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WordPress is dominating the blogging scene more than ever and there are some great themes out there, including ones from sites like StudioPress.com and WooThemes.com.

So, what are the best WordPress Theme and why? Demonstrate your expert knowledge and share your advice in this months Young Entrepreneur Poll!

If you would like to take part in our poll and tell us what your Top WordPress Theme is, enter at http://contests.youngentrepreneur.com/ or tweet your answer below.

Adam Toren

It would seem that there is a lot more to gain than there is to lose when you consider whether to entertain a social media campaign, so long as you exercise a modicum of common sense. A lot of the well known pitfalls experienced by some premier brands could have been avoided with a little introspection.

So what are some of the pitfalls for you to avoid?

1. Avoid controversy.

Some people advocate that to make a wave in the vast social media ocean you need to be controversial to stand out. What you need to realize is that your energy wave creation could become a tsunami of controversy. The same element that makes social media such a tempting proposition could also work against you by creating substantial negative press that you can do nothing about.

2. Avoid spreading muck.

This follows along with the previous point to a certain extent and underlines why you should put some of your best marketing brainpower behind a social media campaign. Don’t be tempted to become a shock jock or openly criticize other competitors in an attempt to gain an edge, as no matter how subtle you try and how many “smoke and mirror” campaigns you dream up, this approach will backfire and hurt you more.

3. Avoid “puffery.”

This colorful word describes the act of blowing your own trumpet or aggressively talking up your brand or product, maybe under a disguise created for the purpose. Be careful that your IP address or e-mail cannot be traced back, allowing people to “out” your efforts!

4. Avoid being vanilla.

Again this comes back to creativity. Don’t expect a great result just by setting up pages, profiles or accounts. You must have a good “hook” and have a policy and strategy to update and create meaningful content.

5. Don’t shoot first and ask questions later.

It may be easy to imagine the social media environment as a “wild west” of sorts, where pretty much anything goes as we are all in uncharted territory. Don’t make the mistake of unloading your shotgun of poorly formed thoughts, questionable tactics or competitor onslaughts without fear of a reprise. You may well not be able to put the fire out.

6. Don’t bite off the hand that feeds you.

Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are really valuable assets and you should treat them accordingly. Always be aware of their terms of service and never do anything to make them turn the focus of attention on you.

7. Don’t delegate and forget.

This will require your best brains, as we have already said twice. For veteran marketers the whole concept can be difficult to conceive, but don’t be tempted to delegate to junior IT people, rather make it a think tank approach.

8. Don’t forget how visible you could be.

When you enter the world of social media, you may encounter a visibility that you are not prepared for. Remember that to a certain extent it is a commenting free for all and you need to be constantly aware of what is being said about you, within your pages and “retweeted.”

What is your best tip?

Matthew Toren

Adam: You had an extremely successful partnership with Jeffrey Kalmikoff, how did you meet?

Jake: We met about 2 years after I started Threadless. Jeffrey ordered a poster and it arrived damaged. In our communications with him to get him a new one, he invited us over for dinner. We went and met a lot of local designers. We started working with Jeffrey as a designer first and then we later merged our companies and he began working with us on Threadless full time.

Adam: What do you think are the benefits of starting a business with a partner?

Jake: For me the #1 benefit is simply having somebody there that can listen and discuss ideas with you. It’s very important to have at least one other brain to help you with your thoughts when you are starting a business.
However, I feel my case was a bit different because it was really more like 2 friends building a tree fort than building a business. We never intended to make money, it was all just a hobby.

Adam: Your partnership is very successful why do you think that is?

Jake: Our business model is incredibly unique. We are almost 10 years old as a business right now and I don’t think anyone else has really figured out how to replicate what we are doing. I feel like our model is so successful  because it really only works when you can legitimately think of your customers as your friends. The whole dynamic changes then and in our case, it is crucial to our business model.

Adam: Threadless is almost 10 years old now, what have been the milestones that were most important to you?

Jake: The first milestone for Threadless was in 2004, when it was given our full time attention. Before that Threadless was a side project and we were an agency creating websites for clients. In ‘04 we fired all of our clients and began focusing on Threadless full time. We grew the company a lot in the next few years. Come ‘06 and ‘07 we had a lot of changes take place to help us with our growth. First, we sold a minority share of the company to a venture capital firm to get somebody invested in helping us with the hard stuff that we didn’t understand too well. During our Christmas sale the previous year, it took a month for us to fulfill everyone’s orders. Clearly we need some help there. Most recently, we have been focusing more on partnerships and our international growth.

Adam: You started a collaborative business from day one, which has proven itself to be very successful, what are the key strategies in your business model?

