Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

I thought that it was time I spruced up the look of the blogs that I run so I’ve been looking for a new theme off and on over the last few weeks. Today though was a bit of a marathon session when I picked up over 20 potential themes and am in the process of trying them out on the blogs.

It’s a very easy way to find yourself at the end of the day with nothing of any consequence done as there are dozens of sites listing untold thousands of WordPress themes, the vast majority of which are free.

I’ve barely scratched the surface but to give you some idea of where you can look, here’s very much a partial list of places:

http://www.wordpresstheme.in/
http://www.devhunters.com/
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/
http://www.wpskins.org
http://www.bobek.co.uk/blog/
http://www.themesbase.com
http://themes.blogflux.com
http://www.themebot.com
http://www.fresheezy.com
http://www.freewordpressthemes.com
http://www.ithemes.org
http://www.themes.rock-kitty.net
http://www.WPThemesFree.com
http://www.web2feel.com
http://www.wordpresswow.com
http://www.themes.iwebnet.org
http://www.themevibes.com
http://www.wptheme.net
http://www.bloggingthemes.com
http://www.wpsnap.com
http://www.freewpthemes.info
http://www.webpuffs.net
http://www.freelayouts.com
http://www.templatenavigator.com
http://www.osskins.com/
http://www.unmatchedthemes.com
http://www.thatsprofound.com
http://themeboss.com/
http://themes.mygreencorner.com/
http://wptemplates.org/
http://www.wpthemesarchive.com/
http://www.themehq.com

Which doesn’t even include the (dire) WordPress theme viewer itself!

One of the problems with paid posting sites is that the majority of them expect you to know how much your blog is worth which, for most bloggers, is the one thing that they know next to nothing about.

That being the case, you often find “high value” bloggers writing substantial posts for $5 when they could just as easily be writing shorter ones for $50. They’re not crazy, they just don’t know what their blog is worth.

So, it’s nice to see that SnapBomb have taken away all that guesswork. Signup with them and within a few minutes their system produces a price range for your blog. Why the range? Well, as they explain on their blog most blogs will have a certain base value but that value can be enhanced if the blog is particularly attractive to an advertiser’s campaign. Thus, you can have a range from, say, $25 to $100. A generic post might get the $25 end of that range but if you’re in the right market segment for a campaign you’d get closer to the $100.

Also good is that signup is pretty much instant and there’s no delay before you can start writing posts for them. Payment is 60 days after taking the post and you’ve 12 hours to do the writing.

The weather has taken a distinct lurch for the better over the last week or so and we’re having to go back to just the t-shirts as it’s just too hot outside at the moment for anything else.

Somehow I just can’t see that heat wave holding up but we’re trying to make the most of it while it lasts (well, will be once we all get over the flu that’s felled most of us over the last week).

It is pretty peculiar to be needing the airconditioning in February though!

There haven’t been any posts in the last week or so as I was felled by the flu. Isn’t it amazing how such a seemingly trivial thing can still knock all of us out?

Of course, with the relatively cold weather and the school holidays it’s been working it’s way around everyone over the last week.

Still, just about everyone seems to be getting back on their feet again so we’re back to (almost) normal.

Whilst I include most of my sites in an annual site-promotion programme I’m really bad at omitting the blogs from that. Why? Well, because it’s not so easy to promote a blog as most directories aren’t geared up to listing them in a sensible way.

So, now and again, I look around for new places to list the blogs and just came across rssHugger this afternoon.

As in most blog directories, this one considers blogs separately from normal sites and, of course, in this particular instance targets the RSS feeds which is always useful as you can get a whole bunch of new readers if you’re on the “right” RSS aggregators. Now, the question is whether rssHugger is one of those “right” aggregators but, at the moment, it’s just impossible to say as 1) this is a relatively new site and 2) I don’t know the demographics of those that use it and therefore whether or not they’d be generally interested in the stuff that I write.

Initially the sign-up was $20 for 10 years but they dropped that requirement recently for those blogs that write a review of them. Personally, I think that it’s good to have that notional $20 value as it gives a broad indication as to where they themselves feel the value of a listing on rssHugger would be.

What’s the site like though? It has a very clean look which in some senses is good but it’s a little too clean as it’s not immediately clear from the opening screen that there’s a directory living here. I think it would be better to move that directory onto the front page. It’s also quite a long directory and could do with being stuctured eg you get “Investing” and “Save Money” as two categories yet since the directory is purely alphabetical these related categories are nowhere near each other.

Is it worth listing with? In that it’s free at the moment there’s no downside and it has the feel of a site that could have a lot of upside so, yes, it’s worth listing with. How valuable the listing will be only time will tell.