Over the last few weeks we have been asking you “What is your favorite WordPress Theme and why?”

Thanks to everyone who entered this months poll, the overall winning theme for design flexibility and versatility was Thesis 1.6

Your next top 3 favorite themes were:

• Interphase at Elegant Themes
• The Lifestyle theme from studiopress!
• The Wordpress Journalist theme by kalphegor

Here are the Young Entrepreneur top 5 online resources for fantastic WordPress templates:

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Best Wordpress Themes

WordPress users have thousands of themes to choose from. They hunt out the best of the best free and premium themes so you don’t have to.

StudioPress

StudioPress themes are a perfect solution for small businesses or individuals looking to establish their online presence with a WordPress blog or website.

ElegantThemes

Was created to provide WordPress themes of quality and integrity. The themes are crafted with a goal of simplicity and professionalism and strive to inject each design with a dose of modest elegance. Your website is not just a tool, it is an integral part of your identity. They provide attractive and userfriendly templates that will help you achieve your online goals.

WooThemes

WordPress themes for all types of web publishers. A one stop theme shop where you can get the finest WordPress Themes and top notch support so you can give your website a shiny new look and be up and running in no time!

DIYthemes

The Thesis Theme for WordPress is a high-quality template system that you can use to improve your site immediately. Thesis boasts the strongest SEO of any theme on the market today thanks to its expertly-coded HTML + CSS + PHP framework. Not only that, Thesis also contains additional options that will allow you to fine-tune each and every page of your site. The days of worrying about your in-site SEO are over—with Thesis, your strategy is “just add killer content.”

If you would still like to add your comments, we are leaving the contest open for 1 more week – enter at http://contests.youngentrepreneur.com/ or tweet your answer below.

Next week we will be starting a brand new entrepreneur Poll!

Adam Toren

Social proof is ever so important for e-commerce retailers, as a “feel-good” barrier stands tall between your site and the folks at the other end of the keyboard. Your offer may look tempting and you may have designed your site perfectly well, with a logical progression, your calls to action and your friendly checkout process. First-time buyers still face an urge to find out a little more, so that they feel they are doing the right thing and discover if others have found success. Incorporating testimonials and reviews within your site makes a great deal of sense.

You should try and incorporate a system to help gather and promote reviews on your site. Don’t make this haphazard or trust that people will just do it, as with the best will in the world, everyone is time strapped these days and it’ll just slip their mind. Consider these six steps to help you set up a system to gather reviews automatically.

1. Once you have committed to sending e-mails to buyers, you need to set up your autoresponder system to send out a mail asking for a review within a certain timeframe. There are a number of different ideas here but we recommend between five and 10 days after purchase. You obviously need to give a little bit of time for them to enjoy and to form an opinion about your product or service, but don’t leave it too long in case they forget.

2. Try and give the recipient an incentive of some kind in return for their response. It always helps to prompt them, so that they will spend their time filling out the details and you could consider a discount against a future purchase or entrance into a draw for an object of value. You never know, if you include the discount against a future purchase, they may even use this incentive right away and put additional money into your coffers right there and then.

3. It is very important to be crystal clear about the purpose of your e-mail. Always include the keyword “review” in your subject line and maybe mention the incentive as well. Unless you are clear here, the mail will be seen as just another promotional piece and may be discarded.

4. Don’t assume too much. In other words remind the mail recipient that they purchased product or service “X” from you, including a graphic or photographs relating to the item to jog their memory. You may be quite clear about the purpose of the e-mail, but don’t leave any questions in their minds, as your goal is to get a good conversion rate here. Have a clear call to action with a prominent link to the review landing page.

5. Landing pages should be self explanatory, not require them to jump through too many hoops and be simple to interact with. Do not put any obstacles in their path by keeping the number of boxes to check or to fill in as low as possible.

6. Consider what you would like your reviewers to say. If you want more detailed feedback, referring to particular facets of your service or features of your product, then you could prompt accordingly. Remember that you do not want to make this process too cumbersome or time-consuming and try not to make any assumptions here, either.

Do not underestimate the power of reviews. Consider including some elements of constructive criticism within your published reviews, as this adds an element of realism that your prospective buyers may well appreciate.

