When you set up your new WordPress blog, should you go with a template or a new custom design. There are pros and cons to each.

Template - WordPress has many templates that you can choose from. The advantage to using a template is that it’s easy to pick one and install it at the click of a button. The downside is, not all templates are optimized for the best performance. This is easily remedied as you can always replace a template if it doesn’t work out for you. Another downside is that other people are using the same template. Do you want your blog to look like everyone else’s? If not, then you should go with a custom design.

Custom WordPress Theme Design - The problem with designers is that they are not created equal. If you find a good theme designer who knows SEO then keep him because that’s a rare bird. That said, custom WordPress themes are a good way to go if you want your blog to stand out. But it can be expensive. If it doesn’t fit your budget then you should just go with a WordPress template and work toward being able to purchase a custom theme down the road.

One way you can find a custom blog theme for your WordPress blog is to visit other blogs and evaluate the designers style. If you see a designer that you like - that is, you see several designs from a particular designer that catches your eye - then ask about his prices and be sure to ask about the optimization performance of the blog themes he designs. If he doesn’t know about the performance then chances are he doesn’t design optimized blog themes. It’s very important that you get a blog theme that is optimized and a good designer will know that his themes are optimized and be able to tell you how his designs fare at the search engines.

Happy New Year bloggers! The new year is here and it’s time to set some goals. Unless you’ve already done that.

According to a Harvard Business School poll, 3% of Harvard graduates write down their goals. Those 3% make twice as much money as the average of all other Harvard graduates. Why the big difference?

Goal setting is essential for business - any business. Blogging too. Goals keep you focused. When you write down your goals then you solidify them in your mind. You can go back and review them.

Goal setting is very powerful. Those who set goals and write them down usually have goals for different areas of their lives - spiritual, relationships, financial, hobbies. And I’m a big believer in goals. I’m also a big believer in blogging. Have you set your blogging goals? If not, here are a few areas of blogging that you might want to set goals for:

• Income
• Targeted traffic
• SEO performance
• Number of posts you’ll write this year
• Social bookmarking benchmarks
• Overall marketing expenditure
• Number of new customers

If you haven’t set any goals for your blog in 2008, now’s the time. Take 30 minutes to an hour and think about where you want your blog to go. What do you want it to do for your business? If you don’t set your goals you likely won’t meet them.

It’s the new year and like most fearless forecasts, there are a lot of website predictions coming out like the 40 Plus 2008 Web Predictions presented by authors of ReadWriteWeb.  

Here at BlogMarketingJournal, we are confident that the year 2008 will be a better year for bloggers and the blogosphere as a whole.

It will be a more fruitful blogging year for old and new bloggers alike. Here are BMJ’s Blog Predictions for 2008:

1. Blogging will be more lucrative than ever.  Those who have just started with problogging can expect an improvement in pay per post.

2. More blogging jobs will be made available. More and more people will hire bloggers to post whether for personal or corporate blogs.

3.Blogging will become a household term. It will go more mainstream and the public will know more about blogging.

4. Bloggers will be the new media. Companies, agencies, and even media outfits will look to the opinions of bloggers as part of the new media. These companies have started to realize the power of blogs and bloggers and no one’s going to stop them now.

5. Bigger blogs like Engadget, Mashable, and TechCrunch will continue to grow making a fine line between new media and mainstream.

6. Smaller blogs will continue to have revenue no matter how small.

Now there. As compared to last year, blogs will be a bigger and better thing this year as the Internet world will realize the importance of social marketing.

So here’s to a successful 2008 blogging! Cheers! Blogging rules!