When you are starting out, the decision to choose between a Free theme and a Premium theme is easy to make, choose the free theme and start creating the content because it’s the content that matters, and it is what people will follow your blog for, unless your blog is about Web design.
I’ve said this quite a lot of time when 80% of your blog visitors are coming from Mobile phones, there is no point in buying that $80 theme just because it showing something cool to the desktop users.
And if you are showing your desktop version of your website to the mobile users, it is going to be too slow to wait for it to load and read content.
Well, It’s because of the theme support from the developer.
Surely, you won’t need support if you know how to edit/modify your theme and hard code it. But the majority of bloggers are not well equipped with it, they simply want to blog and not worry about the Theme breaks every time they upgrade their WordPress version.
Theme WordPress repository is filled with Free themes, but the sad part is, almost every theme is a bad quality because it has not been updated in a while.
On the other hand, Premium themes like Newspaper, which has been bought by thousands of publishers, keep their themes updated and are there to answer the queries of their buyers.
This is the most important reason to go for a Premium theme over a Free theme.
If you have no money, go with the Free theme but as soon as you get your first check, buy a theme. It’s the only investment that matters the most.
(You can obviously get a Digital Ocean cloud hosting starting at $5/month for your blog.)
Don’t go for flashy WP themes you see on ThemeForest, they are multiple purpose themes and filled with features you won;t ever need. Instead go with simpler ones, with good reviews. If yours is a visually appealing blog, take a look at this list of viral WordPress themes.