Do you respond to requests for reviews?

Matthew Toren

This week I was lucky enough to interview Sanjay Sabnani. Sanjay is the CEO of CrowdGather. He has been an active proponent of message boards since 2002, when he acquired General Mayhem, his first message board community.

Adam: How did you first come up with the idea for CrowdGather and what made you believe this idea would make a great business?

Sanjay: CrowdGather came from my frustrations first as a forum member and then as a forum owner. I felt that forums and message boards had been ignored by technologists and investors alike, despite the fact that they are the largest repositories of user generated content on the internet. I started buying forums in order to gain some critical mass and soon my hobby took over my life so I was faced with no other choice than to do this full time.

Adam: In the initial days of CrowdGather, did you have a team of employees or did you “go it alone”?

Sanjay: Initially, CrowdGather was me, my forums, and engineering support provided by a couple of friends from those forums. I found it very difficult to work in isolation without a full-time team.

Adam: CrowdGather is a free service for members, so how do you make money?

Sanjay: We offer a free experience for our members, but we support it by running display advertising on our sites.

Adam: CrowdGather has recently raised a significant amount of finance, but initially you personally invested your life savings in the business. Do you think being so financially committed to the business helped or hindered your work?

Sanjay: I would have had a tough time asking others to invest and believe in my business vision if I was not able to demonstrate that I had sufficient “skin in the game”. Fear of losing everything is a very powerful motivator and it helps to drive me towards success. It can be overwhelming at times, but entrepreneurship is not for everyone.

Adam: CrowdGather has 1.9 million unique users monthly and this year your audience grew over 400%. Can you sustain this type of growth? Is there a point where you will feel you will be big enough or even too big?

Sanjay: Our growth rate is entirely based upon our access to capital. Given capital, we can keep driving our growth till we achieve critical mass and profitability. We anticipate this will happen when we are at around 10 million monthly unique visitors. Beyond that we will grow revenues by partnering with smaller forums in order to help them benefit from the higher advertising rates we have negotiated.

Adam: You occupied senior executive positions in several publicly held companies before starting your own business. Would you advise young entrepreneurs to work for others before striking out on their own?

Sanjay: Everyone should work for others in order to learn the discipline it takes to build a business. It is also helpful to watch others make mistakes so that you reduce your chances of having to learn everything the hard way- by screwing up yourself.

Adam: What about business education? You have a BA in English Literature from UCLA and seem to have learned your business skills on the job. Is formal business education important for entrepreneurs?

Sanjay: I would venture to guess that there are far more great business leaders such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who have never had a formal business education than those who have an MBA. I don’t think it really matters in the long run since entrepreneurship is usually learned in a real world setting.

Adam: You served as chairman of the board on two distinguished non-profits, Artwallah (arts festival) and TiE SoCal (venture capital networking). Do you think it is important for entrepreneurs to apply themselves outside of profit driven companies?

Sanjay: I achieved non-profit leadership positions by working hard and networking. This is no different than what it would take to succeed in a for-profit setting. My interest wasn’t philanthropic, it was to learn about different types of operational structures.

Adam: You are a founder of the California charity, EndDependence (scholarships for addiction treatment). Why did you decide to found this charity and are you still involved in their work?

Sanjay: I founded the non-profit while I was working at a for-profit addiction treatment company. It was heartbreaking to receive calls from drug dependent individuals who wanted to get better, but could not afford treatment. I convinced my employer to allow me to launch this venture so that those in need could apply for treatment scholarship. I named the company and found a very low cost way to launch it, but I was never officially involved in the day to day operations of the non-profit since it needed to be fully independent of my employer.

Adam: Finally, what is your next challenge or goal?

Sanjay: My goal is to build CrowdGather into one of the most successful internet companies. If my team and I are successful, forums will be treated as a big deal and not as second class citizens of the social media landscape.

Adam Toren

“It’s about creating new market opportunities. Giving users new ways to be creative…We see our technology as a platform for other things” – Chad Hurley.

