Changing from Free to Paid Themes for all my Blogs

Previously, I have spent a lot of time searching for good free WordPress templates for all my blogs. I have a number of blogs and trying to work out the right kind of look using a free theme with my limited coding abilities is a real challenge.

The decision came yesterday for me to make the decision to paid themes instead of free themes. The final straw came when I was trying to make one of my sites look better by replacing with a new theme- only to find out that a number of internal codes in that theme (the design was good) points back to the maker. I had planned to go to the Pikom PC Fair today but after second thought, I decided not to go and to spend the amount I have budgeted for buying a paid theme.

With my credit card and just a few clicks, I got myself the Developer license of the Thesis theme. Reason why I choose Thesis over others is because:

1. Rave reviews all over the internet

2. Unravelled support

3. Worthwhile to be used for those with multiple blogs- like mine.

After paying and reading the tutorial, you can download the Thesis template into your own PC and upload via FTP (file transfer  protocol) to your site. The problem is that I’ve not yet figured out how to set up a FTP in my PC- so I upload folder by folder and file by file. Each site takes almost an hour to upload and another 2 hours for customization. So I slept at about 3.30am this morning and today, surviving on coffee and instant noodles to get everything done.

Was the theme worth the price paid for?

I must say, YES! My sites loads faster and I am able to create a different look for each site using the same theme- something that I’ve not able to do before with free themes due to my limited knowledge of php and css. I need not worry about free themes that may affect my page rank, loading time or SEO.

All I need to do now once I am done with transferring my exisiting blogs to Thesis theme is to focus on the content.

Really, if you have been using free theme and have been trying to make tweaks to it, you are really wasting a lot of time. Look around the web for paid themes and convert to paid theme.

Just like between free and paid hosting, I made my decision to switch to paid hosting at the time when I did not have a job and to fork out a few hundred USD was a big deal. I need to use my savings to pay for it.

Switching to paid hosting was one of the best decisions I’ve made. Prior to switching, I find that there are so much of things I’ve wanted but could not do with blogspot blogs. After switching to WordPress and paid hosting, I was able to download plugin for everything imaginable.

If you want to switch to paid hosting, do it early before your blog traffic builts up. If you have long term plan to grow your blog(s), then give it a good start. Else, you need to start all over- because the organic traffic from Google would take time to grow- especially if you are migrating existing posts to your new blog.

But if you are in just for the fly-by-night kind of thing- that is just to make money without much work, then you may need to think twice. Because it does require consistent hard work, dedication and patience before you can see results.  If you give up during the initial stage, the blog may not be able to make enough money to even cover the hosting.