The newest addition to ForTheLose.org's growing collection of Wordpress themes, Wild Tint is sure to make your site pop with life. Because of the ease of changing the look and feel of the theme with just a few mouse clicks, there are pretty much an endless number of different color variations that anyone can have.

Wild Tint comes with a built-in Twitter widget, so you can keep your visitors up to date with all of your random doings. Best part is, it couldn't be easier to manage this Twitter widget. Wild Tint comes with a Theme Options page that makes customizing the theme so simple that even the most inexperienced coder could use it without breaking a sweat. From the Theme Options page, you can do things such as:

• Change the color of many of the different theme elements.
• Enable the built-in Twitter widget.
• Identify Key used for post image thumbnails.
• Add and remove elements from the sidebar.
• Switch from picture logo to text logo.
• View Theme Options Page HERE

If you're still not convinced that this is the theme for you, let me give you the specifications of the theme. When you download Wild Tint, all of this is included:

• Wordpress 2.6, 2.7, 2.8+ Ready
• Widget Ready (Widgetized Sidebar and Footer)
• Gravatar Ready
• IE 7 & 8 Compatible
• Firefox Compatible
• Safari Compatible
• Opera Compatible
• Netscape Compatible
• Ability to Choose From IMAGE Logo or TEXT Logo (For those of you without a program like Photoshop to make image logos, you can choose to use just text.)
• Custom Post Image-Thumbails (The theme automatically finds if a post has a thumbnail attached to it or not. This makes it so the user (you) doesn't have to worry about attaching an image to every single post.)
• Infinite Number of Color Schemes
• Detailed Theme Options Page
• ReadMe.txt for Help Installing the Theme
• Separate Comments and Trackbacks
• Easily Editable CSS - Fully Commented
• Web 2.0, Tableless Design
• Best of all, it's all FREE

Whew, that was alot of typing. Right now, you're viewing the default color scheme. This is just a specific combo of colors I picked - blue, gold, and white.

NOTE: If you download and use this theme in any way, shape, or form, you are NOT allowed to remove ANY links from the footer at all.

• Preview This Theme
• Download This Theme Free
• Downloaded 2995 Times

The image below just show's the default blue/gold the theme will come in.

Another great thing about this theme is the logo area. Whenever I release a theme where the logo area is text instead of an image, I always get people asking me how to get their picture up there (since they don't want the text). Same thing when I release a theme where the logo area is an image instead of text. To remedy this problem, I made it so you can choose what you want displayed (an image logo or just plain text) in the header area.

Anyway, today I'll be spending the day getting this theme coded up in Wordpress, so it should technically be ready for download sometime tonight or tomorrow, but I may have to hold it back for a few days at the most. Expect it released soon!

The thing is, compared to the countless number of other times I began working on a new theme design, this time was somehow different. I didn't feel the urge to do stupid time-wasting things like playing Left 4 Dead or just laze around the internet, I just hopped right in with a fresh idea and didn't stop until I practically fell asleep at the keyboard. The next day I awoke, hopped right back to work, and had the entire design completed in Photoshop within an hour . I cut the images and prepped the workstation folder and that's where I am now, about 24 hours later.

I began thinking, how is it that I completed a process that normally takes me up to a week in such a short period of time? The answer was simple. I didn't give myself time to procrastinate.

The "Just Do It" Tip

We all know that feeling. You procrastinate (often for no good reason) and just can't get any work done. That feeling plain ol' sucks. Not only does it make you feel crappy, but specifically if you're working on a web design or other online project, you're also probably losing out on money. Which makes you feel even more crappy.

It's a giant loop of crappy crap feelings, really.

What I discovered on Saturday will hopefully change the way I work nowadays. Whenever you get the feeling that you just don't want to work on a certain project right now, don't give in. In my case, I opened up Photoshop and broke the design process down into steps. I just set goal after goal after goal.