Jake: The key for me is to try not to think about it as a business. It’s more about what would be cool, what would be fun, what would your friends want to be doing, what would be exciting and awesome. So that is the way I think about most of the decisions we make. In the end it has worked out for us – since we are such a community based business, we are just all about doing stuff to keep our community happy and to excite them. As long as we continue doing that, we believe the rest will follow.

Adam: Threadless now has some “bricks and mortar” retail stores, how big a decision was it for you to take this step?

Jake: We decided to do it because we thought it would be awesome. We felt like we needed a real place where you could touch and feel what Threadless is about. It was more of a flagship branding type move than to actually make money from it but our stores are profitable. We don’t plan to open any more of them in the near future but it was a lot of fun and I think they are a great part of the Threadless empire.

Adam: Have you learned any lessons from opening up this new channel?

Jake: Almost everything I know I learned in running this business. I was 20 when we got started and had a few years work experience beforehand but really Threadless is everything I know. If I were to do it again, I think the main thing that I learned is that a company can be started with very little money. In my case, $500. And you don’t have to grow quickly, take your  time. I would also be sure I am doing this because it is what I want to do with my life, not to make a bunch of cash. It’s funny, my wife is a chemical engineer and when I started Threadless we had a money discussion. The plan was for her to be able to make enough money doing what she loves to support our family – I was always the one who just had this crazy hobby that could never support us. So that’s really what it was about for me. Sure, I ended up finding financial success but that wasn’t even a piece of why I began this company.

Adam: Your business was mature prior to the start of the current recession, what impact has Threadless seen from the recession?

Jake: We have seen a slow down in our growth but we are still growing  substantially year over year from ‘08 to ‘09.

Adam: Design is obviously your passion, do you think that this passion is a contributing factor to the success of the business?

Jake: It has everything to do with it. As I said before, Threadless wasn’t even meant to be a business in the first place. It was a hobby – a hobby as a designer to make cool stuff with other designers.

Adam: You do not hold the copyright on the designs submitted to your website, the designers retain them. What do you think about sites like Facebook who do not follow the same ethos?

Jake: They have their reasons, we have ours. We feel that in order to really build a trusting community where members are interacting on such an in-depth level (it can take days/weeks/months for some of our artists to create one design), we need to create an environment in which no one is taken advantage of and we are very open about our intentions to our community members. I don’t know the details of what Facebook is doing so I’d hate to speculate about that…

Adam Toren

“Don’t be afraid to take time to learn. It’s good to work for other people. I worked for others for 20 years. They paid me to learn”

Vera Wang fully understands that life is all about a long journey through experience. She often talks about life’s rich learning curve and is clearly a product of the experience gained. Her belief that “success isn’t about the end result, it’s about what you learned along the way,” fits nicely with her assertion that previous employers paid her as she learned her life skills. Wang may be very inward looking and self-effacing, but she has been extremely successful, both in her educational achievements and in her career and she attributes this to her undying passion for everything she gets involved in. “If your heart is attached to it, then your mind will be attached to it. When you have a passion for something then you can not only be better at it, but you work harder at it too.”

Wang was born in the summer of 1949 in New York City to Chinese immigrants. Her parents had fled to the United States to avoid the Chinese Communist revolution and they had themselves become quite successful in their new world. She attributes a lot of her drive to her father, who owned a medicine company and who has always encouraged her to make the most of her experience. She may not have always had her dream job, but she was always open enough to understand that every day is a part of the journey.

After attending the upscale Chapin School in a tony part of Manhattan, Wang followed with further education at the University of Paris and the Sarah Lawrence College, resulting in a degree in art history. It was during her younger years that she did discovered a passion for figure skating and put her heart and soul into the idea. She would make every sacrifice for the passion but ultimately decided that she would never aspire to the highest echelons, which in her mind meant the Olympic Games and she turned away.

While working for Vogue magazine, Vera learned a great deal about fashion and clothing and started to dream about how a woman could look so good when skating and how this could be applied to her dress styles in life. “All those years of skating and dancing have carried over. I can’t design anything without thinking of how a woman’s body will look and move when she’s wearing it.”

She left Vogue after 15 years and went to work for Ralph Lauren for a few years. Feeling the inspiration to design her own creations in 1990, just after getting married, she opened her own salon in New York City featuring bridal gowns. She knew that she would have to create something different to stand out and set out to create a unique brand, staying close to her beliefs and coming up with an inspired collection, which has found appeal to this day. The wedding gowns have been chosen by a veritable “who’s who” of celebrities and one of her crowning moments has been to provide costumes for figure skaters taking part in the Olympic Games.

