Hypebot.com — a ProBlogger Community Blog Consulting Project

What I like about the blog:
1. I love the header image. I think it has a very nice design.
2. I like the design of the rest of the page. It’s very simplistic and easy to look at.
3. You have really good content, and you are updating the blog regularly.
4. You are using the text links for Social Bookmarking at the end of each post.

Areas to improve:
1. I might make the sidebar width a little smaller. It takes attention away from the main content area at the current width.
2. I would add About and Contact pages to the blog, and I would post links somewhere up at the top of the blog.
3. I would remove the Recent Posts from the sidebar just to reduce the clutter. If you scroll down, you can see the recent posts, so it might be unnecessary.
4. For your feed button, I might choose to use the button that has text letting the user know “Subscribe to Feed”.
5. As for categories, there are two widgets being used for them right now. I would choose one of these, and remove the other to “declutter” a bit.
6. There are also two Technorati buttons in the sidebar. I would remove one of these to “declutter”.

Overall, I think you have a nice looking blog with great content.

I like how the real meat of the site is in simple white related material is in grey. Make it easy to focus on subject.

I find the text for the Recent post and Recent comments a little too small.

I would like to see the heading for the various subcategories (my Links, About and all these) stand out more from the grey background so I can quickly these categories . Now they see almost berried.

In some of the article there are too many Bolds and links and for me at least it makes it difficult to read. The first article and second work great

I would like to address the readability of the blog. One thing I find distracting is the font size and spacing. I have a high resolution monitor, and the words appear too large and far apart. This makes it a bit of a chore to read, and keeps the page as a whole from hanging together. On a low resolution monitor the problem would be amplified.

I would experiment with these elements until it becomes more pleasing to read, and when readers stay longer to read, you have one more element on your side to increase readership.

Don’t let the criticisms people give get you down. Just analyse them, choose the best, and ignore the rest.

Before I start answering the question here goes the first few points which hit me as your blog loaded.

–What have you done with your about page? Its layout does not match with your blog. The theme should be same. And there was NO link in your about page to your blog’s homepage? What if I opened your about page in some new window and accidentally closed the homepage? How will I know where I came from?

–The contact page? You have a email there for people to contact you. Better have a contact page. It is all about going more professional look to your blog and that is what you are thriving to be. Right?

–Your logo links to typepad URL where as it should link to http://www.hypebot.com/ Change this. It is just another silly mistake which bloggers do. If I click on your logo to get to your homepage (Because you do not have a home button.) and decide to link to you than I will end up linking to your typepad URL. That won’t help you in your pagerank. So change it.

–I don’t think you need to write Sponsors above the google ads in the sidebar. Thats my choice. I don’t prefer that. If these are 125×125 ad spots than I will write sponsors but not if they are google ads. Google already mentions them to be Google adsense ads.

–In you first post you are displaying a rectangular google adsense ad. Change its background color to white. You will get much better clicks then.

–Remove that powerpoint clip art. That books picture there in the right sidebar. You can get something more unique. If you can pay for problogger’s blog consulting than you can get a better image designed too. Remove that clipart from there.

–Remove that technorati’s search field. Technorati fave me button is fine but technorati’s search has a better replacement. The Google Custom search bar. Get that.

–This might be of no importance but under your privacy policy I could see the Digg this and the delicious links :) I know this was default and I think you should remove it. It is all about giving a professional look to your blog.

–Permalinks to all your posts are the typepad URLs whereas your homepage is a normal URL. I do not know much about typepad but I think if you can somehow change that typepad permalinks to your posts permalinks than it would be much better.

–When I open http://www.hypebot.com/ in firefox than it won’t show the favicon but when I open http://hypebot.typepad.com/hypebot/ than it shows the favicon. Although the favicon is the typepad favicon still if it is visible everytime than it is better. And why not change to a personalized favicon which matches with your logo?

–You have a cnet badge there in you blog which means you were listed on cnet (if I didn’t guessed it right). If that is so than why haven’t you linked to that article of cnet? That badge links to nothing.

–Recent posts were being displayed twice in the sidebar. Why?

–In few posts I saw that if they have been updated than the word UPDATED shows right on top of the post whereas the trend is that you should write the updated content after the complete post. So that a reader who has already read the old post is able to find the updates in the article easily.

–No archives? I wanted to see how old your blog is. And if it is there and I missed it than you should understand that it isn’t in a easily visible place. Although I have checked it many times and I couldn’t find it.