For example, once I was done with the header area, I decided I would just get the sidebar area designed before I took a small break. But once I was done with the sidebar, I set a new goal. In this case, it was to move on to the design of a single post, and then I'd take my break. Eventually I had the whole design done before I ever even took one break.

I don't want you guys to get the idea that I'm trying to tell yourself to work yourself to the bone and never take a breather. Sure I stopped for a minute or two here and there when I saw an interesting tweet (or something like that).

The point I'm trying to get across is that to get anything done, you have to get started first. I found that once you get your work started for the day, it's very easy to keep going. It's as if you've built up some good momentum.

So right now, if you have something your procrastinating with, just get started right now. Open up whatever program needs to be opened, open whichever file is necessary, and just go. Trust me, it's not as bad as it seems.

(Also +10 cool points to whoever spotted the Easter Egg in this post's image.)

This is the main reason I haven't been around lately, as I had to dedicate all of my time to the game. Either way, I felt I've rambled on enough, and I really don't want to go on about this anymore. This isn't what you guys come by here to read, so let's move on, shall we?

Over the next week I'll slowly be getting myself back on track. Posts will start coming out like they used to and I'll begin work on all sorts of new Wordpress themes for you guys. I may also play with the look of the site, just to optimize it a tad. Nothing like a re-design or anything.

For those of you wondering about my WIP Wordpress theme WPPaper, I'm going to be putting it on the back burner for now. It's been so long since I touched it that I don't feel like trying to get myself back into the state-of-mind I was in in May when I started work on it. It's just I want to start something new, something fresh.

Anyway guys, if you have possibly unsubscribed from the site or totally forgot about it, get ready, because it's coming back full steam!

It seems every day I'm seeing people in my Twitter feed update with tweets about how they're reading a post called "Is Facebook and Twitter the New Way to Blog?". Let me answer that question with a single word - no.

Let me give any of you that are confused a quick lesson. Twitter is a small social networking site where you can stalk keep updated with anyone that you want. Think of it as a giant chatroom where everyone is invited.

Facebook is another social networking site where people can catch up with old and current friends and family alike. Normal things to do here consist of commenting on eachothers pictures and posting funny videos of yourself and your friends.

Blogging, on the other had, is the act of owning your own website that you update frequently with posts that are normally quite lengthy. Even ForTheLose.org is a blog. A few months ago, if you asked me what a blog is, I'd say it was basically an online diary. Now, I've broadened that definition to even include sites that are dedicated to a certain topic which is authored by one or two people. ForTheLose.org now falled under the category of a "blog" in my head.

Anyway, look over these three definitions of the terms Twitter, Facebook, and blogging. How does anyone get off comparing them? It's like comparing apples and oranges - you just can't do it.

They may all be a form of "social networking", but that's about it.

Anyway, firstly, let me quickly address the point of there not being much activity around here lately. For the last month of my senior year of high school, students are allowed to take on a personal project with friends and complete it while not having to attend school. This is what was eating up all of my time for the past month, being that most days I left my house at 9am and didn't get back until 11pm.

Even though school is over for me (graduated high school about a week ago), we're still not done working on the project, so I may still be a bit tied up because of it.

Another major conflict in my schedule is the fact that I just had myself some surgery action on my left foot. If you follow me on Twitter, you probably already know what's up. It's nothing major, but since the surgery involved bone and tendon reconstruction, the pain is just a tad bit excruciating if I even think about attempting to crutch myself out of bed here. Also to add onto that, I'm going to be doped up on pain pills for the next few weeks as well, so on top of all the pain and immobility, I'll also be tired and drowsy most of the time.

What I'm trying to get at is a decent excuse for me not posting like I normally would for the next few weeks again. I hope you guys can understand that

Since I don't have much to do now, I should be able to settle down and make some major headway on my upcoming Wordpress theme, WP Paper. I'm really excited for it and can't wait to get it out to you guys.

