Last week, a friend of mine asked me if I thought it was possible to get a good website design for less than the $1500 she’d been quoted by a local designer. I get this question all the time (or variations on it, like “I can’t afford you, but I still want a nice website until I can”), and my answer usually starts with that annoying standby, “It depends,” and goes from there.

Since I know people are interested in finding ways to cut costs when starting out, I thought I’d take a few minutes and outline a cheaper alternative to hiring me or another full-service blog/web development firm. This “how to” post is also part of the “Crowdsourcing Business How To’s” extravaganza at Sparkplugging.
Premium blog design is not for everybody
In case you think I’m nuts (or suspiciously unselfish, which hardly ever happens in the real world), I’ll start by addressing the obvious question: why would I tell you how to not hire me?

Simple. My services are not right for everyone!

Don’t get me wrong—if you and I are a match made in heaven, you will get tremendous value out of working with me. If you’re an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, or represent a business, your investment in my services will generate a great return. My excellent code quality, attention to SEO, and blog savvy easily present a high value that goes on to pay for itself.

However, if you’re doing the web thing as a hobby, or you’re bootstrapping and have no capital to invest (regardless of the ROI), or you’re not sure if you’re going to stick with this business, it’s wiser to hold off on any purchases that aren’t absolutely necessary. In my friend’s case, the site she wants is for an on-the-side business that she doesn’t plan to take full-time for a long time, so her anticipated revenues don’t justify much investment.

In news that’s been way too long in coming, I’ve just launched a new site called WordPress Theme Review. The concept is based directly on the work I’ve done to improve search engine optimization (…

Since the last batch of search engine friendly WordPress theme recommendations went over so well, here are five more themes for the full version of WordPress (and if you’re on WordPress.com, don’t despair; we’re in the process of reviewing the included themes right now and will publish our recommendations for you soon).
XV - Revised
We like this theme’s code because it:

validates
has better-than-average code structure
emphasizes your post titles
emphasizes your blog name
emphasizes your blog’s description
uses unique page titles

Many people have been reading the posts on ProBlogger and this blog about the importance of good theme code and the role it plays in your search engine traffic.

Now, I’m a little biased , but I think one of the best ways to get a great theme with great code is to have it built that way; you get the best of both worlds: a custom theme that represents you perfectly, and great, search-engine-friendly code.

However, I’m also a realist, and know that many bloggers can’t/don’t want to put cash into their blogs, so I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some beautiful WordPress themes that also feature excellent, search-engine-friendly code. Read on to see the first five selections (in no particular order). (Hold your mouse over a “reason” to see a slightly longer explanation.)

I recently read a post about tracking the factors that contribute to good search engine rankings. There are lots of factors to keep track of, but if you do a good job, your blog will get tons of new visitors from Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.

The post was specifically …