Can Knowledge be sold in SL ?

Hi, all;

We have created and published a set of video tutorials about sculpted prims with blender. Although we ask for donations since some time, we see almost no payments(2500 L$ within 5 months). On the other side we see about 35000 (yes, 35 thousand) video downloads since day one in may 2008. We hesitate to stop our efforts now because of the seen download rates, but we have a hard time to justify ourself to keep on working for 2 US$ per month

Now i ask for an advice from those builders who have managed to drive a successfull business in SL. How could we proceed from where we are and what could be a good concept for return of investment? This is my current list of possible ways to go and earn some reward for our efforts:

- Sell the final results of the videos examples in world (full perm)
- add "platinum" versions of the videos with higher resolution, multi language, etc. pay per view.
- Create a paper book plus a DVD with all videos (published in RL).
- Add Consultant offerings in world. Pay per hour, pay per question ...
- Add in world courses and work with donations(tips?)

Do you have any opinion how to deal with that situation? What could be other good ways to get some reward? I appreciate any sharing of "best practices", advice or opinion.

Thanks a lot
Gaia

If I were you, I'd set it up like gnomononline.com, and similar services. Offer a handful of free videos per month, a subscription service for full access to your complete online library of streamed videos, plus sell DVD's for people who want to have local copies.

Everyone wins with this model, I think. People who are only casually interested in what info they can glean from free resources here and there will await your free offerings each month, and may eventually opt for a subscription, if and when their interest intensifies. People who are more serious will subscribe and/or buy DVD's. In other words, every member of your audience can get what they want, fairly and reasonably for both you and them.

I've bought a bunch of DVD's from Gnomon, myself, over the years, and they've been great. From the couple of your Blender videos I've watched, I'd say you're just as good. There's no reason you shouldn't be making the same kind of money they are (which I assume is a lot).


I also have an additional suggestion (which I was meaning to talk to you about anyway, sooner or later). I'm not ready to discuss it publicly yet, so let's talk in-world at some point. My forum account has been broken for years, so I can't do PM's, unfortunately. I probably won't be in-world much for the next few days, but perhaps next week we could find a time to chat.

You might also try finding contact info for Jeff Heaton and see if he might let you know if he has done alright with his Linden Scripting Language book:

http://www.heatonresearch.com/book/introduction-to-linden-scripting-language-for-second-life.html

Or here are a couple of books about Second Life on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Second-Life-Official-Michael-Rymaszewski/dp/047009608X

I would imagine that demand for blender/sculpty knowledge would fall somewhere in the middle.

A publisher would be able to find out how those books or any others out there about SL have done. If the demand is there then one of the publishers would bend over backwards helping you get a book released.

I have used your video tutorials. I don't remember whether I've donated or not. I do usually try to donate to people who have provided invaluable tools to me. Some of those multiple downloads may have been me, because I was a bit dense, and am often on different computers.

I don't know much about selling knowledge in SL. Some people do it, but I don't know how successfully.

It would be kinda cool if people who use your tutorials or Domino's scripts could give a slice of sales to you of products that were made possible by them. XStreetSL has a new splitting capability...

@chosen: Sure we can meet for a chat. I'd love to do that. thanks for the offer.

@Jesse:Thank you for the pointers. I will try to consult Jeff now. Publishing sounds very interesting to me, although i fear it will be the most challenging task. A friend of mine did that once and he ended up with hundreds of hours of writing and rewriting and at the end it took him almost a year to finish his book (He planned for 3 months).

@Renee: For me donations are not a good base to operate on. Not only because of our recent experience, but also because donations are a very unpredictable thing. Typically it ends up with a few kind donators versus a large mass of unaware (ignorant?) people. it does not feel right to me. The splitting option you mention may be something. Maybe 1% of the selling or so would be a great option But again this is something the seller must arrange so it is more like a donation. But i like the idea much more.

Thanks for your input to all of you.

Cheers,
Gaia

If you do do a book, I'd suggest you explore self publishing. While there are certainly benefits to having a publishing company behind you, recent advances in printing technology have really democratized the industry. One-off prints are very, very affordable these days, making print-to-order cataloging instead of brick & mortar warehousing a sensible model for the small author. If you're Stephen King, then you need a publisher. But if you're an independent author writing for a niche market, services like Blurb and Amazon's CreateSpace can work really well.

I'm planning on using CreateSpace myself for a line of comic books I'm working on. I'll also use it if and when I ever get around to writing the Photoshop For SL Users book that's been mulling around in my head for the past few years.

I'll only answer if you pay me a dollar.

@Lee Ponzu: Good approach, but may need a bit of reworking
@Chosen: Again thanks for the pointer to Amazon's CreateSpace! I will check that.

After sitting back for a weekend and thinking a bit about all of this, now i tend to rework the existing videos:

- make them more up to date
- enhance their overall quality
- publish a free light version (fully working example, no background knowledge)
- publish the "pay per view" expert version (full story with background information)

We will try that approach with the video ("creating sculpted prims" and see what happens.

cheers,
Gaia