Training Videos

Hello everyone,

I am thinking about making how to videos to teach people to do things (technology related). I am currently thinking of doing videos on how to make a website using WordPress but there are a million videos out there already.

How can I go about getting people to submit their requests for videos? I do not have an audience already so I am not sure how to go about building my audience.

I would like to do what Dan does with his questions where people ask and I can make training videos , any help would me appreciated.

Danny

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Permalink Reply by Egbujuonuma Damian.O on March 26, 2012 at 8:40am

Let your method be simply and easy to understand

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Permalink Reply by Michael Deason on May 11, 2012 at 7:45pm

I have thought of the same idea about doing training videos. You do the videos for free and post them on the net. Once you have a good number of people following you, then it will be easier for you to get advertisers to pay for ads in the videos. There are LOTS of free "how to" on the web.

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Permalink Reply by Reid Wilson on May 12, 2012 at 8:33am

If I were wanting to do this as a business, instead of asking an audience what kind of training videos they would like -- with their responses likely being topics that are already covered many times, I would seek out web applications, websites, and software development companies in my area that would benefit from having a series of tutorial videos for their users, and then I would contact the site owners/software companies and offer to create (for a fee) a series of videos for them.

We're not in a large metropolitan area but even where we live there are probably enough companies in town who would pay for this that someone could make a decent living doing so, and really there's no reason you'd have to stick with local clientele once you were more established.

In addition to training/tutorial videos, you could also create sales overview videos.

Here's an example of what my 15-year-old has recently done working with a local startup:

http://www.youtube.com/monarcares

The "Monarcares Overview" at the bottom of the list is the sales overview -- I suggest you watch it first. The rest are more tutorial-based.

Here's another one she's done:

http://www.adoctopuss.com/presentation/

With this one she also did a series of how-to tutorials adding up to about an hour of content.

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Permalink Reply by Terry Snelling on May 13, 2012 at 4:15pm

I'm also considering doing something like this.

If it were me, I would start by building a Youtube following. Publish tutorials covering simple (but frequently needed) topics, such as creating a blog post or formatting. Find a USP—a way to set your videos apart—such as teaching web design theory with practical information. I viewed a few tutorials on Wordpress......a lot of talking about features. Where is the practical? Maybe create a scenario-based tutorial series. Youtube videos should just be enough to whet the appetite of potential customers (like Dan's podcast, for example, someone asked a question relevant to me this week and because of it, I bought Living, Loving, and Working). Perhaps, people can ask for tutorials in comments. Or is there a messaging system on Youtube?

Anything you create for Youtube should also be placed on your own website/blog. Once you build a following and create enough content, you can look into multiple income streams (create entire courses on advanced topics, offer online courses/support/consultant packages, sell the videos on lulu or amazon, write an ebook on WordPress, become a Youtube partner with ads on your channel). For most of this, you can repurpose your content in many ways.

These are just a few ideas. I cannot say if they would work. Sorry for the long response, but I've been tortured by this same idea for months now :) As for people paying for what they can get for "free", just look at www.lynda.com. It's a very profitable site with the highest quality tutorials.

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Permalink Reply by Dan Miller on May 14, 2012 at 3:26pm

Be sure to check out all the training videos on using WordPress that Jeff Long has done:

http://www.48days.net/group/WordpressWorld?xg_source=activity

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Permalink Reply by Dallon Christensen on May 15, 2012 at 5:00am

Danny, when it comes to gathering ideas, I'd start with the 48Days group. Go to some of the groups like the Leap group or the technology-related groups and ask what people are currently struggling to do. Look at the discussions and see where people's pain points are, and then post some short videos on YouTube and Vimeo on those topics. As mentioned by others, always post these to your own blog as well so you can get people following your website.

I do a weekly short video series called At the Whiteboard on my site. Here's an example of a video, which I just embedded from YouTube. Like you, I'm planning to create educational videos (some free, others for paid download) on my site as well.

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Permalink Reply by Danny Lint on July 18, 2012 at 8:41am

Thank you for all your replies so far! After spending some time with the older people in my family the last few days I'm thinking about focusing on creating something more tailored towards teaching / helping senior citizens learn about computers.

What do you guys think? Not sure how a technically challenged person will find my tutorials though.

My goal is to be able to create quality content and be able to make money while I'm anywhere in the world vs having to show up to people's houses to do this.