Each time I build a new website or blog (which is quite often), I go in search of a new template. Though this blog theme was designed for me, I have designed all my other blog templates either from scratch or using a free theme as a jumping-off point.

The point is, I have spent a lot of time in the last three years searching for just the right template. There are a ton of great Wordpress themes out there, but I have trouble making up my mind and I always end up spending hours and hours thinking that the minute I settle on a theme I’ll be missing the perfect one on the next page. The other day I began a new theme search and came across a premium membership site that held my attention.

Dream Template is a website designer’s heaven. Not only is the price right (keep in mind all the content is premium and unique), but the extras included are above and beyond what I expected. Frankly, I was shocked to realize that I had never discovered this goldmine before.

Dream Template is part of a family of sites dedicated to web development and graphic design. You’ll have access to five or all nine of these sites, depending on whether you choose the basic or premium membership (details below).

From fonts to templates and all the professional graphics and stock photos you could possibly need, the Dream Template suite of sites has it all. Essentially, this single membership serves as a one-stop shop for everything you need to create original, stunning websites on any platform.

This article is somewhat time-sensitive because there is a special in place and it’s unclear how long it will last. It consistently shows that the special will end at midnight “tonight” (Central Standard Time), but the date for “tonight” has changed each day for the last two days. In any case, the sale is excellent and I doubt it will last too much longer.

I’ll go over all the sites and membership options in a minute, but right now a one-year basic membership will cost you only $59.95 (includes access to five sites and usually costs $149) and the premium 13-month premium membership is just $89.95 (nine sites). I don’t know about you, but I’ve paid way more than that for a single template. I have already signed up and am having a blast combing through all the impressive options on the various sites.

Website developers can even use the templates (up to 50) to design for clients. You don’t have exclusive use of anything you download, but you do have the right to alter the templates in any way you wish. The biggest no-no, really, is that you can’t download the templates, graphics, etc. and then sell them as is or give them away. You also can’t claim full responsibility for designing the templates. Though there are no watermarks or ads on the templates, you can’t claim that you designed them.

As I said, along with the Dream Template site, there are eight other sites available. Each site covers a different aspect of website and/or graphic design and offers thousands of original items and resources that can be used freely. I haven’t linked to each site, but they can be accessed from the right sidebar on the main Dream Template website.

The Nine Dream Template Family Websites

The basic membership gives you access to four sites and the premium membership, for just a few dollars more, gives you access to eight. Before I explain the membership options themselves, let me tell you a bit about the sites included.

• Dream Template
  
  Your one-time fee provides a full year of access to professionally designed websites that are ready to be customized in Dreamweaver, Frontpage, GoLive or any other HTML editor of your choice. You will also have access to the PSD (Photoshop) files for the templates and new templates are added regularly (about once a week).
  
  As well as the nearly 6,000 templates, you will also have access to professionally created fonts, clipart, images, office documents and other useful design resources.
• Brochure Ready
  
  Brochure Ready has everything you need to create stunning, professional brochures without the huge prices charged by outsourcing. There are thousands of brochure templates to customize and print as well as high resolution photos, fonts and other images you can add before instantly printing your finished product.
  
  The high resolution layouts are designed in Adobe InDesign and you will also be able to download the source files for the templates as well as the PSD files for logos and photos. Along with brochure templates, Brochure Ready also includes templates for flyers and newsletters.
• Icon Objects
  
  Available for use on your websites, applications, brochures or anything else imaginable, the icons provided by this site are professional designed in a variety of styles. These vector icon source files can be downloaded for customization in Adobe Illustrator for Windows or Mac platforms.
  
  Icons can be searched for basic on type (2D, 3D, realistic, cartoon, etc.) or browsed in many categories. The Icon Objects gallery is one of the most comprehensive vector image collections online. Each download includes the vector source file as well as PNG or JPG files for those of you who do not need to alter the icons.
• CSS Hub
  
  CSS Hub offers access to numerous professionally designed website templates in CSS format. These templates are ready to be customized using the HTML editor of your choice or can be directly uploaded to your site for immediate use.
  
  Your download includes all the source files necessary to customize your template in your favorite HTML editor as well as the image files in PSD format. These can be edited using any imaging application that supports PSD files (Photoshop, GIMP, ImageReady, Paint Shop Pro, etc.).
• Theme Layout
  
  Theme Layout is your source for Wordpress, Joomla and OsCommerce (a popular, open-source shopping cart) themes. Out of the box, these thems are SEO-optimized, CSS and XHTML standard compliant and ready for editing in the HTML editor of your choice.
  
