It may have happened subconsciously but over the past year or so, I’ve been paying for a growing number of online services. It may have to do with running a business and making sure there are solid roots supporting it. Or perhaps it’s a simple matter of getting over the novelty of getting everything for free…and waking up the reality you usually get what you pay for.

In any event, I don’t think twice about paying for online services. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not showering money around the Web and I try to use discount codes whenever possible. But the idea of coughing up for a good service that will make life easier, more productive or convenient is a no-brainer.

Some of the paid products within my digital portfolio include:

- Skype: a $2.99/month all you can calling plan for North America

- DropBox: After using the free file-sharing service for several months, I upgraded to the $99/year Pro 50 service that offers 50GB of data storage.

- Freshbooks: One of my business’ core service, I’m on the $29.95/month Evergreen service, which offers an unlimited number of clients.

- HostPapa: A green and cost-effective Web host with prices starting at $5.95/month. HostPapa has great customer service as well.

- Performancing: A Web analytics service to track the performance of my blogs and Web sites for $3.99/month. I also use Google’s free Google Analytics service but I like how Performancing is user-friendly and quietly robust.

- WordPress: In the past, I would scour the Web looking for free themes. Now, I’m content to pay for high-quality premium themes that provide great customer services. Some of my favourite theme makers include Themify and ThemeFuse. I’m also impressed with Pagelines but have yet to buy one of its themes yet.

- TweetBot: I have used a lot of Twitter applications for the iPhone but happily paid $1.99 for TweetBot recently because it is easy to use and it’s feature-rich.

- MarsEdit: I’m writing this post using a demo version of MarsEdit but I’ve been looking for a Mac-based blog editor so I’m seriously considering a purchase.

In the scheme of things, the services and products that I have been paying rather than trying to get for free are a tiny part of my overall expenditures. The difference in paid vs. free is based on a free themes:

1. When you pay for something, the expectations are different when it comes to things such as customer service and product upgrades.

2. Paying for a service supports the underlying business so it can build its business and be able to invest in new product development and sales.

3. It encourages entrepreneurs to charge prices for their services rather than simply offer something for free in the hope that it will attract enough customers to generate advertising revenue. I’m a big fan of the premium model because it offers a try before you purchase approach that can get lots of people in the door.

For more thoughts on paid service, check out The Next Web’s post on “Why you should want to pay for apps”.