Aligning my Business Objectives with Steemit in 2018
10 years ago I produced my first video. Voice over screen capture. I was so proud. This lead to the creation of my first online course and 7 years it went live. It was made up of over 7 hours of video. All voice over screen capture. I was even more proud.
It was a lot easier back then, competition was not as rife, and video quality was not as important as video content. I was able to work from home creating online courses and be a full time mum too. How awesome.
But as the competition grew, the quality and standards of education videos and courses online also grew. One of the biggest changes for me was moving from voice over screen capture to talking head and greenscreen videos
I made this video some time ago showing my progress in quality.
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When I began this venture, I only had one child, so there was a spare room in my house I could use as a studio. I now however have 2 kids, one age 10 and the other almost 5. I have no spare rooms to make videos and my course production has come to a standstill.
What’s this got to do with Steemit?
How does this benefit Steemit and the Steemit community? Well so far I have given free access to my online courses to many fellow steemains. These courses are on Excel and Power BI and are helping to develop the Blockchain Business Intelligence Community. Although I need to make a living and do charge for my online courses, I also understand that the pricing is not in everyone’s reach. I was given the gift of education from my parents, and I don’t think money should be a barrier when it comes to training and education. That is why I have given away so much of my courses here on Steemit.
You can check out my website and list of courses here
I also have courses not produced because I have nowhere to produce them. One is a data analytics pathway, again very suitable for the Blockchain BI community here on Steemit which I will be letting people take for free.
But I also have a course on Steemit I want to produce. Here is my syllabus draft
Course Title : Cracking Steemit in 28 Days
- Overview What is Steemit
- What is Blockchain Technology
- Steemit 101 Whales minnows and dolphins
- How do I post
- How do I edit a post
- What tags should I use
- How do I use markdown
- How do I vote or Flag
- What is my vote worth
- What are permissions
- What are the passwords
- How do I set up my profile
- What is curation
- What are curation rewards
- Week 1 On steemit What not to do
- Undoing what you have done
- Introducing Communities
- Introducing Contests
- People to follow
- Why you should comment
- What to do week 1
- Bonus Hack
- Steemit 102 Where does the money come from
- What is STEEM
- What is STEEM Power
- What is Steem Dollars
- What is delegation
- How do I delegate
- How do I make a transfer
- What is the internal market
- How do I use the internal Market
- How do I sell Steem for Other Crypto Currencies
- Week 2 On steemit More on Communities
- More on Contests
- What to do week 2
- Steemit 103 What is a witness and what do they do
- How do I vote for a witness
- What is a proxy
- deep dive to curation rewards
- Understanding reputation
- What are bots
- Ethical use of Steemit
- Week 3 On Steemit Your Brand
- Finding your niche
- Promoting your post
- Tracking your mentions
- Tools you can use
- What to do week 3
- Week 4 on Steemit More tools you can use
- Staying informed
- Utopian
- Busy
- esteem
- gamification
- Other Steemit Hacks
- Growing and developing your brand
This is subject to change, and will also be added to over time.
I gave you a link above to my own teaching website, but I am also a successful instructor on Udemy with +27,000 Students. This Steemit course will be FREE on Udemy and a number of other platforms. With this course, I hope to on-board 2000+ new steemains with in the first 3 months of it going live
You can check out my Udemy profile here
https://www.udemy.com/user/paulaguilfoyle/
Next Steps
So now I need a studio. my family have grow so I have no space, but they are still young so I need to be close to home. My back garden is approx. 7M x 15M. I already have a shed that is 3 x 2
So here is what I am thinking. To rent a green screen studio for regular use will cost me quite a lot, however if I purchase a log cabin for the back yard, I can be set up fairly quickly and within 2 years I will easily have made a saving on what rent would have cost me. I already have good equipment, lights, camera, and audio. I just need the space (and I need it secure).
The other problem with renting is that I can’t just work my own hours per say. Now I would work in the mornings when the kids are in school and again in the evenings when the kids are in bed. When school holidays are on or the kids are sick, I only work evenings when the kids are in bed. If I rented a studio I would have difficulty securing late evenings, and then I could end up paying for days when the kids are sick.