  As with the other template sites, you will receive access to all source files including PSD, logo and graphic files. There are hundreds of templates available as well as fonts, clipart and other images to allow you full customization abilities.
• Webmaster Tools
  
  This site offers full access to over a hundred webmaster tools to help you improve traffic, optimize your site for search engines, find success with social networking, and increase your website’s or blog’s online popularity. There is a full suite of rank-checking tools and a multitude of other tools to help you keep track of your website stats and optimize it.
• My Vector Store
  
  This site offers more than 2,000 original stock vectors that can be used royalty-free. The homepage for My Vecto Store shows a great array of example sets available to members. These beautiful icon-like grahpics range from large cartoon word captions to holidays and from gadgets to plants. With all of these choices, it would be hard to not find what you need.
  
• Ppl Stock
  
  This site offers exactly what its name implies – a huge amount of royalty-free stock photographs of people. These are real, high-quality photos available to you free of cost depending on your membership choice. Even without the premium membership, you can browse all the photos and purchase them ala carte.
• Hot Web 2.0 Logos
  
  The logos at Hot Web 2.0 Logos can also be purchased individually without a membership ($30 for non-unique or $135 for non-unique). You’ll be given access to the basic logo layout and graphic in Adobe Illustrator format. You can then alter it to include your website or company name.
  
  

  On the left is an example of just one of the hundreds of logos available. As you can see, I placed a watermark on it because I just took a screenshot and am not a paid member of the premium plan. There’s really no point in trying to steal these anyway because you’ll only get a small version without the necessary graphic files to create high-quality logos.
  
  All the logos on the site are classic, eye-catching and you can use as many as you want with a premium membership. Again, I have to mention that this set of sites and the membership options are incredibly inexpensive while still being super-high quality.

Membership Choices

There are currently five membership options for the Dream Template resource sites. The options differ based on the number of sites to which you’ll have access and the length of time for the membership. The prices listed are one-time fees charged when you subscribe. However, these are sales prices and could be increased substantially at any time.


• Basic 1-Year Membership – $59.95
  
  12 months of access to Dream Template, CSS Hub, Brochure Ready, Icon Objects and Theme Layout.
• Premium 13-Month Membership – $89.95
  
  13 months of access to Dream Template, CSS Hub, Brochure Ready, Icon Objects and Theme Layout. Plus Webmaster Tools, Vector Store, Ppl Stock and Hot Web 2.0 Logos.
• Basic 3-Year Membership – $96.00
  
  36 months of access to Dream Template, CSS Hub, Brochure Ready, Icon Objects and Theme Layout.
• Premium 37-Month Membership – $129.95
  
  37 months of access to Dream Template, CSS Hub, Brochure Ready, Icon Objects and Theme Layout. Plus Webmaster Tools, Vector Store, Ppl Stock and Hot Web 2.0 Logos.
• Premium Lifetime Membership
  
  Full, unlimited, lifetime access to all nine sites: Dream Template, CSS Hub, Brochure Ready, Icon Objects, Theme Layout, Webmaster Tools, Vector Store, Ppl Stock and Hot Web 2.0 Logos.

If you build sites or blogs a lot you know that even the most expensive membership option here is less than you’d pay elsewhere for these types of premium quality products. And the final seller for me was that with that yearly (or longer) fee, you have unlimited access to all the site included in your subscription.

I have one more quick positive note about the Dream Template customer support. For some reason I never received the email necessary to verify my account and log in. I contacted customer support and within the hour they had replied, letting me know what information they needed to verify my account. I sent it and heard back again within fifteen minutes.

Not only is that excellent for any company. But this all happened at about 2AM my time (PDT). Now that is extremely impressive and says a lot about the priorities of those in charge of this service.

I truly have nothing but great things to say about Dream Template. If you are a blogger, graphic designer or website builder I highly recommend this membership site.

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One of the most difficult things about being a blogger is maintaining the motivation to write regularly. Consistently updating your blog is one of the keys to blogging success. If you are working to grow a readership, you can easily lose it if your regulars come back and find nothing new. During the lifetime of this blog (nearly three years now) there have been a few times when I’ve taken breaks from upkeep of Pajama Professional.