Despite being involved with what many would consider to be a very high-end product and clientele, Wang is nevertheless firmly grounded in the need for sensibility. She asserts that style is not about price but is about a look that works for the woman who is wearing it. In today’s economy the fashion mix has to be sensible and she recognizes that her audience are all smart shoppers.

Vera Wang has been recognized for her achievements in fashion and has expanded a reach into jewelry, fragrance, housewares and home fashion. Most recently she signed an agreement with retailer Kohls to sell budget spin off brands. She is now 60 years old and still exhibits a passion for her creations and for the art of learning.

Matthew Toren

Many make the mistake of looking at a designation, those three or four letters after the professional’s name, assuming that their very presence is enough. Nothing could be further from the truth and we need to understand that there are many different qualifications and “horses for courses.” Make sure that your professional is best qualified to help you with your primary goal, to start off with. Further than that, though, you do need to choose an advisor who is able to help you view the bigger picture. Is he or she able to work with other professionals, such as life insurance agents or attorneys to pull together your plan? Often financial planning is more about life planning, and individual elements cannot be viewed in a vacuum.

Try and select a financial advisor who most closely mirrors your situation insofar as experience, track record, understanding and ability are concerned. You really need a financial coach to help you build a plan or indeed to help you resurrect your damaged dreams. You will need advice on taxation, insurance and money management.

It is important to understand the professional’s fee structure before you start as there is a big divergence. While some opt to charge a quoted fee, others will suggest a percentage of the asset value covered and some might earn commissions from the financial products that they initiate and manage. Be aware of this latter option and seek for clarity to unearth any potential clash of interests.

Thousands of people have lost a sizeable part of their assets due to their involvement with professionals who have subsequently been charged with fraudulent activity and have achieved notoriety in doing so. Your due diligence will include a lot of research, the gathering of testimonials and the checking of references. It is fairly easy these days to find out if any ethics actions have being taken against a professional by contacting the relevant board, or by just doing a targeted Internet search. Once you have asked all your questions and completed all your research, make sure that you have a very frank discussion with your financial planner and confirm everything in writing before you agree to move forward.

Adam Toren

While the average person may not have considered it, a folding bicycle is an impressive feat of engineering. It needs to be easily collapsible yet maintain alignment to offer a comfortable and speedy ride – it’s a daunting task for any entrepreneur. Such was the conundrum that Andrew Ritchie wrestled with in the mid-70s. Ritchie, trained as an engineer, but working as a landscape gardener, was intrigued by the idea of designing a bike so small “it could fit in your pocket”. He began working on his own prototypes and by 1976 had formed a company, Brompton, named after the Brompton Oratory church opposite his home. Despite the bicycle’s ingenuity and Ritchie’s enthusiasm, bike manufacturers showed little interest, forcing him to go into production for himself. He had no problems selling his bikes, but between Ritchie and his single employee, he couldn’t build more than 300 a year from his little workshop in London. Now the company has a turnover of £10million and is growing about 25% a year. About 70% of the bikes are sold abroad, particularly to the Netherlands, Germany, the USA and Japan. Amazingly, manufacturing still takes place in London.

Nearly half a million journeys are made by bicycle in London each day, and the number of cyclists has nearly doubled since 2000. The Mayor of London wants growth to quadruple by 2025, creating more demand for Brompton bikes.

The existing factory has the capacity for Brompton to double its output, and with another 15 years on its lease, there is no reason to doubt that Brompton will remain the best of British, made in the heart of London.

It’s the start of a new poll! This month we are asking “What is your favorite WordPress Theme and why?”

To be in with a chance of winning our $25 Amazon Gift Voucher offer, please simply enter our poll and this voucher could be on it’s way to you!

WordPress is dominating the blogging scene more than ever, and there are some great themes out there which are helping newbies and non techies create some excellent looking sites. With sites like StudioPress.com and WooThemes.com we have a choice of some amazing themes. So we want to know “what is your favorite WordPress theme and why?”

We can’t wait to hear all of your opinions on WordPress themes in this month’s Young Entrepreneur Poll!

If you would like to take part in our poll and tell us what your favorite WordPress theme is, enter at http://contests.youngentrepreneur.com/

Adam Toren

If you have something of considerable value, especially if it is in digital format, then you should consider setting up your own membership site. This can represent a lucrative income and a wide variety of websites, software solutions and plug-ins exist to help you get going. Advances in the technology used within these various platforms allow us to choose whether to create our own or to buy into someone else’s design. WordPress has become so advanced these days that you can use it as the perfect content management system and take advantage of specific plug-ins to help you structure and organize your theme and content.

