I haven’t posted in several months because of a move and work so to get back into the swing of things I’m holding a giveaway!

I purchased this website last year (2011) on Flippa.com for $2,497. You can see the listing for full details on the site. One lucky person will walk away with this entire site on June 8th 2012.

Why am I giving away this site?

Well since I purchased it last year I haven’t had the time to dedicate to it like I wanted.  And I have this website to update as well.  So instead of letting it sit for longer I thought I’d hold a raffle and create some buzz.

How to enter

For your chance to win you simply need to tweet this page, like it on facebook, follow me and leave a comment if you wish. The more you do the more points you get that increase your chances of winning. By doing any of the actions you’ll be entered to win one of my complete websites: WPSwitch.com. a Rafflecopter giveaway

Best of luck to all the entrants!

I wish all of you the best of luck! Giving away an established website that I paid $2500 is one of the craziest things I’ve ever done.  Not to mention that I invested a couple hundred in the few new posts that are there.

How To Cash In On The WordPress Theme Market
(Even If You’re Not A Developer)

Download my FREE report + Update and Enter for a free chance to WIN WPSwitch.com!
Raffle Ends June 8th 2012

For a short time I am releasing an update to my original report I released back in 2009 on how I started to making reoccurring revenue promoting WordPress themes. I’ve been able to increase my revenue from the techniques I revealed in my first eBook by 660%!  Even through the economic downturn my commissions each month have continued to increase.

Even more the WordPress theme market is a multimillion dollar market that is still in it’s infancy. You can see from the skyrocketing growth of theme marketplaces like Themeforest and Mojo Themes that the theme marketplace is healthy and seemingly unstoppable.

The Market Is Hungry For Themes…

Over 2 million searches per month are happening on Google for keywords related to WordPress themes and templates.  That’s quite a bit and the numbers keep going up from year to year I’ve noticed.  This means the market is hungry for WordPress themes and a lot of those people are willing to pay for premium themes.

So What Does This All Mean For You?

Like the hundreds of developers who joined Themeforest in the past couple years or the new theme shops that have popped up, dollar signs ($$$) should have popped into your head.  If you’re not lucky enough to be a developer yourself the only other way to make money from the theme market is by affiliate marketing.  And that’s what this is really about.  You don’t have to be a developer to make money from this method.  If you can blog you can do this.

Of course it takes more than knowing how to blog… and that’s what I go over in my report.

Who Can Use This Info?

• Do you use WordPress?
• Do you design/develop WordPress sites for clients?
• Are you a Freelancer?
• Are you a blogger?
• Are you the type of person who likes to give advice?
• Are you just interested in making more money online?

If you answered Yes to any of the above questions then read on.

Really anyone can use this info, but you’ll most likely have better chance at succeeding if you’re a web designer, web developer, SEO, online marketer, blogger, freelancer, photographer, writer, entrepreneur who already knows their way around the web.

You can even adapt the techniques in this report to other industries or niches as well.  If you are already promoting products in other industries online then light bulbs should go off in your head on how to adapt the techniques in this report to whatever industry you’re in.

Envato Users…

If you are a developer on the Envato marketplace or have an account then you’ll want to snatch this info up.  I am basically teaching you how I promote WordPress themes so if you’re actually developing them to earn a living then this information is super powerful.

What Kind of Money Can You Make?

Do you know how much WordPress theme developers make per year?  Do you know how much affiliates for those developers make per year?  Of course the numbers vary widely but the high end theme developers are making millions per year.  You might have heard Themeforest mention authors like Peerapong generating 1 million in sales… or you might have heard of Chris Pearson, the developer of Thesis saying that he generated over 2 million in sales one year.  I don’t remember the exact details but the point is that a lot of those sales are sent via affiliates like myself.

There’s really no better proof than showing screenshots of my actual earnings so you can see for yourself what I am talking about here. Those three screenshots below show $111,182.99 in earnings just from three companies.  It’s not millions like the developers make but imagine never having to deal with clients, support, development… pretty cool.

 So… What’s New In This Update?

• See Real World (LIVE) Examples
• Discover the Post that Started it All
• Discover What Site I Built That Makes $1,500/mo on autopilot
• Discover My Domain Name Secrets
• Discover Who Pays Me the Most Per Month!

What’s All Included?

• 23 Page Original Report

• 16 Page Updated Report

To download for free simply enter your name and email below!

Promote This Page For A Chance To Win WPSwitch.com! (a $2,497 Value!)

