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Destroy All Software screencasts free this week

destroyallsoftware.com

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Re: Destroy All Software screencasts free this week

#21

Post by thomasmeeks »

AlexB138 wrote: post #19

Nice quality content, I'll definitely take advantage of the free period. The cost to sign up seems very high for what this is though. I expected a one time cost, or maybe $5 or so a month. $290 annually seems expensive for a single format of lessons from a single teacher. Even the current promotion seems onerous. As a point of comparison, Safari Books Online does sales for $199 annually just about every year and has…

The cost to produce quality content is quite high. Even if you are "only" putting together a screencast, the cost of learning that content, planning how to teach it, editing it, and inevitable retakes can all easily stretch to 20x the length of a video. I'd call that estimate fairly optimistic, to be honest, it can go much higher.

To use an example I'm familiar with: Code School courses took about 6 or so hours to complete (including challenges), but take 4-6 months of effort by an average of 4 people at any given time to create. We tried many times to tighten that timeline up, but being too aggressive inevitably resulted in a course we weren't 100% happy with.

Pricing isn't as obvious as it seems, as well. We raised our prices from 25/mo to 29/mo ages ago, which was a large net positive for the company from a revenue standpoint. We ran pricing tests a few times, as well, and anything below 29/mo performed much worse overall (we didn't get enough extra signups at a lower cost to break even). Sales & free weekends have a big impact, though.

As I've watched the space coalesce it seems like the very successful companies will be the ones that create some kind of "degree" (accreditation doesn't matter, only how much the community trusts them) for individuals, or companies that chase down enterprises for continuing education dollars. Or both. Both tend to charge a premium over that 290/yr price point, which you need to in order to be wildly successful due to the massive churn in the education space.

All that to say, from my perspective, $290 a year is very reasonable, and is probably the right price point.

Source: was the CTO of Code School

Re: Destroy All Software screencasts free this week

#22

Post by steveklabnik »

downrightmike wrote: post #20
AlexB138 wrote: post #19

Nice quality content, I'll definitely take advantage of the free period. The cost to sign up seems very high for what this is though. I expected a one time cost, or maybe $5 or so a month. $290 annually seems expensive for a single format of lessons from a single teacher. Even the current promotion seems onerous. As a point of comparison, Safari Books Online does sales for $199 annually just about every year and has…

It is hard to find good CS teachers, because they can make more in industry than they do teaching. It makes sense that a good quality CS teacher with a solid course should cost more than another subject.

"Fun" anecdote on this: long ago, I used to teach Ruby and Rails, professionally. One of my old professors emailed me asking if I'd like to come back and teach as an adjunct for a single course the next semester.

The pay for the entire course was the same as our day rate was in industry.

Of course, as an employee, I wasn't making that day rate personally, but that's how far out of whack it was overall. It's really brutal. I would love to teach, but it doesn't make any economic sense: ironically, part of the reason I need the extra money is that I'm still paying off my student loans!

Re: Destroy All Software screencasts free this week

#24

Post by gingerlime »

AlexB138 wrote: post #19

Nice quality content, I'll definitely take advantage of the free period. The cost to sign up seems very high for what this is though. I expected a one time cost, or maybe $5 or so a month. $290 annually seems expensive for a single format of lessons from a single teacher. Even the current promotion seems onerous. As a point of comparison, Safari Books Online does sales for $199 annually just about every year and has…

If I recall, it used to cost $20 or $25 one-off per series (there are 5 legacy series), available to download. It was a very good value.

I love Gary Bernhardt's stuff. As an old customer who already "bought" the 5 series, the incremental value is even lower for me now unfortunately. Nevertheless, I'm really happy that he's back producing those videos.

Re: Destroy All Software screencasts free this week

#25

Post by gravis7777 »

thomasmeeks wrote: post #21
AlexB138 wrote: post #19

Nice quality content, I'll definitely take advantage of the free period. The cost to sign up seems very high for what this is though. I expected a one time cost, or maybe $5 or so a month. $290 annually seems expensive for a single format of lessons from a single teacher. Even the current promotion seems onerous. As a point of comparison, Safari Books Online does sales for $199 annually just about every year and has…

The cost to produce quality content is quite high. Even if you are "only" putting together a screencast, the cost of learning that content, planning how to teach it, editing it, and inevitable retakes can all easily stretch to 20x the length of a video. I'd call that estimate fairly optimistic, to be honest, it can go much higher. To use an example I'm familiar with: Code School courses took about 6 or so hours to co…

Free market will judge the right price. Lots of people put free content out there, some of it pretty good. Not as good as Code School's content, but people have to see the value difference. Just because you put a lot of hours in doesn't mean people will appreciate it and pay more for it.

Re: Destroy All Software screencasts free this week

#27

Post by SZJX »

steveklabnik wrote: post #22
downrightmike wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to find good CS teachers, because they can make more in industry than they do teaching. It makes sense that a good quality CS teacher with a solid course should cost more than another subject.

"Fun" anecdote on this: long ago, I used to teach Ruby and Rails, professionally. One of my old professors emailed me asking if I'd like to come back and teach as an adjunct for a single course the next semester. The pay for the entire course was the same as our day rate was in industry. Of course, as an employee, I wasn't making that day rate personally, but that's how far out of whack it was overall. It's really br…

The private teaching industry does seem to be able to charge a lot of money, e.g. the coding schools and the (human) language schools. It's the research-oriented/public schools that don't have much extra money for teaching or simply don't care.
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