Okay. So that was the first look analysis of the blog. Now I will get into your questions..

Without loosing my core music industry/tech audience (which in itself could be much larger) how do I increase my readership?
To increase your readership get more of such type of blog consultings but in blogs which are from your own niche.

A word FREE brings in lot of readers. I see that you are giving away 5 CDs here. Why not start giving some good FREE stuff on your website to readers. Don’t ask them to link to you for the free gift. Make it very easy. Like ask them to leave a tiny comment and some lucky ones get the FREE gift. Such kind of contests which are easy to participate are easy to join and become famous very well, like Darren’s contest few months back when ProBlogger turned 3 years. Mostly the contest wanted people to leave comments. That is easy.

Try and stretch the contests for a week. Like just now Darren started a contest where after a week he will give books to some lucky people who leave comments. If the gift is attractive than it will attract readers. If you got money than instead of waisting it on coffees why not “waste” it on your blog for future returns? To expand your readership you start commenting “very heavily” on same niche blogs. You will get good readers.

Also I saw that you have been writing some real good content for music companies. Contact those companies and tell them what you have written. If they link to those articles in there press release section than you will get many readers coming in. Many dedicated ones.

And get your logo and your blog’s URL printed on a T-Shirt and wear that regularly. This starts conversations very quick and readers do tend to visit your blog at least once. Who know how many turn to be regular readers.

Add the subscribe via email and the subscribe via RSS Feeds button below every posts like I have done in my blog.

I’ve recently been approached by more than 1 of the established blog networks. Would a niche blog like this benefit from such an alliance or be hurt by a perceived lack of independence?
If it is a established network than GO FOR IT. You will benefit from it in some way or the other. If your blog fails to meet up to there standards than at least you will learn what you need to do and when you get into a network of experienced people than you are bound to get the exposure you are looking for. By the way if the network is established than they have guessed that you got something in you and that is the reason why they contacted you. No other answer for this. Go for it!

Since my current audience is specialized, but small, do you think I could/should sell ads? If so, how do I get an idea of what to charge?
Do NOT sell ads at this stage. You seem to be be working very hard in your blog and that makes it clear that you aim high with this blog. So why are you thinking about money at this stage? If you need some quick bucks than do some freelance writing work on other blogs in your free time and that should be fine. You will find good opportunities in problogger’s job board. See..if you sell ads at this stage and the advertiser does not gets the clicks he might expect than he won’t come back again. You loose business. Build your readership and once you start getting high amount of readers than think of selling ad space. At that stage people will themselves start asking for ad space. It is all about patience. Little bit of patience, lots of hard-work and lots of goodness to others will bring in the success and will bring in the advertisers.

Am I achieving the right balance of news vs. commentary?
Right balance? In your last articles from November 30 till date I found only 30 comments (approx.). Out of those 18 were on the article which is about nominations. That is totally out of balance. See I am not criticizing you. What I mean is you are generating cool content and may be you have some dedicated readers but friend your articles aren’t such that people are “pushed” to leave a comment. Read probloggers article on how to push your readers to write comment. You should write like you are talking to the reader and you should end the article in a way that it asks readers if the so n so company did right with the step you mentioned (just a example) or something of the sort. This will push the reader to leave a comment. Now actively participate in this and reply to those comment. Sometimes replying in controversial manner will bring in more comments and that isn’t wrong!

I recently simplified the design and may have gone too far. How can the design be improved to encourage more time on the site?
You blog is focusing on “news” so why not get a new theme which looks more like a news theme. Premium News Theme might be a good option. I don’t know if that works with typepad. If it doesn’t than invest some more money and get a news kind of theme for your blog “very quick” because this one kills all the experience. The theme which I have suggested got a good video plugin there and it will go great with your kind of blog.

Get a theme, get some place for video in that theme and update that regularly. This will bring in more readers if they find good videos on your homepage on a regular basis.

Remember that your theme should match with your logo.

Now first thing you need to do is remove that clip art from there (that books image). It isn’t professional. Than look for a designer, get the quote, plan a design and get it done. Without a good theme you won’t have readers coming in. Remember to get a design which attracts readers. Cover of the book does matter. Here is a a list of 53 blog designs. (that isn’t my blog) The list contains some real good designs to give you ideas.

