Outlaw Design Blog

If you spend any amount of time looking at the premium wordpress themes market, you have no doubt come across some of Woo Themes designs (previously Premium News Themes). Even if you dont like the guys themes, you have to appreciate his amazing ability to market himself. Some how, Adii managed to label himself as a “Wordpress Rockstar” even when he only had a few themes under his belt. Some of which weren’t even that great. It just goes to show you how far some smart marketing can go.

I recently contacted Adii to talk to him about his success in the Wordpress industry and get some of his advice on being a full time freelance designer.

What got you interested in the premium themes market?
Mmm… I don’t know to be honest… I think it was a mixture of wanting to explore, needing a challenge, seeing a gap in the market and ultimately creating a source of passive income that could compliment my freelance earnings. Plus - to some extent, developing premium themes was a natural progression of my own identity as a well-known WordPress freelancer. It just all made sense at the time and since I love a challenge, I jumped at the opportunities available to me.

Who were some of your main inspirations in getting started in this industry and why?
Well, at the time, only Brian Gardner was really doing premium themes and I can definitely say that he inspired the idea for me. But even though, I have buckets of respect for Brian, we’re always going to run our businesses very differently and therefor I can’t say that he was the sole source of inspiration for me; he did over spark the idea and after that I went off on my own journey into the world of premium themes…

If you could start Premium News Themes again knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
I wouldn’t change much to be honest; I really think that we’ve done really well and WooThemes’ success is evidence of the hard work that Magnus, Mark & myself has put into our business. I guess the only that I’d change is that I should’ve reinvested a bigger percentage of our income into advertising at the beginning, as I can see now what a big difference an extended ad campaign can make to theme sales.

What advice would you give to someone looking to get into the freelance industry?
Work hard! Value every small-time client you get in the beginning, because you never know when they’re the next Facebook or something. And lastly start a blog, where you can market yourself as a trusted freelancer and showcase your awesome design work.

What online tools do you recommend for freelancers and why?
Basecamp - for managing all of your personal & client projects. Google Reader - to catch up on what your favorite role models are saying. FreshBooks - for invoicing clients and managing your incomes / expenses online. And then lastly - a blog & Twitter combo to broadcast your views to the world.

You recently bought a shared office space, how is that working out for you?
The offices are really great and it has been a welcome change from having to work at home. At the moment though, the offices are still costing me more than it would when I was working at home, but the benefits far outweigh the cost involved.

How did you go about finding others to share the office space with you?
At the moment, it is only Cobus working with me in the office, as I’m still waiting for the majority of my furniture to be delivered. The original idea was to run a type of Rent-A-Desk operation whereby I’d get like-minded freelancers to join me in the office and pay towards the monthly overhead. But things has taken a big change in the past week, which will most probably see me announce a new partner in my “official” design agency - {radiiate} - whilst I’m also looking to hire a full-time designer & PHP developer to take the {radiiate} team to 4 peeps.

What is the best piece of marketing advise you have ever heard and how has it helped you?
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Richard Branson has always lived by this mantra and I really try to implement it into my business decisions. I think that my success as a blogger has a lot to do with this mindset, as I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind. A few people really don’t like me online, but every time someone would publish a negative blog about me or my businesses, I’d see a traffic spike. So I’m not suggesting that you should go out and piss people off, but you shouldn’t be overly concerned with supposedly bad publicity either.

What kind of things can we expect to see from Woo Themes in the future?
Big things! August will the first month that we’ll be releasing our monthly new themes to subscribers and the quality of the future themes should be an indication of where we’d like to take WooThemes. Our new themes will also start focusing on different niches, whereas we’ve focused on the news / magazine look in the past. Once everything is settled, we’re also looking to get more involved in the community with some free themes, maybe some plugins and also involving some other respected designers / developers on a few collaborations.

Our launch of WooThemes three weeks ago, was only the start and the next 4 - 6 weeks will see us building on that success!

Check out more on Adii at:
Woo Themes
Adiis Personal Blog