Not sure what really tripped it, but when it did, it was the parting of the seas and I Got It, I Really Got it.   So I started to get excited and started to learn all about them.

The great thing was that almost everything was free.  The software, the support, the add ons and the plugins.  All of it could be had for little or no cost.  This was great. Any question? Check the forums and get real answers for nothing.  This was cool.

Once I caught the Blog Bug, the next mind block was “why would I pay for a theme when all these free ones are out there?”   It made no sense to me.  All this free stuff, why would anyone want to pay for a theme? To me, I saw the theme as a wrapper to a blog.  Wasn’t it the content that was most important?

I finally got the nerve up to try and see what the hype was about premium themes.  I bought a cheap package of premium themes for under $10.  Thinking what could I lose??   Ten Bucks is like a night out at Micky D’s!

Immediately I saw my numbers go up.  My site visitor counts almost double within a few days, maybe a week.  A sudden huge jump in numbers and all I did different was change the theme??  The difference was like night and day.

So I started to question why?  That’s when I came across a new guy to the scene. Brian Gardner.  An interesting chap who just became a WordPress convert and developer. He released his first theme series called “Revolution Themes” A beautiful work of coded art.

Brian took the time to answer many of my questions about WordPress and premium themes, even tho I had not bought his theme.  He really was (and still is) a saint by taking so much time answering me when I had yet to pay him anything.  Brian explained that a free theme was designed for beauty, where as a premium theme was designed for speed and performance.

Among other things, free themes have a lot of extra code to make it look all nice and pretty.  When in reality, it clogs the spiders and the search engines.  Things get lost or the spiders just abandon the search.  Not a good thing if you are using it for business.

I started to understand that.  I really thought Brian’s themes were amazing.  But so were some others for the same price range.  Either way, I wasn’t ready to make the big leap and pay a real premium price for a premium theme.  The $10 theme was doing fine for the time.

Yet, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking, “if a $10 theme does this, what does a $75 theme do??   Well, I soon got my chance to find out.

It’s a funny way that the cosmic world works.  I am of the mind that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  Apparently the student was ready because I had yet to really do a website for anyone else but me.

One day a new friend asked if I could build him a website like “this” as he showed me a website he found and really liked.  I looked at the footer and saw “Revolution Theme by Brian Gardner”

I saw that as a sign…  Go Premium
And I will continue next time

Mark Anthony

Seriously.  If you look at the signs and the tell-tell pointers, you would have to agree that we are at that point.  We are at the Mississippi River looking westward at a wide open electronic land mass.

Want to Know How I Know??
Like the world we are leaving behind, we used to watch the stock market each day.  From that, the news reporters would tell us if the nation was doing good or heading for trouble and why.  In the world of Internet, its the Domains you watch for.  Or “Domainiers” as they are called.  People buying and selling domain names and the market around them.

I subscribe to the RSS feed for DN Journal. Watching what is happening in their world, gives me some assurances that I am in the right place at the right time in my world. More people are buying and developing all kinds of domain names and business around their domain names.

As an example: Pizzerias.com just sold for $15,000.  There are million dollar sales every week as well.  These are people investing in the idea that a name can deliver a business. It also shows that not all “good” names in the dot com field are gone.  Plenty of great names for a website still exist.

Take a look at their site and few others in the domain business and you will read article after article of people jumping into the Internet Marketing business and making steady money from a unique name and a passion for what they are writing about.

You will also read about what is working and what is not by the stories of why this domain failed or that one made its owner a million dollars.  These are the people on the front lines of the Internet Market and can tell you what is coming down the pipe in business as well as in law and legislation.

2010 Is The Year for You to Start your Internet business!!