First of all, the naming of the site is fantastic. Hollywood Burn is an excellent name. If things don't work out, you can definitely turn a profit on that domain name. You said you tried selling it with no luck, but I promise if you can garner any kind of traffic with it at all, the value of that name is going to skyrocket.
As for the theme, I think it looks aesthetically wonderful, although I have a personal distaste for blog-type pages that use this type of design (by design, I mean paper ripped out and floating). For some reason, I always feel detached from a site when I see it. It's great for a profile site, but not what I would recommend for a blogging site (although this could just be my weird little quirk, ask some more people). As a reader I just don't feel engaged into a community, which is an important part of a blog site, because there might be a time where you want to turn your feed into more, and you'd like to have an engaged readership.
Some quick tips:
1. Adjust your ads to blend better with the page. I understand this can be difficult with your background, so I would recommend an image ad for the "Affiliate Links." The largest square/corner ad you can fit there, which I think would be 300x250 possibly?
2. It's great that you've got these feeds going automatically, but I would recommend less volume and more focused content. If you add your own voice to this blog, I think it can be really good. Maybe you just want this to go on auto-pilot and rack in ad revenue for you -- if so, that's fine. I get the idea, it's called Hollywood burn and it's a feed burner. But I think you should consider the benefits of developing your own content for search engines and backlinks. Maybe provide both if at all possible -- a constantly updated feed, and also your own original content.
3. Try to find a way to make the page a little smaller, so you can fit a skyscraper along the right side of the page. If you do it tactfully, you can get a very aesthetically pleasing page with fantastic click through potential because of the skyscraper placement. Another possibility would be to do a simple banner ad underneath or right above the latest feed. This should also convert well with your target audience.
4. Bounce the "older entries" tag and replace it with a paged system. If you're on wordpress, I recommend WP-Pages (or maybe it's called WP-Pagination).
5. Make your links open in a new window. Keep people on your site.
6. Change "Hollywood Categories" to "Hollywood Beat" or "Hollywood Sections." Maybe it's just me again, but I find the words "categories" to be a very big turn-off when I visit a site, probably because it's the default name for wordpress blogs and it makes the site seem mechanical and dry.
7. Add hashmarks to your tweets. Three of them if you can fit the space. I understand you can't add specific hashmarks to each tweet because it's a feed, but you can certainly add more general terms. Such as #gossip, #hollywood and #celebs. Pick three related hashmarks that will get you the most exposure, so when people search those tags, or another site aggregates by hashmarks, your site will be visible.
8. Make it more clear what users have to do to read the story when they click on your feed links (the individual page posts, not the front page). Right now, there's an arrow pointing to a red title, with a description underneath. While this seems like enough direction in concept, I think in practice it's going to confuse some people. They are going to think the red text is just a title, and the description is the actual article and be turned-off by the brief content. If you did it in reverse, with the arrow and title link underneath the description, I think it would direct users more easily where they want to go. I'm not sure how difficult this would be to accomplish, so if you can't do that perhaps think of a way to make the arrow a little more descriptive (perhaps by the same curved dotted-line direction you use somewhere else, where it says description - - - - -- GO - - - - arrow curved toward the link).
As for the theme, I think it looks aesthetically wonderful, although I have a personal distaste for blog-type pages that use this type of design (by design, I mean paper ripped out and floating). For some reason, I always feel detached from a site when I see it. It's great for a profile site, but not what I would recommend for a blogging site (although this could just be my weird little quirk, ask some more people). As a reader I just don't feel engaged into a community, which is an important part of a blog site, because there might be a time where you want to turn your feed into more, and you'd like to have an engaged readership.
Some quick tips:
1. Adjust your ads to blend better with the page. I understand this can be difficult with your background, so I would recommend an image ad for the "Affiliate Links." The largest square/corner ad you can fit there, which I think would be 300x250 possibly?
2. It's great that you've got these feeds going automatically, but I would recommend less volume and more focused content. If you add your own voice to this blog, I think it can be really good. Maybe you just want this to go on auto-pilot and rack in ad revenue for you -- if so, that's fine. I get the idea, it's called Hollywood burn and it's a feed burner. But I think you should consider the benefits of developing your own content for search engines and backlinks. Maybe provide both if at all possible -- a constantly updated feed, and also your own original content.
3. Try to find a way to make the page a little smaller, so you can fit a skyscraper along the right side of the page. If you do it tactfully, you can get a very aesthetically pleasing page with fantastic click through potential because of the skyscraper placement. Another possibility would be to do a simple banner ad underneath or right above the latest feed. This should also convert well with your target audience.
4. Bounce the "older entries" tag and replace it with a paged system. If you're on wordpress, I recommend WP-Pages (or maybe it's called WP-Pagination).
5. Make your links open in a new window. Keep people on your site.
6. Change "Hollywood Categories" to "Hollywood Beat" or "Hollywood Sections." Maybe it's just me again, but I find the words "categories" to be a very big turn-off when I visit a site, probably because it's the default name for wordpress blogs and it makes the site seem mechanical and dry.
7. Add hashmarks to your tweets. Three of them if you can fit the space. I understand you can't add specific hashmarks to each tweet because it's a feed, but you can certainly add more general terms. Such as #gossip, #hollywood and #celebs. Pick three related hashmarks that will get you the most exposure, so when people search those tags, or another site aggregates by hashmarks, your site will be visible.
8. Make it more clear what users have to do to read the story when they click on your feed links (the individual page posts, not the front page). Right now, there's an arrow pointing to a red title, with a description underneath. While this seems like enough direction in concept, I think in practice it's going to confuse some people. They are going to think the red text is just a title, and the description is the actual article and be turned-off by the brief content. If you did it in reverse, with the arrow and title link underneath the description, I think it would direct users more easily where they want to go. I'm not sure how difficult this would be to accomplish, so if you can't do that perhaps think of a way to make the arrow a little more descriptive (perhaps by the same curved dotted-line direction you use somewhere else, where it says description - - - - -- GO - - - - arrow curved toward the link).
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