So today I wanted to create a list of my favorite free WordPress themes that are available right now.  I’ll also continue to post themes in the new WordPress Themes category as I come across them.

1. FFF “Lemon Twist” v1.5 (demo | download)

2. Elixir (demo | download)

3. Dilectio (demo | download)

4. Night Transition (demo | download)

5. TechRiddle (demo | download)

6. PolarLight (demo | download)

7. DarkRed (demo | download)

8. Fluid Yellow Black (demo | download)

9. DePo Skinny (download)

10. DePo Clean (download)

11. WP Premium (demo | download)

12. Modicus Remix (download)

13. Grid Focus (download)

14. Overstand (demo | download)

15. WP-Polaroid (download)

16. The Azure Hut (download)

17. Sakena (demo | download)

18. Ringtone (demo | download)

19. Agregado (demo | download)

20. Notepad Chaos (download)

21. Elegance (demo | download)

22. Amazing Grace (demo | download)

23. Redoable (download)

In addition to Smashing Magazine, also keep an eye on these great resources for finding the best free WordPress themes:

• Fresheezy
• TopWPThemes
• Free WordPress Layouts
• WPThemeSpot
• Unmatched Themes

You would presume the site was making good money by the sales price, but nothing else about the site stacks up. Traffic isn’t brilliant, matched by irregular posting at best. Quantcast shows 156,000 uniques on 263,000 visits, Compete puts the unique number at 300,000. The site has an Alexa ranking of 42,168. Since September 14, there has been only 9 posts to the site, and comments vary from a few through to the highest at 20.

Without knowing all the actual details (well, the revenue mostly), it’s had to definitely say that this blog was over priced, but the amount paid for it is staggering, and I’m surprised others aren’t saying the same thing. This wasn’t a blog network, or mega-blog with a team of writers; instead it’s a one man blog running a mix of Adsense units and affiliate offers!

How’d they get such a good price?  Mark points out just how valuable traffic like Bankaholic’s is, and that’s absolutely got a lot to do with it — as does Bankrate.com’s probable desperation to shore up their business in this economy.

There’s another factor at work too, though.  I just talked with my bankers and found out that they represented Bankaholic’s owner, too.  You can’t overestimate the value of having a great investment bank on your side.  They have proven time and time again their ability to turn a good deal into a outstanding deal.

If your site was deleted from the Google index would anyone other than you notice and care?

That was a quote from Aaron in “How Does the Algorithm View Your Website?“, and nothing has ever rang more true to me.

See, I had a site in the same mold as so many others that I had had success with.  It was a very easy model for making great money: find a site that fit a certain pattern, do a simple set of very easy things, and then watch traffic shoot up dramatically — all legit and all totally what Google was looking for.

Except for one thing.

A few months ago, the site had its rankings dropped dramatically.  Traffic dropped by 50% literally overnight.  The model no longer worked.  What happened?

Well I still don’t know the answer to that, but here’s what I do know: it forced me to take a long honest look at my site and admit that — although I had known how to get Google to rank it highly — it didn’t actually deserve to be there.  It certainly wasn’t the best site for all those queries, so I had no grounds for complaining or for going to Google and asking what had happened.  The run was over.

Funny thing was, I was always the one that preached quality and preached not building a business on Google traffic.  I totally believed that (and still do), but I was saying one thing and doing something different.  It’s the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge.

Yes, you can have success with tricks — with something other than creating and marketing something truly valuable, something truly worthwhile.  Know that you’re always on thin ice if you choose to do that, though.  It’s very much a day-to-day strategy — not one that you can rely on for any sort of long-term security.

Maybe you’re okay with that.  Maybe you’re fine knowing that you could wake up and find it all gone tomorrow.

I’m not.  That’s why you hear me preach against shortcuts and tricks and “gurus.”  But no one’s immune from the draw of an easy buck — least of all me.  Just wanted you to know that I have to work at it, too.

The Key: Quality Over Quantity

In the long run, quality beats quantity every time.  That’s the key to highly successful SEO.  Yes, you still have to take care of SEO basics, and it’s not an absolute rule, but it’s immeasurably easier to rank a site that deserves to be ranked than it is to trick Google into ranking one that doesn’t.

Forget the shortcuts.  Forget the tricks.  Build something of value and then work on your SEO.  Then you’ll be one of those guys who thinks SEO is really easy

Original photo by mamamusings.

People…live too much in the now. They go for what makes them comfortable right then instead of the future.

His co-author continues:

Whenever he has a business decision, he doesn’t concern himself with the upfront money; he’s thinking three years down the line.

