No doubt, nowadays any business cannot survive without professional representation on the web. Luckily, having a top-notch website to promote your business or ideas is getting easier on a day-to-day basis. Now there is no need to apply to a professional designer to develop a custom website, particularly taking into consideration the price of the service. You can take advantage of ready-made templates to create a site of your dream. The question is where to find the template you need.

Luckily, there are many marketplaces for templates on the web, among which there are some worthy of note, like Codester, HubSpot, ThemeSnap, ThemeForest and TemplateMonster. The last two are big rivals in on the market and win most attention. Today we are going to find out what the difference between TemplateMonster and ThemeForest is.

TemplateMonster’s merits

TemplateMonster has rocketed as the leading marketplace for all sort of templates for websites quite recently. Initially, it was known as a manufacturer of website templates, but now it has expanded to a successful selling platform. TemplateMonster’s offers exceed anyone’s expectations due to the astonishing variety of templates. They fit any platform, including WooCommerce, Joomla, PowerPoint, Keynote, Shopify, Drupal, eBay and so on. The good news is that using this splendor anyone can create their own commercial website, an online store, a blog or a portfolio with an ease.

First, let’s work out what exactly makes it easy to create a website. Everything depends on a content managing system you choose. The best system for novices is WordPress. WordPress themesprovide a wide range of possibilities, are rich in handy widgets and multiple plugins, and can be easily modified to anybody’s needs. You only need to choose from variety of designs and apply changes to the initial look to make your website more noticeable.

You can change any template beyond recognition right from admin panel. You can upload your logo, photos, videos, and texts. The things you can change include color scheme, layouts, number of pages and sections, sidebars, buttons. In a word, you apply changes until the site suits your taste and needs. However, bear in mind that certain freedom of customization might cost more. TemplateMonster gives you the choice: either to buy a template that looks pretty standard and save the money, or buy more expensive version of the template and feel free customizing it. The latter option ensures joy of creation as well as individuality of the final outcome.

The overwhelming majority of all the themes have professional creative design and clean code, responsive design and are compatible with major browsers. The immense custom support deserves specific mention. TemplateMonster provides the work of agile 24/7 service center in case you have any troubles dealing with the theme you bought. This support is available as long as you run the website.

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The web-templates are conveniently arranged in a gallery and have a demo-version for trial. Moreover, you can download a sample website template and check it for compatibility with any html editor. The gallery has all possible filters to make your search easier but for price. Unfortunately, you will need to find the sales and discounts on your own.

As for the price, TemplateMonster has some offers: you can but a single-license template that costs from $45 to $75 on average. However, the price rises the more additional features you include. A single-license template is suitable if you use it for one site or project only. In case you have several sites or projects, you will need to buy it again. The good news is that many TemplateMonster’s themes have a GPL license, which allows use on an unlimited number of websites. It’s really alluring but still even more expensive.

There is another unique opportunity to buy the exclusive rights on definite site. It guarantees that your website will be truly unique and no one else will use a source template. However, the price will be much higher.

Here is the short outcome of mentioned above:

ThemeForest’s benefits

ThemeForest is a grand marketplace designed for ready-made templates. It boasts more than 37,000 designs of all kinds of web-templates for Magento, VirtueMart, WordPress and other various platforms. However, they are not developed by a single manufacturer. Anyone can sell their templates at this marketplace, and this is the point where you should scratch head over viability of purchasing a template there.

You have to browse through the works of thousands of different web developers. It’s the case when quantity doesn’t guarantee quality and too big choice becomes frustrating. Definitely, there are many great-quality sites on ThemeForest, but you will have to make some effort to find them. Luckily, a sortable gallery allows finding the cheapest offers and sales. You can sort the templates by popularity, features, categories and styles, which is extremely convenient. It’s possible to preview demo version of any theme before purchasing it, read the reviews, testaments and see the rates.

Another question is the lack of all-round support at ThemeForest market. The thing is, when the developer produces and sells a template, you have a duty holder to apply to in emergency.

Why is support so important?

Definitely, after purchasing a template you need to install and adjust it. In case you meet some troubles, you have to get in touch with developers. Unfortunately, ThemeForest only sells templates and isn’t helpful in that case. You need to find website developers yourself and contact them directly.

However, some templates at ThemeForest come with a fixed period (e.g. 6-month) of technical support from the developer. You have to pay extra money to extend the period of technical support. Like the templates created by TemplateMonster, the flat price of most themes doesn’t cover professional installation, hosting, speed optimization, etc. These services and extended licenses are subject to additional charge. Most templates at ThemeForest go with a single-use license.

