Has anybody ever done a tutorial to sell it?

[Aaron2004]

I've noticed that tutorials on making GOOD residential houses in sketchup are few and far between. I feel like I've done enough of these at work that I could make tutorials. I COULD put them for free on youtube, but why not try to make a profit? If I polish them up and sell hard coppies or downloads with extras, I think I could justify charging.

 

Has anybody attempted to sell a tutorial series and either suceeded of failed terribly? Is there a problem with people pirating them?

 

Thanks!

 

Aaron

[SandmanNinja]

I own quite a few video tutorials and I know most of the authors are worried about Piracy. I think www.3dbuzz.com has the best solution - put a watermark on the video with the purchaser's name, home address and phone number. That should deter a Pirate from buying it and then releasing it for free.

 

Since you theoretically buy the video with a credit card or PayPal, their info should be correct. Simply take the billing info and whack it on their video.

 

Camtasia's capture software easily lets you make the Master capture session in it's own propriatary format and then you can load it back into their software and 'compile' it out with a new and different watermark whenever you want. Naturally the downside is the time it takes to re-compile each version, uniquely branding it with the purchaser's details, but that is one way to do it.

[William Alexander]

nothing wrong with being proactive about the piracy thing.....

 

a good tutorial, especially a series, is not all that easy to begin with...now one of a quality worthy of charging for and then being worthy of piracy...????????

 

Been doing tutorials for a private online community for a number of years. Audio is challenging especially proffessional quality audio. Dynamic range issues, background noise, editing-cleaning. File size vs quality vs format vs frame rate, audio birates, good aspect ratio.... that's technical now personality, livelyness, coherent presentation and overall 'need' are all very very important factors to charging money and need of piracy protection.

 

LOL Having a mic and screen record on .... it's a different expereince.

 

Camtasia is a good stand alone product.... but putting a water mark on each 'copy' of a 5-10 minute session takes time and to really protect it needs to be full screen, otherwise it can be masked very easy if you hide it in a corner.... I'd want my money back if the water mark got in the way of the screen capture.

 

....although there is a lot of training out there and most of it technically often is not all that good. Poor compression or MASSIVE sized files with giant aspect ratio that plays back slow, same with audio. Low levels, high noise, poor audio performances. Forgot what it was, but one series the dude was so monotone I gave up trying to stay awake.

 

Wellll.... take this all in stride. The standards I work under are very stringent but the end result is a proffessional production. Maybe that's not typical video tutorials in most peoples minds, but this is my 2 cents on the subject.

 

Hope it's helpful to prepare you for moving forward

[Aaron2004]

Well, I realize that the profit you make from it is all relative to how well it's marketed and accepted, but did you find that it was worth the time for the money you are making from it, or is it just a few extra dollars a month for you? I'm not expecting a self made tutorial to make THAT much money, but I'd like it to be worth the effort.

 

Aaron

[Aaron2004]

Oh, also...are there any legal issues with selling a tutorial? Do I need permission from the software company?

[waleedss]

it deponds on content. you should look for uncovered topics.. I believe good video tutorial can take mouths of hard work to be done effectively. will take tons of tests / reading behind the scene. I think it should be long-term plan say create 10 dvds to distribute cost of website , hosting , payment getaway and ADVERTISING.

[STRAT]

i've sold things on and off over the years online - tutorials, models, scenes, textures etc etc, but these days i just tend to give things away. the hassle and amount of money made (and tax i had to calculate and pay) just isn't worth it. At one stage i was making an regular extra $50-100 per month in turbosquid for a year or so.

 

but my exposure and credibility is much bigger and greater giving free things away rather than the limited audience i get by charging. as i say, if i were to make a decent sideline to my main job i might have continued, but you dont really make a hill of beans to please yourself.

[jinsley]

...

 

but my exposure and credibility is much bigger and greater giving free things away rather than the limited audience i get by charging. as i say, if i were to make a decent sideline to my main job i might have continued, but you dont really make a hill of beans to please yourself.

 

Very true and smart... On the tutorial topic, I would point to guys like

 

David Fano (http://designreform.net/) or

 

Ramy Hanna (http://3dsmaxrendering.blogspot.com/ )

 

both guys have put together an excellent source for information relating to modeling, rendering and general knowledge concerning the platforms we work with, and by making them publicly accessible they have greatly increased their presence in the community. Which I would suspect, leads to more business for them...

[GordonHo]

thanks for sharing