Blogging doesn’t have to be expensive. It never was an expensive hobby to begin with unless you make it expensive which kinda depends on the type of blog you have. Lifestyle bloggers have the best of both worlds where we are only dipping into certain category without going full force with it. For example, my beauty category. I am not a beauty blogger, but when I do buy and use products I love or if I deem suitable for my blog, I can write a review on it. Or not. It’s entirely up to me. I don’t buy beauty products just for the sake of doing reviews, but I can write reviews for products I am buying for myself and use. You get what I mean?
The first seven years of blogging, I spent next to nothing for my blog. Just some spending on drugstore makeup here and there for reviews because of course I had the typical lifestyle blog with the occasional bout of makeup reviews.
And then I discovered Etsy.
Figured out how to link debit cards to Paypal.
And the rest is history. My blog had makeover every month and I accumulated a huge collection of blog templates over the time. It was a disease. My obsession was a disease.
I was ecstatic to visit other blogs and leave the link to my shiny new blog on their comment section, hoping that everyone else reading would click it and see how beautiful my little corner of the internet that I spent so much time customising.
Then I discovered WordPress.
That, friend, is an entirely new world of its own.
I was itching to own a WordPress blog.
“It looks so cool!” I thought to myself, while checking my bank account debating whether I could squeeze out some money for WordPress.
That went on for quite some time.
Should I? Or shouldn’t? Should I? Maybe I should.
So I did. From blogging on a free platform, I upgraded and decided that paying yearly fee for a mere hobby was what I needed.
“Well I can’t be using a free theme on a paid platform, now, can I?” It defeats the whole purpose of upgrading.
So off I went, and came back with a paid theme. Mind you, that WordPress themes are expensive. Some really good ones are in the hundreds.
“Anything, as long as my blog turns out beautiful.”
I think I spent more than RM1500 on blog themes alone which to be fair I have made back from sponsored posts. My current theme, Barton by EmPress Themes is by far my most customisable and bang-for-your-buck theme I have ever purchased. Proof? I have been using it since November 2021 and the only tweak I made since was just changing font type. And I need not add CSS codes because every single thing on the theme is customisable. It’s just that good. If you have been following me since blogspot era, you would know that I was obsessed with buying templates. Now, nothing compares to Barton and the ones who come close are hella expensive. Uh – no.
This time around, I think I will be loyal to just one theme until EmPress Themes comes out with a new theme that is better than my dearest Barton. Period.
See? I can be loyal to just one. My blog doesn’t need to have a makeover every fortnight. Tsk.
However, like I said, you don’t need expensive theme to start a blog although it would certainly help to have a clean, polished site to establish your mark in this blogging universe. But in this era where TikTok is ruling the social media, does one ever want to start a blog?