Like many other concepts that we now take for granted as part of our everyday lives, YouTube developed from a fragmented series of ideas and became the product of its own popularity. Rather than representing the result of a well thought out business plan, or a journey through the helping hands of various angel investors, the explosion of the ultimate concept propelled YouTube from an unknown to a household name in very short order. Cofounder and chief executive officer Chad Hurley is a graphic designer, but always had an eye for a business opportunity. Little did he dream, surely, that his first venture would be a beauty to behold.

Chad Hurley was born in Birdsboro, PA in 1976. He exhibited a keen interest in computers during high school, but an even keener interest in design arts. In 1999 he graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in finance. Ironically, his first job position was at PayPal, another quick startup-to-Internet phenomenon. He is credited with designing the initial PayPal logo as part of his job initiation and was to go on to make a significant impression within the company, engaging two company engineers, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim to help him brainstorm his business idea.

The Web 2.0 revolution was really humming at that time and in 2002 auctioneer eBay bought out PayPal as part of its expansion plans. Hurley received a bonus from this transaction which he used, in co-operation with Chen and Karim to launch YouTube. Launch may be too grand a word, as the initial days of the company were spent in less than ideal surroundings, working from homes and in tandem with a couple of handfuls of dedicated enthusiasts, all working more for love than money. Chad was keen to develop something which had the chance to “affect people’s lives,” and he had a keen eye for popular culture. He worked on a process of trust and friendship with his compatriots and his skills as a good motivator certainly helped in those early days.

YouTube did not really have a business model, although the team quickly came to learn that they needed core video upload sites to distribute videos in and around the community. It wasn’t too long before the concept became known within the blogosphere and suddenly went viral. YouTube went from virtually nothing to one million visitors per day in a very short space of time.

With some assistance from the former chief financial officer of PayPal, Roelof Botha, Hurley and his team were able to secure significant rounds of funding to fuel explosive growth. Storage and distribution of video files requires a huge server capacity, a team of very knowledgeable people and the ability to scale on an almost unheard-of level. Hurley basically created “a community around video,” and the concept seems so simple, yet essential today. “I see our service as one that’s been needed for a long time. The pieces to make it all happen just weren’t in place until we came around.”

YouTube was sold to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, with significant portions of the wealth attributed to Hurley, Chen and Karim. In addition to addressing the power of popular culture, YouTube has become the chosen marketing tool for corporations large and small. People love the moving image and they often opt to open a video file before a static file when they surf the net. There are clearly significant options for monetization, although Hurley has always said that “we’re building a community and we don’t want to bombard people with advertising. We’re not in a hurry. We’re trying to improve the experience for people on our site.” Nevertheless, as YouTube now represents a significantly scaled search engine in its own right, “pre-roll” ads may yet appear when you click to view your favorite videos.

The YouTube of today likely represents only the tip of the iceberg, for as Hurley puts it, “everybody aspires to be a star.”

Matthew Toren

Every new business goes through phases, some representing expansion (hopefully, often) and some contraction and as these phases unfold your business can fluctuate in size and require different resources. Sometimes, the business will get to a certain plateau and seem to stick, almost spinning its wheels despite your efforts. At this point in time you will want to consider all your options and may feel that a business partner could really help to un-glue the potential and allow you to make significant forward strides. Finding a business partner can be quite a difficult task and is much more involved than one might think. Look at a business partnership like a marriage and you will be ideally placed to begin hunting!

You should start by asking yourself why you really need a business partner. Do you often find that your really lengthy work week is still not enough time and that you are spending inordinate amounts of time on rather mundane tasks? While you could consider taking on employees, they will not necessarily be an investment in terms of business prospects and sometimes a business partner can help to alleviate and spread a workload while working, like you, to grow the business.

Beware the burnout – this can occur when you’re pouring every hour that is sent to you into the business with little relief. If you are spreading yourself too thinly and trying to expand at the same time as you are running in place, then you could end up becoming less efficient with all the negative connotations.

If you have never had a business partner before and you are out looking for the first time, then stick to one partner. Don’t think that the more input you receive the better, as this is rarely the case. If things work out with your new partner you can always look at different options down the road. Remember what we said about a marriage, it is going to be quite a task for you to find and get to know someone before you dive in, so don’t make it that much harder by trying to find more than one partner.

