I want to start creating. But what? Courses or eBooks?
Hi there Indie Hackers! 👋
I'm on a dilemma and I'd love to hear what your opinion is.
I've been a programming tutorial author for years; I've written lots of them. However, I want to go beyond that and start creating courses or eBooks based on some ideas and material I have.
And here's the dilemma: Should I go for e-courses, or eBooks?
I've read a few posts about that online but I'm not convinced yet about the one or the other. What would you recommend? And what would be more profitable?
If it's about courses, I guess that video lessons is what people are mostly interested in. However, given that I'm not a native English speaker I feel like my pronunciation could be a sort of a small "barrier" for me. Therefore I'm wondering if text-based courses could work equally well.
Thank you guys in advance for any feedback!!!
I had the same dilemma. I am Danish. I wrote a book and had it translated into English. That was in 2012.
In 2014 I wanted to turn the book into an online course.
In the process, I decided to hire an American to do a voice over for the videos.
Today, I believe it was a mistake. Autenticity is a must, I believe. My English is fairly good, but I could have invested in an online English teacher just to improve my fluency. An hour pr day for 30 days would have made a difference.
In 2015 I had a stroke and today my work capacity is significantly reduced.
However, I have been producing content professionally for 30+ years. But marketing is not one of my super powers 😉
Here is the course, it was never launched due to the stroke:
Behappyin.life
And the book:
https://www.amazon.com/Sober-Living-Possible-Alcoholic-Self-esteem-ebook/dp/B00IBX6GTM
As you can see, the course and the book don't work together. I love content creation, not marketing 😂, but I have learned a lot since 2014.
Anyway, today I would outline a book and speak it through a speech to text app. (The technology has matured a lot since 2014)
I would send the text to an English freelance writer and ask him/her to turn the text into a book. After that I would turn the most relevant sections of the book into an online course.
But!!!!! I would test and try to presell the entire idea with my target audience before starting the work.
Take a look at Udemy to see how many people teach online with a heavy English accent.
If you feel like discussing your options, you are welcome to contact me.
Good luck.
Christian Schade 🇩🇰
PS: You gave me an idea for a course... How to create an online course for people with English as a second language. Thanks👍
Hi Christian and thanks a lot for that long and thorough reply!!!
First of all, I'm terribly sorry for the stroke that you had. It's a bad situation, I've seen it happening to my close people. Hope you're doing well now.
To be honest, I'm thinking to get started from a text-based content, either this will be an eBook or an eCourse. Video courses probably will come next, so I take my time to get prepared for that. I'm considering to kick start short Youtube video tutorials and get used to that kind of lessons. Unfortunately right now I can't afford to hire anybody for that kind of tasks.
But I like the idea of turning most relevant sections into a course if the original is going to be a book. And yes, most probably I'll go after validation to get some feedback and see if people would be willing to pay for the kind of courses I've got in mind.
I'm glad I gave you a new idea 😁; can't wait for it and when you do it let me know!!! Also, I checked out your book on Amazon; it looks inspiring from the few words I quickly read and definitely helpful to many people. Thanks for sharing!
Btw, I'm Gabriel and thanks for your reply once again. Probably we'll have the chance to get in touch at some point.
Thanks. And yes, I feel very fortunate. I was lucky with the stroke. but I do feel great. I am sorry to hear about the people close to you. A stroke can be really dangerous.
I have so many ideas, and I hope one day to be able to do the course on English as a second language, but I wish you good luck and hope the best for you and your biz.
Best
Christian
You're welcome Christian!
Stay strong, and I honestly wish you to bring all of your ideas to life! And thank you too on my turn for your wishes!
Take care!
Hi again
I am working on updating my book. As I mentioned, I need to learn marketing.
I did a little research and discovered this site. See below. The free resources seem to be excellent.
May be it could be worthwhile for you to take a look... Especially the free training looks interesting. 😊
https://self-publishingschool.com/
Best
Christian 🙏
Hi Christian,
Thanks a lot for sharing it! Definitely I'm going to take a look, it seems to be interesting indeed!
Personally, I'm starting with an e-book and start selling.
Then will create some video content, and offer both together as a higher-price package.
Seen this done elsewhere. Has the advantage of avoiding paralysis of which to go with first :-)
I second this! The eBook is quicker to produce to high standards, while creating video (if you actually want to be good) takes time (and also requires investment in equipment and software). The book will allow you to start building an audience and validating the content. In my case, the eBook were the notes of the courses I was giving in person at universities. I made a PDF out of them, and thanks to that I've discovered that there are people interested in the subject. Not millions, but it gave me confidence to start recording my online tutorials. I think that having the book out there helped me understand what is the knowledge gap I can tackle.
I appreciate your answer!
Honestly, I had never thought about that. Nice idea!
Hi Gabriel, late to the thread but hopefully with some helpful perspective, as I've worked in online learning for about 10 years (Pluralsight, Udacity) and am building some resources to help creators make great courses.
I second the recommendations around starting with a text-based approach. Attempting to make a great course while also learning how to make high quality videos can be daunting. You can make a valuable course without any video at all - just make it one that delivers tangible outcomes / new capabilities that your students want, and focus on making an engaging course. Make the course as hands-on as possible - give students short exercises to complete during the course to practice new skills, and a hands-on project for the end of the course so they can demonstrate what they've learned from you. Neither exercises or projects require any video, and students will love them far more than highly polished videos.
You can also learn videomaking by experimenting with shorter video tutorials, and post to YouTube to get feedback from real users, to test the viability of that route. Alternately, a great way to practice video tutorials, if you create a text-based course that has exercises and projects, is record a walkthrough of one of the exercises yourself, just talking through what you're doing every step of the way in order to provide students with a solution video.
Hi Brian! It's never late when there's value added to the discussion!
Thanks a lot for your thoughts and advice! It matters a lot to hear all that from someone who's been involved deeply in online learning for years. I think you're into the point, because what you describe is the route I'm actually thinking to take; to get started with text-based only content and keep users engaged as much possible on one hand, and most probably to create video tutorials on Youtube so I get some feedback and see if it's a viable thing for me to do.
I honestly appreciate your feedback, I find it really valuable and constructive!
In 2006 I started writing an eBook on the 3D modelling tool Blender. At the time it was a free PDF eBook and quite popular. Over time Blender has changed the GUI a lot, and I had to make the same choice: eBook or video.
I've chosen for the latter since I discovered that YouTube really helped me getting an audience. These videos are combined with a website: https://blender-tutorials.com and https://arduino-tutorials.net
In my opinion does the best option also depend on the subject. For example Blender and Arduino are a lot easier with video. But for programming I can imagine an eBook works best.
Thank you @osi for your reply!
I really like the point where you're mentioning YouTube, because it comes to validate my thinking of making some short video tutorials on YouTube in order to expand my audience.
I tend to agree about making an eBook too. But what makes me hesitate is that lots of people in various posts and articles say that it's not worth creating eBooks that much; that the "juice" is on eCourses.
No matter what, thanks for sharing your thoughts with me!