For your chance to win simply follow the instructions below. By doing so you’ll be entered to win a complete website WPSwitch.com. I purchased this website last year (2011) on Flippa.com for $2,497. You can see the listing for full details on the site. One lucky person will really be able to jump start their business with this baby.   Includes one free year of hosting!  If you have your own hosting you are more than welcome to move it to your hosting account.a Rafflecopter giveaway

Best of Luck and Thanks!

Best of luck to all raffle entrants for www.wpswitch.com!

If you’ve downloaded my free report I hope you make use out of it.  Please let me know what you think of it.

Again best of luck to all of you!

Jeff

WordPress is a fantastic platform for photographers – it’s easy to set up, easy to use, and there are loads of ways to upload your photos on the go using various mobile apps. Theme designers know how much photographers love WordPress and so there’s no shortage of WordPress photography themes that you can use on your website.

This collection contains a whole pile of themes released over the past year. You can see a growing trend that has emerged in photography themes. Theme designers are really looking to showcase a photographer’s work so there’s a huge number of full screen portfolio themes that focus on the work 100%. It’s great to see that theme designers are sensitive to the needs of photographers and are adapting their themes accordingly.

Responsive design has really taken off over the last year as well. Designers can use responsive design techniques to create fluid images, meaning that your photographs can look beautiful on any device. A number of the themes listed below use responsive design for beautiful image resizing.

So on to  30 of my favourite free and commercial WordPress themes for photographers.

Commercial

Photoshot

Sideways

Buy

Anan

Buy

Invictus

Buy

Immense

Buy

Adventure

Buy

Panorama

Buy

Core

Buy

Kingsize

Buy

Slash WP

Buy

DK

Buy

Flashlight

Buy

Chocolate WP

Buy

Village

Buy

Gridline

Buy

Gallerific

Buy

Deep Focus

Buy

Photocrati

Buy

Sidewinder

Buy

Focal Point

Buy

Free WordPress Themes

Photography

Demo | Download

F8 Lite

Demo | Download

Big Square

Demo | Download

Mansion

Demo | Download

Minimatica

Demo | Download

Mixfolio

Demo | Download

Foto Folio

Demo | Download

Paragrams

Demo | Download

Portfolium

Demo | Download

Exposito

Demo | Download

Be sure to check out my original post on WordPress themes for photographers as well.  And bookmark my site for heaven’s sake!  :)

Just in time for holiday gift-giving comes all new awesomeness from Blurb!  I really love Blurb because the quality of the books you get is unmatched.  Really, if you’re planning on ever making a book of your artwork, photos, poems, whatever do yourself a favor and get it through Blurb.  I wrote about Blurb in 2008 when I ordered my first book and since then have made several.

And now Blurb is making it even easier to create your own books…

Blurb is now offering customized 2012 Planners, Facebook Photo Books, and Instagram Photo Books, that make the perfect gift for friends and family.  I think the facebook photo books and instagram photo books are going to be a big hit.

Facebook photo books
You can now turn your favorite facebook photos into a fantastic photo book. This my friends is going to take off in a big way.  What better way to capture a moment in social history than preserving your facebook photos in a book.

Instagram photo books
Blurb is now offering Instagram Photo Books which is giving you a new way to share your Instagram Photos from your phone. We’ve created a new set of banners to help you promote this product. Here’s one of the banners available for you:

Not interested in making a book?  Make a planner!
Blurb has just announced their new 2012 Planners. These truly personal planners are created with customers’ images on the cover and throughout—with elegantly designed calendars. They also make a perfect gift for friends and family so be sure to promote Blurb’s custom Planners on your site today!

You can also get 15% off your next book from Blurb by entering this special coupon code: AFFILIATE15OFF

I can’t express how much I’m in love with Typekit. It’s quite possible the best service to serve up some sweet new fonts on your website. I assume they’re the best as I really haven’t tried anyone else out. Well I did try embedding fonts using myfonts service, but the quality was bad… ie. the fonts are jagged and don’t look as smooth as Typekits.

I’ve had the joy of switching over the regular web fonts I have been using on this site to the magnificent Proxima Nova. I’ve played around with several other fonts but thought Proxima Nova looked the best.  Of course I’ll probably change it up in the future but that’s what I’m using now.

I’ve also been using Typekit for a client as well as on some personal websites.  You can see Proxima Nova at work on Midwest Heavy Haul’s website.  They offer Heavy Haul services throughout the Midwest and I thought Proxima Nova worked well here too.  I’m really not sure what it wouldn’t work on.

Midwestheavyhaul.com using Proxima Nova from Typekit

I’ve also been using it on WP Switch, which is a new site of mine that I recently bought. Still needs some work, but boy does it look better than it did.

