I started DIY sometime in mid-summer 2011. I only had purchased pre made juice from 2 companies, prior to starting to experiment with making my own. I haven't bought a bottle of pre made juice since. I've sampled lots of it at vape meets, won some in raffles, picked up some door prizes, and given most of it away. It took a while, before I finally made something remotely vapeable. Lots of 'sweaty gym socks' and 'burnt tires' along the way. I've also found that as my vaping style and hardware choices evolved, so have my recipes. I've had to modify most of them, at some point. There's no way I'd be able to vape anything that may have been fine when I was using 2.5 ohm CE2s, in a dual coil, .4 ohm, bottom feed atty, on a Reo. The nic level had to come way down, as well as the flavor percentages, even though the flavor profiles remained the same.
But I've also just gotten lazy. A standard Reo bottle, filled with about 5 1/2 ml of unflavored 75vg/25pg, and a drop or two of flavor, tastes great to me.