Deaf Musician

Everyone’s talking about making money online nowadays. Wordpress Themes is one of the ways to make some money and Brian Gardner has figured it all out. He started out just a year ago designing themes for WordPress. There’s absolutely no doubt he has a good taste in simplicity. Brian has released 10 free themes and 3 paid-for themes. Let’s look at how Brian made $5,000+ from a single theme.

Two months ago, he released the Revolution Theme, then later released Revolution News Theme, and then the Revolutions Sports Theme. Essentially, they are all the same, different colors.

• Original Revolution Theme: ~49 themes sold x $59.95 = $2937.55
• Revolutions News Theme: ~18 themes sold x $99.95 = $1799.10

The total: $4736.65. That’s just the minimum. I am sure people bought different packages. That’s a pretty good money for a day worth of work. I don’t know how long it took him, but it doesn’t seem that complex to create. Nate Whitehill charges a hell lot of a money for a custom design, may be he should adopt Brian’s model. Small Potato should learn something from Brian Gardner, if he ever wants to become a much bigger potato.

Maybe I should start designing some “premium” themes? Hmmm.

I just wanted to take this time to congratulate all the 5 winners of our first contest. It was a great competition. As a matter of fact, it was so great I felt bad for the second guy, who was pretty close to winning.

The Winners

#1: Mark from Gigadesign (102 votes): Congratulations, Mark. I am looking forward to working with you on your custom WordPress theme! You will also get to name the theme, which will later be released to the public, and you’ll get a footer link on that released theme! I will also do a review of your site in the coming weeks.

#2: Tech Guy Tales (93 votes): Congratulations, “Tech Guy”. Really, a great competition with Mark. Like I said, I felt bad for you for trying. So, I’ll also do a custom theme for you. I can’t find your contact information, so get in touch with me.

#3: David from Blogdinero (30 votes): Congrats, David. As promised, I will do a review of your site. Sorry, but great try. You know what, since you tried too, I will design a banner for you, if you’d like.

#4 & #5 Navdeep from Dezinerfolio and Zac from Nighthacker (tied at 6 votes), both of you will also get a link on the right side.

All of the 5 winners will get a link on the right side for a month! Thanks for trying everyone. I had fun doing this, and I plan to do it again soon. Make sure to stay current on the updates.

Sorry for the lack of updates here at DeafMusician.com. My Vista kept crashing, as soon as it shows the desktop, it says “explorer is now restarting” and it kept doing that in the loop.

How DOS Saved My Life

The explorer kept crashing and I didn’t know why. I ran Spyware by quickly double clicking on the desktop icon before explorer crashed again, but that didn’t help. I went into the safe mode and it kept doing the same thing. I read forums from the other computer and some guy said it happened to him after Firefox download was canceled. None of this made any sense. Then I remembered that windows crashes whenever I have a divx file in a folder, and I remembered that I downloaded a file and saved it on the desktop. Some how I had to delete that file, but there was no way to do it since the explorer.exe would quickly restart. It was really annoying.

So, here’s what you do.

1. Open Task Manager and end task “explorer.exe” (this will stop the crashing, but will not show the desktop)
2. Go to File > New Task (run…) > type in cmd (this brings up the command prompt)
3. Browse to the desktop in the command prompt and type “del filename.divx” (.vob, .wmv, .divx, basically delete any video files)

That should do it. I love you command prompt! This is why I love simple tools like command prompt and telnet, no fancy interface, just get the job done. I always program through telnet in vi and pico on unix, all my WordPress programming is always done on either of those programs.

How to find out if your site has been Dugg

Digital Inspiration has a great tip on how to find out if your site has been dugg. Basically, you search for dugg urls and subscribe to the search results.

Usability Nightmares

Smashing Magazine has a great article on 10 Usability nightmares you should be aware of. Usability is pretty much everything when it comes to designing websites, so this is very important. 37signals wrote a book long time ago called Defensive Design for the Web: How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points, which was very informative. I recently purchased Web Accessibility book from friendsofed publishers. This book is written by 11 different authors and it’s great if you’re getting started in the world of accessibility.

DeafMusician.com Updates

• I get a lot of questions on why there’s no search box on this website. As stupid as it may sound, I FORGOT! That’s the answer. I completely forgot that this site needs a search engine. I am working on it, so it’ll be up soon.

Three WordPress Themes Coming Before End of the Year

Theme #1: I am still releasing the ApnaNukkad.com WordPress theme as it was requested by some of you. Theme #2: I will then release the theme from the winner of the custom WordPress Theme Contest. Looks like Mark, Tech Guy Tales, and David are strong candidates. Good luck to all, and the winners will be announced on Monday, October 8, 2007.Theme #3: And lastly, I have really been inspired by the drive of Christopher Ryan. Chris orignally entered the theme contest, but later emailed me more about him, and after hearing his story and his passion, I have decided that I will design a free WordPress theme for him regardless of him winning the contest. So, I’ll release that theme. Passionate and driven people inspire me, that’s why I go out of my way to help them. Here’s a short video on Chris Ryan:

[youtube xL6svX577Bw]

That’s all for today, folks. Lots of update coming your way. Stay tuned.

Ok everyone, the voting begins now for the Custom WordPress Theme Contest #1. If you don’t win this round, don’t worry, I’ll be having one of these again before the end of the year.

You can vote for up to 3 people. The winners will be decided upon the highest number of votes. THE winner will get a custom WordPress Theme to his/her likings and a review on this site. The theme will be released to the public with the winner’s link in the footer. The two runner-ups will get their site reviewed. And the top 5 will get a free link on the sidebar for a month! It’s up to you to tell your friends and family to come to this site and vote for you. The poll will close at midnight on Oct 7^th, 2007, and the winners will be declared on the following day. To read WHY you should vote for any of these people, please read their pitch on the original post. So, let the voting begin:

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