Some of the most powerful and successful web sites in the world are now run through the power of WordPress. Sure, it’s easy enough to install WordPress on your server and get a blog up and running, but if you want to get anywhere, you will need to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer, such as custom themes and plugins.

AppThemes is one of the top web sites and resources for when it comes time to finding quality themes and plugins to transform your WordPress driven site into the power house business or site of your dreams. The difference between AppThemes and other premium WordPress themes services, is that AppThemes adds novel functionality and are fully functional web apps. In short, you are getting a lot more than a WordPress themes, but also a content management solution catered toward specific site niches and tasks.

AppThemes WordPress Themes

Personally, I’m addicted to creating web sites and blogs with killer site designs. I can spend hours looking at all of the different WordPress themes available and what some of the amazing designs and features of each offer. AppThemes has their own arsenal of custom designs WordPress themes that were created with specific niche design, tasks and features all built in to create a one stop solution for whatever you need. If you’ve ever wanted to create your own classifieds, job board or coupon site and didn’t want to pay the thousands of dollars for a custom programmed site, AppThemes has a solution for you. You can see five of their different themes below, and what each represents.

Vantage (NEW) – Transform your site into a professional business directory.
ClassiPress – A classifieds ads application to quickly run your own classifieds website.
JobRoller – A job board platform for running your own online recruitment business.
Clipper – Turns your WordPress site into a fully featured coupon codes site.
QualityControl – An issue tracking platform for project / help desk management

AppThemes WordPress Showcase

It’s always great to look at all of the designs and features available from the default themes, but it’s also extremely important to know how customizable the themes actually are. Most people will buy a custom theme and want to bring it to life with their own design to match their logo or add some additional features and uniqueness. Through the AppThemes Showcase you will be able to see many sites out there that are currently using AppThemes WordPress Themes, but mainly how they have created and customized the themes with their own look and feel. This is key for anyone who is looking for some new design and inspiration.

Make Money and Save with AppThemes

Way back in the day I made a killing in the free stuff and coupon niche. I actually wrote about the power and potential to make a lot of money in the coupon niche back in 2009. It seems like there is just more money to be make with a coupon driven site year after year. It’s all about creating quality content and monetizing your site efficiently. AppThemes currently has the “Clipper” theme that makes it easy for anyone to setup a blog and start their own coupon site right away. The theme can be setup with your own affiliate codes, data feeds and ad placements for Google Adsense of affiliate banners. Once this is setup you will just need to focus on creating a following for your site, which isn’t that hard through Facebook, since everyone is looking to save money with coupons and get the latest alerts and downloads online.

You can individually purchase the Clipper theme or access all of the themes AppThemes has to offer. Each theme starts out a $99 each, or you can join their AppThemes Club Standard package, which costs only $249 and gives you access to all of their themes and 12 months of updates. Save even more by using coupon code “ZACJOHNSON” to save 15% on any AppThemes purchase right now.

One of the key aspects to making money online and surviving the continuing changes in the market, is to make sure you cover all of your bases. As you may have noticed, I have added some new contextual / in text advertising on the blog within the past couple weeks. You can tell the in text advertising from regular text links, in that the contextual links have a double green underline vs. the traditional blue links. This method of contextual link advertising is referred to as “in text advertising” and is being managed by InfoLinks.

While at BlogWorld in Las Vegas, I was invited to a very nice dinner with John Chow and the InfoLinks team. In addition to having an excellent dinner at Top Chef Masters’ Rick Moonen’s RM Seafood at Mandalay Bay, we also went for a helicopter tour over the city of Las Vegas. Long story short, this allowed me to spend a lot of time talking with Mike Glover (VP, InfoLinks) and the rest of the InfoLinks team and how we could further monetize the blog, while helping others make more money in the process. Sounded like a great plan, so we finally implemented the links on the site a couple weeks ago.

What is In Text Advertising, and How Does it Work?