So the plan for the New Year is to get myself a studio. The cabin I am currently looking at is shown in the image below
I will need to get rid of the shed as the dimensions are shown below and it has a second room which can be used as a shed
It comes with double glazed windows. If I add guttering and a thicker floor, the supply cost is €4,786
You can read more about it here
https://www.beaverlogcabins.ie/log-cabins/log-cabin-wolfgang
With Fitting the cost will come to about $6,000 and then some more costs involved with sound proofing.
Other Plans
I am not a developer, but I would like to see how I can tie SMTs into my existing Excel and BI community. Maybe even find a way of rewarding people with tokens for activity within courses.
I also want to start using Dlive for training and other live shows. #dlive is an awesome project that I have not really been able to test because I have no where to work from :-(
So there you have it. My plan to tie my training business more in with Steemit, to create a steemit course and on-board new users. I think this investment is worth it, what do you think? Please do leave your comments below
Finally! Something I can comment on by drawing on my "semi day job."
(Yes, consulting on building home studios for AV production is something someone can do. It's a crazy world.)
Don't forget to factor into the cost of building your backyard studio the cost of properly soundproofing it, including putting in good flooring and ceiling audio tiles. You would be amazed at how much of a difference it makes in capturing good audio to have a studio which is largely sound dead. Your micing can be hotter while still avoiding background noise, you can move around more comfortably without worrying about destroying the audio take, and you just generally have a lot more flexibility.
And while you already have lighting, obviously, you will probably want more. Glancing through your videos, I see a lot of very flatly lit presentation, which may not be the most flattering in all cases. Especially if you want to do more in shots with close-ups of your face and moving to a wider, three-quarters shot, you want a little more dynamic side lighting to increase the contrast just a little bit. And more use of a rim light would not hurt.
All of that means that you need to think about investing a few dollars in perhaps a little more infrastructure support for lights and maybe the camera then you may have on hand. You would be amazed at what you can put together with some PVC and imagination, but you still have to buy some really quality clamps and be willing to put in a little bit of work.
All of these are not immense investments, but they are both time sinks and going to require some extra dollars that you may not have been planning on upfront.
(I admit that my personal pet peeve and most video is "bad audio," which generally involves microphones being placed in rooms with no sound treatment, 5 feet from the speaker so that almost all of the bass roles off and you're left with just weedy mid range and up. As I'm sure you already know, most of that goes away with a decent lavalier mic.)
There's definitely a need for some onboarding systems for Steemit, if it's going to survive in the highly competitive social media marketplace. No question at all. Whether or not there is sufficient market to actually be worth harvesting in this way – well, that's always the mystery of business, now isn't it? No one knows until the first person goes, and then everyone else either regrets not going first war is terribly glad that they didn't go first.
thank you kindly for all of this. Sound can be difficult to get right and yes I intend on spending a bit to get all of this right.
Tell me, what is rim light?
I'll make reference to one of my favorite photography instructors online to help answer your question.
The short version is that a rim light is a light source which comes from above and behind an actor or talent which exists to separate them from the backdrop or background. It helps the viewer read the composition of the scene, pulling the speaker away from whatever is going on behind them (even if that's just a solid, motionless space).
You don't ever want to be having flat lighting on you and flat lighting on the background because you effectively disappear, making it much harder for someone to pay attention and stay focused on what you're doing. (This is actually one of the reasons that a lot of online instructors who do three-quarter views end up being less interesting to look at than a close up. The usual composition is widescreen, with a three-quarter view you are taking up only about 1/6 of that screen, and there's just not a lot of detail to notice beyond broad physical gestures. Headshot close-ups at least bring a viewer in on your face and eyes, which gives them something to focus on. Choosing what composition and shot to use at any given moment – that's more an art than a science.)
The easiest lighting in the world to get right is three point lighting, and that's a key light (main light), fill light (a bit of light coming from the opposite side from the main light to make sure that your shadows don't get too harsh; you can use a big piece of white card to balance light from your main if that's what you got), and a rim light to create some contrast between the hairline/profile and the background.
Get that right and you can be visually ahead of 90% of the people doing communication videos on YouTube.
