Using a WordPress Page as Your Home Page

This has been tested to work in WordPress 2.X and above. This article was last updated in March, 2013.

Welcome to WordPress Wednesday! Each week we’ll be answering as many of your questions about the blogging platform WordPress as possible. If you have questions you’d like answered that aren’t covered here, feel free to drop them in the comment form below. Covering topics such as themes, plugins, popular tutorials, current WordPress promotion codes, and more – be sure to jump in with your questions and comments.

QUESTION: I’d like to use something other than my recent posts as my home page. Is that possible within WordPress?

It’s not only possible it’s relatively easy. The first step is to create a page to serve as your new home page. For the purpose of this example, we’ll call it “My New Home Page.”

  1. In your WP control panel, select the Pages tab.
  2. Click on Add New.
  3. Give the page a title – something like, “HOMEPAGE”
  4. Create the content for your home page just as you would a blog post.
  5. Click the Publish button.

While you’re still in the Write Page subpanel, create a second page:

  1. Title this one “RECENT POSTS” (or whatever you want to call the page that your recent posts appear on).
  2. You don’t need to have any Page Content for this one.
  3. Click the Publish button.

Now you’re ready tell WP to use your new page as the home page:

  1. In the Settings panel on the left navigation select Reading.
  2. At the top of the Reading Options subpanel you’ll see:
    How To Set Page As Homepage In WordPress - Step 1
  3. To change the front page to your new home page, select “A static page” for Front page displays.
  4. Select “HOMEPAGE” from the Front page drop down menu.
  5. Finally, be sure to tell WP which page to use to display your recent posts. From the Posts page menu select the “Recent Posts” page you created earlier. As you can see in the picture below, our posts page has not been set yet.
    How To Set Page As Homepage In WordPress - Step 2
  6. Click Save Changes.

View your site. “HOMEPAGE” should now be your home page. You also do not need to put the title in all caps. This was simply done for our example.

Note: Any Page content you have entered for the page you designate as your Posts page will be overwritten by the listing of your recent posts. The content will still be there, it simply won’t show while you have that particular page set as the Post page.

See also the WordPress Codex page: Reading Options Subpanel

If you have a question you’d like me to address or (better yet) if you have a WordPress tip, trick or tutorial you’d like to share let us know!

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Effective WordPress End User Documentation

WordPress theme developers and authors who sell their WordPress themes to non-WordPress professionals will always run the risk of customers coming back to them seeking support for theme installation, setup or some other bug or issue. Attending to one or two or maybe even four customers requiring support poses no problem and is actually still quite manageable. However, the downside of a popularly selling WordPress theme is how to provide support to, let’s say, more than a hundred or even thousands of buyers who have very little WordPress knowhow. The only thing that can bridge the gap between the buyer and the WordPress author’s brains is the documentation or the instruction manual included in the theme package. The lack of or a poorly written end user documentation can spell disaster for the author in terms of after sales support.

There are many challenges that should be anticipated while developing a theme’s documentation. The most common reason why problems crop up is, to put it bluntly, people don’t actually bother to read the documentation. How many times have you bought a gadget, took it out of the box, fiddled with it first, and only bothered to look at the instruction manual when you couldn’t get it to work? Guilty? Don’t worry, your theme buyers probably did the same thing too.

The problem if this happens all the time is that authors and developers will be spending more time attending to support issues instead of creating more new themes. That is why there is a need to be able to provide buyers and theme users sufficient information to be able to handle simple troubleshooting on their own. Even if they are WordPress beginners.

What is efficient and sufficient theme documentation?

People receive and absorb information in different ways. Some people comprehend easily when there are lots of pictures, screenshots, or visual aids. They are what we call visual learners. On the other hand, there are people who can comprehend easily by simply listening to audio instructions. They are auditory learners. On the other hand, some people work better if instructions are in bullet format or checklists instead of long paragraphs, while other people who find lists and text heavy instructions boring need manipulatives or something tactile to make the concepts become real to them.

Knowing that theme buyers can fall into any of those types of learners should help authors in developing the appropriate documentation format that will satisfy the needs of.

The purpose of providing customers, especially WordPress beginners, with detailed documentation is to assist them and guide them as if you, the author, were actually there holding them by the hand through each step. This might sound too laborious on the part of the author but can you imagine all the time you would save from answering basic installation or setup questions if these challenges have already been addressed and comprehended in the documentation right from the beginning?

