© cienpiesnf

First of all, my apologies if you thought this post would give you a comparison of free and premium themes, plugins and services on the Internet, and which ones are good to download. This post isn’t about that today. I’ll blog about that topic in future (already written down in my notebook!) but for today, I’d like to talk about free bloggie things vs premium bloggie things.

When I first started blogging years ago, it never came across my mind to even pay for premium themes and blog design. At that time, I knew there were a handful of premium themes (blog themes that you have to pay for) circulating about the blogosphere but seeing that blogging was nothing more than a hobby for me back then, I went down the free theme route. It suited me just fine because it gave me the flexibility to redesign my blog designs to my liking and learning about HTML and CSS along the way.

In 2010, I decided to give the very popular Thesis framework for WordPress a go. At that time, I made a few peanuts a year from blogging via ads and decided to use those peanuts to pay for the premium theme. At that time, I didn’t know if I was making the right decision because to me, it was a lot of money to pay for a theme when there were heaps of free themes online. After consulting with Paris B who was (and still is) on the Thesis framework, I took the plunge into the world of premium themes. A couple of years later, I started to pay for premium WordPress plugins after dealing with so much crap that came with free mobile themes plugins.

These days, a lot of the plugins on my website are premium ones. I even pay for certain services that make my blogging a whole lot easier. And I don’t regret a single one of them.

You see, a very common question I used to ask myself was this: why pay for something when you can get them for free?

I still get a lot of my blog-related stuff for free if I can. If there are great free plugins that help my blog, I’ll jump on them. However, there’s always that caveat when you get things for free. If things go wrong and the proverbial shit hits the ceiling, you’re on your own, mate. I’m sure you’ve had your fair share of troubleshooting blog problems. They can often take up so much of your time and energy, even up to a point where you throw your hands in the air and cry, “I give up! Blogging is too hard!“.

This is when I tell myself: sometimes, you have to fork out some money to pay for things that can make your life easier. In this case, it’s a good idea to consider premium themes and plugins that can make your blogging a whole lot easier without needing to deal with issues later that you’re have to solve on your own.

I’ve noticed a lot of bloggers splurging a good amount of money on fancy DSLR cameras, lighting equipment, fancy lenses and so on to want to create better photos for their blogs. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that. Yet they try to do all of their blogging back-end work for free, struggle at keeping up with scheduled posting on social media, struggle with free themes and plugins that end up breaking the blog, etc. It’s okay if you have the time to sit down in front of the computer and study hard to troubleshoot the problems or study tutorials to create something from scratch but honestly speaking, how many of us have the time to do all that?

If you have the time, by all means study to troubleshoot problems because that’s the best way to learn. If anything wrong happens again, you’ll know what to do. That’s how I started off and with most of my blog-related issues, I’m still troubleshooting them on my own. When I can’t do it any more, I engage the services of an expert who can sort the problems out for me because ain’t nobody’s got the time for that! 😛

However, if you are time-poor or would rather spend precious time doing something else (e.g. spend time with the family. I know I would), then I highly recommend going down the premium themes or plugins route whenever financially possible. You’ll have access to technical support from people who developed the theme/plugin. They’ll usually know how to fix the problem without you spending hours Googling for solutions.

I’m not saying that everyone should go down the premium route especially when it’s not financially possible. When I started monetising Beautyholics Anonymous, my original goal was to make enough money via ads to cover my webhost, domain, etc costs just so I don’t have any out-of-pocket costs. Of course, now that I’m doing this blogging gig full time, my goals have changed but this still applies, not just to me but to all bloggers out there. If it doesn’t make financial sense to you, then don’t do it.

On the other hand, if you’re making a bit of money on your blog whether it’s via ads, sponsored content or selling your own products on your blog, then it’s a good idea to invest some of those earnings back into the blog and get high-quality premium themes, plugins and services that can make your entire blogging experience a much better one. Once you go down that route, you’ll be wondering why you didn’t jump on the bandwagon sooner. 🙂

Good luck!

Do you use any premium themes, plugins or services on and for your blog? How useful are they to you? Are they worth the money you spent on them?