Anyway, that's about all that I can come up with for this weekly review. I'll be talkin' to you guys again soon!

I'll try to keep the story as brief as possible. One day while I was browsing my email, I came across a message from one of the good ol' readers from my site here. I open it up and to my surprise, I see that the message is alerting me that someone has stolen my Wordpress theme "Rock Solid", modified it slightly, removed the sponsored links from the footer, and is now redistributing it under their name.

This person was the so-called "professional" web designer Jeremy Buff over at JeremyBuff.com. I proceeded to comment on his blog and email him asking him to remove the theme from his site, as he doesn't have the right to claim ownership or redistribute it under his name. He responded my IP-banning me from his website and replying back via email that he doesn't know what I'm talking about. He claimed something along the lines of him finding a "framework" that looked similar to Rock Solid on a website he couldn't remember the name of.

We emailed each other back and forth a few times after this. He kept up his charade of not knowing what the hell I'm on about. He actually started up a new story, and now he was accusing me of stealing the theme from him! (For comedic purposes I'll tell you guys what his story was. What he told me was that he had actually finished the theme in December of '08 but never publicly released it until late March of '09. He claims that I stole the files from his server and released a modified version before he did.)

Anyway, since I was obviously getting nowhere with this guy, I went and contacted his website hosting provider. I sat down and wrote up a pretty long and detailed complaint against Jeremy and the fact that he was stealing content from my site. His web host and I had a few emails back and forth before I was finally contacted by the designated agent for claims of copyright infringement notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

I had to officially make a few statements back to this guy that basically said that, under penalty of law, I claim this Wordpress theme as my own creation and that Jeremy has no right to claim ownership of it.

After about two weeks of back and forth claims (Jeremy was still holding true to the story that I stole "Rock Solid" from him), Jeremy had his website taken down. I'm pretty sure it was offline for about 2-3 days. (I think the final nail in the coffin for him was the fact that I provided the Photoshop .PSD files for "Rock Solid" to the agent. Pretty much proof that I'm the original owner.)

Ever since then, I haven't seen a trace of my theme anywhere on his site.

I guess that whole 2-month ordeal ended up working out in my favor. Whew...

How to React to Stolen Content

What did I learn throughout this whole crazy thing? Stay mature. Unlike Jeremy, I kept my emails professional. I represented myself as a respectable person, kept my grammar and punctuation perfect, and never referred to Jeremy as "that jackass" or something in that nature (as much as I wanted to).

It's sad to say, but this is something you have to expect with online content. I mean, it's just too easy to steal. When you do discover something of yours that has been stolen, follow these steps:

1. Firstly, find a way to contact the person that stole your work.
2. Politely (but assertively) tell them to remove the content.
3. Remember to always keep a professional tone, no matter how the other person acts.
4. If they don't respond or don't take the content in question down, contact their website hosting provider
5. (Find the host of any website using this tool)
6. Take the time to write up a professional email to them, claiming copyright infringement / Ask for a DMCA notice against the person in question
7. Follow all of the instructions and try to provide as much evidence as possible to the agent
8. If all works out well, everything should be resolved shortly

I hope you'll never have to go through this, but if you do, just follow the steps above. Even though a DMCA notice isn't enough to legally have the thief remove the stolen content, it usually scares them enough that they take it down anyway.

We have:

1. Learned of a good way to come up with niche ideas
2. Filtered the ideas to come up with a niche with high demand and low supply
3. Used Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find a perfect .com domain

The obvious next thing to do is to set up a website. Now, I'm not going to go into much detail here, but here are the basics of what you want to do. First, set up Wordpress on your host and point your domain at it. Then, for the time being, just write up a quick paragraph on the home page describing your website. Also include a link to a wikipedia that is the closest to the niche of your site. (I do this because it helps Google categorize the site faster.)

At this point, you're going to want to get Google to find your site, so go and submit it to Digg or something.