Documentation and Tutorial Formats for Every Type of Learner

Perhaps providing WordPress theme buyers with documentation and tutorial options that matches their learning style will encourage them to dig more into the documentation instead of seeking theme support straight away. Providing audio or podcast instructions for the auditory learner; screenshots, images or video for the visual learner; written or text format instructions for the list learner; and perhaps activity-based instructions for the kinesthetic or tactile learner; all in simple and easy to understand, and easy to follow instructions. This will free the author or developer to focus his efforts on improving the theme rather than spending time answering basic support questions.

Voyage: Travel WordPress Theme 2013

We all love an adventure. Who doesn’t dream of traveling or going on that dream vacation? According to the Global Online Travel Report for 2012, some of the key findings and statistics featured in their report listed below are:

  • The trend of booking trips online is expected to grow further in 2012, especially in emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil.
  • In 2012, the “Online Travel Segment” is forecast to represent almost a third of the total global travel market value.
  • Online travel sales in the US are forecasted to increase by more than +10% in 2012 compared to 2011.
  • The UK is projected to remain the largest share of Europe’s online travel market in 2013, followed by Germany and France.
  • Gross bookings on the Asia Pacific online leisure/ unmanaged business travel market are expected to increase by more than +30% in 2012 compared to 2010.

Meanwhile, according to US Travel.org,

“Activities with the greatest level of interest among U.S. adults are, in order, visiting friends and relatives, sightseeing, beaches/waterfronts, visiting zoos/aquariums/science museums, national parks, visiting a state park, going on a cruise, theme parks, visiting a city and visiting a mountain area. Interest in the engaging in the activities varies by generation, household income, gender and most other demographic characteristics of leisure travelers.”

Based on these statistics and findings, barring local and international security issues and safety, people WILL travel. Perhaps it is also safe to say that the travel industry, at present, is definitely a viable industry. It may be also safe to say that the internet has contributed a great part to making travel reachable and accessible to a lot of people all around the globe. Access to online airline e-ticketing, booking and reservations, destination packages, hotel reviews and ratings have made people bolder in making travel decisions. Even if only a fraction of the 7 billion world population have the means to travel, travel agencies have not fully saturated this market. So, if you are considering putting up your own online travel agency, this is great news. The next step is to setup your own website and what better way to do it than through WordPress and with a theme that’s specifically tailored for travel agencies.

Voyage Travel WordPress Theme is a gorgeous feature packed premium WordPress theme built for this specific niche. The responsive theme’s highlights include an extremely powerful search and filter option that clients can use to find the travel package of their choice. The theme also includes lots of pages for showcasing a variety of holidays, special prices and latest promos, packages according to destinations, and a whole lot more. It also comes bundled with a Blog and Contact Page and tons of shortcodes you can use to customize or tweak the theme according to your needs. A lot of these powerful functionalities are based on one of Themefuse’s best and most complex theme, Homequest. Another great thing about Voyage is that you can actually play with it for 14 days, using Themefuse’s test labs feature, before you decide to purchase.

Features:

  • Responsive
  • One click auto install
  • Best for a travel agency website
  • Powerful search and filter options
  • Dynamic Sidebar Widget Creation
  • jQuery Image / Video Light box

Voyage Premium WordPress Theme includes video tutorials, theme documentation, and access to an AfterCare Forum for theme issues, questions, and support.

Voyage: $49 | Demo & Download

WordPress Themes Should Be More Expensive: HERE’S WHY

If this post has caught your eye, you are probably a current WordPress user, author, developer, designer, or if not, perhaps a potential one. The subject of pricing is a tricky topic that some prefer to ignore or avoid – the proverbial elephant in the room. Why, because this is a hot topic indeed.

How should WordPress Themes be priced anyway?

For the purpose of this article, let’s start off by saying that a WordPress theme is a downloadable digital product as compared to an actual physical product that can be shipped. When you purchase a WordPress theme you do not receive any physical items at all but instead, you are given permission or license to download an electronic/ digital product (the theme), via email or a provided link, and use it according to the author/developer’s specific TOU (Terms of Use).