You will notice when you research the options available to you, that some offer a one-time purchase price while others indicate a monthly charge. Generally speaking, the one-time fees allow you to download the software and operate on your own server, while the monthly fee option includes an element of support as well as remote hosting. This is a matter of personal choice. You may also notice different price points according to whether you are using the software on a single site or on a multitude and this latter option may be of interest to those who are considering setting up some kind of membership site template and “franchising” out to others.

You will normally have a tremendous degree of flexibility, especially among the better choices. You can opt to receive payment via a number of gateways and product or service resellers, such as Clickbank, PayPal, 2checkout or your own payment processor. You can also establish an affiliate program allowing you to gain additional members in return for a commission fee to be paid to new affiliates.

Amember is the top script available, supporting plug-ins that allow you to link your database through your Joomla or Wordpress platforms, for example. These scripts are very sophisticated, user flexible, and feature an unlimited number of product or service subscription types, each with its own parameters, such as automated account sign-up, expirations and terminations.

Have you set up membership website?

Adam Toren

In the world of online marketing, we basically rely on results retrieved through search engines more than we would wish to admit. Our websites are always optimized to make them crawlable and readable at the same time and we put great emphasis on achieving a high ranking in the eyes of Google, primarily. It remains to be seen whether the creatively promoted Bing will make any inroads into what is still a monopoly for Google, but it’s advance should be heralded by everyone in this field.

Bing markets itself as more of a “decision engine,” obviously seeking to set itself apart from Google. It suggests that it is intuitive and can really understand “what we mean” when we try and enter those all important keywords. As such, they will often return a very different set of results as compared to Google and this may in turn provide us Internet marketers with additional ideas and information for our campaigns. We can now turn to a variety of upstart sites to enable us to view interpretations of both Google and Bing (and others) at the same time.

One of our favorites is Bingle, which can be easily added to your browser bar, as can Bing and Google and Stringy. Furia is a very basic option for quick access.

If you want to take this a step further, you can choose to compare results from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, InfoSpace, AltaVista, Lycos and Dogpile using the creative tools provided by Googawho. Search3 also includes a three-way selection tool, choosing from Twitter, Yahoo and eBay.

Make your selection and try analyzing certain results from both sides of the fence, as it were. There’s no such thing as too much information.

What’s your search engine of choice?

Adam Toren

“Never not do something because you don’t have the money. If you want to do it enough and you’re focused enough, the money will find you”

She may be American by birth and exhibit all the outward signs of being a fully focused, goal orientated, “winner take all” native, but she prefers the culture and the people of her main base in London and is seen as one of the 50 most powerful women in Europe, according to the Wall Street Journal. Julie Meyer has risen to become one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs, yet at age 42 is still searching for the next “aha!” moment, even as she strives to help somebody follow in her footsteps.

Meyer is well-known for being fast on her feet and making quick decisions, some of which come back to haunt her. However, she is known for her work in bringing capital to the table for hungry entrepreneurs, and for a business accumen which found its roots when she started First Tuesday back in 2000. The underlying concept was, in fact, created in the fall of 1998 and was designed to be simply a networking event series, focused on the first Tuesday of each month. However. the concept snowballed and by the time the company was sold in July 2000 it was responsible for networking 500,000 people each month and the company’s sale duly netted her $11 million.

With funds from the sale of First Tuesday, Meyer set up her next creation, Ariadne Capital, a company that is involved at the core advisory level with digital media and communication ventures. She is currently raising a significant sum to form a venture capital fund going forward and is shrewd enough to seek out equity stakes in key startups in exchange for the provision of services and advice. She is no doubt motivated by her original investment of $35,000 in First Tuesday, which realized a more than 30,000% return.

Julie sees the current economic environment as the best time to move forward. “One of the fundamentals of investing is to buy low and sell high, it doesn’t get much lower than where we are now.” She is always a champion of free enterprise noting that “government cannot make revenue, companies do that” and calling for a relaxation of Britain’s typically restrictive higher income tax band rates.

Meyer is an acknowledged workaholic, committing seven days a week and spends little time on her personal fetish, which is to enjoy some spa relaxation time with friends. She has something of a golden touch and has helped famous startups such as Skype, Emap and Spinvox to gain their considerable footings.

Living in Europe for most of her adult life, she has a degree in English literacy, an MBA and strong business and emotional ties to her adopted London. She is still single and has no plans for motherhood, but is however setting up a foundation for teenage girls to help them focus on what they could become and in turn bridge what is still an imbalance between successful men and women in the higher echelons of business and commerce.

Meyer is well respected and has an impeccable track record. She may not consider herself to be ambitious, but her achievements precede her.

Matthew Toren

* source: timesonline.co.uk