Blogging is still very popular and it will surely continue growing in the future.
Consider that there are more than 180 millions of blogs online !
WordPress is one of the leading blogging platforms and webmasters who want to personalize their blog or make money out of their blog should use a theme that reflects their personality (I use WooThemes).
An interesting way to make money could be by building and designing themes for WordPress.
It will be a huge advantage if you have your own website, where you can start offering a selection of your designs and styles that appeal to different people and charge a flat fee from anyone who wishes to download a theme.
After you develop more confidence in your creative skills you could offer to make custom designs to people at higher rates.
How to Start as Theme Designer
If you are good with style and design and you are familiar with WordPress, you can start this business.
Even better if you have knowledge on CSS, PHP and HTML : this will make designing and building themes easier.
Spend some time researching about the type of themes that are in demand and try to satisfy those requests.
To ensure that your reputations remains intact test each theme before you sell it, to discover any bugs or errors.
Use keyword tools to locate areas of interest that are in demand and attract more clients your way.
Build up several custom themes, at least ten or more, before launching your web site and see that they are leaning towards diverse topics.
This will make your site more attractive to novices who engage in different niches and give them a selection to choose from.
By adding keyword descriptions to each theme you improve your chances of getting more traffic to your site.
One of the great things regarding standard custom themes is that they could be bought online and be arranged for automatic delivery.
This allows you to set up the site, having passive income while you work on developing new ideas.
Promote your business attracting customers to your website trough keywords and SEO, PPC, internet marketing and social media work.
Also the word of mouth is important in online business.
Steps Involved in Daily Work as Theme Builder
Here below the steps involved in the practical work of building and customizing a WordPresst theme.
1 . Write your requirements : here you have to write down all the information that you want to show on your blog pages (mainly the homepage, individual posts-pages, archives and search results).
2 . Visualize the project on paper : after the requirements, you should draw your theme on a piece of paper or by using a free tool like MS Paint.
3 . Pick a base theme : once you have the homepage floor plan, you need to take a light free theme that is structurally the best match for your requirements.
4 . Clean up and enhance the structure : next step is to clean your theme. Remove unnecesary widgets and then remove animations, badges, thumbs and backlinks to the designer. Now you can add your desidered structure to the theme, by coding them or changing existing code.
5 . Work on module : after the structural changes are done to reflect the basic looks, you should think about the modularity of the theme.
6 . Internal linking and SEO Optimization : after building the basic structure and widgetizing, you need to worry about the internal linking and SEO optimization.
7 . Work on widgets : focus on completing the widgets and filling the basic visualization.
8 . Arrange the style and brand : put the make up to the structure. If your base theme has the color and style combination of your taste, you have less work here. You can use free online tools, for branding purposes, as logos and icons, designing buttons and background images.
9 . Test compatibility and compliance : you can use the W3C XHTML validator and CSS validator online applications to check your code compliance. Also, you need to do some amount of browser compatibility testing at this point.
10 . Get feedback and evolve : once you are ready, you may upload and test it further. You should take feedback from your readers and free review forums.
Good luck with your theme building and your new online business!
