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For technical learning material do you prefer a SAAS model where you pay $10-20 / month for all-in access to short isolated videos in a related subject (potenti

by nickjj 4y ago

For technical learning material do you prefer a SAAS model where you pay $10-20 / month for all-in access to short isolated videos in a related subject (potentially ~4 new videos a month) or dropping $50-150 one time for a course that could be anywhere from 3-15 hours long? It's kind of comparing apples to oranges but as someone who has made courses for a while I've always thought about the idea of doing weekly screencasts instead. HN is one of the best places to ask this sort of question.

biztos 4y ago
I don’t see what’s SAAS about a content subscription but yes, I prefer that. Reason being that I’m often unsure how deep I want to go in a subject, so putting up say $20/mo gives me the option of only spending $20 if during the first month I decide it’s not what I want. If you want to see a very good (IMO) implementation of this model, check out Ray Wenderlich. Lots of free stuff to show you the style. Then $20/mo or $40/mo for “pro.”
- nickjj 4y ago
  > I don’t see what’s SAAS about a content subscription but yes, I prefer that. Yeah that's a fair point. I boiled this down to paying per month or a 1 time purchase. It was coming from a more general angle where it could be content, a product / service or heated seats which when you think about it all have different tastes. Content and a service could be classified as different. For example I don't mind the idea of paying a one time fee for a photo editor but paying per month bothers me on principle because it doesn't feel justified, which is weird because in both cases you'd want or expect updates and if you're going down this rabbit hole of paying for 1 year's worth of updates this boils down to paying per month but on a different schedule with an added bonus of controlling if you want to pay for a major update or not. Thanks for the feedback! Ray's site looks like he has hundreds of courses available, does your answer change if there's "only" ~30 standalone videos (not courses) on a specific topic with intent that more are being delivered every week? I guess the question there is at which point do you deem the catalogue large enough to pay? With one time course you at least know what you see is what you get with a possibility of there being more added over time in the form of updates.
  - biztos 4y ago
    Even Wenderlich started small! I’m backing someone on Patreon who has maybe a dozen videos out, but it’s a hard subject and I’m determined to learn it and she releases about one new video a week. The production quality isn’t very high but you can see she puts a lot of work into it, planning and transcripts and stuff. Teaching is hard! So yeah my advice is market test by asking people you know who know your subject, then yes put it out there with some free content and some paid monthly. Or just try Patreon if the audience is big enough.
TrueSlacker0 4y ago
Why not offer both? Paying $10/m for as long as you like and get all new and old courses. A basic streaming subscription essentially. But for $100 get lifetime access to only that one purchased course? Then if the consumer wants more they have the option to spend another $100 for a different course or add the $10/m subscription for other/new content. I personally would benefit from this immensely in course style learning. I tend to browse lots of content until I find the right info. Then deeply consume the single topic slowly as I teach it to my team. I'm usually stuck paying monthly for something I use for a month then don't use until I begin the training a few months later then dormant again until the next training x months later. An example.. pay for a Spotify/Netflix/etc monthly subscription but have the ability to purchase a cd/series/movie/book so that if you end your subscription you still have access to the purchased items. Essentially paying a monthly rate to peruse through material then purchasing to deeper dive/repeatedly use an item. The service might even make more money this way.
- nickjj 4y ago
  Thanks, that's a good idea -- especially for standalone courses that are kind of pre-made and done. I guess it's a bit tricky to balance with "screencasts vs courses" which I suppose is a different conversation than a SAAS model or not, although these 2 are pretty tightly coupled. For example, you could have 100 isolated 5-15min screencast videos released once a week about let's say Flask or Rails or whatever topic you're interested in or a 5-10 hour course that covers a cohesive project from beginning to end using a specific tech. The appeal of screencasts to me is you can make a video about anything around that topic, it's completely standalone where as a course is more like you pick the material, record it and that's it but then 8 months later something changes and you'd like to refactor something which could mean re-doing half the course because now you want to use esbuild instead of Webpack for your assets. Full courses tend to be better at taking someone who is a beginner and guiding them to a finished solution and screencasts are good for anyone who wants to solve a very specific problem like "how do I do pagination with Flask". In theory you could have screencasts grouped together as a learning path to solve bigger problems tho so you can technically maybe get the best of both worlds with screencasts which is something I've always wondered about as someone who has made a couple of one time standalone courses.