When I started writing this comment there were zero comments on the list. Now I see that there are 5 comments. Just to make it clear the ideas are mine and I haven’t copied any comment.

I hope that will help you. If that does than do visit my blog and if that dosen’t than I would love to know what clicked, other than all this, for your blog. I will soon be returning to your blog after my exams to see what changes you made.

That will help me know how is this consulting helping the bloggers. It seems to be great thing.

@Compuworld

Yes, it would be nice if the Comment system here let us edit our posts for at least a few minutes after posting.. so many times I have noticed a stupid typo but there’s nothing I can do about it..

The first point that striked me is the design that should be reviewed. He tried to go simple but it still looks cluttered. This is how I would proceed:

Adding a color like the purple of the header on the post title would improve a lot the design.

Increasing the space between the different posts and putting icons instead of the digg it, stumble upon links would also be great.

Images on the post should be on the left side and he should not use bullet points and other text effects on the summary of the post.

Increasing the size of the comment link and putting an icon would help.

You should also put the sidebar on a white background because it doesn’t looks like to be the same website. Also some purple for the titles of the sections.

I think presentationzen is a good guide in how to attain a good design for an uncluttered website.

Without loosing my core music industry/tech audience (which in itself could be much larger) how do I increase my readership?

When you say music industry, who do you mean? Musicians? Record company people? If you want to broaden your readership, there is a growing army of independent producers and artists out there. They are growing while the giant recording industry as we’ve known it is dying. The problem is the recording industry is at war with music lovers. You need to pick a side and stand up for that side. Stand for something on your blog. That will attract attention because it polarizes people.

Also, from a design standpoint: your tagline doesn’t really tell me what you’re about or who you’re for. In other words, it doesn’t tell me what’s in it for me.

* I’ve recently been approached by more than 1 of the established blog networks. Would a niche blog like this benefit from such an alliance or be hurt by a perceived lack of independence?

I have never perceived a blog that was part of a network as lacking in independence. I don’t think that’s really an issue. You will get support and traffic, however.

* Since my current audience is specialized, but small, do you think I could/should sell ads? If so, how do I get an idea of what to charge?

You can look at the ad rates of other blogs to find out. What’s more important is that with contextual advertising, the keywords on a page are going to bring ads in that your target audience will never click on because they are on the other “side” of the music drm/p2p no drm war.

* I recently simplified the design and may have gone too far. How can the design be improved to encourage more time on the site?

Widen the main content area
Increase the font size of the sidebar
Left-align your post headings
Add more white space between the end of one post the heading of the next.
Carry through the colors of the logo in the rest of the design.

* Without loosing my core music industry/tech audience (which in itself could be much larger) how do I increase my readership?
A: As someone who creates their own music as a hobby in my basement, I have been looking for something just like your blog. I know there are thousands more just like me looking so eventually they will find you as your blog grows. As for the industry/tech audience, I would think they would want to follow what your ‘regular’ readers are saying.

* I’ve recently been approached by more than 1 of the established blog networks. Would a niche blog like this benefit from such an alliance or be hurt by a perceived lack of independence?
A: I think you would benefit from an alliance as long as you really do maintain your independence. Your content will be the true judge of how you are perceived.

* Since my current audience is specialized, but small, do you think I could/should sell ads? If so, how do I get an idea of what to charge?
A: I think you should definitely try to sell the ads. As someone who does his own recording, I have always found that the ads increase the attractiveness of some other sites by increasing the content.
How much to charge? I would use your traffic data combined with considering your CTR on your Adsense and how much you are earning per click. However, if you consider that one copy of Cubase recording software sells in excess of $800, a company like that might be willing to pay more…if they only sell 10 copies a year from your site, that’s an extra $8000 in sales so you should be able to charge accordingly.

* Am I achieving the right balance of news vs. commentary?
A:So far so good!

* I recently simplified the design and may have gone too far. How can the design be improved to encourage more time on the site?
A: I like the design. It’s simple and clean. Maybe put “Categories” in the upper right corner which is something I would look for. It’s nice to easily find some info if for example I was looking for all your articles about recording or promoting music online.

First the feed. Do something like the problogger.net does.
After the logo, put in the words “subscriber to Hypebot via RSS.
Add a quick explanation of “what is RSS?”
Finally, use “or subscribe via email”
All these will help those who visit your site for the site time to be turned into your regular reader by subscribing to your blog.

I thoughts is that you didn’t over simplified but rather too much space on top and rather tight space with the expanded 3 columns.
This is what I suggest. You can tighten some more on the height of the heading, set the edge of closer to your logo.
Then fill the blank space on top with things like a search bar or move the “music technology. the new music business” to the right to fill the space and also to tighten the height more or include in some words that will tell a new reader what is your blog about. Which is “News source, guide and commentator on how the internet and technology are changing the music business” or maybe fill with an ad banner.

Change the link in your logo such that by clicking your logo, it will go to the main page of the blog instead of going to your typepad blog. Lead your readers to your main blog and not away.

There is a big offset in your column width coordination. It gives the impression that the grey columns are actually more important than where your postings are.
What to do is to narrow the right most column to give a wider space for your left most column and as well as some more gap space to the left of the left most column.

Another way is to move your RSS column to be your left most columns so that your posting will be able to take centre stage in your blog.

An important thing is that your words in the 2 right columns are too small. They may not be the focus of your blog but they will help your reader to zoom in, go deeper and stay longer at your blog. So make it friendly to your reader and increase your font size. To have a good idea how much bigger your font size should be, take a look at problogger.net side bar. It is about 1 point font size smaller.

Sometimes simple is more. But the colours give a dull and serious feel. Your blog should have exciting colours to match up with your topic, hype on internet and technology influencing the music business.
Go for energetic colours to match your logo colours. You might want to use analogous colours like light purple for 2 of the right side bars (Maybe different shades of purple or blue) Or you can use complimentary colours like light lime green with light purple. Just by using colours, you will be able to spice up and add a bit of excitement to your blog and therefore more appealing to your readers.

It is sometimes difficult to read some of your postings. Do not bold your words anywhere or anyhow. Bold words should be used for separation purposes and highlight a start of the next item in the topic of the posting. Use italics, change in colours or underline (don’t use underline excessively too) to emphasised. Again don’t use it all over place, anywhere or anyhow. Another technique is to use sub heading in the posting to emphasise a certain words. This is a good technique to create more desirable keywords in blog resulting in higher search engine ranking and therefore higher traffic to your blog.

To keep your readers stay reading your blog longer, is to make them go “deeper” by adding a related posts links at the bottom of each post, start a content column which should be more focused instead of the categories which has a wide range of topics.

Maybe half each, on news and commentary. But this will be difficult as news will be depended on events that will be happening (maybe an infrequent or frequent event)
So the easiest way is to add tab (pages) so that your reader can go straight to all news postings tab, all commentary postings tab or back to the main tab for all the latest postings which is a mixed of both. Include an archive tab and contact you tab also since you are looking into collaboration.

There is no such thing as to too little readers to put ads. Yes, you should have ads and by choosing your ads carefully, it will work both ways for you and your readers. First, your readers will benefits from the ads as they will have more related interest link to go and you will benefit to by earning revenue from it.

Coordinate the colours of your Google ads. A great example will be Simply Recipes from elise.com. Look at how the Google ads are merged seamlessly with the rest of the blog. Also notice that the head isn’t too high and the blank space on the left is nicely filled up with a search bar.

It is difficult to judge now how much you should be charging your advertisers and if your readership is low, it will be difficult to justify to your sponsors why they should put up an ad in your blog. Best way will be by using an affiliate program like adsense to start off. Build up to a sizable readership and a good sum of revenue generated from ads. Then find out what is the percentage that adsense is earning from your ads. Add that to your income from your ads revenue. Monitor these for a few months and correlate the total earning from the ads with the number of subscribers and readers. Then do a future projection of total ads revenue when you have a higher number of subscribers or readers. Then you can confidently approached your sponsors and tell them your rates.
And also by putting up ads early, you can get a feel of where you should position your ads (and ads sizes and types of ads like the widgetbucks) to get optimum results.
One last thing, on choosing your sponsors or ads. Try to focus on ads that is related to your topic and which is more profitable also. For example, choose ads for ipods insteads of ads for music. The competition in the ipod market is fierce and the item fetches high price, so the advertisers are more willing to pay more to advertise than music MP3 or iTunes.

To increase your readership, further improve on your content. Try to understand your targeted market and come up with postings that will be interesting, give value, useful, etc to your target audience. By having “solid” contents (high ranking keywords), first, you will have more readers interested in your postings and they will add links, bookmark, digg it, etc. These will give your blog more exposure to the blogosphere like BlogRush and technorati.

