Do you ever get stuck for an idea for your next website project? Well that’s exactly what used to happen to me until I created a software program that actually generates website ideas. Now these website ideas I have for you aren’t any old ideas picked out at random, they’re actually

Here’s why... the way my website ideas software works is easy… it generates website ideas by creating new combination’s of previously proven online business models. Let me explain… imagine a massive list of niche subjects that are proven money makers. Then imagine another huge list of proven online business models. This is where my software steps in because it analyzes both lists and creates a virtually infinite number of potentially profitable website idea combination’s from these two huge lists.

What I’d like you to do next is to take a look through this list of ideas I’ve got for you below. Then use any one of them as a starting point for your next big online success. When you’ve found what you’re looking for let me know and I’ll help you turn that idea into a big selling website …sound like a plan?

A website on: Writing about Windows XP user tips
A website on: Facts about being paid to complete online surveys
A website on: Writing about computer cleaning
A website on: Selling products about having more fun with video games
A website on: Articles about building clocks
A website on: How to promote landscaping
A website on: Facts about StumbleUpon
A website on: Online interviews about building your business with Google
A website on: Blogging about Golf Clubs
A website on: Tips about T’ai Chi
A website on: How to promote digital photo editing
A website on: Online videos showing Wedding speeches
A website on: Webcasts about creating a Forum for profit
A website on: Articles about creating Podcasts
A website on: Ebooks about business plans
A website on: Recommending products about Broadband Internet
A website on: Audio interviews about gluten free cooking
A website on: A Guide to finding fresh website content
A website on: Tips about winning the Lottery
A website on: Online interviews about living without fear
A website on: Teleconferences about Choosing a Health Club
A website on: Writing about online games
A website on: Insider secrets to Stock options
A website on: Recommending products about Chinese cooking
A website on: Webinars about Science Fiction
A website on: Promoting products about playing a hand of Bridge
A website on: Tips about fighting spam
A website on: Promoting products about Determining your perfect heart rate
A website on: Online interviews about planning baby showers
A website on: Secrets about DIY detective work
A website on: A Guide to Social Networking
A website on: Articles about computer cleaning
A website on: How to promote CSS web design
A website on: A Guide to meditation
A website on: Online videos showing buying a car
A website on: Teleconferences about weight training
A website on: Webcasts about marketing to Attorneys
A website on: Online interviews about networking
A website on: Tips about finding cheap airline flights
A website on: DVDs about Soccer
A website on: Reviewing products about maximizing Google AdWords revenue
A website on: Selling products about job interview answers

What have you come up with? Have I got you thinking?

All it takes it just 1 single great idea to find the online business success you’re looking for.

Click here now, watch the video and discover exactly how I can help you turn your great idea into a Big Selling Website!

The best pre-built themes available are those created by WooThemes. They’re the best because they’ve been designed to not only be easily re-designed but also to use right out of the box.

This means that any good website designed can pick up one of their themes and use it as a starting point for a unique design.

In fact when I design themes I now start with a WooThemes theme whenever possible, then I take that theme and give it my own unique twist. The result of working this way means I can pass a substantial saving onto my clients because the framework and code has already been created.

With that said I’d like to show you a few of my favorite WordPress WooTheme, these are the templates that have the most potential as Big Selling websites…

You can preview each of these themes right here.

Here’s the simple process I follow when adapting these themes to my clients (and my own) projects…

Step 1: Password protect the folder where I have WordPress installed to stop prying eyes from spying on the work that’s about to unfold.

Step 2: Unpack the theme and install within a new installation of WordPress.

Step 3: Add mock-up content using Lorum Ipsum text. This way I can see how the theme would look when it’s full of live content.

Step 4: If I don’t have the layered Photoshop files for the theme I then take screen shots of how the font page, blog post and a stand alone page would look.

Step 5: Then I look at the structure of the theme design and determine the grid structure used. This gives me the framework to work within when creating a new design. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts I usually work within the framework of an existing WordPress theme to save time and costs for my client. This step is how the framework is defined.

Step 6: Next is the design stage where I create a new design and fit it within the framework determined in step 5.

Step 7: Now it’s time to slice up all the elements and fit them to the elements of the original blog theme. Sometimes I work with my programmer on this final stage to make sure everything fits and works as it should.

