Hey Guys...
I've been toying with the idea of setting up a pay-per-view screencast education site for Drupal design. I'm wondering if you guys would check out this sample screencast and let me know if this kind of thing would be worth paying for (I'm initially thinking $5 per video...feel free to suggest another price).
My goal would be to basically do what I do on G&G, however because of the time and quality commitment, I'd roll it into my business model at Mustardseed, targeting "Building Church Websites with Drupal". I'd probably do, like, 40 videos or something, on how to produce a Drupal website from start to finish (from Photoshop to a final, rockin' Drupal site)
So, check out this sample screencast and let me know if you'd want more of this stuff and what you see as a fair price structure.
Thanks!
Further Info...
Ok, so after playing with this idea...I think a one time membership fee would be better. I'm thinking $99, and it would start at 40 videos. Then, from there people could suggest topics for future screencasts/series.
Whatta ya think? Am I nuts or would this be helpful?
-Rob Feature
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mustardseedmedia.com
Now you're starting to talk
Now you're starting to talk sense. $5 / vid * 40 is alot more money and one might not really need some of the casts but not know it until after watching a bit of it. Now you're talking half the amount of money and the possibility of having more targeted information.
Your knowledge of Drupal is so beyond mine that I would DEFINITELY spend the money and at $99 who can refuse?
Can we expect that the videos will typically be longer than 5 minutes? The sample very nicely explained its concept in the short time but I would like to really dive in to some topics. If you tagged the videos based on different categories that would be good too: skill level targeted (coder, user, sponsor, decision maker), what part of the life-cycle (preproduction, ui-design, architecture design, coding, testing, etc), type of activity (layout, css, module hacks, theming, photoshop, browser).
OK, I'll stop. As you can tell I'm quite excited at the prospect.
- David Lloyd
lloydhome consulting, inc.
Excellent Suggestions
Fantastic suggestions here, David. Every one. I think I'd implement all of them. The only kicker I see is: I might run into issues at $99 for "lifetime" membership....that means I'd basically have to spend time making videos forever wtihout additional income once I hit the critical mass.
I'm thinking maybe we'd be looking at $99 for a 'series'. Like you could get the basic series, developer series, themer series, etc. Not sure how to solve that yet, but I'd have to make sure it wasn't a set cost for an infinate amount of videos :)
As far as length, actually I was thinking they WOULD stay around 5 minutes each (depending on the complexity of the issue) After looking at Drupal with these eyes, though, I realized it would probably end up being WAY more than 40 videos per package. More like 50-60 probably.
Here's my other issue: Do I target this just at churches, like we do with G&G? Obviously that will really limit the audience...I'm thinking maybe I would open it up to a bigger audience than that....thoughts?
I'm going to toy more with this idea, but thanks for the input....anyone else?
-Rob Feature
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mustardseedmedia.com
my 2 cents
Rob
I agree that it would not be feasible for the lifetime membership... I like what Lynda.com does, $25/month or $250/year, a great deal. They have a large inventory of very long tutorials covering a great number of software titles which allows them to charge more then I think you could.
I personally think $99/year would be a great price point but people will need to see proof of content amount before they would be willing to pay the money... ie. wait until you've got the 50-60 titles ready before you launch.
However, I would not target churches with your idea... what would be the benefit in doing so? You're not dealing with doctrinal topics but technical ones, why limit your potential market when a Christian website developer can and will learn from secular content more easily then a secular developer from religious themed content. More business for you means more time spent increasing the product line which means more benefit to church techies who have a membership.
Perhaps you could offer some videos that make the connection between specific videos/modules and ministry website development, ie. Ministry Websites and Drupal, or Handling Online Donations in Drupal. This will eliminate the need to include religious references for the average user, but will help churches get the big picture of effectively using Drupal on their sites.
Mark Fogarty
www.MuddyRiverMedia.org
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Get Muddy... It's Free!
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Repeatable?
It'd definitely be something I'd be interested in. I don't think I would pay a monthly subscription, but I'd pay a lump fee or a fee for individual videos.
But only if I can watch them repeatedly as I am a slow learner and need to see or hear something a number of times to grok it.
Yes
Hey Shawn....