The most attractive thing about ThemeForest is the price. You can find many templates for only $2. However, it looks like a gamble and if you don’t want to be deeply disappointed, we would recommend you to search among templates whose price vary between $28-65. And this is the point where ThemeForest wins a score.

Here is the outlet of mentioned above:

As you see, both marketplaces offer a great variety of web-templates. ThemeForest wins when budget is a factor. But TemplateMonster wins when it comes to immaculate quality and life-long support. Anyway, it’s up to you to decide what to hit for and we hope this comparison of characteristics of both marketplaces will be useful for you!

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There are countless websites, blogs and brands doing the rounds on the web but only a select few that ever really make a big splash and fulfil their potential. Why is this?

Simply put, it’s because a lot of brands are really somewhat dry and wet. How many times have you seen articles on ‘How to Lose Weight’ or ‘How to Make Money Online’ that don’t have anything exciting or new to say? The question these marketers should ask themselves is why anyone would be interested in subscribing to that kind of content!

The posts that do well on social media meanwhile, are the ones that are highly unique, that are very niche, or that are even quite controversial.

The posts that try to please everyone will end up not making much of an impact for anyone. While those that have something very clear to say to a very specific type of person will do well. And there’s a very good reason for that…

The Psychology of Sharing

A post will do well on social media when it gets shared. If you can create an article or a blog post that gets shared by all your followers and all their followers, then you will have a chance of going viral – which essentially means breaking one-million readers and potentially exploding as a result.

So why do we share? Here, it’s useful to remember what social media actually is on a fundamental level. Social media is a communication tool and that means that people use it either to express themselves, or to communicate something with someone else.

This is true of sharing too. People tend to share content for one of two reasons:

A) It says something about them. They like it so that other people will see it on their wall and know what’s on their mind.
B) It says something about a friend. They share it with a friend to show they’re thinking of them, or perhaps as a joke.

An Example

So let’s take an example. If you write a post on ‘How Working From Home Turns Your Brain to Mush’, then this will instantly appeal to people who work from home and who want to learn more about what impact that might be having on them.

If they agree with your post, if they find it interesting, or if they find it funny, then they may go on to share it on their wall. In doing so, they are reminding their friends that they work from home and maybe trying to help them understand a bit more about who they are.

Meanwhile though, your post might also get shared by people who have friends that work from home. These people will share your content because they’ll want to demonstrate that they understand their friends’ plights, as a way of poking fun, or just as a way to show that they’re thinking of them.

But this only works because your content appeals to a specific type of person. Don’t be afraid to narrow down and to potentially exclude others as a result. That’s how you become a brand with something useful to say.

If you’re looking to give your website the biggest boost possible in the shortest amount of time, then you’re looking for a growth hack. A growth hack is any technique that can be used to give a website an instant boost in terms of its visibility and traffic and the best of these can help you to ‘skip’ a lot of the grinding that’s normally necessary for good SEO.

And what is by far one of the best growth hacks is influencer marketing. When done right, influencer marketing can help you to go from 0 weekly views to hundreds of thousands. Here’s how…

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing essentially means that you are working with big ‘influencers’. An influencer is anyone who has a large audience and very often that will mean someone on YouTube or on Instagram that has managed to amass a large following. These people don’t only have an audience, they also have the trust of that audience and the ability to sway opinion.

Thus, if you can get them to recommend your website or to link to it, then you can find that a large proportion of their audience heads over to your channel and gives you an instant and impressive hike in readership and sales.

Imagine if you could get a link from Tim Ferriss. Just one link from his website, along with his recommendation, would bring you hundreds of thousands of visitors a day, many of whom would probably subscribe on the spot. The SEO benefit would be huge but that would pale in comparison to the gigantic surge in direct traffic and the shares that that traffic would create.

How to Find and Work With Influencers

So how do you find these influencers and how do you get them to post your links for you?
The answer is not to start too big. If you email Tim Ferriss, then chances are that you’re not going to get a response. Likewise, you probably won’t get much of a response if you email someone with a million subscribers, or even 500,000 subscribers.

Instead, aim for someone who is just starting out but who has built something of an audience already. These people will be more flattered by your interest and more likely to respond to you. When they share your link, you’ll then see your own subscribers go up by a few thousand, which puts you in a position to reach a slightly bigger influencer next time.

Better yet though, you should think about creating relationships with people first. Spend some time familiarising yourself with the people you want to work with and if you can, meet in person. This is one reason why networking events are so useful for internet marketers. Another tip is to think about your existing contacts, are any of them influencers who can get you started?

