We follow all of the premium theme developers and recently noticed some great themes coming from a new kid called “RichWP” We wanted to find a bit more about RichWP and the owner Felix Krusch so here goes!

Q. For those who don’t follow you and might not know, how long have you
been interested in design and development with WordPress?

I developed my first WordPress theme, named Aalglatt, to start a German blog about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) back in December 2005. That theme was just a modified version of the famous Green Marinée theme by Ian Main but it had its own twists to it. Ian allowed me to publish the mod on my site. Since that day, this theme has brought a lot of attention to my little German blog, causing me to change the focus of that site to report about the template and theme markets.

Q. What got you started in the theme development business?

Because my free themes began bringing lots of free traffic to my blog, I soon began to monetize it with several theme and template affiliate programs. This gave me a good overview of the market and I saw what was working and what was not.

In the beginning of 2009, I booked a telephone consultation with Brian Gardner from Studiopress and he patiently answered all of my questions about the WordPress theme market and about starting and running a Premium WP theme label that I had up to that point.

I took all the good advice, locked myself up, designed and programmed six WordPress themes, got my sales pages ready, and launched.

Since then, I frequently give one-on-one support to every customer who writes in. That positions me right on the pulse of what my customers want. This is where the ideas and hints for developing new themes and improving the current ones come from.

Q. Do you generally have a target audience for your themes? Most companies target just Web designers; are you trying to target others such as newbies?

No, I cannot say that I target one special audience. Sure, I developed the photo themes and the gallery functions with artists in mind who want to display their work. I designed the blog themes with bloggers in mind and the business themes aim at small to midsized business customers. Web designers are often buying my themes to cater to their customers, saving themselves time by not having to reinvent the wheel and saving their customers money in return. Newbies are as welcome as experienced WordPress users and developers.

Q. Now that your themes are under the GPL, do you see any change in sales or traffic to your site?

I can’t really say because my themes were licensed under the GPL from the beginning—thanks goes to Brian Gardner for that advice. Besides that, everybody who uses GPL scripts and functions within their themes should release the theme under the GPL. As far as I know, you can only copyright your design and CSS, which is what I did in the beginning, but you should not do that with the other necessary theme files, because they contain WP functions which are GPL.

Giving up protecting my CSS was only a little step for me and being 100% GPL brought me into the commercial theme index on wordpress.org. There is some traffic coming from this index, but it is not a significant amount.

Anyway, it’s great that anybody can do with your themes what they want to do. I mean, selling a developer’s version of your theme that only allows your customer to remove a copyright notice and a link to your site in the footer or to use your theme on multiple sites simply isn’t a good deal. It is not that they give you anything extra, like a more comprehensive options page or other features, which is the best practice for most software developers. Don’t get me wrong, I am a capitalist at heart and I am all about profits. I tried that kind of developer’s license thing with templates for another CMS, too. But giving the customers the best service you possibly can and more importantly, giving them the freedom to do with your products whatever they can imagine definitely brings in more money than any model based on some kind of usage restrictions could ever do.

It might sound completely counter intuitive, but if you don’t cling to your digital products too much and accept that since they are digital products, they will probably be available somewhere on the Web for free, this is actually a great promotional tool.

I mean, you can almost be sure that you are not using the most up-to-date version of the theme, but you use it and learn to love it. Then maybe questions arise and you want the latest version, or your good consciousness kicks in and you realize that I have put a lot of work into a great and affordable product and that the new versions of my themes are rich in features and you can do a lot of stuff with them. In order to get everything out of my themes and also profit from the experience I have as a blogger and Website owner, then you want access to me personally and use the one-on-one email and chat support that I offer with my themes.

So every RichWP.com theme you find out there to download for free is actually an evaluation version of my product—something that software companies have been using for ages as a proven promotional tool.

I will even take it a step further and release free versions of all of my themes within the coming weeks.

Q. What are some of your favorite things to do outside of Web design stuff?

I enjoy traveling and I am thankful that I have been able to visit quite a few countries on this planet so far. A flight to Chile is already booked for February. I graduated with a Master’s degree in geography and I am using what I have learned there to explain what I see and experience on my trips.

Besides that, I love sports, especially swimming. You can meet me at the Olympic Pool in Montreal almost every day.

Q. We know this might be Top Secret, but do you have any other entrepreneurial projects in the works that you can share?

Right now, my focus is on RichWP.com and the WordPress theme market. I have so many ideas I want to realize with RichWP, that it will probably occupy me for some months to come.

I have started a lot of small businesses; some have failed, but some are still earning me good money.

Sometimes just a walk in a park can get me all hyped up at trying another idea and starting a new business. Stay tuned; it never gets boring.

Q. Do you have any quick tips or advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs?

This might sound cheesy, but do what you love to do and focus on it—don’t focus on the money, that will come automatically. Money is just a way of keeping score about what you did right with your business.

If you fail, get up and try again or try something else. Or in other words, how often do you have to play a video game before cracking the high score? How often did you fall before you were able to walk?