custom worpress design... Or not?

[paffie]

I remember, many years ago (2002-2003) i bought a licence for WSNlinks, and i asked a designer (sevens) i met on webmasterlinkup (i hope it's OK to talk about a forum that is no longer around, if not: let me know and i'll edit my post) to make me a custom design (he did a great job)... Sales went up, and i made a lot more money afterwards...

Its the only custom design i ever had...

Nowadays, i mostly use wordpress... And i always tought that my content was more important than a nice design, so all my blogs just use one of the default templates... I just keep wondering if my reasoning of the past would make me more money, or just end up costing money...
In the past, i guess a nice design on an affiliate page made sure my banners had a higher clicktrough ratio, and it would improve the chances of bookmarking and return visits... I just think nowadays people are used to seeing banners and "clean" wordpress templates, so i'm not completely sure that spending $100 or $200 on a design would pay itself back (i'm even afraid my sales ratio would go down if i moved from a "clean" template to a "custom" one)

Would you guys buy a custom template for an affiliate blog, or just use a default one? I did not put all my eggs into one basked, so my most popular blog only makes me between $50 and $150/month, so if i buy a $200 design, my sales ratio has to go up with at least 15% if i want to break even in 2 years... If you would go custom, how much would you spend, and would you buy an exclusive or a non-exclusive design? I don't even know a good deal from a designer if i saw one....
My niche is 3D porn (porn for 3D TV's, not hentai or cartoon or any of that stuff); it makes it kind of hard to use model images in the design, since it's hard to envision 3D images i guess???