Too many of us fail because we can’t handle delayed gratification.  We want it now — even if “it” is only a few dollars.  We gladly (or unknowingly) sacrifice the long-term on the altar of the immediate and wonder why we’re still not making enough to quit our day job.  We don’t give any thought to the future result of what we’re doing today.

Take some time today to really think.  Are you whoring out your blog to make a few bucks, while in the meantime chasing away readers who would have formed the foundation for a very successful business one or two years down the line?  Are you living on the edge of legitimacy trying not to get caught when, ultimately, you always will?  Have you grown so fat feeding off the free traffic from Google that you’ve ceased trying to make your site more defensible?

If so, don’t start whining a year from now when those who took a long-term view of things are working for themselves, and you’re still having to answer to someone else.

You haven’t had a “day job” for more than 3 years now. How did you make that transition?

I actually made the jump when I was doing quite well in an mlm business, however, I don’t recommend anyone get into that line of business any longer after my last experience. Fortunately, I had started a couple of websites before I quit my job and was earning a decent income through AdSense. That managed to keep things going until I started to earn more revenue through several travel related programs.

What are the skills that have helped you be successful so far?

Probably graphic arts and the ability to be able to build my own websites. I’m not the most skilled at building sites, but it has saved me a lot of money and I can at least put together something that looks decent. There are a lot of horrid looking affiliate sites out there and I think may affiliate business suffer because sites that don’t at least look good will immediately chase off a potential customer before they even have the chance to see what you’re offering.

Also, when I was doing mlm I produced my own leads for both retailing products and for recruiting other distributors. That has translated easily into producing all kinds of other leads as an affiliate marketer.

What one skill do you not have that you think would make a dramatic difference in your success?

That would be scripting and programming. I know just enough PHP to destroy a WordPress template. There are lots of affiliates who are doing some pretty neat things with these skills and if I do anything involving programming I just grab someone else’s script and plug it in somewhere without most of the time knowing the how behind it.

It looks like about 2/3 of your revenue comes from affiliate programs. Who’s your favorite affiliate network these days?

That easy, the eBay affiliate program all the way! It is its own network.

Why is that?

eBay US features some 30,000 categories and with the ability to combine several at once with the many mash-up type scripts like Build A Niche Store and the tools available directly from eBay, there isn’t a niche that exists that doesn’t have some presence on eBay. Besides, people not only love to shop on eBay they buy, buy, buy on eBay. It doesn’t get any better than that.

I noticed you’ve been a part of PPC Coach for a few days now. How well is that working out for you so far?

For the people that are at the point to spend $50 a month on a coaching program it is more than worth the money. Probably by the time this interview gets published I’ll have 1 year of PPC Coach paid for from the techniques I’ve learn there so far. In just a week or so, I’ve learned an incredible amount about pay per click and have made some nice money to boot. It has opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

You have one BANS site doing much better than all the others. Could you ramp that up even more by spending some time building out the content, or is there an inherent limit to how much revenue a BANS site can generate?

I could probably double or triple my earnings from that one store by getting more involved in the niche, writing for other sites in that niche, putting up more content and doing more article marketing. It’s a very lucrative niche that I’m barely scraping the surface of.

Have you ever thought about picking just 1 or 2 of your 40+ sites and focusing on really growing those?

Yes I have. I’m not a very focused person and that’s been a hindrance to growing my business. We’re going on vacation the day after this interview and I’m going to spend some serious time evaluating how I’m working my business and what can be done to focus more towards the things that are making money and spend less time on the things that aren’t.

What’s the best advice you can give to someone who has just made the leap into making money online and is beginning to learn their way around?

Add value to the web and it will reward you. The net is filled with heaps of worthless money making schemes and sites just trying to squeeze cash out of people. If you take the time to figure out what people really want, and then give it to them, there’s a long future in that.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Keep reading, studying and building your online business. The more experience you get, the more opportunity you will see. The web is still in its infancy and there’s a lot more money to be made in the years to come. Are you going to be a part of it?

If you’re looking for a good, honest look at what it takes to make it online, I highly recommend Alan’s blog.  Here are a few of my favorite posts of his:

• Finding A Profitable eBay Affiliate Niche
• Would You Buy From Your Own Website?
• Total Misconception About Making Money Online

Dumb.

Let’s suppose for a second that your content is as good as Shoemoney’s or Aaron Wall’s.  Know what they found when they went to partial feeds?  Same thing that everyone finds.

People hate it, and they let you know by not only coming to your site anymore, but by unsubscribing to your feed as well.  Multiple studies have confirmed that.

Show the full feed.  Give your customers what they want.  Reap the rewards.

There are lots of people who own quite a few domains and built-out websites that are languishing from lack of attention — and that will be for the foreseeable future.  They know there’s potential there, but, for a variety of reasons, that potential likely isn’t ever going to be recognized.

