In today’s interview, we’ll be talking to Tobias Fendt.
An entrepreneur and WordPress fanatic from Bavaria, Tobias has shared with us his amazing experience with theme designing, WordPress development and blogging.
His blogs, a passion that he’s turned into a business, show us how creative and versatile Tobias really is, since he writes about fitness and investments apart from WordPress.
We wanted to know more about this young web developer, fitness freak and football lover. So we asked him a few questions about his personal and professional life.
Let’s take a look at how Tobias’ journey has been so far!
(Note: Here’s the original version in German)
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Tell us about yourself and how you got started with freelancing
Hi, my name is Tobias Fendt. I’m a Web & WordPress developer from Germany, from the beautiful Bavaria to be precise.
I spend most of my time designing and developing my own WordPress Themes and managing multiple blogs in a variety of niches. I ventured into freelancing quite early.
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What is your typical workday like?
My alarm rings at 07:00. That’s when I usually start my day. I then dedicate some of my time for exercise. I run for about 30 minutes, then comes a nutritious breakfast and at about 09:00, I’m ready for a productive day.
Everyone who has ever dealt extensively with time management knows the saying “Eat the Frog” and the eponymous book by Brian Tracy. This means, major tasks should be completed first thing in the morning. Once these tasks are completed, you’ll have put the most unpleasant and difficult task of the day behind you. The remaining tasks will seem so much easier and you will ultimately be more productive .
I spend most of my time coding and programming new WordPress themes or implementing new ideas on my existing blogs and pages.
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You’ve been blogging for over 5 years. What role does blogging play in the life of a web developer?
I dedicated the first 3 years of being a web designer solely to my clients. In 2009, I started my first blog about fitness. I’ve always been athletic and busied myself with diet and exercise. Initially, I used to blog without planning well.
When I saw the number of visitors rising slowly, I worked more and more on SEO, social media, content marketing and blogging. Two years later, my blog was one of the most widely read German fitness blogs. I had managed to take up blogging as a business, as it provided me with a regular income.
Today I have several blogs in different niches. My team writes regularly on Food Fitness about healthy eating and weight loss. With Immoanleger, we help newbies invest successfully in property. Apart from these two sites, I have about 10 smaller niche sites that are advertised through affiliate marketing.
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In your opinion, what are the 3 core skills needed to complete a project successfully?
To make it short and quick: Discipline, Time Management and of course the necessary Skills.
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What according to you are the qualities that separate great web designers from the good ones?
A client of mine, who’s also a designer, gave me a very good compliment a few years ago. He said to me with great enthusiasm, “Tobias, you have what is referred to as a “design-eye”.
In all these years of me working as a web designer and developer, I have viewed and analyzed around 50,000 websites. Every time I make note of what makes the site successful- the good points and the bad. Certain aspects such as generous spaces and a structured arrangement of elements on the website seem “beautiful” to the human eye. Good web designers can create a website layout design that’s good. Great web designers make designs which make you go, “Wow!”.
But this is often a double-edged sword. From my experience I can say that, not all sites that look beautiful work well. You can have the most beautiful site, packed with the latest web design trends… but if you do not bring your visitors to perform a certain action, then the most amazing design is worth nothing. Often the simplest pages are also those which actually generate revenue. There is simply no element which sticks out and the call to action stands quite in focus.
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What’s the biggest marketing challenge you continuously face?
The biggest challenge is to get to new customers.
I keep a regular check on my blogs, where we get traffic, which is then converted into customers. However, it’s not the same with WordPress themes. I sell these on a market place, to find potential customers.
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Name any one WordPress Theme you wish you had built
There are many good WordPress Themes.
The quality has been getting better in the recent years. But if you look at the sales of premium WordPress themes, it would be nice if I had the idea to build Avada 🙂
The Avada theme has an incredible 250,000 purchases in the past 4 years! The author of this theme has cracked the 10 million mark – with just one WordPress Theme. That’s really impressive!
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Which is your favorite WordPress Plugin?
A plugin that I can make good use of on all my sites, is the SEO Plugin by Yoast. I feel every website administrator, who does search engine optimization, should have this SEO Plugin on every WordPress site.
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If you weren’t a WordPress developer/ designer, what career path would you have chosen?
Footballer 🙂 I love to play football and I can say that I’m also good at it. But it’s too late, as I am too old for that now. 😀
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Thank you Tobias for sharing your experience with us. We wish you luck for your future and look forward to hearing more from you.
To connect with Tobias Fendt, you can follow him on Xing, and fitness freaks can follow his blog 🙂