Traditionally, the actual cost of producing/manufacturing tangible products can be arrived at by adding the cost of materials used and the labor paid to produce these products to arrive at the total cost of goods. Others may add on overhead costs but strictly speaking it’s simply materials +labor. For services rendered, actual cost can be arrived at based on a rate applied to the number of man hours spent (time) on a project or the professional fee charged by the person (expert) rendering the service.

However,

Digital products require an approach to pricing that differs from that used for physical products. Most digital products have common characteristics which includes:

  • high fixed cost to produce the first unit, but low marginal costs to produce subsequent units
  • quality is difficult to judge without actually experiencing the product

The most common pricing method that can be used for digital products is to use a licensing approach.
(source: Digital Economy: Impacts, Influences, and Challenges by Harbhajan S. Kehal, Varinder P. Singh)

The Digital Products Cost Equation

The cost structure of digital products = high fixed costs that are sunk, and tending towards zero marginal costs.

Fixed costs refer to the costs associated with a product, that are fixed over a number of units. Thus regardless of the number of units produced and sold, the fixed costs remain the same. With digital products, much of the fixed costs are actually sunk costs, and therefore non-recoverable costs. A large portion of the costs associated with digital products are fixed, and sunk, and not variable costs, which are more typical of traditional manufactured goods.

Sunk costs refer to costs that are non-recoverable fixed costs. Digital products usually have significant sunk costs (when compared to other fixed costs) in the form of research & development and intellectual property (copyright, patents etc.) for the product. If the product is not successful in the marketplace, the costs associated with the the product development (intellectual property, labor) cannot be recovered. Thus when making pricing decisions about the product in the future, one should not factor in the sunk costs. If a product’s cost structure is made up of sunk costs (no other fixed costs) and zero marginal costs then any price above zero will contribute to the company’s bottom line. Other fixed costs, that are not sunk (rent, depreciation on equipment etc.) should be factored in when making pricing decisions in the future, since these are ongoing costs to the company. The company will continue to have to pay these costs in the future, this is not the case for sunk costs.

Marginal costs are the costs associated with creating an additional unit of product. This is similar to variable costs, which are the costs that increase directly with the increase in production (unlike fixed costs). Digital products typically have very low marginal costs, when compared with traditional goods (materials, labor etc.) and if the product is distributed via a web site, then the marginal costs can be zero. The consumer is bearing the distribution costs, and there are no packaging costs. This is why companies are able to market their products for free on their web sites, in order to try to entice further purchases at a later time (in the hopes of creating lock-in perhaps).
(source: http://www.udel.edu/alex/dictionary.html#d)

What costs go into the creation of a WordPress theme anyway?

How many of you enjoy BTS (Behind the scenes) footages of upcoming movies? BTS clips give you a sneak peek of how these movies were filmed and the production process these films have gone through. Similarly, if we could do a BTS video of how a WordPress theme is created, can you imagine the amount of work that goes into creating a theme? Can you identify which activities fall under fixed costs, sunk costs, or marginal costs? Can you tell how many working hours have gone into its creation? Can you measure the education, experience, competence and expertise of the author/developer?

When you purchase a WordPress theme from a reputable WordPress author/developer you typically get a long list of features like the one below. But, have you ever associated any cost to these features?

1. Theme Features and Functionalities

  • Fancy Sliders
    • Simple jQuery Slider
    • Slider Pro ($25)
    • jQuery Carousel Evolution ($10)
    • TouchCarousel ($21)
    • LayerSlider (Parallax Slider) ($15)
    • Paradigm Slider ($15)
    • Slider Evolution ($18)
    • Nivo Slider WordPress Plugin ($19)
    • Pinwheel Slider ($9)
    • Responsive Ken Burns Slider WordPress Plugin ($18)
  • Plugins/plugin compatibility ($4-$50)
    • eCommerce/shopping cart plugins
    • Audio/Video/Images/Slideshows/Widgets/Portfolio
    • SEO, Social Media
  • Multiple page templates (more than basic Blog and Archives templates)
  • Graphic Design Elements
    • Icons
    • Fonts
    • Stock Photos
    • Multimedia
  • Mobile device compatibility and display features
  • Styling Short codes (buttons, columns, tables, boxes, dropdowns, drop caps, etc.)
  • Custom admin panel and customization features