The problem is that what they’d sell for isn’t nearly enough to give them up.  But with no time spent on them, it never will be either.  It’s a classic catch-22.

What if there was a place, though, where you could post your list of domains and websites and trade with others who are in the same situation?  You could use your assets to trade for someone else’s, and both of you would get far more in return than you would if you just sold them outright (or let them die a slow death).

This may already exist, so definitely let me know if it does.  I have quite a list that I need to do something with.

Here’s why.

For at least some industries and/or keywords, the top spots are reserved for those who are paying to be there.  Yahoo! provides this helpful illustration:

What they don’t tell you, though, is that there are actually three tiers of rankings within their “Search Submit and other results” section: Search Submit Pro, Search Submit Basic, and free organic results.  Those break down something like this:

(Important Disclaimer: I do not know whether Yahoo!’s example search of “Flowers” actually uses the three-tier system, so I definitely don’t know which results are in which tiers.  I’m only using this image to illustrate the tiers.  I have seen clear evidence of the three-tier system on two very major sites in completely different industries, but I’m not at liberty to reveal who they are.)

Within each tier, the results appear to be algorithmically ranked, just as they would be if there was no tier system.

It’s possible that Yahoo!’s three-tier system is in place only in certain industries and/or for certain keywords.  For some sites, paid inclusion makes a dramatic difference.  For others, it makes no difference at all.  I don’t know if that’s because Yahoo! only uses the three-tier system for select niches, because there are little to no businesses using Search Submit in many niches, or some other reason.  The only way to tell if it will make a difference for you is to apply for the program and see.

See Free Movies Legally fits really well with this Free Business Ideas series.  At just $3, I assumed that the report was filled with just one big trick that wasn’t even worth $3.  Wow, that wasn’t the case at all.  I like the report a lot — both for the specific idea it contains and for the general principle behind the idea.

My biggest problem with the book was that it’s clearly an early version.  The writing could be much tighter and the information could presented in a better way.  Add in that the writer’s native language is French, not English, and it can be tougher than it should be to distill the information sometimes.

Still, if you’re looking to get into business online this $3 e-book may be exactly what you need to get you started.  Even if movies isn’t your thing, he goes into such detail about the concept itself that you could apply it to an almost infinite number of topics.

I can’t go into detail about the concept without divulging more than I should, but it’s completely complementary to the things you read on this blog.  There’s no “get rich quick” or promoting of shortcuts.  The title may be a little provocative, but the information he delivers is sound: See Free Movies Legally

1. If the site is about where you live, it’s easy to be an expert in what you’re talking about.
2. Making money from advertising is a cinch.  If you have a compelling level of traffic, you know exactly who your potential advertisers are — just walk down Main Street.

That’s why I was especially intrigued by this site that I came across today: Atlanta on the Cheap.  There are several things I love about this idea:

1. It’s a sub-niche.  We’ll be talking a lot about those.  When you’re starting out, picking a sub-niche instead of a full niche is a great strategy because it helps you focus and get your feet under you.
2. The design is fantastic.  Simple, clean, attractive.  It instantly conveys trust.
3. It’s a blog.  Nothing’s easier and more powerful for creating a site than something like WordPress.  Money-making sites don’t have to be extraordinary technical endeavors.
4. “Cheap” is huge.  How many people do you know who would love a site that had great, practical ideas for saving money?

Don’t just go out and steal “cheap,” though.  Do some thinking.  There are plenty of local sub-niches:

1. Great (Restaurant Type) Restaurants in (Your City Name) — where (Restaurant Type) can be the type of food, the price range, or some other category (theme restaurants, family restaurants, etc.).
2. (Demographic) in (Your City Name) — where (Demographic) is some sort of demographic designation (single, ethnicity, age, etc.).  Where are the interesting spots for that demographic (and what happens there)?  What events or other information would be interesting to them?
3. Best (Your City Name) Entertainment — For people looking for a night out, what are the best options?
4. Who’s Who in (Your City Name) — Profile interesting people in your area.  (Might work better in smaller areas where people are always checking to see if someone they know has made it onto the site.)
5. (Your City Name) Politics — All politics is local, as they say.  Get really local and start talking politics in-depth.  What’s interesting about the candidates for coroner?  How in the world does one go about deciding who to vote for for coroner?  Nothing generates more traffic and conversation than politics.

Think about pairing it with a social network from Ning, too, to really make it a destination site.

Follow the blueprint, and I could easily see a site like this generating $100,000 a year in income within a year or two.  Just as importantly, though, it will lead naturally to other opportunities — including, quite possibly, the one that becomes your big one.