The blogosphere is a big place. There are over 100 million blogs on the Internet. For those of you who have found a way to stand out from the crowd, or those who intend to, you may consider monetizing your blog to earn some profit for all of the information you've shared with the world.
The most common way to earn money is by placing advertisements on your site. In this article, I'll share 12 clean and free Wordpress themes with ad space built-in. These themes are listed in no particular order. If you need help changing your blog theme, we can show you how.
FREEmium
FREEmium is an excellent theme that's just as good as many commercial themes. It was designed by Paul Kadysz and coded by Dariusz Siedlecki. It has built-in support for 125x125 ads that are displayed in the upper-right corner of the site by default, which is a good "hot spot" for advertisements.
Simple Balance 2.2
Developed by Alex Cristache, Simple Balance is a great 3-column Wordpress theme with a nice setup for ad space too. Using the theme's native options, you can tell it to use 125x125 banners or replace them with a 250x250 Google Adsense square. You can easily choose from a couple locations of the ads as well, without any coding required on your part.
Check out the demo or read more details.
GameZine
GameZine is developed by Jinsona Designs and is a great magazine-style theme for gaming sites, or any other site for the matter. The theme was designed with Adsense and 125x125 ads in mind. With its grungy blue design and Javascript effects, it's sure to impress your readers.
Check out the demo.
ZinePress
ZinePress is another magazine-style design with built-in 125x125 square ads support. Created by Andrew Lindstrom, ZinePress is a beautiful and calm tan design that's definitely pleasing to the eyes. It's very customizable and even works nicely on old browsers, such as IE 6.
Check out the demo or read more details.
Small Magazine
I see Small Magazine as an ideal layout for a news site, with its clean style, built in Flickr support and grid layout. It has native support for 125x125 image ads and 250x250 Google Adsense spots.
Check out the preview image or read more details.
Masagana
With its clean blue header and freshly styled design, Masagana is worth a look. The theme comes Adsense and 125x125 ad blocks ready to go. It has many nice features enabled by default, such as gravatar support and threaded comments. There's also a nice Javascript header for featured articles on the home page.
Check out the demo or read more details.
Firebug
The Firebug theme uses colors in one of the best ways I've ever seen on a blog design. Not only that, but it's packed with features like Gravatar comments, 125x125 banner ads, and support for widgets. If you're looking for a theme that really stands out, be sure to not pass this one up.
Check out the demo or read more details.
Timeline Digest
Timeline Digest by Dezzain Studio is so good that it could easily be a premium theme. Luckily for us, we can have it for free. The theme was built with ads in mind and has plenty of places for 125x125, 728x90, and 300x250 ads. One of the more unique features of the theme is the post styling, which helps you make important messages stand out to your readers.
Check out the demo or read more details.
CSS Gallery
If you're running a blog that is focused on photography, take a look at the CSS Gallery theme. It's a slick and clean theme with nice highlighting and star rankings of photos. Comes with built-in tagging, Google Adsense and 125x125 ad support.
Check out the demo or read more details.
Blue Green Harmony
For a pleasant nature-colored theme design, check out Blue Green Harmony. With its minimalist design, fast load time and integrated ad-management features, I see this as a great design for many types of sites, particularly gardening or vegetarian recipes.
Check out the demo or read more details.
DailyPress
DailyPress is an excellent theme with its color choice and 3-column layout. This is an ideal theme for delivering daily tidbits to your readers. Tabbed content makes for easy browsing. It comes ready for widgets, banner ads, 125x125 ads and more.
Check out the demo or read more details.
Typebased
Designed by Armono Wibowo, Typebased is one of the most polished themes on this list. It has the type of design that just "pops" off the screen and makes the whole blog more interesting. Comes with built-in ad management, stylish drop-down menus and Flickr photo sidebar.
Check out the demo or read more details.
How About You?
Do you plan to use any of these themes? Or do you have a great suggestion of any Wordpress themes with ad space that we left off our list? If so, please leave a comment below!