Interview with Alex Cristache from Blogsessive

In my schedule, it was time for another interview here on DivitoDesign. A couple days back, I had the pleasure to talk to Alex Cristache from Blogsessive.com.

I guess some of you know him from the free Simple Balance WordPress theme he has released a while back. In this interview, he has a number of interesting things to say about “free” and blogging. Enjoy!

You can visit Blogsessive.com about his blogging adventure and QBKL.net for his design studio. He also runs CREATIVEurope to showcase the best designer portfolios and blogosphere.cc for the latest news from around the blogosphere.

Thanks for the time you take to answer these questions, Alex.

1. Alex, welcome! Could you tell us something about yourself, who you are, what you do, etc?

Hello Stefan and thanks for the interview invitation. Who am I? I’m your average IT enthusiast, design and writing passionate and with a desire to help other people find their way in the online environment. More about me can be read on my about page on Blogsessive: http://blogsessive.com/about/

2. What does your typical day looks like?

It usually starts with the morning cup of coffee and a lot of online reading… blogs, newspapers and email/comment answering. After that, it really depends on a bunch of things. Being self-employed tends to lead to a variation of habits, from delivering projects on time to idea hunting, writing and bike riding for relaxation.

3. You blog at Blogsessive.com, a blog about blogging. Any tips on how you promote your articles?

Blogsessive is not your average type of blog. I’ve created Blogsessive out of passion and did not took a direct interest out of making money with it. Because of that, I haven’t really put a huge effort in promoting my articles, but rather let people discover and enjoy them. Most of the articles that circulated the internet have been promoted by readers simply because they enjoyed them and wanted to share them with their friends or readers of their own blogs.

In some special cases I did turn to social media services for article promotion and some direct mailing to a couple of bloggers in order to attract attention.

4. Simple Balance is a real success isn’t it? Why did you decide to release it for free?

I do think it’s a success. I’ve spent a lot of time developing and improving it and that showed in the way it has been received by the public. If we go by the standard definition of “free”, yes: the theme has been released for free. But, users have sent some donations in order to support this theme, and for that I’m grateful to all those who did so. Also, the theme has helped promote Blogsessive, attract new people, new traffic and also quite a bunch of backlinks. The better the product, the better the reaction.

Why did I decide not to charge money for it? Because, as stated before, there are other things you can gain from such a decision, and also, I wanted to prove that not everything “free” is a synonym to low-quality, sacrifice of functionality or design. I plan on releasing a few premium themes in the future, but also some other free themes. I’ve always enjoyed the concept of “choice” and I want the users of my (future) themes to have a choice when facing the decision of getting a new theme, of good quality, free or for a fee.

5. Do you have big goals for the year 2009 for your online career?

We all have big goals, but the most important thing is not “the big goal”, but rather the steps you take to get there. I focus on making the right decision at the right time. At this time, the biggest challenge I’m facing is finding the right percent of time to spend between growing my design studio (http://QBKL.net) and picking up the pace on Blogsessive with a few new concepts and ideas for 2009.

I’d say the biggest goal for 2009 is to continue to provide quality resources through Blogsessive and quality and fair-priced designs through QBKL.

6. DivitoDesign should *absolutely* interview:

Adrian Diaconescu : talented designer, freelancer and blogger.

Thanks for the opportunity Stefan, it’s been a real pleasure doing this interview.