Essentially BuddyPress is a plugin that adds massive amounts of social interaction to your website. What I like about blogs is you can set them up so people can comment on anything you’ve said. BuddyPress takes this to a whole new level by not only continuing with this theme of blog commenting but also making it possible for people to interact with each other and begin their own separate conversations.

BuddyPress on it’s simplest level is just a WordPress pluging you install and activate just like any other WordPress plugin. So it’s very simple to set up. However because of the extra social interaction it brings to your WordPress blog you’ll need to either do some serious modifications to your existing blog theme or use a specially created BuddyPress theme.

Thankfully BuddyPress comes with it’s own theme you can very easily modify by adding your own header graphic. You could go one step further and modify the CSS code to change fonts and colors which is extremely easy to do (I’ll show you later).

BuddyPress itself has only been around since May 2009 (a little over a year since writing this) so as a platform it’s very new. When I looked at it back then it was very limiting in what it could do and had quite a few bugs that needed ironing out. It’s biggest limitation was it only used to work on WordPress MU (Multi-User) which meant that you could give all your members the ability to create their own WordPress blogs. At that time it didn’t appeal to me.

Thanks to the help of the army of developers out there BuddyPress has evolved into something very powerful and extremely flexible. Gone are the days of it only working on WordPress MU and now the platform it taking on a life of it’s own I’m very excited to be working with.

There’s another limitation I need to tell you about that’s becoming less of a limitation with each passing day. Because it’s such a new platform there aren’t very many proven plugins out there. When I say “proven” I mean plugins that themselves aren’t full of bugs. As I say this is changing with each day new plugins being released and those already out there being made better and better.

I only began working with BuddyPress myself about 3 month ago as an experiment for a new project of  mine. And in doing this learned very quickly what works and what doesn’t. Recently I used it to develop a fan site for a well known celebrity who now has well over 3,000 members using the site and interacting with it like crazy.

If you’re into building social networks like me then I’m sure you’ve heard of SocialGo or Ning. Both are great platforms but in my opinion BuddyPress is set to walk right over both and totally dominate the social network website platform.

As a marketing strategy and a way of making more money online I highly recommend taking a closer look at BuddyPress as a social networking platform. The possibilities are limited by your imagination!

Can you imagine building a website that’s not only a blog but also gives people a platform to network and chat with each other? If your value proposition is a good fit for your niche then you can very quickly and very easily monetize the site in more ways than you had with just WordPress alone.

For now here are some links I think you’ll find useful in getting started with this insanely powerful platform for WordPress…

Download BuddyPress

(You guessed it the BuddyPress site uses BuddyPress so you can see it in action)

Get the latest BuddyPress plugins

(This is where you’ll find all the newest BuddyPress plugins being released)

This plugin helps to adapt WordPress themes to work with BuddyPress

(It’s not perfect but it gives you a head start)

Here’s where you can pick up some fee BuddyPress themes

(They’re not the best themes ever but they’ll give you a head start)

Over the next few months I plan on adapting this theme to work with BuddyPress, so look out.

Here’s a BuddyPress site I recently developed.

If you discover any new resources for BuddyPress just let me know by leaving a reply below…

WordPress is essentially a content management system (CSM) which basically means it will manage any content you publish no matter what it is.

WordPress was originally developed as a blogging platform 7 years ago because bloggers generated a lot of content on a regular basis, but now it’s time to think beyond this into other areas of the ever changing world wide web.

I’ve already written on how the new BuddyPress plugin can turn your website into a massively powerful social networking platform (better than SocialGo or Ning in my opinion).

But what else is possible? When you ask this kind of questions it’s best to  answer it with another question… what do you want to achieve with your website? It’s so easy to get swept up in the technology and all the gadgets and widgets out there, remember this… form follows function. So look at the function first then decide on the form.

For example if you’re a company selling different kinds of alloys for medical applications to an ultra small group of people you’re not going to want to create a WordPress blog or even a social networking website. There just aren’t enough people who are going to be interested in commenting on your blog or networking with others. Blog style websites aren’t always the answer.

Instead in this example you need to be thinking about creating an online brochure style of website. This kind of website would be the place you send people to after you’ve met them face to face or talked with them over the phone. (I’m using a bit of an extreme example here because most people can get all the traffic they need from the search engines.)

