I’ve witnessed many selfless acts of goodwill by bloggers over the years, so it’s not a surprise to run across it again, but it certainly is a pleasure.

Kate at Blogging For The Money will give anyone who asks free advice about making money with blogs. And no, she didn’t request links back as payment; there’s no catch.

Out of the five blogs I run, this is the only one through which I don’t hope to make profit by blogging. That might sound like an odd confession, given the blog’s name, but I’m already making money with my other blogs. I don’t look to this one to generate one red cent.

Pay it forward, blog style?

So, if you need advice, simply Ask Kate. I already have, and received my answer.

Thanks!

“Never explain: your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe you anyway”.

I loathed attempted explanations as a girl of five and now at fifty find nothing has changed. Unfortunately, now that this space exists a need to clarify why and for whom has arisen.

Understanding why many internet applications want to pigeonhole sites doesn’t help with the why and how of marketing niches, however. Categorizing for the sake of reader’s ease of use is logical; someone seeking a blog written by and for IBS sufferers won’t glean any useful information if pointed to an internet marketing blog.

Since I want to advertise here at some point, I went looking for some information.

Now, I don’t want to say that most of what came up on screen was over my head, but I tend toward simple. Thus a sigh of relief when a search revealed the benefits of declaring an authentic niche at Authentic Promotion. I liked this bit very much:

Your niche market is the place in which you have a natural competitive advantage because you occupy the right place in the right ecosystem.

I appreciate the simplicity of the explanation; and in one sentence!

I still don’t have a niche, nor am I completely sure I need one. Understanding does not equal success. What if I swing wildly from menopause to WordPress themes and over to fedora wearing iguanas? How much would that complicate matters for advertisers? Is there -could there be- a niche for the ‘everything’ blog?

A fool for color, I’ve mangled and discarded more WordPress designs than I can count. Every time my mood shifts so does the need for a different palette. Which is why I like my current template: lots of different hues soothe my need for change.

This is a list of the tools I use for color. One never knows when one may need color help, heck, even scrapbooks are going digital!

ColorSchemer
Definitely the first site I hit for color.

ColorToy
Flash based, it generates color schemes based on your values or randomly.

4096 Color Wheel
This can be used in different ways, by hovering or inputting values.

VisiBone Color Lab
Click on a web-safe color in the palette on the left and choices come up on the right.

ColorJack Sphere
Visualizer that works much a couple of the others, but I like the schemes.

Web safe and named color chart at Mandarin.
Sometimes you just need to see them, ya know?

9rules Daily Color Scheme
Check out the archived schemes!

kuler
Adobe’s awesome color schemer.

TrayColor
This handy little utility has proved invaluable over the years. The only tool on the list that must be downloaded to use, it ‘grabs’ a color. Any color on the screen. The code is never updated because it’s perfect as is.

Have a color tool? Fuel my addiction and send me a link, k?

I lambasted WordPress theme designers for the negative things some of them do, so to make up for that here is a list of six I believe do a wonderful job. These artists all put out quality work for free, which is commendable, especially since after a release they are subjected to 75 comments from yahoos who think it could have been better done another way.

1. WPDesigner
Small Potato has consistently released great themes for over a year. Regrettably for us, he’s making some personal changes and will be selling the site… I don’t know if the themes will go with him, so if you want to see them, go now.

2. BlogOhBlog
Each theme topnotch work and Jai continually improves on the more popular ones, like BOB… v3 is in the works.

3. Design Disease
Home of the popular Illacrimo theme, as well as five others, every one of them is well constructed.

4. Deziner Folio
Themes, gradients, style and a gallery, all for free. Can’t beat that with a stick.

5. Kaushal Sheth
Fifty two themes to choose from, and all of them structurally sound.

6. Sadish
Sadish creates “useful and beautiful WordPress Themes”. I couldn’t agree more.

There’s no reason to put up with sloppy code when people like these are creating for us.

WordPress theme designers are a talented lot, and luckily for us many of them put their work out for the general public to use at no or little cost.

I’ve been messing around with the fruit of these people’s efforts for four years now, and while I truly appreciate the tremendous effort that goes into designing a theme, I have some nits to pick with a few designers. So, here is my list of grievances. On the bright side, it’s short.

Bad or incomplete code. Download the zip and they’ve left out a page like comments.php, or totally disregarded the laws of browser physics and tried to layer seventeen backgrounds because they think it looks good. Just because one browser can pull it off doesn’t mean the others can as well.

Hubris. Designers who put their name in 20 different places in the theme, and when you try to remove one instance your entire site goes down until you delete the thing in cPanel. Isn’t a notation in the css and a blub in the footer enough? Especially when it’s listed with three other people/sites who ’sponsored’ the theme and now we’re supposed to ’sponsor’ these people as well?

Stolen themes with no credit given of the original designer/theme. It amazes me how often this happens. I’m not talking about cherry picking an idea here and there, but blatant theft. Even if I’ve manipulated a design until it looks totally different, I always leave the original designer’s name intact. It’s just right.

Embedded code and text that doesn’t belong. This ranges from the designer’s meta tags to their ads sprinkled liberally throughout the sidebar, header and footer. Flickr I would expect, but I don’t want to have to go through a theme with a fine toothed comb to find hidden stuff that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Themes that are never updated. Once placed out in the general population, the designer never touches it again to update template tags or iron out bugs. Doesn’t answer emails or post comments; figures he’s ‘done enough’. While I can understand letting a theme fall by the wayside after a year or two, suspending support immediately is simply wrong.

Some may think I’ve no right to cast stones, as I’m not a designer and I’ve never constructed a theme from scratch; I rely on those more talented to do the work. That’s fine; this is simply my opinion.

Next up: some who do it right!