Over the last few years I have learnt a lot about WordPress, website creation, hosting and a wide range of other things in the online world. All in my pursuit of creating an online income. Other then creating useful content, I think choose the WordPress premium theme is the second most important thing.
Why choosing the right WordPress Premium Theme is important
One area that I continually had struggled with until recently, is creating a website that looks great and functions well. I am talking about a visually appealing website, or a THEME. There are countless studies and statistics about why first impressions count in website design, for example web users form first impressions of web pages in as little as 50 milliseconds.
One of the many things that I love about WordPress is how easy is it to change things or add things. However choosing the right WordPress premium theme has taken me thousands of wasted dollars and a couple of years to get right.
My first website design
My very first website I ever attempted was a self help blog I created in Art Explosion Publisher Pro 2.0. The version is now 3.0 I think.
In a word it looked hideous. See for yourself.
It didn’t take long to work out that I could pay someone to create a nice looking WordPress theme. The first one I paid for cost $600 the second one was $8000.
I discover free WordPress themes
It didn’t take me long to work out that $600 for a custom WordPress theme, was a financial killer. So I started to play with WordPress free themes.
In the early days I was working with a VA, so I had the VA tweak the free themes for me. I was still to scared to play with the HTML code myself. But I figured out I could just copy the things the VA was doing to make the changes I wanted.
Thesis theme lands in my lap.
It was actually my VA who suggest the thesis theme to me. It was a way of creating multiple sites quickly that all looked different. Now this was back at Thesis 1.82, I think they are now up to a whole new thing called Focus.
The earlier versions of Thesis were pretty good. I was getting my VA to set the sites up for me. Then I was replicating what my VA was doing, to create more sites. It didn’t take long for me to have more then 100 sites.
I discover quality over quantity.
To be honest if I had 140 sites, 136 of them were crap. Either they looked half baked, or were under fee when it came to quality content on them. So I started to focus more on creating Authority sites that were helpful.
I started to look at other more successful sites and started to pick them apart. I went to Freelancer and outsourced my WordPress theme creation to a professional. At a cost of $250 each theme, I again started to replicate their work on my other sites.
How I found WordPress premium themes
I finally worked out that by being a little bit smarter. And I actually did some decent research I could buy an individual premium WordPress theme for my site, for and average of $35 USD per theme.
The problem with individual WordPress Premium themes
Most of the themes I was buying were only for 1 site licenses. In a lot of cases weren’t much better then the Thesis based theme I was creating myself. The sites still lacked appeal.
Thank god for subscription sites like Solostream
A lot of years ago, I started to help a friend of mine set up a travel blog, Big World Small Pockets. I of course created the first WordPress theme for her site with Thesis. The thought was that after three months we would look to upgrade it to a different theme.
After a ton of time, Steph found Solostream, and with another two intensive days of checking out each theme that Solostream had, final settled on Brilliance. That’s were I took notice.
In helping Steph through the setting up her travel blog and creating a thesis based theme. I actually took notice of Solostream big time.
It didn’t take me long to work out that it was every bit as flexible as Thesis. More so in some cases. I could use this WordPress theme and set it up any way I wanted.
Value for money
I have used Solostream themes now on several of my sites. Mainly the ones that are money earners. I can use the same theme several times and have it look different every times. All with some very easy tweaks.
Help and support
A big thing for me online is the help and support that I get. I started out know absolutely nothing so its been a lot of trial and error. So help an support is a key thing for me.
Solostream had a really easy to navigate support forum. I wanted to more my secondary menu down the screen a little bit, and could not work out how to do it, I posted a help topic and had an answer with in days. For me this was heaven.
Solosteam V ThemeForest
Sometime back, unfortunately Solostream went under. I now buy any WordPress theme I need through Theme Forest. Its a marketplace where developers can sell their designs. There are so many to choose from.
What I learnt about WordPress Themes
I’ve learnt a stack about themes along the way.
- You will need to spend money to get a decent working theme. That doesn’t make your site look like crap.
- Research is key in finding the right WordPress theme for your site.
- Quality over quantity every single time.
Whats the guff
Unless you are/have created an authority site that is earning real money. Then you pay for someone to create exactly what you want (remember this can be in the thousands). When looking at your setup budget allow for a WordPress premium theme. You certainly won’t regret it.