I wish I had more time to implement Typekit across a few more of my sites but I’m going to wait to do full redesigns.

Typekit is a dream to work with and is super easy to implement if you haven’t tried it yet.  Go sign up if you haven’t!

We all like to make money and one of the ways you can make money online is by simply promoting or blogging about WordPress themes or even premium plugins.

By putting a link or an advert to another service from your site using your special affiliate link – you  can earn a commission if a person who visits from your link makes a purchase. That’s how affiliate programs work and it’s a great way to make money.

There are loads of WordPress Theme developers and theme shops that have affiliate programs so they’re a good place to get started if you want to start making money. WordPress 3.2 has been downloaded more than 12 million times – that’s a whole lot of sites running on WordPress, and a whole lot of people looking for WordPress themes. Here’s a run down of the main players, with a bit of info about their program and how much lovely cash-money you can earn.

Of course this list is not finished and I’ll be keeping it updated as time goes on. If you know of a WordPress theme developer not on this list then leave a comment below.

WordPress the most popular open source CMS in the market. In fact, it’s so popular that 22% of all the websites in the world are built using it. Part of its attraction is the massive developer community supporting it. Developers create plugins, and plugins extend WordPress, letting you take it in whatever direction suits your needs.

There are some plugins that turbo-charge any WordPress installation, taking it from blogging platform to powerful CMS. They enhance WordPress, making it faster and more powerful. Chances are that your competitors are using these plugins so maybe its time that you thought about using them too.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is an essential part of getting your site ranked on Google. The great thing about WordPress is that it’s already pretty good for SEO out-of-the-box (according to Matt Cutts, Google’s Head of Web Spam) But you can improve it further by installing a plugin that fine tunes your SEO. All-in-One SEO is a great choice that has enough options to juice up the SEO of the average WordPress user.

Analytics

Every webmaster knows that to develop your site you need to know who’s visiting, when they’re visiting, where they’re visiting and how they’re finding your site. Google Analytics is the best free tool for tracking your sites analytics. Google provides a tracking code that you can insert in the tags of your theme. However, if you change your WordPress theme the tracking code will disappear. By using a plugin like Google Analytics for WordPress the tracking code is no longer held in the theme and you won’t be in danger of your stats disappearing.

Cache

When you cache your website information is stored as a static file and served up to each website visitor. This means that your website isn’t having to reload all of the information from your database each time someone lands. Caching is the best way to speed up your website, and is particularly useful for photographers, who often have image-heavy websites which cause slow load times. A good choice is WP Super Cache.

Backups

Backing up your site is an important part of being a webmaster. You never know when your server could expire, your database corrupted or your site hacked. It’s worth making regular backups of both your site and your WordPress database. A great option for this is ManageWP. ManageWP is a service which manages your WordPress sites. It has built in backup to Amazon S3 as well as Dropbox. Currently it is in beta so is still free, but after launching at the end of November it will remain free for users with 3 sites or less.

Mobile

The world has gone mobile. More people are now accessing the internet through mobile devices than ever before. In fact, we’ve reached a point where more people are surfing the web on mobiles than on computers. You need to make sure that you’re in on the game and a great way to do this is to install a mobile switcher like WP Touch Pro (or the free version). This detects what device your site’s visitor is using and serves them up a version of the site that is suitable.

Contact Form

Contact forms are useful for letting people get in touch with you. Gravity Forms does that but it takes forms to the nth degree. You can use Gravity Forms for any sort of form building and all of the data is stored on your website’s database. It makes it easy to collect data, and to look at it later.

Social Connection

Sharing is the cornerstone of Web 2.0 – these days it’s what drives the internet. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Reddit, the list goes on and on. People are connected in ways they never have been before. Sharing is the perfect way for you to spread your photography amongst people who haven’t seen it before. Installing a plugin like ShareThis makes it easy for people to share your photography without you having to do any work at all.

Notifications

Hello bar is a notifications bar that pops up at the top of your page. It lets you add simple notification messages at the top of your page. Unlike pop-ups these bars are helpful and unobtrusive, letting you grab visitors’ attention with a call to action, without annoying them in the process. Hello bar is a commercial plugin but it comes packed full of useful features like analytics and A/B Testing.

Ecommerce

Selling photographs through your website can be a great way to supplement your income. This is possible by extending WordPress with one of the many eCommerce plugins. By installing a plugin like WP E-commerce you can sell your photographs from your site. WP eCommerce is a free shopping cart plugin that you can use to sell photographs, including digital downloads so you can sell high-resolution versions of your images – no printing required!