As you start your process of discovery you should look around you, within your closest circles. Do you have any friends or good acquaintances who may be potential targets? Ask your closest friends and family if they can think of anyone you might talk to. Ask your existing business contacts, if you have an open type of relationship with them of course, for their input.

If you are unable to find a resource from within close circles, networking events may be your best bet. Remember that this process is going to be a lot longer as you must really get to know a complete stranger rather well before you move forward. Take your time here as this period of revelation is important from both your points of view. You will both need to to get to know each other, your backgrounds, current circumstances and aspirations as much as possible.

When you believe you have found your business partner and before you actually move ahead, conduct a summit meeting. Go through a formal exchange of ideas, representing the next few months and years and outline how you will interact as you move forward. Try not to leave any stone unturned here, so that there are no surprises or misunderstandings of any kind after formalities have been completed.

Always form an LLC or other formal Corporation. Never be tempted to engage a business partner on merely a handshake or verbal agreement. You really need to employ the services of a legal expert here and make sure that the attorney covers a period of vesting, so that the partner’s shares accumulate over time. It’s hardly fair for him or her to receive a significant portion of the business early on, should you get into a position where the corporation has to be liquidated.

When all is said and done, even the most arduous selection process cannot prepare you for what will happen in the real world. It may or may not work out and you may have to start again and look for other business partners. This happens all the time and is just another facet of doing business. Be diligent and you will stand a great chance of boosting your business success.

Does anyone have any gems of wisdom to share, relating to partner-hunting?

Adam Toren

There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur, especially when it comes to online business. The Internet has become the great equalizer, allowing anyone with a business plan to equally prosper, so long as they are willing to do the hard work and learn those essential lessons that only an online living can teach.

Technology and innovation go hand in hand, so it makes perfect sense that the online world would be the first to experience a steady stream of sharper and sharper tools, continuously being developed with the online entrepreneur first and foremost in mind.

Here are 5 areas the online entrepreneur must always keep their focus and 5 ways to stay at the bleeding edge.

Content Creation

Drafting compelling copy is an absolute must for the serious online entrepreneur. Business online requires sales letters, marketing and email auto-responders, at the very least. In other words: copy, copy and more copy. While it used to be enough to use Microsoft Word, Open Office or Apple’s pages, these days online entrepreneurs can collaborate with cutting edge online tools such as Google docs, allowing us to use spreadsheets presentations and forms. Google Docs have been around a couple of years now, but they keep on adding features, the best of which is still the first — seamless sharing without any risk to loss of data.

Communication

Remember when cell phones were about as big as the yellow side of the phone book? These days the cell phone is more than just a phone, it is an all-in-one communication device. Skype, text messaging and Twitter are only the beginning. By this time next year, Google Voice will also be available to the general public, ushering in a full integration of services such as voice-to-text, and all of it available from a single phone number.

Online Office

Because it has never been more possible for the entrepreneur to have colleagues spread across the planet, it has also never been more important to establish the most effective ways of sharing information. Physical office space is going the way of the t-rex. New tools such as Dropbox allow online collaborators to easily exchange files by dropping them into an online server shared by multiple users. Accounts are free with 2 gigs of storage, but for just $10 a month, users can multiply it 25 times and go all the way to 50 gigs.

Project Management

An online office is important, an online project management system is even more so. Basecamp is one of the best friends of many a modern day entrepreneur. The online application is subscription based, can be tailored to fit the needs or budget of any user and can be shared with anyone at any time. Basecamp allows for online communication that is both powerful and fluid. With everything the modern day entrepreneur must juggle, setting an efficient project management system in place is essential to the bottom line.

A PC in Your Pocket.

Phones have been slowly transforming into magic wallets, allowing users to carry anything from their entire address books to each to-do for every project on their plate. The iPhone is only the first in a giant wave to crash on the shore. With tens of thousands of applications instantly available that can make your entrepreneurial life instantly accessible, it has never been easier to fit your desktop, or your entire office, directly in your wallet.

There has never been more opportunity for entrepreneurs, nor has there been more quality tools to help make it possible. The above are just a few, but the smart entrepreneur also knows to keep their eyes on what’s just past the horizon.

What are some of the tools in your “Entrepreneurial Toolkit?”

-Adam Toren