The next step is to get a custom design on your site. (Either that or a very nice and simple free theme.) As you can see on my MyBombayCat.com site, I went with a custom theme. (For those of you wondering, I designed, sliced, and coded this theme in just 1 day. I can work quickly if I really want to, I guess, lol.) Since this is a small article-based site and not a blog or an ordinary website, be sure to keep the design clean and very simple. Be sure to have spots for the many various types of advertisements, as that's how you're going to make money from the site.

These types of advertisements include, but are not limited to:

• Google Adsense (CPC ads)
• Clickbank (affiliate networks)
• Kontera (inline text ads)
• TextLinkAds (textual ads)
• Adsdaq (CPM ads)
• Selling ad space directly

If you take a look at my Bombay cat site, you will see that I have two different Clickbank ad slots in the sidebar. The first is just some textual ads, and the second is a custom graphic I made. I also have some Kontera ads running as well as two slots of CPC ads on the main page. Notice how the design still is clean and doesn't look crappy or spammy at all?

Start Writing

Once the site is all set up and monetized, get some articles on there. Don't whine. Just sit down, take a few hours out of your busy day, and just type. If you really put your mind to it, you'll be good to go in one or two days. I recommend you have a good 10 or so articles with 400 - 900 words each.

Important - Be sure that the article's title uses one or two of the keyphrases you discovered when using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool from step two. Also be sure that you use some of the keyphrases (or keywords) in the body of the article aswell. Putting the keyphrases in bold or in heading tags puts emphasis on them in the search engines. Be sure not to oversaturate your article with keywords though, as that is considered spam. This leads us into the next section of this niche site building process...

SEO All the Pages

SEO stands for search engine optimization. The better each page's SEO-job is, the better the ranking in Google. (Read: more traffic for you) The best way to SEO page is by doing the following:

1. Each page has a relevant title that uses a targeted keyword or two
2. Each page also has a short, detailed description & keywords meta tag
3. The title of the article is a typical search phrase, but is still human-friendly
4. The body of the article is long and has a good amount of keywords and keyphrases, but does not appear to be spammy (it reads well and doesn't sound "robotic")

In that last point, some of you may be confused by the word "robotic." Let me give a quick example:

Good: The Bombay is a type of cat that is normally covered in all black fur. It is very friendly with humans and is also very talkative.
Bad: The Bombay is a type of cat that is normally covered in all black fur. The Bombay cat is very friendly with humans and Bombay cats are also very talkative.

The type of wording in the second example, if repeated throughout the body of the article, can be marked as spam by search engines, and thus will not rank well in search results.

Stick to a Schedule & Keep Notes

Once you've done all of the above work, you're basically done touching the actual site. The rest of the work is done outside the pages of your website. This is called off-page SEO. Let me just let you guys in on what I did.

For exactly 2 weeks straight (no breaks, no procrastination) I did the following each day:

• Listed my site in at least 10 free directories using this service
• Used article marketing to get 2-3 links from sites like EzineArticles.com
• Looked for and contacted small websites that were related to Bombay cats

Important - Something else I did throughout these two weeks was went and edited a Wikipedia entry on Bombay cats. I added a good amount of new content and also dropped my link in the External Links section. The moderator's have Okay'd and and boy, am I glad I did that. I get a good 10+ unique visits from that one link alone a day. I definitely recommend you give this strategy a try.

The goal of these two weeks was to get a steady input of links from various websites pointing to my Bombay cat site. It is very important that the anchors of these links are high-traffic keywords such as "bombay cats" or "bombay cat pictures". This way, Google begins to recognize my site as an authority in the Bombay cat niche.