Spam

Spam is the scourge of every WordPress website. As a webmaster you can get endless comments asking you to buy some prescription pills or visit a casino site. Akismet fights spam. It uses an API key which you can get from WordPress.com. It is free for non-commercial use and there is a fee for commercial users. It’s a life-saer though when it comes to the battle against spammers.

A new survey shows that SEO is the best source of leads for both B2B and B2C marketers, beating out both PPC and social media marketing of online marketers. But more of those surveyed say they plan to increase their social media marketing budgets in 2012, ahead of SEO and PPC.

The results reveal that:

• 46% of B2B participants said their most important objective is to generate leads.
• 53% of all participants say SEO makes the biggest impact on lead generation, followed by 28% for PPC and 19% for social media.
• 75% of B2C companies are the most active on Facebook, followed by 8% on Twitter and 6% on LinkedIn.
• B2B companies are active more evenly across all three leading networks: 34% Facebook, 26% Twitter, and 25% LinkedIn.

The 2011 Webmarketing123 State of Digital Marketing survey was conducted online in September. Over 500 marketing professionals completed the survey.  You can download the entire report here.

Overall, 60 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their budget for social media marketing in 2012; 53 percent plan to increase their budget for SEO and 40 percent will increase their PPC budget.

Source: Search Engine Land

Happy Halloween first of all!  Hope if you do celebrate it that you have a fun and safe one!  It’s kinda weird starting and stopping blogging for so long but I’m trying to get back into the swing of things… if there ever was a swing.  I don’t like to think that I’m neglecting this blog but with work and everything else it’s hard to keep up to date.  And blogging I think takes me longer than most people who blog.  I always get caught up in getting everything perfect that it takes forever to do one post.

Anyway I thought I’d share 5 things I’ve been kinda addicted too the last several months.  And I say addicted in that I use these sites/services at least once a day if not multiple times… so yes frequently.

Pinterest

What can I say about Pinterest?  It’s basically tumblr on steroids and can be quite addictive because it’s seriously so much eye candy you can sit for hours going through what other people have pinned and yeah….  it gets better if you have a wide screen.  Feel free to check out my pins and follow me if you want.

Feedly

I’ve been so happy with feedly because it makes subscribing to feeds a whole lot more intuitive I think because of the heavy use of imagery through the way they deliver the content and also it gives you a way to subsribe to sites with feeds a lot easier, via a small semi transparent button graphic that sits down on the bottom right hand corner of your screen.  If you publish a blog or have a business where you need to publish new content Feedly not only makes it easier to keep tabs on all your feeds it makes it enjoyable.

Tumblr

I’ll be honest, I’m new to Tumblr.  The only reason I started using it was because I purchased a website that was powered by it, by accident really.  I didn’t know the site was powered by Tumblr so it forced me to use it.  But I’ve really liked using it so far.  There’s some weird gratification you get when other people share what you’ve posted… goes the same for when get your content shared anywhere else I suppose… probably not that weird.  Anyway, yes, Tumblr has been a joy to use so far with a few moments of downtime here and there, but overall I think I’ll be using Tumblr on a semi daily basis over at FFFFood and Typejoy, two of my personal Tumblogs.

Zillow

Zillow is a site where you can find homes for sale, for rent, etc and I’ve been using it for the last few months quite frequently.  Of course I still use Craigslist but when it comes down to viewing property photos and locating where houses are on a map I don’t think anything compares to Zillow.  If it does let me know.  But I love that you can view an actual map of wherever with pins on it, and when you click the pins another page doesn’t load, but a simple java popup that allows you to view more details and view pics of the property.  It takes a few steps out of the process of looking for a property online.  Trust me, if you’ve tried to find a new place to move you know how annoying it is hunting through hundreds of website pages…. and you’ll never search for properties with images to only find it’s just an ad like you do on Craigslist.

Spotify

I don’t think I’d want to live in a world without music and it’s probably safe to say I listen to more music than anyone else I know.  So Spotify has really been in use since I’ve started using it a few months ago.  For a small monthly fee Spotify allows you to instantly stream music to your computer… instantly.  I know I said instantly twice, but that’s what makes Spotify Spotify.  I’ve stumbled upon so many new bands that I might not have ever heard if I wasn’t able to click through to related bands and listening to their music instantly.  I guess other services exist out there like Spotify but for some reason the GUI and ease of use makes it very attractive.  Plus it notifies facebook to what you’re currently listening to so that’s pretty cool… if you like annoying everyone of your friends like I do.

Of course I’m addicted to many other sites but these are the standouts.