The pros and cons of using wordpress themes for your business instead of a custom design

The pros and cons of using wordpress themes for your business instead of a custom design

The pros and cons of WordPress can seem pretty obvious to a lot of us, but not everyone.  For that reason, I'll be covering what you should know about WordPress and custom designs before you start to set up your personal or business website.  Knowing what you're getting in to is just a single part of the battle that is entwined with making money online, but you can go at it head strong after reading this discussion lol

When I started working online, I thought I needed a $2,000+ website design because that was the only way to get something up and running.  I eventually found a good web designer, who is now one of my partners, and he didn't charge more than $500 because he lived in the Philippines and didn't need to make more than 1 sale a month to live off of.  Back when I was paying him to set up websites for me, I was rolling out 1 or 2 a month and having him do all of the work.  We both loved it because I was giving him more income than most people were making in the Philippines each month and he was giving me good designs that I didn't have to pay $2,000+ on lol.  He eventually got a remote design job for a company in the US and was making a full time income for someone that was living in the US, not the Philippines, and didn't have time to work on my projects anymore.  He suggested that I look at themesforest and start using premium themes instead of hiring someone to do a custom design, and soon after, my world was changed lol.

I didn't need to invest the $500 or even $200 into a website design anymore.  Most of the premium themes over at wordpress are under $80 and this means I can have more money to invest in generating traffic for my website since I'm not paying for the design anymore

This was a long time ago and now I almost always use WordPress themes or pre-coded scripts that work for what I need them to do.  I haven't paid for a custom design in years, and I don't plan on doing that anytime soon.

Pros and Cons of using WordPress themes over Custom Designs
Pros:

1. Cheaper -  Like I mentioned above, you don't have to spend a boat load of money on a WordPress theme.  This is because the designers know that they're going to be selling their theme 100's or 1,000's of times.
2. No design skills needed - You don't need to know HTML or PHP in order to have an amazing looking website.  You just purchase the theme, install it and BAM!  You website is up and ready to tweak
3. Easier to edit - WordPress themes are pretty simple to edit because the good ones will come with a built in page builder to help you design what you need to, if anything.
4. Well Designed - A lot of the WordPress themes on Themeforest are well designed.  Just look for the ones that have a decent amount of reviews and read through the comments.  You'll figure out what is good and what isn't.
5. Free Updates (sort of) - With every purchase you usually get 6 months of free support and updates.  This means that if anything is updated within the theme, you can simply re-upload what is needed and the theme is up to date.  You can opt for the 12 month support, but it's not necessary most of the time.

Cons:

1. Can't have a ton of customization (usually) - One downside is that you don't always get the freedom you want.  Some themes come with dozens of pre-designed pages, but not always.  If the theme comes with a page builder, it will still take some time to get everything the way you want it, if you're picky.  I've actually hired VA's who specialize in WordPress and had them build out some pages for me for a few bucks.
2. Some people can spot WordPress - Some people will see that you are using WordPress and they will call you out.  They think that if you don't have a 100% unique design, you're not credible, which is bullsh*t lol.  I actually use a marketing theme for one of my websites and someone refused to work with me because we didn't spend thousands on a design....  Other times there are people who aren't sure if you are using WordPress so they'll go to websites that will crawl your code and spit out what theme you're using.  You can install plugins to block this from happening, but not many people think of doing that.
3. Duplicate designs - Since you're buying a premium theme, you're going to have the same design as a lot of other people.  Now not everyone will be using it at the time you are, but they still have everything you do.  Some people get turned away from premium themes because of this, and that just shows me they don't have any vision lol.

Using a WordPress design is solely up to you, don't let others sway you from saving money.  There are a lot of other marketing specialists that will side with me on this, if they're not selling website design as a service lol.  You don't need a million dollar design to make a million dollars online each year, you just need to know what you're doing and how to save money.  Saving your money in one sector will allow you to spend it in others, like traffic generation.


In Conclusion:
I prefer using WordPress themes for my websites because I can get a website up and running within a day or two and have traffic coming in the day after.  It's super user friendly since you don't have to work with any code, unless you really want to.  You can get just as many sales through a WordPress website as you can a custom design, but custom designs almost always cost 10x what a premium theme does lol   No one can make your choices for you, but I hope I gave you a decent understanding on the themes vs. custom design topic


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Razzy