In Text Advertising isn’t anything new, but more sites are using it to make more money from their websites now more than ever. Just like the concept Google Adsense was built upon, which is providing advertisements based on user content, in text advertising does the same thing, but a few levels deeper and without the wasted ad space. Instead of placing banner ads on your web site, using in text advertising with a service like InfoLinks, allows you to generate revenue off content you’ve already written. Any keywords that you’ve used that are targeted to an advertiser will then be shown as a contextual ad or in text advertising. When the user clicks or hovers over the link, a video or web site preview will appear.

Watch the short two minute video before for a quick review of how you can make money with in text advertising and a simple visual explanation of how everything works.

What I Really Like About InfoLinks

Besides the fact that everyone from the company is just awesome to work with and go out of their way to keep you happy, the InfoLinks service is also great. One of my main concerns was that I would have a massive amount of contextual links spread through out the blog, which would limit the user experience. In the admin area, you can easily change the settings for your account, which allows you to show 1-12 contextual links per page. My settings are currently at 4 links per page. You can also change color, underline linking display and advertisement categories.

Running the ZacJohnson.com blog, I continually have advertisers and networks contacting me on a daily basis trying to buy advertising on the site or forming new partnerships. As the demand increases, so do the prices. I was never open to the idea of just throwing contextual advertising on the blog to make more money, but was able to come up with a deal that works for both myself, InfoLinks and my readers. Whether you have a small or large web site, InfoLinks wants your business and traffic. During the next few months, I will do a case study on InfoLinks’ performance and how you can better monetize your web site or blog by using In Text Advertising.

I can assure you that InfoLinks will go above and beyond any other “in text advertising” network out there. Just try them out and compare your results to the competition! Your success is their success! – Join InfoLinks

InfoLinks Has Massive Exposure

While some of you may not have heard of InfoLinks, they are definitely establishing a name for themselves in the contextual marketing and in text advertising niche. With so much competition in the contextual and in text advertising, being able to secure such high traffic and branded sites is not easy. After doing some research in the in text advertising niche, I was browsing top level sites and saw a few of them running InfoLinks as their contextual provider. There are also a few very high end sites that you will see joining the InfoLinks network in the coming weeks. This is just another example to demonstrate how InfoLinks go above and beyond the competition to offer the best support and payouts.

Get Started with InfoLinks

As I continue to use InfoLinks on this site and others, I will post updates and tips for the best ways to monetize your traffic with in text advertising. I mostly covered how you can make money by placing in text advertising on your site, but you can also advertise with InfoLinks and get your ads on the massive network of traffic their system has access to.

Joining InfoLinks is free and can easily be setup within just a few minutes. Throw their ads up on your site, and if you aren’t seeing the results you’d like to see, contact Mike Glover and he’ll make it work for you!

Join InfoLinks In Text Advertising

Mention Google Adsense to anyone that is making decent money online, and they will probably have something negative to say about it. It’s true… Adsense doesn’t get the love it deserves. As much as everyone loves to hate on the thought of running Google Adsense on their site and losing site visitors for pennies, Google Adsense did help pave the way to online advertising and affiliate marketing. It’s also safe to say, Google Adsense is the “easiest” way to make money with a web site.

Not only is Google Adsense the easiest way for anyone to make money with an established web site, but it’s also become a huge favorite in the blogging space. The thing about blogging, is so many people are blogging simply to blog, not many people are blogging for money or know how to make money. It’s easy enough for a blogger to copy and paste a code and maybe make a few bucks with Google Adsense.

One the other hand, making blogs that are strictly used for building tight niche sites and monetizing them with Google Adsense is another issue. There are literally billions of different tight niche sites that you could build a mini blog about and make a few dollars a day to a few hundred dollars a day (using Google Adsense) if you get indexed into Google, have decent content and the necessary backlinks.

Whether you are just looking for a new blog theme and would like to try out Google Adsense, or you want to take a stab at the mini blog / Google Adsense game, I’ve compiled a list of the top Adsense Ready WordPress Themes available around the web. All of the themes I have listed here are free to download, and I’ve also listed a few other useful resource sites at the bottom.

Golod Adsense Ready Theme:
A 3 column AdSense ready theme, which leaves a lot of room for customization and improvement with it’s header, social widgets and right/left columns.

