6 Reason Why You Should Use Premium WordPress Themes

Posted In Blogging | 7 comments


Since creating the Super Simple Blogging course, I’ve had a lot of people ask me about which themes I “recommend” or the “best” theme for building niche blogs or for affiliate marketing in general.

Honestly, I don’t have one favorite theme that I use… and it varies a bit dependng on what I’m trying to accomplish.

But one thing remains a constant…

I only use Premium Themes (paid themes).

While I totally understand that paying for a premium theme may be impossible and out of reach if you’re just starting out, I highly recommend you invest in one as soon as you get a chance…

Why premium themes?

There are many reasons, but here are six reasons why I use premium themes:

1) Free themes often have malicious code (it happens more often than you think, particularly from certain 3rd party free theme sites), or links (in the footer) pointing to one of their sites.

If you are running free themes, I highly recommend you install and activate the following plugin: Theme Autheticity Checker (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tac/)

2) Most, if not all reputable themes are constantly updated by the author(s), and generally work with the latest versions of WordPress. This is huge, because you don’t want a theme you’re using for a site to all of a sudden not be supported (and break during an upgrade).

3) Premium themes offer responsive support – Many premium themes offer a help desk and/or a knowledge base along with a support forum. Many of the more popular premium themes have very active communities where you can get insights and feedback on a problem instantly.

4) Many premium themes have customization options. All of the premium themes I use are flexible themes that allow for a lot of customization; whether it’s multiple columns, multiple widget areas, header customization or even something as simple as changing the color scheme (not so simple in most free themes).

Some themes are “framework themes”, such as: Builder, Thesis or Headway themes (to name a few). These offer a huge range of customization options and allow you to virtually build your theme from the ground up.

5) Many premium themes are already SEO friendly, which means it negates the need of SEO plugins. Many have also been optimized to load quickly, which had become increasingly more important in regards to search engine rankings.

6) Developer’s license. Many themes offer a ‘developers license’, which allows you to sell the theme. Obviously very important if you are planning on flipping sites. On the same note, it can offer additional value to your offer by including a premium theme as part of the sale.

 

There are some additional reasons, but these are six BIG reasons why I choose to use free themes.

In a future article(s) we’ll look at some of my favorite premium themes and some decent free alternatives as well.

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Leave A Reply (7 comments So Far)

  • http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/342428-biggest-value-private-label-rights-article-package-youve-ever-seen-double-your-money-back.html#post3472000 Max Z

    Hows your stick fighting coming along? Looks pretty brutal to me.

    • Steven

      Still training for it.

      I’ve been training with a broken hand (sustained in class)… so it’s been hampered slightly by that. But it’s still coming along pretty good (considering).

      By the way, it’s not as brutal as you might think…

      Steven

  • Dale Glazebrook

    Hi Steven, I am liking the new newsletter so far. Thanx for the tip on the plugin, it should save some time locating unwanted code. While I do have 2 or three premium themes, I still do use some free ones.

    One thing you alluded to that I have difficulty with is your statement “Honestly, I don’t have one favorite theme that I use… and it varies a bit dependng on what I’m trying to accomplish”.

    I’ve seen this said quite a number of times but can’t honestly say that I’ve seen anyone explaining how to match a theme with what one is trying to accomplish.

    Would it be asking to much for you to write a post on this subject?

    Thanx
    Dale.

    • Steven

      Thanks Dale,

      I’ll be sure to touch on how to match themes (or at least my approach to it) when I publish the entry on my favorite premium themes.

      /Steven

  • http://www.e-bookmarketingsecrets.com/ Andrew Seltz

    You make some compelling points about favoring premium themes – reason number one is critical. Plugins are very similar. I recently installed a free plugin from the official WordPress repository and discovered that it placed a link at the bottom of every page on my site pointing to one of the author’s websites (which was totally unrelated to my site and not a web developer site either – just a niche site coat-tailing on my site’s search ranking.)

    Fortunately I am comfortable enough with PHP and HTML to clean this type of stuff out of a template or plugin – most are not so lucky.

    Great post,

    Andrew

    • Steven

      Thanks Andrew,

      Sometimes it’s difficult to edit php because it’s been “encoded” (an example is the free Flexibility theme, which has links encoded in the functions.php file).

      Good point about plugins. I’ve seen similar things as well.

      All the best,
      Steven

  • http://www.businesscreditworkshop.me Joe

    Thanks for the tips. I really look forward to seeing which premium themes you prefer.

Steven
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