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Rails and Revenue: Building a Screencast Business

89 points by ChanningAllen 9y ago

merpnderp 9y ago
What is the advantage of using Wistia over Youtube for video hosting?
- rando444 9y ago
  Security I would imagine. If your videos are on youtube, if someone copies the link they can just publish it somewhere else, or make a public playlist of all your 'paid' content.
- davzie 9y ago
  Wistia is amazing for lead tracking and analytics about your customers' viewing habits.
  - excid3 9y ago
    Primarily, I use it for just hosting paid content in a protected way. They do have awesome lead tracking, analytics, email captures and things but your bandwidth can cost a lot if you do that too much. It doesn't quite work out financially with a low-cost screencast business like mine. Probably better for marketing teams with a budget and higher cost products.
albertgoeswoof 9y ago
For those of you who want to run a 15k/month one person business, the most interesting excerpt from this article: > Since I had been publishing content to GoRails for a year before I launched the paid courses, I had the advantage of all the SEO and visitors I had built that year. During that time, I was collecting email addresses of people interested in learning more about Rails. This gave me an audience I could launch to from day one, which was incredibly important to give me some confidence as I launched. > After getting some initial traction, I had to come up with a way of marketing my screencasts. The way I solved this was by pivoting to weekly screencasts and releasing a free one every other week. This let me share quite a lot of content on places like Reddit, Rubyflow, and to my email list. I knew those users would check out the other episodes I offered and hopefully subscribe to the paid content eventually. > I would say the majority of growth of GoRails has just been from this free content. If I cover a popular topic, it often gets shared, and if I cover a library, the authors love to share the videos as well to get more usage of their own work. I'm uploading the free content to YouTube which not only gets me an audience there but also saves me from some very high video hosting costs that I would incur if all the free content was hosted on Wistia. It makes for a nice way of building the community and the customer base at the same time.
cseelus 9y ago
GoRails really filled the gap Railscasts left as Chris Oliver himself also states in this Interview. He also mentions that for some people solutions to immediate problems are more relevant than constant learning via weekly screencasts. I hope he finds a way to offer these customers something, for example by selling course packages for a reasonable price, like all the recent „Vue.js with Rails“ screencasts as a package for XY$. Overall GoRails is a great ressource for Rails developers, Chris Oliver seems to be a decent guy and I wish him best of luck with his projects.
- excid3 9y ago
  Thanks for the kind words! I appreciate the support! I definitely am considering offering courses that either package up a series or a topic. That seems to be a good way of solving that balance between the different types of customers I see.

89 points by ChanningAllen 9y ago

merpnderp 9y ago

What is the advantage of using Wistia over Youtube for video hosting?

rando444 9y ago
Security I would imagine. If your videos are on youtube, if someone copies the link they can just publish it somewhere else, or make a public playlist of all your 'paid' content.
davzie 9y ago
Wistia is amazing for lead tracking and analytics about your customers' viewing habits.
- excid3 9y ago
  Primarily, I use it for just hosting paid content in a protected way. They do have awesome lead tracking, analytics, email captures and things but your bandwidth can cost a lot if you do that too much. It doesn't quite work out financially with a low-cost screencast business like mine. Probably better for marketing teams with a budget and higher cost products.

albertgoeswoof 9y ago

For those of you who want to run a 15k/month one person business, the most interesting excerpt from this article: > Since I had been publishing content to GoRails for a year before I launched the paid courses, I had the advantage of all the SEO and visitors I had built that year. During that time, I was collecting email addresses of people interested in learning more about Rails. This gave me an audience I could launch to from day one, which was incredibly important to give me some confidence as I launched. > After getting some initial traction, I had to come up with a way of marketing my screencasts. The way I solved this was by pivoting to weekly screencasts and releasing a free one every other week. This let me share quite a lot of content on places like Reddit, Rubyflow, and to my email list. I knew those users would check out the other episodes I offered and hopefully subscribe to the paid content eventually. > I would say the majority of growth of GoRails has just been from this free content. If I cover a popular topic, it often gets shared, and if I cover a library, the authors love to share the videos as well to get more usage of their own work. I'm uploading the free content to YouTube which not only gets me an audience there but also saves me from some very high video hosting costs that I would incur if all the free content was hosted on Wistia. It makes for a nice way of building the community and the customer base at the same time.

cseelus 9y ago

GoRails really filled the gap Railscasts left as Chris Oliver himself also states in this Interview. He also mentions that for some people solutions to immediate problems are more relevant than constant learning via weekly screencasts. I hope he finds a way to offer these customers something, for example by selling course packages for a reasonable price, like all the recent „Vue.js with Rails“ screencasts as a package for XY$. Overall GoRails is a great ressource for Rails developers, Chris Oliver seems to be a decent guy and I wish him best of luck with his projects.

excid3 9y ago
Thanks for the kind words! I appreciate the support! I definitely am considering offering courses that either package up a series or a topic. That seems to be a good way of solving that balance between the different types of customers I see.