Here’s a website I designed recently for this very same market so you can see exactly how I designed and structured it…

As you can see the layout is very simple, there’s a rotating image to grab people’s attention. The call to action (contact us) is also very clear and easy to read. All the links on the front page you see above take people deeper and deeper into the site where they can get more details information about whatever is the most interest to them.

The best platform for creating this kind of site is still WordPress, it gives you the flexibility to create a site that can easily grow into something bigger or just stay small. To people who know nothing about HTML or even the basic kind of website editing WordPress is a powerful solution because of the way WordPress makes it easy to add new content to you website. The way I look at it is if you can use Microsoft Word you can control the content of your site using WordPress.

That’s an extreme example of using WordPress as a way of creating and managing a brochure style website for a small and highly specialized target audience.

Hopefully by now you can see why it’s so important to start with function of your site first, then look at it’s form. If you want to build a website that showcases you as an expert in your niche market place then create a blog. If you want a place for people to come and chat and network with each other about your chosen niche then take it one step further and include BuddyPress.

Very quickly marketers like Terry Dean began to see the real potential of the Internet as they started to apply the principals of direct response marketing. In fact Terry was one of the first true pioneers of creating websites that sell and he did this with a huge amount of success as a result.

As I’m sure you know already direct response marketing had been around for many, many decades before the Internet even emerged, but the problem was people back then just didn’t know what the Internet was or even understand how to use it as a way of marketing their products or services.

The first thing Terry did was NOT to use “Welcome to my website” at the top of his websites, instead he took those battle hardened and proven direct response marketing techniques and tactics and applied them. What did he do? He wrote advertising headlines that gave people reasons for reading his website and buying his products. He wrote sales letters instead of welcome messages which made him a fortune and turned him into one of the worlds first marketing “gurus”.

All those direct response marketing techniques and tactics Terry applied back then still apply today. In fact if you’re not using them you’ll be under serious threat from your competition who no doubt are.

So where do you start with creating a website that sells?

The first place is always with copywriting starting with an attention grabbing headline, the headline then leads into your sales letter, which leads people into the sale.

But great copywriting isn’t enough without also setting the stage through website design that supports this. When these two things are working in harmony it’s an amazing site to behold, you’ll find yourself wanting to buy whatever is being sold!

Everything I’ve just mentioned above is just the beginning because there are many more parts to this you need to consider. Getting started is actually the easy part. Because once you’ve got your headline, sales letter and website design in place you also need targeted traffic. Once you’ve got the traffic you next need to be looking at how many people visit your website before they buy anything from you. These is your conversion matrix.

When you know what your conversions are you can work out the dollar value of every person visiting your site. When you know this you can start buying advertising on other websites with greater confidence and certainty. After all if you know that every person visiting your website is worth $1 you quickly get to know what your break even point is which tells you how much you should be spending on your advertising. From this point everything become much more scientific and predictable.

From a design point of view creating websites that sell follows a simple set of rules or principals which just like copywriting are based on proven direct response methods. These principals never change, you simply apply them to whatever the niche is for the website you’re designing.

The easiest way of getting started with creating a website that sells is simply to write a more compelling headline for your website. If your website says “welcome to my website” then shame on you! Immediately replace this with a headline that gives people the biggest benefit from visiting your website. Remember this your headline is your ad for your ad! So your headline gets people to read your websites introduction, which then gets people to read the next paragraph and so on until you reach the order button.

Don’t just stop at one headline, write as many as you possibly can then pick the best. Put the best headline at the top of your site then see if you get any more sales or subscribers. A great way of doing this is to use Google Website Optimizer because you can equally split your traffic over several different headlines you write. Google Website Optimizer then tells you which one made you the most sales or got you the most subscribers.

Headlines are always great places to start when you’re looking at creating websites that sell so with that said here’s a PDF of an ebook you can download for free that’ll help you write all the headlines you need.

The next components to look at are your sales letter and your website design.

Before I discovered the tool I’m about to show you I used to rely heavily on trial and error to find the parts of a layout I wanted to edit. Now it’s a piece of cake to find a very specific design element then move it to the left by 3 pixels.

If all you want to do is change a font in your theme here’s how it’s done (I’ll get onto editing things in great detail a bit later on)…

1. Launch your favorite HTML or text editor (Don’t use Word!)
2. Then locate and open up a file in the theme folder called style.css (in virtually all theme template this is the name of the file you’ll need). This is the file that controls all the design elements of your theme from the color of the text to the position of a button.

