Free Verses Paid WP Theme: How to Decide when to Buy Premium WP Theme
Free Verses Paid WP Theme: How to Decide when to Pay for Premium WP Theme
I left home at the age of 17 and started my life with $750, and I was broke for the next 8 years till I became an Engineer. Since I could not apply for loan and couldn’t even get financial aid for my college and I had to support myself along with my education, I was living literally hand to mouth every day. During that best time of my life, one of the habits that I have developed is “value consciousness“. Mine is a three-step process:
- Necessity
- Affordability
- Maximizing return of dollar spent
My thought process is that when I need something, I also need to be able to afford that comfortably. Once financial situation gives a green light to the necessity then I will find a way to spend the lowest amount possible to get whatever that I want to get. This philosophy also worked when I started to blog around 2006. I was holding myself for the longest from buying paid wordpress themes and bought my first paid theme in 2009, yes after 4 years. Today I will share my thought process that helped to buy a wordpress paid theme for my blogs. I will also include some of the unforeseen benefits that I had after buying those paid wordpress themes.
Understanding the Necessity:
Before you jump in and buy a Paid WP Theme, you need to really understand the need of your blog. This needs is in terms of your blog’s layout. You might have a blog that needs a magazine style WP theme, or a tech style WP theme. It could be a 2 column or a 3 column. So, take your time and visualize it in your head or may be sketch on a piece of paper about the future layout of your blogs and then go and hunt the WP Paid theme that you like. This first step will make you start thinking like a web project manager.
Calculating the Rate Of Return:
Every single dollar that I spend, I ask myself about the return. In the same note, I asked myself about the return that I would be looking for once I buy a Paid WP Theme. Is it the look, or the traffic, or more ad space?? Ask yourself those questions.
Cost determination:
Find out how much money that you can afford to buy a WP theme. You don’t need to buy a developer license even though you might think that you will need it later. When you don’t have enough flow then think how much it will cost you “today”. And of course it makes sense to buy multiple domain licenses if you have multiple blogs that you are running.
Customization Flexibility of your Paid Theme
More people use any particular Wp theme, better it is. Chances are someone already thought about customizing that small piece of you blog that you wanted to customize and all you have to do is to implement in theme. If not then just ask and you will be surprised. So, whatever paid theme that you are thinking of, make sure that a lot of other folks are using that for outside of what you are looking for.
Accessibility for Help
The above point also made me to look themes that have concentrated support forums. This was one of the major buying points for me. Whenever I need something I just go the forum and post the question and log back in day or two later and someone already answered that questions. Life is easy, huh??
Past Customers
This should give you an idea of how good your paid theme will perform in real life. Look for high traffic websites that use the theme you want. And if you cant find any then probability is your is good BUT not that good.
So, I went ahead and bought Solostream Theme for all of my blogs and went along with my life. Was it is the best decision, may be yes and may be not. And I will show you some of the results that i have experienced that I received after buying the Solostream Theme in future. So, stay tuned and dont forget to share your comments.