This will improve on the search engine ranking with more popular keywords and as well as with more links. So, basically, content, keywords and links for SEO to increase ranking and therefore increase traffic and readership.

Yes, it will be great to have alliances unless both of you are occupying exactly the same niches.(People won’t want to waste their time reading the same thing twice but they will be likely like to find out more about the same topic(it will be good if both your blog and the alliances blog will compliment each other by giving different perspective of the same topic) It will help to broaden the network of readership of both blogs and hence more links which means better search engine ranking and all these means more traffic and reader to your blog. This goes even deeper. When there is more traffic going to your blog, they will also check out your partner’s blog. Hence, more links for your partners. Which in turn, better search engine ranking and more traffic to their blog. These new traffic will in turn come and check out your blog too.

Basically, what goes round, comes round. It is like having more doors and bigger doors to your house (blog). It will be easier for the reader to find a way into your house (blog). So, to keep them staying longer and keep coming back is to stock up your house (blog) with valuable and interesting items or objects. These people will then like to share that what a wonderful discovery they have made and told everyone they knew. Soon your house (blog) will be full of people checking your valuable and interesting stuffs and items. Exponential growth will happen in the beginning, but will slow down as most of the active interested surfers found your site. So do a revamp then and update the look of the blog too. Music lovers may tend to follow trend too (more so for the tech type). So your blog should follow the trend, in both the content and looks and design of the blog.

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far!

In answer to one question – my current core audience which I’d like to broaden is music industry professionals (labels, music tech, managers and related services like marketing).

Give me some time to digest it all…and in the mean time keep it coming!

I promise not to cry…. :>)

As I am in the process of designing my own blog, this review is fantastic. Here are my two cents:

1. I definitely agree that the side bars should be smaller compared to the post column. I had a hard time on first glance telling what I was looking for.

2. I would also blend the Google ads into the bottom of the posts rather than highlight in gray.

Bruce – you probably missed my earlier comment because it spent so long in moderation, but I’m still wondering why you question whether or not to sell ads.

You MAY be too small to sell any, but so what? If you put out the offer, someone may bite now, and if not, they’ll bite when you are bigger – but if you aren’t offering, very few are going to take the trouble to ask..

I don’t sell a lot of non-Google/Chitika ads, but I do manage to sell a few here and there and I definitely offer the bigger slots just in case.. you just never know.

My suggestion that hasn’t been said by anyone so far is to change the text in your sidebars. For me it seems a little small. I would increase the size and possibly a different font.

This is the first time I’ve seen your blog and I was overwhelmed by how little of the screen is devoted to the post content (the reason I visit a blog). I’ve recently started playing with two sidebar blogs but this one feels really sidebar heavy and it put me off reading.

Second – and this is a big one – on a quick skim, I don’t get what your blog is about. I don’t feel a cohesive theme. There’s music, sure and some technology, but I felt bombarded with lists of links.

Give me a wider post with solid content that fits into your theme.

Design & Layout
I am a big fan of simple designs too, but I think it needs more color – either in a logo, or attractive links (borders around pictures), to make a simple layout pop off the page. I also think the grey is a shade or 2 too dark, and it is a little boring.

I also did not exactly get what the purpose of the site is. I know there is a tagline, but there could be an ‘about’ somewhere at the top or the side stating if its news, commentaries and interviews (sounds like a pretty good tag line too).

The text in the side bar is too small – I didn’t read it – there is so much text. The blog is also a text wonderland. There needs to be more use of images – bigger.

Nothing wrong with google ads, but the one in the sidebar seems awkwardly placed.

Also you might want to try some other advertising (emusic has a pretty sweet affiliate offer – I use them on my workout music site).

SEO
The title (in the header of the blog) needs to have some descriptive key words. Right now it’s just “hypebot” but it needs to be “Music News | Hypebot.com” or something similar. Also in the header of the individual archive page (not sure if this is a TypePad thing).

Another reason why a text tagline is important is for keywords close to the top of the page that will get indexed by search engines.

The RSS is just an image with nothing beside it. Align it left and actually use the words subscribe by RSS or email. If I didn’t know what that orange symbol means, I would have ignored it (and if you are just going to use the symbol – make it bigger and noticeable).