(I have a whole lecture I could give on proper lens selection for various shot types, but no one has time or the sanity points to burn to survive that.)
All that being said, the most important thing to get right for the kinds of videos that you have done is the audio. Clear, crisp, slightly compressed, very slightly noise reduced audio is exactly what your audience wants. Don't record in a room with no sound treatment on the walls because it's immediately obvious when you get that empty room hollow echoing sound, make sure that your mic levels are right and if you have to err, err on the side of having them too low because you can always turn it up a little bit in post if the noise floor is low enough, and don't get overly cute with inserted sound effects or even complicated bed music.
And another of my personal pet peeve, the one almost no one will tell you, don't spend more than five seconds on a title lead in or close out. I've seen so many 15 to 30 second titles and closes that essentially just waste the time of the viewer. Don't do it. It can be really hard to step away and trust that the viewer is there to get just what you're delivering, and so many people can't do that, but it is absolutely crucial. Anything extra that you think people should know, don't stick it in a title, put it in the description. All of that stuff is searchable and clickable, unlike the video.
Oh look, and that's me going off on a long and rambling lecture despite my best intentions.
Hopefully some of this was useful to you. If you have any additional questions, feel free to let me know. Obviously it doesn't take much to get me started talking at ridiculous length.
thank you !
My pleasure. It's increasingly rare that I get to talk about the things that I actually have direct experience with.
Cool! Now I see why this may align with my "CodeSchool" app plans we talked about! The "Cracking Steemit in 28 Days" series is bound to be a hit! Want some text/scripting help?
oh some help with script, would love some. Will talk with you on discord.
Good luck with your plan. Sounds like a brilliant course. I have been here almost a week and each day seems to get more confusing rather than less. I think I'll get my first payout in a couple of hours but I can't be sure. Very exciting.
Might be worth moving passwords nearer the top since, from what I've read, not using your main password is critical for security and I had no idea about that at first.
I watched a free course on Udemy before I started but it was rubbish. Not written by someone with anyone experience. I learned more searching YouTube. You obviously know what you're talking about so your course will be invaluable.
It might help to lay it out in such a way that it is in manageable chunks. Like your Week 1 do this idea, starting with what you need to do to open an account etc.
I have spent the week adding posts, upvoting, commenting on others and having conversations with new friends. It's been way more time consuming than I expected.
I hope I haven't done any of the things you mention in your "What not to do in Week 1" module.
Anyway, good luck with it. A course like that is badly needed for those of us new to Steemit and Cryptocurrency. I wish it was available right now! 😊
Thank you very much for your feedback on the course and the syllabus. I have also see some other courses and I can promise this one will offer a lot more and will be rather hands on
This is awesome Paula. The syllabus also looks good and can be modified over time. I like the cabin too.
As for the SMTs, I'm still looking into it and how it can be incorporated to existing website. Still fairly new to me so most likely other devs can chime in and share how they setup their SMTs. From what I've seen, test environment for SMTs will be out this month.
SMTs are exciting. I have not done much research so in the new year I have a lot to do
Good Luck @paulag
Thanks For Sharing..
You have great plans that will add value to especially your prospective students who will learn from you for free on Udemy, eventually they will join Steemit and bring in their value too. Thanks @paulag for these initiatives.
Wow, you have a clear vision... having the studio right next to your home really is a must, it's also awesome to have that bit of separation so you are in your own personal space. The course sounds great...how exactly will it be marketed or get people to sign-up? What kind of fees are you thinking? I'm wondering how many people take courses to learn about social media websites, hmmm.
I have direct access to my existing student base on udemy of 27K people, after that, Udemy will market for me to their 15M students
We certainly appreciate your insight and posts on Steemit so we wish you the best.
I'm reasonably certain that you have run the numbers and know the best approach to take! ;-)
You didn't mention electricity. Here in the US it can be a real pain to get electric to an outbuilding (legally). How is it where you are?
electricity is not an issue, my dad is a sparky :-)
My sister @paulag
I wish you and all the family progress and also send greetings to the children
Happy day
Wow. Pretty cool plan build strudio. So do i.
I have a dream on steemit activity , i hope this activity like as permanent job