Here’s what you’re looking for within the style.css style sheet…

Then all you do is do a global search and replace for those fonts and replace for the fonts you’d like to use. if you want to make very specific font changes don’t worry I’m about to show you the software that’s going to help.

Here’s a list of standard web fonts (if you use any non-standard other fonts it’s possible they won’t show up on your visitors web browser if they don’t also have them installed). If you use standard fonts you can’t go wrong.

Arial, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Arial Black, Arial Black, Gadget, sans-serif
Georgia, serif
Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, sans-serif
Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif
Times New Roman, Times, serif
Trebuchet, Helvetica, sans-serif
Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif

A super simple way of finding out where in the CSS style sheet certain elements are is to use a FireFox plugin called FireBug.

You will need to have FireFox installed on your computer to be able to use this so if you don’t have it I recommend installing it right away.

Next you’ll need to download and install the FireFox FireBug plugin which you can get here.

When you’ve installed it look in the bottom right corner of your browser for this…

Now it’s time to take a look at the CSS code of the WordPress theme you’re working on.

All you do is move your mouse to the element within the theme you’d like to change then right click with your mouse which should reveal this drop down menu…

Then all you do is select “Inspect Element”.

When you do this a new part of your browser window will open up to reveal the code for the element you’ve selected.

Now all you need to know is where this code is within the style.css file.

Next we locate this within the style.css file (line 60)…

Now we know exactly where it is within the style sheet it can easily be changed and updated.

If you want to go deeper into adjusting the layout of your theme design it’s made many times easier thanks to the FireBug extension.

]]> http://bigsellingwebsites.com/how-to-modify-wordpress-themes/feed/ 0 http://bigsellingwebsites.com/how-to-build-a-website-using-wordpress/ http://bigsellingwebsites.com/how-to-build-a-website-using-wordpress/#comments Sun, 30 May 2010 10:02:58 +0000 Brian Terry http://bigsellingwebsites.com/?p=12 There are 2 ways of going about doing this but again it depends on what the function of the website is going to be and how much you have to spend.

First there’s the free way to create a blog using WordPress.

It’s really simple… just go to WordPress.com create an account there, choose your blog theme, start posting and you’re done.

Then there’s the better and more professional approach which is to host WordPress yourself within your own hosting account. Even then there’s a low cost route and a more expensive and again more professional way.

If you wanted to create a website using WordPress and you have little money to spend the best approach is to use a budget hosting company like BlueHost.com or HostGator.com. Both of which are very good and have a hosting control panel that makes it possible to install WordPress with the press of a few buttons.

All you need then is a decent WordPress theme and there are plenty to choose from. But again it really depends on what you want to achieve because you always get what you pay for.

You can pick up a free template theme here direct from WordPress.org or you can buy one from my favorite place here.

As always create a plan or a blueprint for yourself. Something you can follow that keeps you on track.

In your blueprint for your new website you need to be thinking about 2 things to begin with.

1. Who’s the website aimed at (who’s your target audience)
2. What are you going to offer them

Once you know these 2 things you then need to create a mission statement, something that combines the above into a single sentence or paragraph,

From this you’ll be able to more easily come up with the .com domain name for your site. You’ll then know what kind of content to write and add to your site, you’ll also have the starting point needed to determine where your best traffic is most likely to come from.

Then out of the function comes the form.

Once you know the function of your website you’ll have a clearer ideas about the form your website should take. Should it be a pure blog, a social network or simply a brochure site with a blog sitting in the background?

When you know the form you’ll then know which kind of WordPress theme is going to be the best fit for your website. And there are literally 1,000′s of blog themes to choose from out there.

I’ve already told you where you can get free WordPress themes from but I want to give you my recommended source for high quality paid themes.

These are without a doubt the best WordPress themes you’re ever likely to find (I’ve searched high and low). You can use these themes right out if the box or modify them any way you like, the choice is yours.

The main reason for sharing this resource with you is because they give you an excellent choice of WordPress themes covering many different niches and formats.

Just go here now (they even have some free themes to try out)

Making more sales from your website is relatively easy if you already have some sales coming in. If you have no sales at all it’s the subject of a different article because you have more to overcome first.

