Options For Online Video Classes – Viddler Or Learnable?

As a tutor of various online video classes I am always on the lookout for new options to reach out to the learners that are easy to adopt and easier for receiving payments.

To me this makes sense because no matter what the claim is, every option has its limitation, and the more the options are, more is the chance of fine-tuning my course. Looking at the way the new developments are happening, there is little doubt that there will continue to be various ways for selling video tutorials online.

For some time now I’ve been using aMember, the membership software that automates several works to run my online course. aMember is rich with features, but honestly many people may find the learning curve a bit steep to operate it in absence of genuinely helpful how-to steps.

There are other variants of membership software, notably those that work with WordPress like the WishList Member, or the standalone ones like iSubscribe, Easy Member Pro, and others.

For each of these options it is necessary that you own a website and have some knowledge of installing and using software and troubleshooting them if things don’t work as they should.

What if you’re not a technical person, yet have the desire to run your own online video classes? If that’s you, you have hope. I discuss two options below that don’t need you to have a website for your video classes. In a coming article I will discuss more options for online teaching with video.

Learnable

Learnable was soft-launched end of 2010, and it received a good response from wannabe teachers. It is promoted by SitePoint, a highly respectable and popular web development company.

I have a course running in Learnable, Secrets of Free Web Design, Fast & Easy, and am planning to start a few more courses soon. So here are some important features of Learnable.

1
Course materials can comprise of articles, videos and downloads. The downloads can be a PDF file, an mp3 audio, or other item, but each download has to be less than 20MB in size.

 

2
You’re nicely guided to create your contents. Typically, a course comprises of lessons, and each lesson has several steps that the learner covers one after another. If you have broken down your lessons likewise before coming to Learnable, you’ll find it easy to complete the course materials. The steps of the course material will make up the table of contents on your course landing page when it is finally listed.

 

3
Learnable requires you to make a video to promote your course on the course landing page (see image below). In fact though theoretically you can create a course without a video, my guess is that you will be nudged to make them for your classes. Heck, isn’t that the reason why I’m writing this article!

4
It doesn’t cost you anything to create and list your course. That’s what it is till now! This must be a major bother off your shoulders! Just consider, you get to run your video classes online without paying a penny!

 

5
But yes, when you make a sale, the money will be shared between you and Learnable. Quite fair by all accounts!

 

6
Learnable is an online learning platform and it is promoted likewise. Look at the focus. People who come to Learnable come to learn. That means they are already qualified prospects. That’s a big advantage.

 

7
Is there no downside to Learnable? There is one if you ask me. The membership to a course runs for 1 full year. That is a little dampener (especially when you consider what you get in Viddler, discussed next) in an otherwise excellent platform to run your video training course online. I shouldn’t be complaining though as I am enjoying Jennifer Shehan’s invaluable course on Facebook Ads 101 for a year having paid for it just once!

Viddler’s Video Subscription Service

Viddler is a great video sharing site with exciting features. Viddler with all the others of its ilk together are still small compared to the giant monolith YouTube, but Viddler is attempting to carve out a niche for itself with products like the video subscription service.

Here are some important features of Viddler’s offers:

1
The course material can only be videos. Not bad per se, but I can say from experience that many people favor other forms of communication like text and audio.

 

2
You’ll get a customizable ‘store’ page. In this (see the image below, courtesy this source) page all your courses are listed with their titles, number of videos in the course, cost of the course and the subscribe link. To compare with Learnable, there you have a landing page for each course and perhaps not a single page with all your courses listed.

3
You can group videos in a single course as you think necessary. This means you may have 5 videos for example in a course progressing step-wise as in Learnable.

 

4
Your earnings from selling video go to your PayPal account; no hassles there. The other advantage is that you can price your course on per week or per month basis, and perhaps even per day basis.

 

5
Let me now come to the downsides. Viddler’s video subscription service is not free. You have to have a business account that costs $100 a month irrespective of whether you make any sale of your course. This amount may seem quite steep for beginners.

 

6
The other downside according to me is that Viddler is not a ‘learning site’ if you understand what I mean. It is basically a video sharing site like YouTube, and so my guess is that you have to do a lot of marketing to promote your online video course listed in Viddler.

Bottomline

There may not be an ideal solution to the list of all your wants. The best way to go about is to try out different things and then decide what works for you. Owning a website is certainly a help because this is where you can promote your products without a constraint, but then you have to also ensure that your website has visitors who you can influence by your promotion.

Considering all of above, if you ask my vote, I’ll certainly favor Learnable between the two. We will look at more options in a coming article.