Another thing that I learned with this project was that it really helps to keep track of the stats of your website. I had an excel spreadsheet that I added to every 3 or 4 days with updated information about my website. It included stuff like:

• How much money I spent
• How much money I earned
• Amount of daily uniques/hits
• Number of pages listed in Google (it fluctuates over time, this is completely normal)
• How I rank for the top 5-10 keywords related to my niche (goal is page 1 or 2 for every keyword)
• Number of incoming links from other websites (found using Yahoo Site Explorer)

It's really motivational to watch as your stats for page rankings in Google steadily rise at a nice pace over the days. It's probably that motivation that kept me going throughout those two weeks because, trust me, it gets really boring. But hey, it's been months since I did any work at all on the site and I'm still getting about 100 unique visitors a day.

I'm now planning on selling this site to make a nice payday for myself. Eh, I may even keep it and try to monetize it in a better way. Who knows?

Anyway, that's about it from me for today guys. I hoped you learned something. Good luck with your niche sites! Let me know how they work out.

Hey guys. Sorry for the big break there between part 1 and part 2 of this series, I'm a bit busy outside of the internet right now. Anyway, lets get to discussing niche sites.

In part one, I gave a brief introduction to what this series is going to be about. I also explained what a niche site is as well as gave a link to one of my successful mini-sites. Check it out and refer back to it as I go on in this post - http://MyBombayCat.com.

How I Choose a Niche

Alright, let's get started. A niche is basically a "topic". In my last post, I used the example of "Sports > Baseball > Baseball Betting" as a decent niche. See, the smaller and more-focused the niche, the better your odds of ranking well in Google are (which should really be your number 1 goal, as that's how you'll be getting traffic).

Every site is a niche site, really. Take ForTheLose.org for example. This is basically a "Wordpress" niche website. Notice how if you search for "Wordpress themes" in Google, however, you won't even catch a glimpse of ForTheLose.org. You know why? Because the "Wordpress" niche is huge. There's really no way I can get to the first or second page on Google with that kind of search phrase.

For this exact reason, you want to find a small niche. For my Bombay cats website, I got the idea from, well, my cat. In all honesty, the idea to create MyBombayCat.com came when I saw my cat walk into my bedroom. After doing some research (which I'll go into detail with shortly), I found it to be a perfect niche to create a site in. The hierarchy of my site can go "Pets > Cats > Bombay Cats".

You can also get ideas from places like Amazon.com. (Bare with me here.) Go to Amazon.com and head over to something like the Best Selling Books, choose a category, and just read some of the book titles. Odds are if they're selling well in book-form, there's also a demand for the same topic online. Do some quick research and you'll have a perfect idea in no time.

How to Tell if a Niche is Profitable

Before I go into detail here, let's go over just a few of the methods you can use to receive a profit off of your websites:

• Adsense (CPC ads)
• Konera (in-text ads)
• Clickbank (affiliate markets)
• Sell your own products (ebooks, etc)

What do all of these methods have in common? That's right, they all require substantial amounts of traffic first. I think the best way to start off this short lesson is with an example first.

ForTheLose.org

A "Wordpress"-niche website.

• Search for "wordpress" in Google - ForTheLose.org nowhere in sight
• Search for "wordpress themes" in Google - ForTheLose.org nowhere in sight
• Search for "web design" in Google - ForTheLose.org nowhere in sight

MyBombayCat.com

A "Bombay cat"-niche website.

• Search for "bombay cat" in Google - MyBombayCat.com fifth result on first page
• Search for "bombay cat pictures" in Google - MyBombayCat.com sixth result on first page
• Search for "british bombay cat" in Google - MyBombayCat.com fifth result on first page

So what's with this big difference between these two websites and how they each rank extremely different for their niche keywords in Google searches? The simple answer is because the "Wordpress" niche is huge and way too competitive to rank well in Google for, while the "Bombay cat" niche is small and a LOT less competitive.

Alright Ralph, how do you know when the niche you've selected is profitable and not already saturated?

Simple. Firstly, head over to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This application is usually for people trying to enlist in the Google Adwords program. What we're going to do, however, is find just how popular this niche of yours is.