I never plan these hiatuses, they generally happen due to circumstances in my life. The thing is, a blog can seriously suffer from a lack of consistency. This time, as I attempt to return to a regular posting schedule, I have asked myself what I can do to avoid future “breaks.” I have come up with a list of six ways to maintain consistency even when your life gets in the way.

• Choose a Topic you Love

  Never. Never. Never simply choose a topic because you think it will make you money. It might, but save it for a small, mostly-static site for which you don’t have to constantly find fresh content. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, I know i have, but it took my actually trying it a few times to realize how absolutely true it is.
  
  It comes down to this: it takes a long time to build up a site to the point where it makes substantial money. If you could create an overnight windfall with a topic you hated, you might feel motivated to stick with it. But that’s not how it works. Establishing a profitable site takes time: time to build it, time to continue adding to it and time for people to find it. Most bloggers don’t even stick with topics they love long enough to profit, by choosing something that doesn’t interest you, you are simply stacking more cards against yourself.

• Find a Timeless Niche

  People might care about Snuggies today. They might even want to buy some next week or next month. But will there be a huge demand for those ridiculous blanket/sweatshirts five years from now? If you choose to build your site around a topic that is gimmicky or fad-icky, you are most likely wasting your time. By the time that blog or website is established, the topic will be obsolete.
  
  So go for the evergreen topic; something people will always want or a topic about which they will always care. My new blog is about parenting – that’s not likely to lose popularity anytime soon. I once started a blog about Beanie Babies. Years after they were popular. I thought that there still must be plenty of obsessives out there and there weren’t really any other sites that were any good. I soon found out why. In four months I had about ten visitors and one comment – from a friend of mine. Learned. My. Lesson.
  
  Before I move on, let me qualify this. If you can pull a quickie blog together about a hot topic, throw some Adsense on it and a few quality posts without too much hassle, it’s not necessarily a bad idea. But when it comes to long-term, flagship (as Chris Garrett calls them) blogs, you don’t want to invest a ton of time on something that no one will care about a year from now. Quite note: if you click on that link to Chris’ blog, you can sign up for his email list or RSS feed and download his excellent e-book Killer Flagship Content – I highly recommend it and his blog in general.

• Set a Schedule

  This works better from some people than others. Some of us need a set writing time or else we’ll never get around to it. Some of us enjoy the freedom of working whenever we want and can actually do so without procrastinating. When you think of schedule, you probably think of a set number of hours on given days starting at a specific time, but there are other ways to schedule your writing that give you a little more room to breathe. And, let’s face it, creative types – as most bloggers are – aren’t always ready to write.
  

  What I use is a timer (see Bob on the right, I love him) and a to-do list. I’ll write more about my exact system in an upcoming post (I’ve just recently refined it), but basically I keep a master to-do list of all the projects and smaller tasks I want to complete. All of them. Then each day I just write down a short (5-10 items, depending on how long I have to work) list of things I want to work on or complete that day, choose a task to start, set a timer and when it goes off I move onto the next item. I may write down a few notes if I don’t finish the first item so I can pick it back up easily. I’ll cycle through each item for the day and then start over with any I haven’t finished or return to my master list to add more.

• Keep Evergreen Posts Filed Away

  There will always be days (or weeks) when you either don’t have time or just can’t think of anything to write. When this happens, you need to call for backup. Evergreen posts are articles about topics or ideas that never become stale. These topics are not faddish, date-related or about the ever-changing worlds of technology or politics (unless you’re reviewing a book).
  

  Having books or websites you visit regularly to get your brain going will help you to write these types of posts. You might find it difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it you’ll find that having three or four of these filed away will make you feel less pressured about having to write when you just can’t.

• Remember your Readers

  You are not writing your blog in a vacuum. You are writing to share with, help out and create a community of readers who enjoy what you have to offer. So make sure you stick to what they like. If your blog is about the joy of gardening, don’t suddenly start sticking in posts about how cute your cats are (unless it’s about catnip or something) or how much you love your granny. It’s fine to write about that stuff – in another blog.
  
  Readers like to feel that they know you, but you have to walk the line between boring daily mineutia and showing that you are just a normal person. How much you share about yourself varies greatly on the topic of your blog. If you write about parenting, for example, it is relevant to discuss how many kids you have and even, in moderation, how cute they are. However, if you write about French politics, keep the kids out of it. Your readers are your audience, your lifeblood, your reason for writing. And, if they’re not, then feel free to write endlessly about the new trick you taught your guppies yesterday.