Yeah, as I think thru this more, I think this might be the way it works:
People would sign up for a user account on the site, then they'd buy "packages" of videos. So, for example, we'd have a 'drupal basics' package, then we'd have a 'drupal theming' package, etc. Each package would have a set amount of videos (for example, maybe 40 in the basics) and it would cost $99. Once you pay you could watch all the videos as many times as you wanted...forever. Then, if you wanted to buy a new package, then you'd pay at that time.
The only problem with this is that there's a high probability of someone sharing their login info with others (or posting it on the net). So, I'd have to work thru this, possibly tying a login to an IP (not very realistic) or at least preventing multiple logins for the same account at the same time....donno yet.
Thanks for the input everyone....any other ideas out there?
-Rob Feature
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mustardseedmedia.com
Like the Idea
I like the idea, some good stuff... I would probably get on board with it...
Regarding the video posted... I have found difficulty with using that method for IE, have started using text-indent: -9999
How are you getting it to work cross browser?
THANKS! Keep up the good work!!
Excellent Question
Yeah, this is funny. MF used to tell me the same thing (and he uses the text-indent method as well). But I've never had any problems. I build to be compatible with IE6 and above and this always works for me (I just now fired up IE6 to make sure).
So, that being said...I guess my answer is: I don't know! It's always worked for me.
-Rob Feature
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mustardseedmedia.com
me like it
I like the one time fee. If you do it you can definitely count me in on it.
Well, that was easy
Well, I didn't realize that this was coming. That makes my decision about this easy...Lullabot would do a better job at this than I would.
Unless anyone sees a reason that Mustardseed could do this in a way that would help churches and ministries more specifically, I'll probably put this idea on the back burner. Would it be worth doing something similar to this if it was specific to church websites? Not sure how/why, but just a question...
-Rob Feature
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mustardseedmedia.com
My thoughts
I haven't watched the full trailer, but it seems like you would do this with a very different personality and style than what I saw from the first few presenters on the trailer.
But, it seems that I have heard you and Matt complain a few times about the "Jesus Junk" culture that always has a Christian alternative for everything that exists in the "real world." For you to offer something that is truly not just "Jesus Junk," you would have to be fairly specific to church sites, which limits your audience.
If your audience is going to be aimed at church volunteers who do not do web development (like I was when I started listening to G&G) then you may be able to find a useful niche. Otherwise, I would wait until you found a compelling reason to take it off the back burner.
If you do go forward with it, let me know. I may be interested in signing up.
John
john-simons.com
Jesus Junk vs. Unique Problem Solving
Hey John
Good insight here. Thanks!
Yeah, you're 100% right, I wouldn't want it to be a "Jesus Junk" thing. Instead, it would hopefully be offering unique insight into building church sites. I wouldn't be doing the same thing as Lullabot and just throwing Jesus stuff in there...instead, I would address the unique needs that church sites have as opposed to other types of sites, thereby showing how to solve or approach unique needs.
Anyway, I'll keep my mind going on this. Feel free to pitch in ideas as you have them.
-Rob Feature
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mustardseedmedia.com
more specific content - targeted segments
Hi Rob -
I'm ready to buy!
I think you should definitely proceed with your idea of paid screencasts. What you contribute as a designer to the drupal community (both Christian and secular) is unique and is quite different to what the Lullabot guys will be doing with their DVD series.
Couple of thoughts:
Hmmm.... more thoughts than I first began with, but there you are. Hope you continue with this idea.
Peter Sneesby
www.sneesby.com.au
www.lifesourcetv.com
more screencast topics: theming views and CCK-nodes
I have been thinking all weekend about the last couple of G&G eps, and one topic which comes through frequently is the idea of "this (insert name-of-block here) is just a view that we themed".
Now that would be a neat screencast: best practice for theming a view (in D5 initially, then D6 cos it's slightly different...)
I know how to build a view, but I am having problems getting theming to work; the visual reinforcement from a screencast would probably nail this one for me.
Related to this would be a screencast on theming a node that you have augmented using various CCK fields. Again, this is mentioned frequently and I'm sure it's straightforward once you have seen it in action.
thanks,
Pete
www.lifesourcetv.com
www.sneesby.com.au