Once the page loads, put in a keyword, fill in the CAPTCHA code, and click "get keyword ideas". In my case, I put in "bombay cats" as my keyword.

Once the list of keywords is generated, sort them by Global Monthly Search Volume. What you're looking at is this number here. Anything over 600 - 1,500+ searches per month is a perfect keyword. (This means that this keyword is searched for that many times a month, averagely.)

You want about 5-10 keywords here before you go onto step two. Step two is relatively simple. Since you now know these keywords have a demand, you must now check whether or not they already have a supply. (Hopefully not.)

Now, head over to Google.com and put in each of your keywords one by one. If the keyword is more than one word, surround it with quotes. This is very important. What you're looking for on the Google search results page is how many pages Google has found surrounding that keyword.

In my case, I'll go ahead and Google "bombay cats". This is what I see:

Results 1 - 10 of about 15,500 for "bombay cats". (0.19 seconds)

The key number you're looking for here is 15,500. If this number is anywhere between 10,000 - 17,000 and the keyword has averagely about 1,200 searches per month (determined by the Google Adwords Keyword Tool from before), then that keyword is ripe for domination.

In my case, "bombay cats" returned about 4,400 searches per month with only 15,500 competing pages in Google. Perfect!

The goal here is to get about 5-7 keywords that fit into this range of numbers. Once you have them, you're basically guaranteed a successful niche site.

Buying a Domain Name

This section is very brief. Once you have all of your keywords and keyphrases selected out of Google, it's time to find a domain name. A perfect domain is roughly based upon these rules:

• One or two words (not including a "the", etc...)
• Preferably a .com
• No dashes
• Includes a keyword

Let's take a look at the MyBombayCat.com domain name for a second, shall we? Does it fit all of the qualifications from above? Why yes, yes it does. Perfect, no?

And there we have it. Part 2 of how I build my niche websites is all done for you guys. In the next few days I'll have part 3 up where I discuss, well, the rest of the process. This includes things like setting up Wordpress, designing a unique theme for the website, and more. Stay tuned!

In this three-part post series, I'm going to be giving you guys an overview of what I did to create this website from the very beginning stages. Now, I'm sure there are things that I did that are wrong or could be done in a better way, but I really don't care at this point. I'm just writing this today to give inspiration to some of you out there that want to create your own small mini-site.

Firstly, Why Make Niche Sites?

Well, before I get to that, let me quickly explain what a "niche" is. "Sports" is a very general niche. "Baseball" is a significantly smaller niche that branches off of "Sports". We can take it even farther and go down to "Baseball Betting". You get the idea, right? A niche site is basically a small (usually article-based) site that is focused around a small topic.

Anyway, you may be asking what the purpose of niche sites are. It's simply to make money, on most occasions. You can either throw something like Adsense on them and watch the money roll in, or even possibly a CPM or an affiliate network. As long as the site gets a decent amount of traffic, odds are that it'll make money somehow.

Other people create a successful niche site and then turn around to flip it for a profit to someone else on webmaster forums like Sitepoint. If the niche site has a unique product associated with it (an eBook made just for the site, for example) and it sells decently, the flip will be extremely profitable for the seller.

My Niche Site

So, let's get to my niche site here, shall we? Go check it out for yourself over at MyBombayCat.com. If you can't guess from the domain alone, the site is about Bombay cats. (For those of you that don't know, I myself own a Bombay cat, hence my inspiration for this site.) It's a very simple site, as you can see.

Throughout this three-part series, I'll explain to you things like how I managed a steady flow of traffic leading to 4,700 unique visitors in under 3 months, how I got to rank on Google's page number 1 for terms like "bombay cat" and "bombay cats", and how I plan to make some good money off of this site in the future.

Tomorrow we'll begin with how I get my ideas for niche sites, how I go about choosing which niche is ripe for domination, and how to design a simple niche-site theme for Wordpress. Stay tuned!