Selecting Blog Design Options – Free / Premium / Custom
One of the starting steps to starting a blog is picking a blog design. There are three options that are available. Free Designs, Premium Designs, or Custom Designs. Now as you all know that I am a strong supporter of WordPress, so examples on this post will be wordpress related only.
There are pros and cons for each option. So lets review them.
Free Blog Design
Free themes are the ones that are available for download for free. Alot of designers are releasing free themes in order to gain backlinks therefore you will see that in most free themes there is a designer link and sometimes sponsor link also. You are required to keep those links as the terms of service. Check out available free WP Themes by Balkhis.
Pros
- It’s FREE – Well they are free and cost effective. Duh.
- Good collection – There are too many free ones available. So you get to pick from a wide collection.
- Change for Free – You can switch your themes around alot. Because too many new ones coming out.
- If its free like Pimp My Blog than you are good to go.
Cons
- Not Unique unless it is from Pimp My Blog.
- You get Designer and Sponsor links on majority of them. But there are alot out there that only have designer link.
- Your blog will never catch the eyes of a reader because there is another one that looks just like it. Unless you use a very crappy theme. Good themes get used by alot of bloggers.
- Usually you get no support on free themes.
Premium Themes
Premium themes are the one that are a step above free themes. They are paid themes that will never be released for free. Most Premium Themes are better than free ones, but there are some which are not. Check out Balkhis list of Excellent Free and Premium WordPress Themes.
Pros
- Less people use it, so you will have a semi-noticable design.
- Most Premium Themes come with support from the designer.
- They are more advanced than the free themes. (Not all but most)
- Cost effective because you get a theme for only $40 – $90 which works like a custom theme.
- Some don’t even require a designer link.
Cons
- They are still not unique! So you will see blogs that use those.
- Popular themes like Revolution are used by alot of bloggers.
- Some are not similar but RIP OFFs of a popular site..
Custom Theme
Custom themes are the ones that are created just for your blog. Providing your blog a unique touch and more. Get your Custom Themes from Uzzz Productions.
Pros
- Your site looks UNIQUE. No other site will look exactly like yours unless they rip your design off. Most Designers are honorable and they don’t create the same theme more than once.
- You get Support – Depends on each designer and the contract.
- You attract alot of readers. Excellent way of Branding.
- Usually custom themes look better than the rest, and they are customized DUh.
Cons
- They are usually more expensive. A custom blog theme can range from $250 to $4000. It depends on what style of theme. It depends on who is the designer, and more factors determine the price of a theme.
- Can’t really think of another Con for a custom theme. Can you?
Above are my thoughts on the options that you have when selecting a Blog Design. Personally, I believe that when a blogger starting a new blog they should try to invest about $300 in getting a custom theme because that will give your blog a cool look, and it will attract readers. But each blogger have their own opinion.
Which option do you think is the best? and WHY?
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
That is all really down to what you are pushing on your blog. There is no reason to use a custom theme on a blog that you don’t need a shiz load of visitors for, like personal diary type blogs.
However, if you are marketing a product or unique content that could add to leads, it might be something you want to think about.
Justin Dupre
http://justindupre.com
Affiliate Marketing with an Attitude
Yup the niche of the blog matters. Perhaps I should write a post about that also
Blog design is very important. I think it is always better to have a blog is on that someone else will not have. So I would not recommend going with a free blog design. You can go with a free blog design as long as you change a lot of the graphics and colors. It is pretty easy to change this with CSS on WordPress.
unless you are successful, you can go with free themes..
Not true. Because most of the times people won’t take you serious if you run on a free template. I won’t probably even remember your site. Because there are too many like it on the web. So you will never get famous. Waiting to get famous is silly…
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It really depends on your level of experience, your target market and the content (to some degree). If you are blogging about the latest technical breakthrus in the gaming industry then you should be looking at a unique blog – one about your person trials and tribulations then there are enough free ones to be getting on with.
Thanks for the heads up about the revolution theme, I’ll be taking a closer look at those
James.
I would rather go with a free template, since the designers charge a lot and that’s out of my budget
sometimes you need to invest some into your business. I have learned that from all my experience. I used to keep all of my revenue and save it. Advertise only via free methods. Than I realized, that doesn’t work best. I started investing in promotion and more, and then I saw better results.