Monster Truck Sketch by Darryl Lecraw vectoring by eLance Freelancer

I have been blogging and publishing content to the web for some time now. I have done this with a Blogger account, through Squidoo, HubPages etc.

It is important to note that I do not know html, web design, graphic design or any sort of technical programing design language. So it has been a learning lesson in figuring out how to get things done and looking the way I want. This blog, Hillbilly Direct, has been around for a little over a year. Originally I started by using the free themes that are all over the place. It didn't take long for me to realize that there did not exist a free theme that would be what I wanted my blog to be. So I took one of my favorite free themes and ventured off into my first attempt at outsourcing. I have, in the past, been a member of Wealthy Affiliate University. They have a job board (much like eLance, but smaller) and I posted a theme customization project there. For $100US I had someone redo my theme….but it had a lot of issues. Every time I did anything in the Wordpress control panel, my theme would bugger up. The person I hired fixed it a couple of times for me…..but this was just not working for me. I spent a few months trying to make that site work, but eventually ended up scrapping it and starting all over and going back to my free theme.

My second outsourcing attempt was through eLance. I posted the project (web customization) and had a number of good bids. I was being cheap at the time for some reason, so I picked the lowest bidder (often not a good idea). What a mistake! Again, I went through a good couple of months with this developer. I paid him $50US and had $100US extra put aside for him…. The quality of the work I got out of this guy was terrible….I spent a good couple of months again trying to work with this guy…..to no avail. I ended up pulling my money out of the project and telling the guy to take a walk.

Unless you have taken courses in web design or programming, or graphic design….you will find there are tasks involved in developing/customizing your website that are pretty tuff (without expensive software). Sure I could have just went with the free themes. But I, like many other I presume, wanted more. I want a site that is unique and customized. So I decided I had no choice but to spend a few more $$$. There are loads and loads of paid "Premium" wordpress themes. I scoured many of these, found lots of great themes and top knotch work… Finally I settled on Affiliate Theme for Wordpress. I liked the simplistic customization options. It is not nearly as fancy as many other paid themes, but it has a lot of what I wanted. Simple easy to use, built in SEO, numerous display options and a reasonable price tag. This is what is now running this site.

Affiliate Theme came with a bunch of graphics that one could use, so I didn't have to do anything further. But I wanted my own graphics (logo). So I went back to eLance and posted a very specific, graphic/logo design project.

I wanted a graphic that depicts "Hillbilly". I tried a bunch of different things, but the Google search that worked was "Monster Truck Sketch". Google images revealed a kick ass sketch of a monster truck done by Darryl Lecraw. (note: the website I found this logo on is open source, none the less, I contacted the artist to ensure I had his permision, this is very important, make sure you have permision) No other sketch came close, so I knew this was my new graphic. I also knew that you have to be very specific and careful with wording and placing your eLance project (I had wasted far too much $$ learning this). Fast forward to now….

I found a very very good graphic designer on eLance through this project. He, I think, did a great job of making a logo out of this kick ass sketch that…looks great.

So finally, I have got my blog done. Thanks for this go to;

Darryl Lecraw for his great sketch,

eLance for the freelance source,

Affiliate Theme for the Wordpress theme.

I consider my blog to be forever in "final Draft" stage. It will continually evolve and change. However, the overall look and feel will be what you see here.

What do you think? Do you have any ideas? Do you see anything that could be improved? Do you have any tips on how to get your site customized (no spam please)? Share your thoughts!