Finally, consider hiring the services of influencers – even just for consultation. Once you do that, you’ll be sure to get an audience with them, which will make them more likely to read your subsequent emails!

When you first start internet marketing, you might decide to check out some of the big marketing forums like BHW (Black Hat World) and Warrior Forum. These are sites where internet marketers can hang out, share tips and buy and sell services.

The problem, is that the quality of these services on offer varies greatly. And in particular, you need to be very careful when choosing ‘link building services’.

The Problem With ‘Traditional Link Building’

That’s because an awful lot of these services will involve a PBN and spun content. So what does this mean? A PBN is a ‘Private Blog Network’. That means that a single owner is in charge of all the different blogs and they have linked them to each other in order to create artificial authority. The content on these blogs meanwhile is not original but is rather reused content that has been ‘spun’ (meaning that the words have been swapped out for synonyms) in order to trick Google into thinking that it’s brand new.

As you may have guessed already, both of these practices are very much frowned upon by Google and if you get caught doing either, then you’ll be penalized. Moreover, if you get caught associating with either, then you’ll get penalized.

Best case scenario, no one gets caught but the links still aren’t anywhere near as effective as ‘real links’.

How to Build Links the Right Way

What Google really wants to see when it comes to link building is that your site has the trust of other existing big brands. If you can show that, then Google will assume that your site must be high quality and trustworthy in its own right.

Certain blogs and websites are already highly trusted by Google. These include blogs with .edu domains and .gov domains. Google also likes blogs and sites that are run by large, well-recognized brands.

Some other blogs and brands have earned Google’s trust over time and you can tell these ones by the fact that they’ll often show up in Google’s ‘News’ section.

Your job is to become as trusted and as authoritative in the eyes of Google as those sites. How do you do that? Simple: by getting links from those sites!

The only problem is that this can be hard work. Getting a link from such a well-established brand is hard work and you’ll often find that your emails just don’t get answered.

So an easier strategy is to look at SEO like a game of ‘degrees of separation’. If you can’t get a link from a top resource, then try and get a link from a site that has a link from a top resource, or a link from a site that has a link from a site that has a link from a top resource… you get the idea.

Right now, there are some websites and blogs in your niche no doubt that are considered the biggest and most important authorities. Your aim is to become one of them and so the best and most obvious way to do that is to associate yourself with them by getting links from them. It’s simple really, just don’t try and beat the system!

If you want to grow your audience, then it is crucial to add a mailing list to your marketing practices. Mailing lists allow you to collect emails and that in turn means that you can more easily reach your audience with new products or offers. This is a great way to turn cold leads into warm leads and that’s imperative if you plan on selling something.

The only slight problem is that people, on the whole, don’t tend to like giving out their contact details. They know that this is going to mean they receive marketing messages and very often, that will be considered to be spam. So how can you persuade your visitors to change their mind and ease up?

What is an Incentive?

One common practice is to get around this problem by offering an incentive. That means providing some kind of free download in exchange for joining the mailing list in many cases – but you need to be careful how you go about this.

For example, let’s say that you have a fitness brand and you’re trying to collect emails. Very often you might then do this by offering a free ‘report’ or even a free ebook for every new person who signs up. People love getting free things and if you tell them how your product can help them to lose weight, build muscle or feel more energetic for free, then they’ll often make the decision that it is worth parting with their email address.

But there’s a problem with this strategy, which is that it can end up attracting the wrong kind of subscriber – the kind of subscriber who is just looking for something free and who won’t be interested in buying from you in future. Often people will take the ebook and then never read another email from you! They may even unsubscribe immediately after…

How to Attract the Right Kind of Subscriber

Your job is to try and avoid letting that happen so that you’re attracting only the right kind of subscriber. How do you do that?

One option is to make the emails themselves into the incentive. You can do this for instance by creating an ezine or a newsletter than provides real value. Talk about how your messages will be made to the highest standard with high quality images and with lots of unique information and this can be enough to encourage people to subscribe and to then keep looking out for your messages.

Another similar method is to enter your subscribers into a prize draw. By saying that a winner will be announced each week, you have created an incentive to sign up to your emails and to keep reading them!

You can even include special offers and discounts in your emails. That way, people are signing up with the prior knowledge that you will be selling to them!

Ofcourse it’s also important that you actually keep up your end of the bargain and that means making sure that your emails really are engaging and high quality so that your visitors want to keep reading them.