Simple Blogs Work Best

As the owner of fifteen blogs and counting I can tell you one major fact that I have learned. Simple blogs with a white background work the best. I have become an ardent fan of getting or making blogs that come as close to the Simplex Wordpress theme , made by “WPShoppe,” as I possibly can. This is goes along with what Heather said in an earlier post about white clean backgrounds being very much in demand. The reason being is that they work!

I’m going to tell you that my best performing blog is still using the default theme that is already installed when you load Wordpress (blue header with the white background). That’s my favorite theme! I have tried 100s of themes and the most complicated themes I used like Revolution, though very attractive, converted less be in adsense or/ and affiliate sales.

The reason being is that there is too much for your potential customer to look at. You bring them to a complicated site with a lot of text and images and they turn into a kid in a candy store. They do not know what they want. He/she will click on this and then click on that. You will find that they click on a lot of things but end up getting confused and not buying. Magazine type blogger templates are too much for most sites. This DelliStore template is more like what I look for.

If you just have a blog for social traffic than this does not apply to you. If you want to make money from your blog or want your clients to make money from their blog you need to understand the art of channeling your traffic. When someone comes to your blog they eventually need to channeled into an area where they can a) click on an ad b) buy your product c) or get your proper contact information so they can buy your product or service in the future. Crisp white backgrounds with blue, red, or black lettering seem to work the best. If I have any pictures of my blog I usually put them within a post and do not make them part of my actual blog.

Taking this a step further I would like to remind everyone that we live in a society that is big on “instant gratification.” ADHD isn’t a disorder anymore in my opinion because most of the population has it. Most of us are not patient people and when we go to a website we want to see immediately what we are looking for. When we go to a site we are looking for something and we want the answer to jump out at us. This was confirmed by one of Grizzly’s post, one of the best internet marketing minds in the business.

This is a short excerpt of what he said:

I rank on top of Google’s serp’s and bring in traffic. Visitors see my inept, amateurish and oh so ugly blogs and they run like hell. Fortunately 10 -12% of them leave by clicking on my Adsense ads. That is my system (not totally as I do have other forms of monetized blogs) and it works.

Now I am in no way advocating writing spammy or crap content. I hate that! My point is that Griz makes thousands of dollars every month from very simplistic looking blogs that have great content on them for the MMO niche but I am telling you that Grizz seems to have a fifth grade writing level at times. I think he does that on purpose. He starts off his blog not making a lick of sense to your common person and saves the juicy parts for the end. He channels people, at the tune of 10-12%, into the adsense and he’s able to do that because his readers eyes are where he wants them to be and not over here or over there.

The same goes actual products and affliate banners. Have a simple yet professional blog design and put what you want them to click on in plain sight.

About the Author: Wesley Barras is a SEO specialist who writes about web design, search engine optimization techniques, and professional blogging.