Pro VS. Casual

Darren Rowse has posted a reader question recently: Blog Design – When to Go for a Professional Template? The reader asked if it’s a great idea for branding in case someone goes for a free template at first and then move on to hire a professional to redesign the web site at a latter time when there’s actually readership. The comments were mixed — some didn’t believe anything using a free template would succeed, some thought it was perfectly fine. I think the same. I currently use free templates for all my blogs. True, I would have opted for a professional designer anytime, but I cannot afford it just yet.

What I did was take some of the best themes I could find which matched the theme of my blogs and tweaked them the best way I could. They’re far from perfect, but they surely serve their purpose and then some. This is because my niches are casual. For those in the business niche, however, it’s always best to have professionally designed templates of your own to which readers can associate to. It’s part of self-branding, which is important if you want to be widely known.

Now, for use who can’t afford it yet, you learn how to tweak templates on your own. It’s not so hard, you just have to invest some time into it. You don’t have to change everything. Most probably, you need to change the header and some minor features of the template to suit your needs.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 2:30 pm and is filed under blogging. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

About the Author: