I am 38 yrs old, living with my wife and daughter (and 2 cats) in Germany.

Since nearly 10 years I am working as a self employed web developer and entrepreneur, with varying success, ranging from extremely good to not so good. Until about two years ago I was mainly managing my own traffic projects with search engine optimization techniques. In pre-Google days I also started a SEO company with two other guys, and we developed a SEO software.

Since more than a year I am all about WordPress. I worked a bit with Joomla, Drupal and CMS Made Simple, and also tried out TYPO3 and Website Baker. They all have their pros and cons but WordPress has the momentum plus it allows for quick straight PHP programming. And for end-users it is the easiest CMS around.

Since I started with WordPress I've put well over 1500 hours (and counting) into the development of about a dozen themes (Atahualpa got the biggest share) of which around 8 or so are published and a few are not, plus a few widgets. Many users probably think I am doing this on the side, after a 9-5 job, but that's hardly possible.

Donations are important. I get donations on a regular basis. Thank you very much for this. It's not like I can make a living off of donations alone. But without them I'd be in trouble. (I already put a ton of time into all this before I even started with donations so I am still at a loss).

I am working on a Pay theme (GPL with no strings attached) that I hope to release before Summer 2009. I just need to get over the fact that the first release won't be perfect. It'll have to be, and will be, substantially better than Atahualpa though. So start putting some money on the side now

(And existing donors will definitely get a good deal for the new theme. Donations really pay off around here, and won't be forgotten, so please check out the "Donate" button above.)

I want to see here is adsense ads.

I always feel that ads add so much something like color and vibrancy to a site and when you are finished chatting or reading a site and want to leave you look around for something exciting to click and seeing a interesting ad is a relief. Without ads the site looks dull.

I always see developers, designers asking for donations, that is right I agree. They are giving their work for free. There are so many who sell their work as paid job. But do you know adsense can help you so much.

If you are actively answering your users queries and very active with development that means the traffic will increase and the best way is to use adsense.

I dont understand why people dont use adsense. A site which gets natural traffic earns in a extremely good way and If you already have an adsense account please add your code to this forum soon.

if the ads are well blended and the ads are non intrusive the site looks very professional, good to read at the same time.

A lot of the work I do here happens offsite, it goes into checking other people's sites, thinking of a fix, and applying that fix on their site through Firebug, then coming back here and posting that fix including line number and code samples. While the result adds to the forum's content through a post and a few lines of code, which may increase the traffic over time, it would be * extremely expensive * to "build content" and traffic like this.

The Adsense ads would have to pay pretty damn good to offset that. How much can you earn with Adsense? $5 per 1000 pageviews and that's already very good? It's more like $1 usually isn't it?

I think you are underestimating the effort that is going into all this if you think that Adsense would be worthwile. I sure hope that the users I have here are worth more than the 0.0001 cent per user I#d get through Adsense. After all, I worked on the site of each one of them, and they're using my theme for their site.

But I might do an Adsense test the next days just to prove you wrong. And if you prove me wrong, then I get to keep the Adsense money, that's fine, too.

no dear you took me totally wrong.

This is my way of thinking that no matter what the earnings are they are still profit. No source of income should be underestimated whether big or small. When money decides to come keep your money paths open, you cannot judge from which path the money will decide to come.

What I meant was donations are not regular income, means somebody may donate 1000$ once or 50$ every year.

but adsense is a monthly income.

donot look at adsense as a way to measure you or users like me.
What I meant to say was that I too use adsense and forums like digitalpoint too.

treat adsense like a piggy bank, let the money accumulate through it.
dont worry what it pay, only see to it that it pays. .

so let the ads be there no matter if they pay up to your expectation or not because adsense earnings fluctuate. You cannot judge them in 10 years too, all depends on from which country you get traffic and how much.

Can you judge from where and how much traffic will you get in the next 10 years.

> in Germany

Hi Flynn,
thanks for sharing about yourself.
I am in love with Wordpress myself, although your experience is ample. I'm also very good with SEO as well and working on a commercial wordpress plugin right now.

I just installed your theme on my PR4 site - so don't underestimate value of backlinks. My site is on second page of Google among about 50,000,000 other competing pages and going up.

I buzzing about your theme everywhere, I think it's the best thing for Wordpress after sliced bread.

If I can help you somehow in your efforts - please let me know.

Gleb Esman.
http://www.memberwing.com

Thanks Flynn, I was most interested to learn who the talented and helpful Flynn is. I've been amazed at the support and solutions you put into the forum.

I have colleagues at my University using Wordpress (for student projects as well as personal) and I've turned em on to Atahualpa - I'm going to tell them to hire your services if opportunities come up.

I also think Atahualpa should be THE default theme for WordPress - all you'll ever need. I'm going to write to them now and tell them.

Hello Flynn,

Your theme takes the wordpress layout to a higher level, thanks a lot!

