You + Us = $$$

We are looking for awesome new instructors.
Which means YOU have the opportunity to make a lot of money.
You make the lesson, we sell it. You get a fat share of it (up to 50%).
This is a huge change from just paying instructors flat-fees. Why....

I want some teachers to take charge of entire sections and to be part owners in what they create for us. We have a ton of traffic. We have a huge base of existing customers. And we have plenty of room to expand what we teach. We're like a co-op grocery store with a huge empty back lot. Bring us your mason jars and we'll put up a tent out back.

I want to sell more (or begin selling)....

Photoshop tutorials (if you are an artist!)
Dreamweaver tutorials
Flash / Flash Catalyst / Flash Builder / AIR tutorials
iPhone tutorials or Android tutorials
Html5 / CSS 3 tutorials
Joomla tutorials
Maya, Unity, or other 3D software tutorials
and whatever else is hot stuff for us geeks.

Here's the rub.

Your tutorials better be damn good.

(see everything below)



Audio

Get a good mic.
This $60 Mic from Amazon is great.
A mic that picks up the hum of your computer or other people in the house is bad.


Check your audio levels
There is no way to salvage a recording session when the mic picks up too much sound.
When you speak loudly, or at times even sighing, can cause loud pops in the audio track.
Again, this $60 Mic from Amazon is great at reducing audio spikes.
We won't publish any tutorials where this occurs frequently.

Move your phone far away from the mic
Many phones will send out data bursts that make a click-click-click sound during the video. You might have even noticed this happens all the time on news stations like CNN. So just put your phone in the other room.

Dog collars.
You might not notice it anymore, but those make noise.


Video

What to record with?
On the Mac I would recommend Snapz (its only $60 or so). "Out of the box" the Snapz video settings are great.
On the PC, most of our instructors use Camtasia. But there's probably plenty of other (cheaper) options as well.


Record at 1280 by 720, 15fps.
Thats a good HD size and framerate.
We might end up lowering the framerate if the tutorial doesn't require that many frames by second,
but its best to record at those settings, and we can change it later.




Compression.
Usually our movies are compressed using H.264, but if you want to compress for Animation (which is usually a setting) thats fine. We can always convert to H.264 from a better compression setting.

Video Format.
You can give us mp4 or m4v or mov files. We'll end up using mov for the final zip.
We don't want swf files.

But of course for pitching us a tutorial idea, you can upload any format.


Record at Actual Size (1 to 1)
So don't shrink a larger portion of your screen into a 1280 by 720 size video.



You.


Generally we want professionals...
...Guys or gals working in a field similar to what they are teaching.
If you haven't yet made your bones in society, you can try to trick us and act as if. What's that mean? Well don't talk about graduating college last summer. Or mention that you saw Toy Story 1 on your fifth birthday. We won't ignore the fact that college-aged kids are probably just as capable of teaching an awesome lesson as someone 10 years older.



Be awake.
You don't need to borrow your nephew's ADD medicine, but stay peppy throughout the lesson.
If it takes a 5-Hour Energy or XL coffee from Dunkin Donuts to do that, go for it.
America runs on Dunkin.




Take a break.
No one will know if you pause the screencapture and pee. Or sleep for 8 hours and start back again where you left off. Just listen to what you previously recorded, so your train of thought is consistent, then continue recording.




Use notes, not scripts.
Reading off a script like a robot is not the CartoonSmart way. Pretend you are teaching a friend.
Notes though are a great idea. For most programming tutorials I teach, I have all the code I'm about to teach up on a second monitor. And I'll even screencapture the code from the program so the color coding is there too (vs just cut and pasting the code to a text doc)


Type code. Don't paste it.
Unless its code you've already taught and explained, just type it out. Typing code gives you time to explain, and often times will make you explain things better than if you just pasted in an entire line of code.


Test often.
Testing a programming tutorial is key. It gives the student a moment to breath and correct errors.
Plus you'll catch any mistakes or typos you made (see below for more on that)


Oops, you made a mistake.
Mistakes will happen in a tutorial.
Some mistakes are good if they don't take more than a few seconds to correct and can be used to demonstrate a common error that the student will most likely also run into. Bad mistakes, meaning ones you need to edit out and go back and record again, are ones that involve a lot of backtracking on your part. Because if you have to go back a minute or so in a tutorial, that probably means the student will have lost double or triple that amount of time because they work far slower than you teach.


For you creative types...
Like you artists (or arteests). For the less-talented, watching truly talented people draw is like listening to a musician play their instrument. So don't assume you have nothing to teach. Make a masterpiece and talk your way through it. I've seen way too many YouTube videos of talented artists time-lapse an hour or more of work into a 3 minute video that goes by way too fast to understand what the F they are doing. Those videos suck. Be brave, show your art.


Johnny Carson said comedy is...
Telling the audience what you're about to do. Doing it. Then telling them what you just did (I heard that from Conan O'Brian during a Simpson's commentary). I think good teaching follows the same formula. Basically, just don't get ahead of the student. Learning can be difficult so repitition is fine.


Dont's


Don't record your personal files or info
Be aware of what you are showing customers! Web-related tutorials often involve a web browser.
There is a lot of embarrassing info that can show up in Bookmarks and History.
Clear out that stuff, or even better screencapture an alternate browser you rarely use.
If you show your hard drive's contents be careful whats in there too. Your plans for world domination aren't what I'm most worried about.




Don't show or record copywritten material.
For example, suppose you taught an awesome Photoshop lesson on how to draw R2D2.
We can't sell that. If you have a question about usage, ask us.



You can plug your stuff. But don't go crazy.
If you're a freelancer this is a great opportunity to find new clients.
Its totally fine to mention who you are, your company, and your website (if your site isn't crude).
Who you are and what you do can also prove you are WORTHY of teaching someone else.
So a super quick mention in the beginning, and a little longer mention at the end is fine.



Don't Swear. Keep it school-library friendly.
Duh, right. But we've had to edit some instructors before.



Don't smoke.
Smoking sure looks cool, but it doesn't sound cool.
Long term smoking takes its toll on the voice (i.e. throat clearing, coughing, even wheezing)
It'll drive customers crazy to hear constant vocal ticks and we can't sell that.


Don't have a messy computer
Sweep all those non-tutorial related Desktop files off to the side.
Plain-ify your Desktop background.



Finally, Pitch it.


Upload 10 minutes or so


Or email us some awesome piece of artwork or awesomely coded example, wait for the reply that says....
"That is indeed awesome, can you teach that now??"
THEN send us 10 minutes of your instruction.



Please don't make some huge lesson without getting the go ahead. Here's why...


First, we might not be interested in selling it. Or it might be too similar to what we already sell.

Second, there's some branding issues to discuss first. Like using the logo.

Third, we might need to art direct you a little bit. Programmers aren't always good artists.

Fourth, we don't want to waste your time.

Fifth, the Council of Elders will need to meet to decide your destiny.