We know everyone loves to get inspired from the people who have achieved a lot in a certain field, and have become an expert in the field. This is why we are starting a series of interviews with famous bloggers, designers and site owners, around the world, to inspire the newcomers in the field, and to help them out in reaching their goals.
We will kick-start our series of interviews with an interview of the creator, and owner of the popular design blog and resource site, Vandelay Design. Vandelay Design as you might is a very popular site based on design resources, WordPress themes, and most importantly because of the Vandelay Design Blog, which is a pool of inspiration for designers.
We had a few talks with Steven Snell, owner of Vandelay Design, asked him some questions, let’s find out what were the questions what was Steven’s answers to those question,
1) Hi Steven, tell us something about yourself and your background in Web Designing.
I got started in web design about 10 or 11 years ago by taking a basic web design course in college. I majored in business administration and I took an elective course that covered just the basics of HTML. For the next few years I continued to slowly learn more on my own from reading books and online tutorials, and eventually I started taking a few client projects on a part-time basis. Before too long things grew pretty quickly and it became a full-time business for me.
2) Have you learnt Web Designing professionally from somewhere or did it just started as a hobby?
Most of what I have learned was informally through online tutorials, books, and experimentation.
3) I have noticed that you have two different sites Vandelay Design and Vandelay Premier, first one for free products and the later for premium products. What’s the strategy behind maintaining separate sites?
The Vandelay Design Blog has been around for over 5 years. About 2 1/2 years ago I launched Vandelay Premier, which is a membership site where designers can get lots of different types of graphics and resources.
Before launching the site I decided to keep it on a separate website rather than adding the premium content to VandelayDesign.com because although the same audience is targeted with both sites, the purposes are different.
The blog has around 1,000 posts and I knew the site would only continue to get larger and I didn’t want it to be overwhelming for visitors to find what they are looking for. Vandelay Premier currently includes more than 700 products, and that number is growing each week.
I felt that having all of those products and blog posts on the same site could make it more challenging to navigate, so I decided to keep the products at a separate site.
4) I have also noticed that you have a very popular blog attached to Vandelay Design. What is your strategy behind running a blog side by side with this site? Is it dedicated for increasing user engagement or there is any SEO strategy behind it?
When I first started VandelayDesign.com it was basically a portfolio site and my primary goal was to use the site to get client work. I didn’t know anything about blogging at the time. About 6 months to a year after starting the site I installed WordPress to manage the blog.
At that time I was hoping to use the blog to attract visitors who would ultimately become clients. During the first 6 months of blogging I started to publish more and more posts that targeted other designers instead of people who would be looking for a designer.
I did have some success using the blog to attract clients, but over the years I have done less client work and earned more money directly from the blog itself.
5) Vandelay Design is a very popular site. How did you or what strategies have you followed to make this site what it is now?
The biggest factor in the growth of the site/blog was continued effort. When I was just getting started with blogging I got to know a lot of other people who were also starting new blogs and trying to make money online in one way or another.
I saw a lot of people who had potential to do really well with blogging, but most of them gave up within the first year, if not the first few months. I didn’t do anything better than they did, I was just willing to stick with it.
Aside from just the fact of giving constant effort, I always tried to focus on publishing content that readers would like. That’s really the biggest factor in success as a blogger.
6) What are your future plans with Vandelay Design and Vandelay Premier that you want to share us?
At this point I don’t have plans to change anything dramatically. I’m planning to keep working at improving the blog by adding new content, and planning to make Vandelay Premier membership more valuable by adding a lot of new high-quality resources. My plan for this year is to continue to work with several talented designers to create great resources for Vandelay Premier members.
7) The first income is always a special experience for any entrepreneur. What was your experience regarding this? It can serve to be an inspiration for many new and starting designers.
My first income with the business was small client projects. The very first ones were friends and family and then I started to get some through the website. My first income from the blog came about 6-9 months after launching the blog when I started to sell ad space.
For me the more memorable experience was when the blog started to get traffic. That’s when I knew that success was possible with the business. The first real traffic came from social media, specifically DZone.com, and the Delicious.
8) What advices would you like give to new designers reading this interview so that they can transform their designing career into a successful business?
There are a lot of different ways that you can earn a living as a designer today. You could do client work as a freelancer, work as an employee for a design studio, work as an in-house designer for a company, run a design blog, design and sell templates/themes, design and sell stock graphics, etc.
So my advice is to find out what interests you the most and pursue it. If you’re working full-time for a design agency or freelancing full-time you might enjoy working on some projects of your own part-time, like sell stock resources.
That ends our chat with Steven, and we hope that you have found this interview to be inspiring and helpful for starting your online business like Steven has done with perfection. Stay tuned for the next interview. Have question in mind? Leave it below via the commenting section.
Fantastic post, I have been following Steven Snell for a while now, he has done a great job in establishing a useful design resource site for beginner & advance users.
What he said about building a high traffic blog is so true. It takes patience and a lot of hard work.
Thanks Rahul for doing the interview.
Mike recently posted..Samsung Galaxy S III is Launched – Android Monster with 720p AMOLED Display
Thanks Mike. I appreciate the kind words.
[...] SUGGESTED INTERVIEW – Interviews: Steven Snell of Vandelay Design [...]
Hello Everyone
Thanks for sharing this awesome interview. I have searched many WordPress themes for free but these are the best themes. Awesome interview & Inspirational too
Sohil Memon recently posted..NVIDIA GeForce 700 and AMD Radeon HD 8000 Series comes in the First Half of 2013!
You are welcome Sohil, glad to know that you found this interview helpful. Yes Vandelay Design surely offers some great free themes, keep an eye on daPazze for more upcoming interviews.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..Interviews: Hongkiat Lim of Hongkiat Design Blog