by nickjj 4y ago

biztos 4y ago

I don’t see what’s SAAS about a content subscription but yes, I prefer that. Reason being that I’m often unsure how deep I want to go in a subject, so putting up say $20/mo gives me the option of only spending $20 if during the first month I decide it’s not what I want. If you want to see a very good (IMO) implementation of this model, check out Ray Wenderlich. Lots of free stuff to show you the style. Then $20/mo or $40/mo for “pro.”

nickjj 4y ago
> I don’t see what’s SAAS about a content subscription but yes, I prefer that. Yeah that's a fair point. I boiled this down to paying per month or a 1 time purchase. It was coming from a more general angle where it could be content, a product / service or heated seats which when you think about it all have different tastes. Content and a service could be classified as different. For example I don't mind the idea of paying a one time fee for a photo editor but paying per month bothers me on principle because it doesn't feel justified, which is weird because in both cases you'd want or expect updates and if you're going down this rabbit hole of paying for 1 year's worth of updates this boils down to paying per month but on a different schedule with an added bonus of controlling if you want to pay for a major update or not. Thanks for the feedback! Ray's site looks like he has hundreds of courses available, does your answer change if there's "only" ~30 standalone videos (not courses) on a specific topic with intent that more are being delivered every week? I guess the question there is at which point do you deem the catalogue large enough to pay? With one time course you at least know what you see is what you get with a possibility of there being more added over time in the form of updates.
- biztos 4y ago
  Even Wenderlich started small! I’m backing someone on Patreon who has maybe a dozen videos out, but it’s a hard subject and I’m determined to learn it and she releases about one new video a week. The production quality isn’t very high but you can see she puts a lot of work into it, planning and transcripts and stuff. Teaching is hard! So yeah my advice is market test by asking people you know who know your subject, then yes put it out there with some free content and some paid monthly. Or just try Patreon if the audience is big enough.

TrueSlacker0 4y ago

Why not offer both? Paying $10/m for as long as you like and get all new and old courses. A basic streaming subscription essentially. But for $100 get lifetime access to only that one purchased course? Then if the consumer wants more they have the option to spend another $100 for a different course or add the $10/m subscription for other/new content. I personally would benefit from this immensely in course style learning. I tend to browse lots of content until I find the right info. Then deeply consume the single topic slowly as I teach it to my team. I'm usually stuck paying monthly for something I use for a month then don't use until I begin the training a few months later then dormant again until the next training x months later. An example.. pay for a Spotify/Netflix/etc monthly subscription but have the ability to purchase a cd/series/movie/book so that if you end your subscription you still have access to the purchased items. Essentially paying a monthly rate to peruse through material then purchasing to deeper dive/repeatedly use an item. The service might even make more money this way.

nickjj 4y ago
Thanks, that's a good idea -- especially for standalone courses that are kind of pre-made and done. I guess it's a bit tricky to balance with "screencasts vs courses" which I suppose is a different conversation than a SAAS model or not, although these 2 are pretty tightly coupled. For example, you could have 100 isolated 5-15min screencast videos released once a week about let's say Flask or Rails or whatever topic you're interested in or a 5-10 hour course that covers a cohesive project from beginning to end using a specific tech. The appeal of screencasts to me is you can make a video about anything around that topic, it's completely standalone where as a course is more like you pick the material, record it and that's it but then 8 months later something changes and you'd like to refactor something which could mean re-doing half the course because now you want to use esbuild instead of Webpack for your assets. Full courses tend to be better at taking someone who is a beginner and guiding them to a finished solution and screencasts are good for anyone who wants to solve a very specific problem like "how do I do pagination with Flask". In theory you could have screencasts grouped together as a learning path to solve bigger problems tho so you can technically maybe get the best of both worlds with screencasts which is something I've always wondered about as someone who has made a couple of one time standalone courses.