100 Reasons Why Blogussion is an Amazingly Successful Site (Part 1)

• Take the time to make your site look and feel unique.
• The default Thesis Theme is white with grey and blue highlights.
• Blogussion is bold, bright and beautiful in red and orange with grey and white highlights.
• Learn how to use your custom.css (custom style sheet) and your custom_functions.php files.
• You can copy and paste code from the Thesis Theme Forum and many other Thesis Theme sites.
• Start with the Tips & Tricks Directory here at Thesis Theme HQ for an A to Z directory and The Definitive List of Thesis Theme Tutorials.

• Don’t try and sell Thesis Theme (or any product) as an affiliate unless you understand how it works, what it offers and demonstrate this knowledge and understanding.
• Blogussion is one of the best examples of Thesis Theme on the web.

• Don’t try and write articles about anything unless you are confident you know what you are talking about. If you aren’t so sure, simply say so and qualify your comments.
• Blogussion offers advice on web design and customizing the Thesis Theme. They know what they are talking about. They steer clear of topics they don’t have direct experience with (usually through trial and error).

• If a tutorial is more advanced, or if the Thesis Theme has a learning curve then say so.
• If you tell readers that something is simple, make sure your explanation, examples and images prove that it is.
• The post on Blogussion 4 Great Ways I Customized my Thesis Theme includes such a disclaimer:

“I’m not going to lie, the way Thesis works coding wise will be confusing at first with the hook system it uses. But once you mess around with it, it’s the easiest thing in the world.”

• I understand the need to tweak a theme until you are happy with it – but once it is obviously successful – stop tweaking with the look and work on your content.
• If you are going to make changes, try to gradually or slightly change your site’s appearance. If you keep radically changing the look of your site – your regulars may be thinking WTF!
• Blogussion has made some minor changes to its layout but the colors and main structure were a hit from the start – and they haven’t been changed.

• Web design is about a lot of things, most importantly a color scheme that doesn’t result in your targeted audience hitting the back button or just closing the tab. If you want to reduce your ‘bounce rate’ at least make your site colors appealing.
• You can’t please everyone with your colors but there are some general rules including limiting your colors.
• Blogussion limits the number of colors but cleverly uses gradients in a color palette to add visual appeal.
• When you are happy with your colors – as above – leave them alone. The mere look of Blogussion is recognisable, largely because of its color scheme.

• Being able to read the headlines to skim, scan and search blog posts is very important. A larger, bold text-style that is easy to read is the best way to go.
• Blogussion uses a larger font for headlines and a larger text in posts and pages that contrasts nicely on the lighter background.
• Notice also that the typography uses the existing blog colors and doesn’t introduce additional colors, underlines or hover properties unnecessarily.

• Many bloggers welcome some extra income to pay for hosting, supplement their income or just pump back into their site to keep it growing.
• Alex is upfront about being an online entrepreneur and Blogussion offers free information on making money with your blog, see From Planning to Earning @ Blogussion for some great info.
• People generally want you to succeed so tell them what you want to be successful at. Alex said he wanted to improve his design skills and he is now a web designer and consultant thanks to people who took a chance with a young man with goals.
• Hats off to Agent Solutions for giving Alex his first break.

“My first client after taking the plunge into freelancing, and I think this made a great start for me.”

• At the time of writing this post, Blogussion had over 4,000 twitter followers.
• Bloggusion have also set up an automatic feed of their posts to their twitter account using twitter feed.
• I use twitter feed to automatically post Thesis Theme HQ articles to its twitter account and can personally recommend it. It takes just minutes to set up.
• Even if you never tweet, your twitter account will at least be active and contain links to your recent posts for your followers to retweet.

• On Retire@21, on the 5th Nov 2009, Alex Fraiser was ranked at number 96
• http://www.retireat21.com/top_young_bloggers/

• Match your domain name to your site name.
• Target keywords in your site name. Target keywords that relate to your site name for extra SEO goodness.

• BLOG + DISCUSSION = BLOGUSSION
• Clever way of getting rid of competition if you can do it.
• Alex’s portfolio/freelance site is coming soon – it’s called KOLAKUBE.
• I checked, it’s not in Wikipedia, yet.

• The images used in posts and pages on Blogussion are very special. They draw the reader in to read any overlayed text and add visual interest.
• Try cropping your images to a standard size of 260 x330 pixels for example.
• Don’t be afraid to use bright colors.

• Alex is a member of Dream.In.Code (DIC).
• Maybe to be as good with site design, you have to join a club?

You better have a lot of patience, and a lot of tenacity to make any money online. You won’t make money doing something you hate doing, but something you love to do. That’s the beauty of the web; it allows you to make a profit doing the things you love.”

Read more of this interview with Alex @ MoneyFellas

“While the content is the thing you should spend the most time on to make it as perfect as you can – the title of the blog post needs to be as catchy as you can.

It’s not really so easy to get the content we write read. The title is usually the one thing that determines whether or not the post will be read. If you have an awesome, catchy title, then the other aspects of a blog post (readability, grammar, graphics, etc.) will come into play. But if not, then all of those things won’t matter much because your content will not be read…”

Read more of this interview with Alex @ MattFlies

“I use WordPress, because it was the first blog software I hear of when I first started blogging. After I have been using WordPress for a few months, I tried out other stuff. Nothing is as good as WordPress, and nothing ever will be.”

Read more of this interview with Alex @ MattFlies

The thing that got me to buy Thesis was how good for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) … I am not that strong in SEO, so the idea of having a theme that will do much of the SEO work for me was awesome…I have upgraded to the Developers Option and have it on all of my blogs. If Thesis isn’t running the blogs design, then I doubt I would be willing to even work on the blog.

Read more of this interview with Alex @ MattFlies

• Blogussion is quite happy to reward its readers.
• Read The Best User is the Biggest Winner @ Blogussion to see what participating actively can get you.

• If you are prepared to share a little of yourself, then you are prepared to become famous.
• Alex has done quite a few guest posts but I have a couple of favourites (some I have already mentioned above).
• Check out Alex Fraiser: Revisted @ Teenius – another design by Alex and think about how much traffic is exchanged between Blogussion and Tennius as a result of these guest posts.