The trick to making more sales from your website is to look closely your sales system. Lets assume you’re getting some sales but not as many as you’d like and you’re using a squeeze page (optin page) as the very first page people see before you show them your sales letter.

If your website follows this squeeze page and sales letter format then there are 2 things you need to focus on to make more sales.

1. Improve your optin rate.

The more people who enter their names and email addresses into your squeeze page the more people who will see your sales letter so the first stage is all about improving your squeeze page optin or conversion rate.

This is very simple to do. Just write as many new headlines as you can for your squeeze page then set up an account with Google Website Optimizer. This service from Google will make it possible for you to then split test your different headlines against each other from the same traffic sources you already have.

By going through this process of small improvements on your front end you’ll have the biggest impact on the backend pages (like your sales letter).

2. Improve your sales conversions

When you’ve improved your squeeze page conversions then it’s time to look at fine tuning your sales letter by going through the same process of writing dozens of headlines, pick the best 3 then split test them against each other until you find a winner. Once you have your winning headline test it against the other headlines you’ve written until you find a new winner.

Testing your headlines for both your squeeze page and your sales letter will have the biggest initial impact on your sales. Only when you’ve got your headlines working hard for you should you then look at improvements to the design and sales letter itself. Whenever you make any changes to your site always split test them through Google Website Optimizer to get the most accurate data to base your decisions on.

You might have thought I was going to say you should improve your website design and you’ll make more sales (or something like this). The fact is whilst website design IS important it’s only half of the equation to getting more sales with your website. What you should be focusing in on are what are the quickest, simplest and easiest changes you can make to your website that will have the biggest impact on your sales. As you probably know designing a new website can take weeks or even months on the other hand making text changes can take seconds. This is why I recommend making these kinds of changes to your site first.

Here’s a great free ebook I’d like to give you that will help you with writing some great headlines for your squeeze pages and sales letter. You can download it here.

The most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal have got to be these two here, both are 100% free from Google.

1. Google Analytics
This is an online website traffic tracking service that gives you all kinds of interesting and useful data about anyone who visits your website.

2. Google Website Optimizer
Only Google could give a tool this powerful away, I’ve seen similar services that charge $100′s a month to use so make sure you get signed up to this and take full advantage.

The very next step I recommend you take is to get the Google Analytics code installed on every page of your website. In doing this you’ll get some interesting stats on how many people are visiting your site, where they’re coming from and what other pages they’re visiting.

Then download the free ebook I have for you, print it out and use it to help you create as many headlines as you can.

Once you have enough headlines get the Google Website Optimize code installed on your squeeze page and begin split testing some of those new headlines you came up with. When  you do this keep an eye on your results and look for the winning headline that gets the most number of people to your sales letter page.

When you’ve fully optimized your squeeze page headline begin work on improving your sales letter headline.

Headlines are the ad for your ad! So make them count.

I’ll keep on adding to this list as I discover new and even more useful plugins.

All in one SEO
That’s an essential plugin to get your site optimized for the search engines in the easiest way possible.

WP audio player
Adding audio to your site makes it more engaging for your visitors encouraging them to come back again and again.

Bad Behavior
This is a new plugin I’ve recently started using as a way of protecting the sites I create from attacks by spammer before they’ve even tried to post a message.

Comment Approved Notifier
I like this plugin a lot for how it keeps people coming back to your site. It’s hard enough to get people to take actions on your site so telling them their comments have been approved helps to show you value their feedback.
Making it easy for people to contact you is critical and this form give you the tools needed to make it easy.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
This is an absolute must have plugin, it’s designed to not only make it easier for people to find the content on your site but give your on page SEO an extra push in the right direction.

Dagon Design Form Mailer
Making it easy for people to contact you is critical. So installing this plugin is one of those essential plugins your site should never be without.

Exclude Pages from Navigation
Sometime there are pages you’ve just got to hide from your visitors, for example you might have a special thank you page set up for your new subscribers. You only want them to see this page so use this plugin to exclude pages from your sites navigation.

Google XML Sitemaps
This is another SEO plugin that your site should not be without. It makes it easier for Google to spider your site, the easier you can make this the better.

Mail From
The devil is in the details and this plugin makes sure any emails sent out from your site have your name as the sender instead of WordPress Admin.

SEO Friendly Images
Yet another SEO plugin that helps you get better keyword density and relevance in the search engine results pages.