2. Admin/Marketing/Support Costs

  • Business license/ applicable taxes (cost = based on your geo location)
  • Developer’s fees
  • Hosting costs
  • Theme preview designs
  • Copywriting
  • Analytics – Marketplace sharing
  • Support staff, Forum maintenance, Live chat support
  • Documentation, PSD/XML/Demo content files
  • Video tutorials, screencasts and video hosting costs
  • Setup, installation of WordPress, theme, plugins (time spent)

3. Labor: Professional fees and software (personal or outsourced)

  • Man hours to create and develop theme
    • (design and coding)
    • design concept | creative process (R&D, selection and decision making: colors, fonts, graphics, icons
    • testing, browser compatibility
  • Software: Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, etc – ($1500 up)
  • Training, Seminars, Education

Did you know that creating custom themes for clients range from around $1500 up to $50000 depending on the project. Looking at the list above, and seeing everything that goes into creating a theme, would you say that WordPress themes are underpriced? overpriced? or fair enough?

Let’s ask the next question. What’s important to you? How much do you value your business? your brand? yourself?

The answers to these questions will more or less determine how much you are willing to pay anything actually – whether it’s paying for your website, for your family needs, or even for your own personal growth.

How important are these WordPress designer’s traits to you?

  • Competence – work portfolio
    Web development requires many skills: Proficiency in Photoshop and design skills, CSS and HTML skills, copywriting and SEO skills, programming skills, with subsets of skills across a vast array of programming languages.
    If you’re comparing costs between developers, make sure it’s apples to apples – you should know what you’re getting in terms of feature set and functionality. Then take into consideration the experience and portfolio of the individual or company you’re looking at hiring, the attention you can expect to receive and the general rapport between you and a potential developer. Even if the cost is perfect and everything else seems right on paper, you may want to think twice about hiring someone if you don’t feel that somewhat ethereal sense of connection and comfort.
  • Experience – good working knowledge, coding skills
    A less experienced person may charge less because he doesn’t have the full-blown skill of a seasoned professional. It’s always a risk when you’re working with freelancers who build websites “on the side”, self-taught “learn web design in 21 days” types and people who are just starting out in the industry.
  • Number of years in practice
    Experienced developers can charge you more because they bring the weight of their expertise to bear on your project. An experienced developer may be able to do your site in half the time and charge twice as much, but remember you’re dealing with value and not cost.

Sometimes you have to make your decision, not based on cost, but based on value – which company do you want to work with? Which one has the most experience, the best portfolio, the most responsive people? A higher cost should not disqualify a company if that’s the one you’re confident can get the job done.

Pricing is not a magic, secret recipe. It’s just the cost of doing business, plus the value of expertise, plus the time needed to complete a project in a particular set of circumstances with a particular set of requirements. (reference: Websearchsocial.com)

At $39 you can already get 80 premium WordPress themes, no sweat. It’s about the same price, more or less, of a plugin or a slider, isn’t it? Do you agree that these themes should be worth a whole lot more than that?

Tell us what you think. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Blazing the Trail in 2013

Greater things are yet to come and they are exciting. There’s always something magical whenever the New Year comes. Technically, if you really strip this day down to what it really is and take away all the fireworks and celebration, it’s actually another normal sunrise and sunset in the calendar. Fortunately, this is not how majority of us see it. Many of us look forward to it with a lot of hope and expectations, a chance to start again, an opportunity to embrace new challenges, a time to let go of the old and wipe the slate clean, a new beginning for many.

For those of us in the WordPress community and the greater Internet population, things have never been more exciting. Imagine a single video garnering more than a billion views and still counting. Why is this significant? This simply gives us the information that there are a billion or more active Internet users out there that we can reach out to. As global interconnection continually increases, social behavior continues to adapt and our world seems closer and more reachable everyday. By force majeure the older generation are being pulled in by the tech savvy younger generation into the digital age as this has now become the common tool for communication. Social networking continues to expand and so has its demographic base.

For those who are in the WordPress marketplace and are serious about it, the hard questions need to be asked. Is it enough to simply ask what the ideal WordPress theme really is or what the perfect theme looks like? Are the current themes in the market today meeting the needs of the consumers, real and perceived? What about creativity and originality? Or innovation? Are we willing to think out of the box and be experimental as far as theme features and designs are concerned or are we just going to play it safe and blend with the crowd? Are we ready to meet the demands of the unstoppable rise of mobile computing and the multilingual global marketplace?

