’m kind of playing catch up here.
Now the question is kind of long but basically what he's saying, he's just getting into Internet marketing and in the blogging. He’s paying close attention to the people that are doing what he wants to do and I guess I'm one of them. And basically he talks about the design of my blog at DavidRisley.com. Maybe he met PCMech.com. I'm not really sure, and said that he likes the way that it looks and he wants to know how he could do the same thing. He wants the site to look really, really good. He says he want it to look clean and sharp like a tailor made Armani suit so again, real long so I’m not going to read every of bit of him but I want to make two points.
Your blog design is important because the thing is when somebody arrives at any website whether it’s a blog or not, you've got about, maybe 5 seconds max to make a first impression. And people are very—their attentions spans are really, really sure in the Internet and if something on your site is not immediately grab their attention, they’re going to back out. So design is important.
I'm not going to say they are not rings your content because content is king and it will always be that way however, your design is important. So you can get free WordPress themes. Mostly you guys know that. Now the free WordPress themes are great start but for a blog that you’re really serious about, you’re going to eventually want to upgrade to something that’s custom tailor to you.
A good starting point to that is to go with the premium WordPress theme. Now, there is a growing movement of people that are actually charging money for WordPress themes and generally they are worth it because the free themes are great. The thing is they are much more cookie cutter. They might not be quite as SEO friendly and things like this but the premium thing is actually to take care of a lot of stuff. I mean, you pay for quality and you pay for a good design and they want you to have a really good solid foundation from one of these premium theme, you can then modify it in order to make a custom for your site.
You can also go with a company that specializes in custom blog designs. The only one I know off hand is company called Ultimate Blog Design. I think is what they’re called. I’ve met with them a few times. They did not that design either one of my sites but I’ve seen some of their sites including I believe, JohnChow.com. I think there might have been ShoeMoney, I’m not really sure. They did my friend RyanWade.com. They finished his site maybe a few months ago. They really do good work and recommend them just because of the work that I’ve seen. I don’t know what their price point is. You just have to contact them.
The other point that I wanted to make it again it’s about your content is that don't get too wrapped up into the design of your site especially early on. If you're just getting started, your content is more important.
So you see, you wanted to look like an Armani style, you know website which means fancy, you want it to look you know, I've got my site here on my screen. Don't spend too much time worrying about that in the early days of your blog.
Right now you need to work on your pillar content. You want to really put some of your best stuff out there so the people will get an idea what you’re all about and then as build up a little bit of reputation then you can worry about investing whether it be a little bit of money or just in time and if you’re doing some custom design work for your blog which eventually you're going to want to do. Any successful blog has a custom theme. So that's my advice for you, Will and hopefully that gives you some way forward and I will talk to you guys tomorrow.
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