Many people often wonder how they can make their own WordPress theme so that it can help them make money online. What people are commonly seeking is a WordPress theme that has all the needed elements packed into it so that it allows for a very high conversion of clicks with AdSense and or a high conversion on affiliate based products being marketing on the blog.

Jarret Cade wrote me an email today asking some really good questions that I just had to share with everyone here on my blog. I asked Jarret if he wouldn’t mind me posting this and he said it would be cool. So here is a copy of the email that Jarret sent to me and below it is my response back to him.

Hey Garry,

I just recently purchased a domain name and I plan to setup a WP blog on it.

I want to use AdSense as the main source of income and well I figured you would be the best person that I know to ask

I am wondering about the ad unit placements. I am not quite sure exactly how I am going to layout the blog because I wanted to talk with you and get your expert opinion on what you find works the best. I am most likely going to be developing my own theme for the blog and I think I am going to go with something around 1000 pixels wide. If I do go that wide I may end up using a 3 column layout or maybe just 2, I don’t really know yet.

Is there a general layout or placement that seems to work best? Or is it one of those things where you have to build the site and then determine where the ads should be placed for maximum effect? I know that it requires testing to find out the absolute best position but I also know that you have been dealing with this long enough to at least give me a good head start.

Hi Jarret,

First let me tackle the simple question, width of your WordPress theme. Some people go fluid others go fixed width. I’ll not go into reasons in this email as to why some people favor one over the other, but rather just talk about the fixed width option. For me, all my blogs are designed with a 985px width. I am unsure if you are go any wider than that without causing your 1024×768 viewers to have to scroll right or left. For me, I always use 985px just to be safe, plus it still gives me plenty of room in the body as well as plenty of room in the sidebar.

Typically my sidebar is 300px in width. I do this so that I can put a 300×250 AdSense unit inside it or a banner from an affiliate program. Some times my sidebar is 250px in width; however very rarely do I make my sidebar less than 250px. In a 985px width WordPress theme, typically my body section of the template is 500px to 550px in width. The difference in numbers between the body and sidebar commonly equate to extra padding, margins and styling that I apply to my themes.

For my niche blogs — the blogs that make me money, unlike this one you are reading — I always use a two column design (body and one sidebar positioned on the right).  My themes are very simple and that one of the keys to my success. I don’t use a lot of plugins — aksimet and Google Sitemaps are typically the only ones — and I don’t crap up my HTML and PHP code with a lot of useless junk.  For me, it’s all about the SEM’ed content that generates the excellent Google Ads and funnels the traffic from the SERPs and it’s all about the SEO’ed Theme that aids in my content getting properly indexed and ranked.

Typically I use a 300×250 directly under the Post Title. Some times I wrap the code in div tags and float it to the left. Other times I float the ad unit to the right. Recently in an experimentation with David Cooley, a friend of mine, I have been experimenting with simply keeping the content below the AdSense unit all together. You’ll have to play around with it and see what works best for you.

Recently too — sorry David bringing you up again — I have been experimenting with very minimal themes compared to my, as some people would call it, “my famous design” themes. So far, I am very impressed with the results of going minimal. When I mean minimal, I mean just that… no CSS, no bells and whistles, just straight up monetized content on a white background with black text with blue links.

If you have a question that you would like me to answer live on my blog, simply contact me with your question. Do what Jarret did and provide me with a very nice email that fully explains your situation. If you do so, then I just might include it on my blog.

For those who don’t know, I am actually offering to build you your very own Niche WordPress Blog for free. This includes free WordPress install, free SEO on a theme and five free professionally written articles based off researched keywords and phrases on your chosen niche.