As we look into the future, those in the Internet and web development industry, (WordPress included) need to take a wholistic approach in planning for the next 12 months and beyond. Maybe some are just dabbling in WordPress theme development for fun while others are seriously considering it as a viable business opportunity worth investing in. Perhaps as we plan future steps maybe we can take a step or two back and view the WordPress themes market from a different angle or with a fresh perspective – to work backwards and use the future to strategically determine today’s activities. Somebody once said, “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” Who would have ever thought that an Asian guy would teach the world (1 billion+) how to do a horse dance? Mind-blowing but undeniably real and possible. Maybe he did what wasn’t normally done and got the results nobody expected. Guess what? So can all of us.

25 Basic Adobe Lightroom Tutorials for Learners

The phrase “photo editing” has become synonymous with “Adobe Photoshop”. Photoshop is the industry leader when it comes to editing images. But one drawback of Photoshop is that a designer needs a good amount of coaching before he can use Photoshop properly. A coaching center near my house promises to teach Photoshop in 2 months to the layman. Not everybody will be willing to invest two months to learn a photo editing software, especially when one does not intend to choose photo designing as a career.

Understanding this problem, Adobe has designed another software named Adobe Lightroom to help even the general public to easily edit images. To quote Adobe’s website – “Lightroom includes all the tools you need for most digital photography tasks in one intuitive solution. Lightroom helps photographers work faster and more efficiently with one image, a set of images, or a large image library.”

When I stated that Lightroom can be used for the general public I don’t mean that one can begin using it merely after installing it. Obviously you need to have some guidance to use the software properly. Therefore, in this blog post, I have collected a list of 25 excellent tutorials on how to use Lightroom properly and get desired results.

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17 Awesome Adobe air apps for designers

One fine day I was trying to fill in an important official form online on my Mozilla Firefox’s browser. After spending about half an hour I reached the last few questions of the form. One question there asked me to click a checkbox to answer but I could see no checkbox on the screen. After wasting a lot of time reading the instructions and every possible detail over and over again I asked for advice from my friends. One person told me that I should try to refill the form on Internet Explorer. I tried it and now the checkbox appeared and I successfully completed and submitted the form online.

The problem just described occurred because the form was designed to work especially for Internet Explorer. You see, designing an application for all systems is tedious as one has to tweak the runtime code again and again to make it compatible to work with different systems. Here is where Adobe AIR jumps in. If an internet application is designed using Adobe AIR then it will automatically work for all systems and browsers.

Technically speaking:

“Adobe AIR is a cross-operating system runtime that lets developers combine HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flash and Flex technologies, and Action Script to deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on a broad range of devices including desktop computers, netbooks, tablets, smartphones, and TVs. AIR allows developers to use familiar tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver®, Flash Builder®, Flash Catalyst®, Flash Professional, or any text editor to build their applications and easily deliver a single application installer that works across operating systems.” – Adobe’s website.

Adobe AIR has a wide array of apps that can help designers design better applications. Below I have selected 17 of them.

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35 of the Best eCommerce WordPress Themes 2013

Believe it or not, 2013 is right around the corner, and we want you to be prepared. Thanks to some big advancements in eCommerce functionality for WordPress in 2012, the Best eCommerce Themes of 2013 are sure to be amazing. eCommerce is simply the commerce conducted through the Internet. With millions of websites, blogs, and Internet users, more and more businesses are taking their products online. The successes of sites like Amazon and Ebay has dispelled all skepticism about eCommerce websites – not to mention the scores of “mom and pop” operations selling everything from ebooks to digital hugs…yes…some people are making money selling completely made up things.

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What Should WordPress Themes Sell For (Individually)?

Product Pricing

Product pricing is one of the trickiest things to determine as far as market positioning goes. Why? There are several market forces that need to be carefully considered, on top of the actual cost of producing or creating the product to be sold, before you can actually arrive at a Selling Price that is equitable to both buyer and seller. Intellectual/intangible/Service products or Works of Art are even harder to price because their value is greatly hinged not only on the actual skills and experience of the creator but on his perceived market persona as well. Premium or Custom WordPress themes are intangible products whose pricing has often been debated and discussed. One recent hot topic on this was ThemeForest’s price increase on WordPress themes sold in their marketplace.