Lastly, I think the titles of your entries could be a little better. They are not really descriptive. For example, “Announcing Music Blog Awards Nominees.” I thought it was a regurgitation of a list of something that was coming on the tele. Then I read it and realized that it was your competition and the nominees were from readers of your site in a previous post. The title could have been something like, “The Readers have spoken and selected their top choices for HypeBots Music Awards.” – Again SEO from the title words, plus I would be more inclined to read it; Then in the post, there should be a link to the previous entry (interlinking posts).

Yeah – and categories 2x as mentioned before.

In summary, I think this page gives a bit of a dry, boring impression. I think the content is fabulous, but it’s missing something to draw me in.

I say pick a nicer colour than grey. Simple white has more of an impact. And put the content in the middle, because that’s where people naturally read.

1. I think the colors are a tad bit boring to say the least. Today’s culture is full of color and wild excitement. Take a look at music videos. Most aren’t black/white anymore, but this blog is close to that. Switch it up a bit and add some colors. The header is already starting to get there.
2. The columns are misplaced in my opinion. The main column is half the size of the page. Adsense and the sidebar make up the other half, but it’s not a good position to place them. Adsense is placed as if it is more important than categories. I suggest a complete movement of the recent posts, comments, categories, etc. to the left. Remove one of the two Technorati buttons (only one is needed right?). The smaller adsense rectangle should be bigger. If you’re gonna advertise, advertise properly. If this is done, focus is regained into the new central column where all the posts and good stuff will be.
3. As said before, make the sidebar text larger. Simple as that, can’t read it as of now.
4. Sorry, but what’s that orange button at the top? one would ask. Make sure people who want to subscribe know where to do so. Add some text to point to their destination, the fancy button.
5. For SEO purposes, your title shouldn’t be just Hypebot. What’s hypebot? Change your title to be like “Best of Music News | Hypebot.com” or something so people will know what hypebot is all about. Right now, google says the site is #1 under hypebot, but under “music news technology” (the site’s purpose yes?), the site is either past the 20th page or not even listed properly.
6. Create an about page to describe the blog’s reason for existence and maybe even tell a bit about yourself. People want to know more about what they are reading.
7. On posts, try to give a bit more shock in titles and opening lines. This keeps readers hooked and feed subscribers wondering what you’ll be discussing.
8. Digg every good post you put out there, Bruce. This increases viewership (even if it’s 1 or 2 people, it’s still viewership).
9. Sell ads! Your sponsors section is basically adsense! As for pricing, I would expect that it depends on viewership. Prices should be proportional to viewership and potential purchases.
10. Go ahead and try the blog network. The only reason I see to not try is if another blog already occupies your niche exactly. Give readers a reason to be at Hypebot.

In the end, the blog is flat in terms of color and design. The content is good for the most part. Experiment with advertising and income streams. There’s a different combination for everybody.

Great Content Honestly!!!! but t2 things from me :- too small font on the right side, on recent posts, etc and adsense design not good!! u should remove the border but merge the background colour with the sidebar grey color, but again, content really is nice …

@Bruce: Wait till the follow follow up article from Skellie on this Blog Consulting Project. There are many more expert idea waiting for you in that article.

Once this is over than you should start doing the changes on your blog as per the suggestions.

Although you can still think on removing that clip art image from the right sidebar as I suggesting in my comment above (number 8) :)

Design:

-I love the logo.

-I like the way the white space in the header forces you eyes down into the content (or ads).

-The general layout is good, but it could use more balance. Also livelier colors.

-The sidebar is to plain. I would change the sidebar headers, they look so Seth Godin/Typepad. At least change the font.

-The books below the “resources” section can go. If you have to have something there, then style the actual word “Resources” and make it blend in better.

-If you want a place to put an ad (maybe a banner), you could use the white space to the right of the logo.

That’s it, if you want more help with design email me at: thomastheblogger [at] gmail [dot] com

-Thomas

Can’t comment on the layout or logo, ’cause after visiting the site once, I subscribed to the RSS feed, so I only see the articles in my aggregator. One of the best blogs out there for the subject matter!

header – align it to center
colors – background colors of main content and side bar is at the extreme contrast, colors need to be changed (like problogger website)
columns – place the main content at the middle and the two side bars on either side. preference – recent posts side bar to the left and the other side bar to the right
posts – too many posts is delaying the site to openup, implementing a recent posts scroll window will be sufficient
fonts – too many font styles making the site look cluttered. a single font will make good readability, highlight only specifics,

wishing u all success

srini

Thanks everyone for these great suggestions!