Interesting point you make about plagarism. I too have several websites offering free material, both written tutorials and videos and have come across very crafty theives.

On the one hand I guess they are helping distribute the material as long as the links are respected, but on the other I think someone has just hijacked work it took me hours (sometimes days) to make. I always use a closing screen with a URL hotspot embedded in it for my video tutorials, but many of the spam sites don’t seem to care – they pinch it anyway!

David

If I find that someone has bootlegged a video of mine that is on YouTube or one of the other services like VodPod, etc., I can ask YouTube to take it down, and they will do it. Fat chance that someone who steals my text tutorials and screen shots would remove those from their site.

This has happened to me twice. The thief used video editing software to paste their URL over the bottom of my tutorial screen for the entire tutorial, using as an advertisement. When I asked the video site to remove the videos, they did so quickly, and in one case they banned the user.

I think following a cursor, and watching a guy type in textboxs is a lot easier then reading a long winded blog artice. With video, I can also use the slider (status bar) thingy to fast foward to the section of the video I need to learn. I also can pause the videos.

I also dislike making text tutorials since I have to make a lot of screen shots, and figure out a way to write them, so they are understandable. Plus, I hate it when people steal my articles and paste it on their website. With a youtube video, I don’t care since I water mark all my videos with my link, so the person embedding my videos to their site is helping me promote my website. Plus, it is more difficult for people to remove a watermark on a video compared to a picture which anyone with MS paint, photoshop can do. But, with video people, need to remove frames with Video editing software.

I truly believe to be successful in tutorials you need both. Remember those learning styles people have, auditory, visual and kinesthetic. There are people who learn best by listening, and others by watching, or reading. And in a world where everyone scans, video loses out and text wins.

And as someone also said, it also depends a lot on the subject matter.

So many variables, it’s just best to have both to cover your bases!

I agree that video is huge these days, but nothing beats having the printed text to refer to as well.

I started making video tutorials for WordPress two years ago. Initially I made them for my customers, who needed a basic introduction to WordPress fundamentals.

Prior to that, I made text tutorials with screen shots. They took about the same amount of time to make, but I did not get as many views and I got far fewer comments and questions. There is also something to be said for the increased visibility you get posting on YouTube plus embedding in a blog vs. posting text on a blog alone.

It’s safe to say that almost everyone reading this post and the comments – me included – is far more technically skilled than any of my customers. Although now it makes me wonder. I don’t really have conclusive data to suggest that beginners prefer video. But I bet they do.

The take-away for me is that it would be good to have a text version of the tutorial available in addition to the video. Thanks for the feedback.