Hi Liz – I’m so thrilled to see you working on your food blog. Building a successful blog is something you work on consistently, so it’s ok to take your time and not rush through it due to other commitments.

I am definitely confident to say that running a successful blog has nothing to do with running it on a premium theme. In fact, there are many wildly successful blogs that still run on free themes without all the fancy stuff going on. It’s all about your content and how you help your readers – whether it’s a simple recipe, how to tutorial or something that’s informational.

For beginners, you can totally start with a free theme. If you want to customize it further, you can always pay extra for the added features that could improve the look of your blog. Some of those features may also improve your blog’s performance but it’s insignificant at beginner and intermediate levels.

Since performance and your website speed matters (something you’ll want to keep in mind as you become more experienced with blogging), I do recommend light weight themes like Astra, Kadence or even GeneratePress.

I have a tutorial on Astra theme to help beginners with a basic setup that will get them moving forward with their blogs. I also address the fact that you don’t have to worry too much about the appearance of your blog at the beginning. I always harp that keyword research for traffic and publishing your posts are priority over most other tasks when you first start – I recommend you going through my tutorial here:

https://www.blogsavvypanda.com/how-to-setup-astra-blog-theme/

And fyi in case you’re wondering, I have foodie theme when they used to sell a different package. It was different then. If I were to start a new blog, I would use one of the themes I recommended above. Astra for beginners because it’s simple/easy (plus really popular) and imo, it’s in the middle of Kadence and GeneratePress.

My final word is don’t worry about free or paid theme. You don’t need to spend $249 per year on a theme to become a successful full-time blogger. Definitely nice to have and something I recommend reinvesting in to build a stronger brand once your blog starts taking off.

I wanted to say thanks for all your excellent advice in setting up a blog. Your ebook has been invaluable to get me started and I’m enjoying seeing it coming together. I have made some progress with good quality blog posts and adding recipes although I’m quite frustrated that I’m not able to spend as much time on it as I’d like due to other work and family commitments.

I really liked the look of the Foodie Pro theme and was keen to download it. The company has however changed the pricing system and I wanted to ask your opinion on the new scheme. To get full support you now need to pay $249/year for the Feast Plugin. Do you think it’s necessary to pay the annual fee in order to run a successful blog or will I be ok with the classic version for $19? I’ve downloaded the classic theme to start me off and it seems fine for now but will there be things I won’t be able to do with this theme further down the road?

Kind regards
Liz

Hi Diana

I haven’t disclosed my other blogs to the public for good reasons. I don’t want people to plagiarize and copy exactly everything I’m doing. I know no one can prevent this, but it reduces/eliminates the attention. This is a mistake and lesson I learned in my blogging journey. 🙂

Hi Lebo

That’s great to hear you figured it out! 🙂

I haven’t personally purchased any Feast plugins.