Learn to do anything you can imagine, free
Filed under: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Saving, Technology
Written manuals are so 20th century. With the advent of user-generated video, the internet is packed with tutorials to teach you how to straighten hair, travel in West Africa, buy a used treadmill or solve Sudoku. The next time you need help with almost any imaginable task, check out one of these four different sites-- Monkeysee, Mindbites, Howcast or Wonderhowto. The answer is probably there.
Monkeysee.com offers free access to a wide selection of professional and user-generated how-to videos. It also has an in-house production studio to help those wishing to become a Featured Expert create their own videos. Such videos have become a crucial part of the savvy entrepenuer's marketing strategy, and Monkeysee seems to be cashing in on that trend.
Wonderhowto.com is more of a search engine for how-to's, offering the ability to pull content from over 500 specialized sites. Guest curators (unpaid) created Wonderlists of suggested videos, and users rate/comment on them ala YouTube.
Mindbites.com takes the iTunes approach, charging a modest fee to users (as little as $1.69) per video, and kicking up to 60% of that to the creator of the how-to.
Howcast.com has an even more interesting strategy. A group of paid Experts select topics and write scripts for how-to videos. Anyone capable of creating a professional video from that script can apply to become a Director. If selected, they are paid $50 plus a cut of earning for viewing over 40,000 to film these scripts. Viewers can watch the videos for free, though.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, video is worth ten times that. A warning, though; these videos can become addictive! Fortunately, there are also videos on kicking addiction.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-21-2008 @ 3:45PM
Jason Reneau said...
Good write up Tom. I also have to give props to the earlier of the ad-supported how-to players in ExpertVillage and VideoJug, who were around when we started working on MindBites in late 06, as well as 5min.com who are doing some cool stuff as well.
When talking about MindBites and "our space", I always get asked two questions. 1. Why a paid content model? and 2. Jeez, the space seems really crowded (which I'm sure many of my colleagues at these other companies have been asked many times as well)
In regards to #1, we just believe there is a place for a marketplace and publishing platform model. This model offers authors a very direct method of getting compensated for creating deep, unique and effective instructional content. Just like eBay offered anyone the ability to sell what they own to the world, MindBites hopes to offer a platform to do the same with your knowledge. Do we believe we're right and the ad-supported models are wrong? No, we just believe there is a place on the Web for both, and many more models.
And this leads me to #2, and our "crowded space." Last time I checked there were 6 billion people on the planet, and all looking to learn every single day. The instructional media market in the US is very conservatively over $20B when you think about all the time and money being spent on classes, books, internet search, etc. The fact is, it's a huge market and only in the early stages of disruption and change. We need more companies trying innovative things, not less.
That's my $.02. Thanks again for the writeup!
Jason
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