Live Demo | Download | Template Home

Prosense Adsense Ready Theme:
A very simplistic 3 column AdSense ready theme that comes in three different colors. Easy user navigation and not forcing Adsense down the user’s throat, makes this a good choice among other Adsense ready themes.

ProSense | Download Prosense | ProSense Gray | ProSense Blue

Blueiz Adsense Ready Theme:
A simple design with a 2-3 column layout, but the proper ad placement and content, it won’t look like your typical bland Adsense ready theme.

Live Demo | Download

Monetizing the Web Adsense Ready Theme:
A very clean design which blends content and Adsense nicely. Leaderboard, skyscraper, regular banner ads and and content area Adsense spot all availalbe with this theme.

Live Demo | Download | Template Home

SEOMaxAds Adsense Ready Theme:
This theme pack comes with 16 different themes for Google Adsense monetization. From the screen shot below you can clearly see how monetized the site is for Adsense placement as it’s right in the users face.

Live Demo | Download

Other Adsense Ready WordPress Theme Sources

42 Adsense Ready WordPress Themes Optimized For Monetization

18 Adsense Optimized WordPress Themes to Maximize your Contextual Ad Earnings

The Ultimate List Of Adsense Ready WordPress Themes

There is actually a large amount of Adsense Ready wordpress themes out there, but the few I selected have the best layouts and color schemes. If you know how to code a bit, you can easily download any of these themes and throw together a decent looking blog, but keeping the same Google Adsense concept in mind.

One of the biggest factors for the success of a blog, is how many comments you can average per post. It’s not all about what you have to say, but how other interact and leave their feedback as well. A new wordpress plugin called “Highligher“, allows you to highlight any content and on a blog and leave a comment on it.

You can see the plugin in action on the screenshot below from the Highlighter.com web site. Also, congrats to the UBD team for securing such an awesome domain name… wonder what they paid for it!

The “Highlighter” wordpress plugin is free to download. In addition to leaving comments, you can also share via Facebook, Twitter and through Email. Simply highlight any text on a blog (with the plugin active) and the plugin will show what options you have, which are to leave a comment or share with others. It’s a pretty cool concept, but I think it would take a lot of training and awareness to get blog readers to catch on to the concept.

Once you download the Highlighter plugin, you have a lot of customization and settings which can easily be accessed through WordPress. There is also some features for adding to your mailing lists through Aweber and other providers, managing comments and ways to change the highlight colors, look and feel. Unique Blog Designs is also running a promotion where you can win a free Apple iPad if you just blog about their latest plugin.

Download Highlighter Plugin.

We already know that blogs are a winning formula for any business, but you can’t simply expect to throw a blog up there and hope for success. Instead, you need to focus on producing quality content, then leveraging social media, seo and wordpress plugins to make that magic happen. A new wordpress plugin called Keyword Winner will soon be released from my friend and fellow blogger Daniel Lew.

What Can Keyword Winner Do For You?

The end goal of this wordpress plugin, is to get you more traffic and better rankings in the search engines. How is does this, is by helping you with writing your blog post titles and other key points to getting that extra edge in the search engines.

With so many of us focusing on paid advertising, it’s always important to never forget about the BILLIONS of free targeted traffic that is out there every day in organic search results. Keyword Winner can help you get there.

While the product hasn’t officially launched for sale yet, many beta testers and bloggers are seeing the first results of what Keyword Winner can do. To give a better idea on what Keyword Winner can do for you, check out this promo video.

Make Money with Keyword Winner

Right now Daniel Lew is doing an amazing job of getting pre-launch promotion for his Keyword Winner wordpress plugin, and he’s still looking for more! The launch is going to be big and many people will be ready to buy when it becomes available. This leave a big window of opportunity open for you to cash in. Join the Keyword Winner JV program and you will earn 50% commissions on top of a bunch of bonus prizes.

Be sure to check it out and sign up to the mailing list where Daniel will show you how others are already creating review sites and getting ready to cash in at launch time.