WordPress Themes – Commodity or Work of Art?

There has been a long-standing debate on how much a WordPress Theme should actually sell for. The WordPress Themes market has evolved greatly in a span of two to three years and a lot of discussions about fair pricing, competitiveness, costs, man hours, economies of scale, quality, fair market value, after-sales support etc. have gone on and on because this market has yet to reach its full maturity. The deluge of new premium themes flooding the market regularly from new but not necessarily seasoned web authors taking their designs to the marketplace has its pros and cons. D more themes equal more choices for buyers, which makes more income for authors? Maybe or maybe not.

The influx of these new premium WordPress themes in the market place definitely has a major impact on every theme’s individual pricing. Premium themes are slowly becoming “commoditized,” with very little differentiation from one theme to the next, turning into “common” products with common features and common functionalities. The market recognizes this “common-ness” and, without getting into too much detail about the law of supply and demand, this characteristic influences and eventually dictates their fair market value and eventually, the success of these themes. Often, the not-so “common” ones stand out and do better sales-wise.

It boils down to how much a buyer is willing to pay and how much the seller is willing to sell. This is not to devalue or diminish the efforts and man hours invested to create such themes but if the author decides to place his product in a marketplace where there are other similar products offering the same features and benefits then he is virtually agreeing to subject his product to the conditions (price control included) existing in that marketplace. It makes no difference how much time and effort he’s invested in creating the theme. It’s like a choice between selling in your own stand-alone boutique or selling in the mall. Different market forces. Different pricing strategies.

As a seller, you have to decide not only which distribution channel works best for your products, your business and your brand. You also need to come up with a marketing strategy that will help you achieve your business goals. Taking your products to a marketplace has its pros and cons and opening up your own store has its own benefits too. Some authors do both to ensure that their products get maximum exposure in the marketplace and in their own storefront.

How Much is Your Time Worth?

Cheap is relative. The Internet has made the global economy a tangible reality and prices do matter depending which side of the globe you are. Placing a dollar sign, a euro symbol, a peso sign, or whatever currency symbol in front of a number will have different values depending on where you are in the world. A cup of coffee in the USA is probably worth a week’s wages in Bangladesh. Because the currency scales are not equal what is cheap in one country may be exorbitant in another.

That’s why pricing is really tricky. It creates the market you want or eliminates the market you don’t want. But regardless whether your target market can afford you or not, your pricing strategy will attract the market you want to service. Those who can afford to buy will simply buy regardless of the price while those who can’t will scrimp and save just to afford what you have to offer especially if you are selling what they are looking for. These customers might not necessarily buy in bulk but definitely they will turn into loyal customers as long as they keep getting the kind of quality product they need. The question now is how much is your time worth and at what price are you willing to sell your product.

From the WordPress author’s perspective, there are many elements involved in computing how much a WordPress theme is worth. No it’s not about the selling price but the worth of each theme according to what was invested in it. Every author’s investment in each theme he creates includes actual man-hours worked on the theme, software bought and used, training, demo files, documentation files, psd files, support system setup, and so much more. Quite a lot actually.

How the author intends to get back a return on his investment (ROI) depends now on his pricing strategy, how much he is willing to sell his theme for (the actual selling price) to get an ROI and earn a decent profit as well. Low Price + High Volume? or High Price + Low Volume? Whatever he/she decides on will determine the distribution channels he chooses.

To Support or Not to Support?

People buy stuff expecting things to work. Whether they follow the instruction manual or not, they expect the product to function the way it was advertised. And if it doesn’t, they expect and demand some sort of support to help fix it or else they simply return the product, if they can. Major businesses and companies always include some type of support or warranty on items sold. They recognize that this is still part of the company’s marketing efforts for these specific products. WordPress authors need to think the same. Support is part of the marketing strategy of any successful business. Even if the customer is wrong. Of course, that doesn’t mean that abusive customers can just have their way. One sure fire way of decreasing the probability of customer complaints and the need for extensive support is to make sure that every theme released is as much as possible thoroughly tested and meets standard WordPress requirements.

In the end, the power of choice belongs to the consumer and it is he who determines whether a product is worth buying or not, affordable or not. No matter what the cost – if they need it, they will buy it. And they will keep on buying if they feel that they get the support from these WordPress authors about the product issues and questions no matter how trivial they are.