WordPress as I have said before is a great CMS system, but without the proper theme, it can looking drab and emotionless. But, if you find the right combination of design, usability, and content, you can create a compelling offering for both your visitors and yourself.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when WordPress themes don’t fit the theme or content of the website. So many times I have stumbled onto blogs with completely contradictory layouts and content. You can’t have a professional website with cartoon characters as the heading (depending on what kind of site, obviously an artists website it would be appropriate). So being able to match a theme to what you like, without much modification is the goal.

Step in premium themes. Premium themes are WordPress themes that cost actual money, but come with a ton more features than free or open source themes. The price you pay is well worth it, for professional looking designs, different color and layout options, and a well crafted user interface that makes it easy to customize and modify the themes on the back end. With that, I want to introduce you to a few theme companies and websites that feature great looking themes for an affordable price.

Elegant Themes http://www.elegantthemes.com

Elegant themes is easily my favorite of all of the premium theme websites. With a unique subscription model in which you pay a yearly fee and have access to over 40 themes for any of your websites, it is a great idea for a niche site builder or someone with a large blog network. The price is very reasonable and you can customize the themes to your hearts content. Definitely worth checking out.

Thesis http://www.diythemes.com

Thesis has been the longstanding king of premium WordPress themes, with their extremely customizable hook framework, making it virtually customizable in every regard, Thesis supports many different layouts and allows the user to have a very SEO optimized theme that is lightweight and fast. Thesis is one of the most popular premium addons for WordPress ever and for good reason.

Woo Themes http://www.woothemes.com

Despite their name, Woo Themes features some really great and customizable professional themes for WordPress. Woo themes does a great job with a very customizable backend that allows users to access almost every element of their theme through a easy to use interface.

Theme Forest http://themeforest.net/

Theme Forest is unique in that they offer many different themes from different designers and coders who are allowed to set their own prices and features. This limits the user experience of consistent interfaces like Elegant Themes or Woo Themes, but does offer a very big variety of themes at various price points.

Google Adsense is an advertising program put in place by Google. The idea is pretty simple, sign up for Adsense, and let Google serve ads to your readers. While the concept might seem simple, using Adsense effectively is actually a little more complicated than that.

First thing’s first, before you can effectively use Adsense, you have to understand exactly how it works. Once you sign up for Google Adsense, you’l have to pick out what type of ads to serve on your site. You can choose image ads, text ads, or both. You can also select a wide variety of sizes and shapes for your ads, as well as different color schemes for your text ads.  Try not to pick ads that are going to blend in to your site too well. You don’t want the ads to get lost among your content. Once you put the ads on your site, Google will examine your content, and serve ads based on what they think your visitors might be interested. Generally speaking, the ads will be directly relevant to your content in some way, which means your users will be more likely to click on your ads. If you ever see an ad appear on your site that doesn’t suit your content, you can always block it from showing up again from within Adsense. That way, you can ensure your visitors will always see the ads you want them to see.

Once you have your account set up, it’s time to put some ads on your site. Put your ads in highly visible places. It’s a good idea to put a large square ad at the top of your sidebar if your site has one, and another wide ad underneath the header.Once you have those two ads in place, think about the layout of your site, and try to find additional highly visible places to put ads. Bear in mind that Google has restrictions on how many ads a given page can have, and on what types of pages can have ads on them. For example, if you run a site with a login page, that login page can’t have any ads on it.

If you put your ads in the right places, Google will take care of the rest. They’ll index your site and show your visitors ads they might be interested in. If your users are seeing the right ads, then you’re more likely to make some money.