I would love to use your theme. So far its not yet working for me. (For some reason when I click on theme options and then on the any of those links I don't get anywhere)

How much is the suggested donation?

Donations so far ranged from $5 to $100, with most being around $20

Despite your name, I assume you are German? Your English is marvelous, as well as your programming skills. Do you work with databases, importing legacy content into Wordpress? For money, of course.

I am Bavarian

Not good enough in MySQL to go around and offer it as a service I'm afraid, thanks for the offer

Hi Flynn

Just made a donation for your marvellous work. Not that I have received any specific help (yet!) but just that I'm impressed by the help and support you give to other users, the speed in which you respond and the fact that you actually care about the theme you have produced - and all for free!

I am new to Wordpress but the Atahualpa theme & the options in the Dashboard/Control Panel make it so easy to use. I tried other themes before this one but struggled to do anything with them.

The only thing I would like to see added (and I know this has been mentioned in other sections of the forum) is unique sidebars for unique pages - in effect, the facility to create many different sidebars with different content to match the content on different pages.

In the meantime - keep up the good work!

woomik

Thank you, woomik

Hey Flynn, thanks for sharing more about you and thanks for all the hard work you've put into this great theme!

A pay theme in the works? Better than Atahualpa?!? Sign me up!

You've certainly put a lot of hours into building and supporting this theme and I really hope the people that download this free theme recognize your hard work and send you a donation.

I agree that adsense won't pay the bills and if Google believes that people are abusing it on your site they won't pay you anyway.

I'm really looking forward to the new theme but in the meantime, what about affiliate offers? I'm sure many of us using this theme eventually need other things such as (graphics, stock photos, Auto Responders, hosting, etc)

What if you were to sign up as an affiliate with these services/websites and send us your affiliate links? I'm sure the one-time purchases (photos, graphics, etc) would be sporadic but if you can get some users to sign up for the recurring services (like the auto responders and hosting) then that can help bring in some more steady income.

What do you think?

Either way, I'd love to see what else your capable of if you were working on this full time!

Keep up the great work!

-vinnie-

P.S. I've already contributed a small donation but I'll definitely be sending more.

Neither Hosting ads nor Adsense did anything. That was probably to be expected as everyone looking for a theme already has his hosting account. I'll keep trying one or another affiliate program now and then but overall I prefer selling something valuable to satisfied customers.

Thank you for your donation.

(It was a check I think, you should get an award once it cleared, in a few days. Until then, perhaps mention your donation if you ask anything)

I understand what you're saying about the hosting but I think there's definitely other offers out there that we'd be happy to sign up with under your affiliate accounts.

I did send the last donation via eCheck (not sure why) but I've just sent another via instant paypal transfer.

Cheers!

Hi Flynn,
I'm from Italy but I have a big friend in München from the Audi TT Club (TTM eV) and so I'm very happy you come from Bavaria :-)
I have donate today for your work because I think it is very good.
Ich danke dir für deine arbeit.

tschuss, servus. Ciao :-)

Thank you, Francos,

I added your donation to your user name.

I'm happy....

:-)

Totally awesome theme Flynn and your support is 1st class - thanks!

You are amazing and thank you! For CSS designers out there who are new to PHP, this forum is wonderful. I can not thank you enough. Yes, everyone please donate!

Hi Flynn:

yes, I donated, and happily! Thank you very much for this wonderful theme!

Terri

Here's a couple thoughts, bro. A two hour one on one chat once or twice a week with A paid membership. $5 a month recurring or $50 a year to talk with you one on one about the template, probs, suggestions, whatever. Rotate the times and announce beforehand.

The other's obvious. Reseller c-panel hosting through a reputable host like Hostgator or Omnis. It's relatively affordable and what better place for your users to host a Bytes For All template than on the Bytes For All hosting platform? Plus it would lead to lots of new clients. Since you'd be able to anticipate many server issues it would cut down on time devoted to solving those issues and leave some for host managing and your development pursuits. You could provide your templates right from c-panel too. For someone smart like you it could be a good income.
JB

Has Flynn not visited this section lately? I think that idea about hosting blogs on his server is a great one. Actually you can do a "simple scripts" push of a button installation of WordPress with bluehost which does have cpanel as well plus alot of other cool stuff I know nothing about (like ruby Falls?).
I think a 2 year intro rate is $6.95 per month payable in advance but with a 30 day money back guarantee.

Any way, I am willing to support Flynn any way I can. I love people with a good heart who at least try to make a living trusting people. I personally really appreciated the ability to pay later. I did pay $50 on May 18th or so and planned to donate another $50 but was wondering about the new blog he is planning on releasing this summer.

Hey Flynn it's hard to find a good php programmer and even those in India charge $35 per hour for this. I want to do a site with a gift registry, it would be nice if it could be a blog. However, I think it may need to be an ecommerce site. Maybe you could help me out. I need an idea of how much money I will need to set this up.