• Remember your Advertisers

  If companies or individuals are paying to place ads on your site, then you need to keep them in mind when you are writing. Let me make clear what I do not mean by this: don’t plug advertisers’ products just because they’re paying for ads on your site, don’t let your advertisers dictate what you write about and don’t agree to write a positive review of something just because you’re getting paid. Well, I suppose you can do that if you want, but I consider it extremely unethical and a disservice to your readers who might go buy some piece of sh!t.
  
  That established, let me tell you what I do mean when I say to keep your advertisers in mind: keep fresh content on your site or no one will visit. If no one visits, no one sees the ads that you were paid to place. It’s not fair to your advertisers – or to you, really, because you won’t make an commissions if that was part of the deal. If you aren’t going post consistently, then don’t place ads from advertisers that pay a monthly fee. Instead, choose Clickbank ads or some other type of affiliate ad that pays for clicks or sales, not on a time schedule.

I hope that this helps you to stay motivated. And I hope it helps me too. Once I get off track and fixated on another project, this is the first blog I tend to desert. My new years resolution – I know, stupid – is to never go a full week without updating this blog. Wish me luck.

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Ah, the wonderful world of giveaway events. I try to stay on top of them, but haven’t done such a good job lately. Luckily, I paid attention to this one:

The New Year Giveaway

Not only did I sign up, but I do something I almost never do – I upgraded to a paid account. “But, Sara,” I hear you said, “you’re all about free stuff.” It’s true, I am generally all about free stuff, but I’m not opposed to paying for something worth paying for and I decided this one was. There are three upgrade options and each one has its benefits and all of them allow you to directly download all the free products without having to sign up for each provider’s mailing list. Some of this stuff was so great I even bought more upgrades after I’d signed in. Not my usual M.O. at all, but this is good sh!t.

I’d tell you more about this, but the truth is I caught this one late and, as of this writing, there are less than eight hours left. The New Year Giveaway closes its doors 1/12/2010 at 18:00 hours. I’m not sure about the time zone, but according to the site, it is now 10:00.

This site is huge and there are a lot of extras and upgrades to check out on top of the free stuff, so if you can spare the time, I suggest you rush on over. Here’s the link one more time:

The New Year Giveaway

Enjoy!

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Yup. There are at least eighteen billion and two website statistic tools available online. I have tried a lot of them and many are useful. However, I recently came across a stat suite called Clicky and decided it looked pretty cool. I decided to install it on both this blog and another website that I keep a close watch on for incoming visitors.

One of the things I like best about Clicky is that there is a plugin available for Wordpress so I don’t have to visit the website when I want to check up on my statistics. There are, in fact, two Clicky plugins for WP, but I choose to download and install the one designed by Joost de Valk. I use several of his other plugins and have never been disappointed. The Clicky plugin allows you to decide what you’d like to track and also has options for a URL shortening feature and automatic Twitter posting when you update your blog.

The Clicky website itself has a Wordpress widgets page where you can download goodies to install on your blog. These widgets range from an all-inclusive tabbed beauty to others that offer info on most visited posts and number of visitors within pre-determined time periods.

Clicky is not free, but this shouldn’t surprise you given the massive amount of information and easy of use. The free trial – allowing you to track one site with up to 3,000 daily page views. The paid plans range from $4.99 a month (3 sites, 10,000 visitors) to $49.99 a month (50 sites, 200,000 visitors). Clicky also offers customized plans for site owners who need even more coverage.

Though the $4.99/month Blogger package seems to offer little more than free Google Analytics (not considering the awesome widgets you can place on your blog), once you reach the Pro and Super Pro plans, you’re getting a ton of customizable information that is definitely worth the price – especially since you get 50% off if you pay anually. For $59.99 a year you get all the statistics you could ever need – and more.

Just because you have a statistic system that is working for you, don’t forget that new solutions are being created every day. It doesn’t hurt to spend a bit of time reviewining what you are using and doing a bit of poking around to see if there is anything new out there that might be even better. You might just find a gem like Clicky.

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It’s been awhile since I posted about Giveaways so here ya go:

Starrs Giveaway

This giveaway is huge. It’s packed with all types of gifts in any marketing category you can imagine.

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