Does anyone understand how this technology works?

[Steve Maskery]

Are there any software engineers on here who understand how this technology works?
http://www.tauntonworkshops.com/course/ ... ur-bandsaw

You create an account and "enrol" on a course. It's basically on-demand online video. It seems like a very good delivery mechanism to me, I'm well aware that the DVD is now a legacy medium.

What's involved in setting up such a system? Is this anyone's area of expertise?

TVM
Steve

 

[Flynnwood]

Are there any software engineers on here who understand how this technology works?
http://www.tauntonworkshops.com/course/ ... ur-bandsaw

You create an account and "enrol" on a course. It's basically on-demand online video. It seems like a very good delivery mechanism to me, I'm well aware that the DVD is now a legacy medium.

What's involved in setting up such a system? Is this anyone's area of expertise?

TVM
Steve

Essentially, a database hosted on a server that people sign up to. The database then serves on-demand content to those that have the required privileges/access rights in the database. There is much, much, more involved than that but that is the basic format.

I only looked very briefly at the site above but this is a task that would probably cost in excess of £5K to develop properly. Possibly £7K or more.

Then, there is the route to market to consider.

A search for "bandsaw videos" returns over 850,000 results.

A search on youtube for bandsaws / bandsaw tutorials / bandsaw lessons etc shows what you are up against.

That might put you off a little but I'm just saying how it is. Apologies if that sounds harsh in any way.

An alternative (if you don't want to make that level of investment) would be to do some "price point discovery" on your existing media.

Couple of options off the top .....

1.) Take various screen captures of your vids, add the text/words and sell them as downloadable pdf documents. Look at Paypal to do that for you.

2.) In terms of further price point discovery on your existing media, a percentage of opportunities will convert/buy at (say) £100, a higher percentage will buy at (say) £60, and a higher percentage at (say) £40 or less etc/and so on.

So for every 1,000 opportunities, there will be a conversion rate (whatever that is).

It appears your fixed costs are already paid for, so now you only have the small variable costs to deal with.

I hope that doesn't come across as patronising in any way.

Only two ways to improve sales/profit in any business.

A.) Increase the number of business opportunites you can interact with each week/month.

B.) Increase the conversion rate of the opportunities.

HTH in some way.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Thank you very much for all that, it's very helpful. Not what I wanted to hear but very helpful.
If I were starting from scratch I wouldn't do DVDs at all now, of course, but I am stuck with legacy format unless I want to spend yet more money. Which, quite frankly, I don't. Ah well.
TVM
Steve

 

[SurreyHills]

We are marketing training on demand courses for Oracle Corporation, but this uses their own technology. As an extension to this we are looking at using Moodle to deliver training courses we have developed in-house with some Adobe software.
The technology is becoming easier to implement and there are some open source offerings and we have just decided on Moodle, which quite a lot of Universities use. Main difference between offering a streamed version of your DVD content is that you need to make the course content a lot more modular. People need the ability to stop/start, fast forward and replay topics. 5 - 10 minute segments are the norm. There are some free hosting sites that you could try it out on. I would be a willing guinea pig if you want to give it a go on a pilot type basis to see what it would take to get up and running.

Once you have got the hang of it you should look to move it to onto a proper hosting site (this will allow you to use your own domain name and eliminate the ads associated with the free sites).

The main issue that you will need to address, if you haven't already, is having a front end e-commerce site to process orders and then follow through with sending out user logins etc. If you don't expect many sales then you could handle this manually.

Finally you need to make sure that you restrict access to genuine paid subscribers and the best way to do this is to make the subscriptions for the content last for a fixed period e.g. 3 months. Also think about offering some intro free topics e.g. Some of the YouTube content you have already produced.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Thank you Andy, I may well come back to you on that.
S

 

[Flynnwood]

Thank you very much for all that, it's very helpful. Not what I wanted to hear but very helpful.
If I were starting from scratch I wouldn't do DVDs at all now, of course, but I am stuck with legacy format unless I want to spend yet more money. Which, quite frankly, I don't. Ah well.
TVM
Steve

In that case, I'd strongly encourage you to discover a price point that sells the existing media.

500 sales p.a. at £10 is better than no sales at £100 per unit.

Also, don't forget the pdf option I mentioned.

2,000 (or whatever number) downloads p.a. at £2 = worth the trouble ....

 

[Steve Maskery]

I don't actually think that price is the issue. Personally I'm surprised at how many people buy them one at a time, even though it's the most expensive way to do it. Most people buy one of the sets, of course.
Taunton are charging $49.99 USD for their 1hr 20m film, so one us of has got our sums wrong, that's for sure.
But delivery, that is more of an issue, especially overseas. It takes weeks to get to South Africa. Or at least it takes weeks to get from Jo'burg to the customer. And Italy, Greece et al are very hit and miss, too. A delivery system like this would solve all that.
S

 

[The Bear]

Steve
You mentioned elsewhere you are starting to develop some new material / DVDs . What are you planning to cover?
Best wishes
Mark

 

[Steve Maskery]

Whoa! It's VERY early days yet. I don't have a workshop and it's likely to be next summer before I'm operational again.
However, it seems to me that there is much router material I've never touched on. I get asked about my fine-adjuster fence a lot, for example. And as a router is one of the first big-boy tools that many aspiring woodworkers buy it would seem a good contender for training materials.
I also have ideas for other machines, like the SCMS and P/T but not yet sure if I have enough material to make it worthwhile. After all, people generally don't have problems with them, in contrast to bandsaws where difficulties are far more common.
Also vac pressing techniques could be interesting to do, but I doubt if there is very much of a market for one.
Then there are projects such as How To Build Front Door, or a Box Sash Window. I've no doubt they would be welcome, but just how many I'd actually sell, I'm not sure. It's a helluva lot of work to make the films I do, they are not just filmed lectures (and I don't mean to denigrate any others' work by that, I just mean mine are a very different, and more time-consuming, animal - just count the number of scene-changes).
So I'm delighted you are interested, but don't get too excited just yet, please!
I can't stand the pressure.

 

[beech1948]

Steve,

I can see how this would be beyond the levels of cost you have in mind. My experience was as the lead contractor on BT's video on demand service.

However, the world has changed quite a lot. I think your videos are more like ebooks in concept and may be capable of being sold as an ebook through an eshop such as Magenta or the 20 others.

Your product is finished and does not need FF/REW etc etc it needs to be sold and delivered.

Worth a look as the costs are really hosting, monthly eshop and some Paypal fees.

Al

 

[Steve Maskery]

Thanks for that, Al.
I did look briefly at iTunes once, but they take a 30% slice of the top and that means I would have to increase sales by nearly 50% just to stand still. I wasn't convinced that would happen, to be honest.
But I'll have a look at Magenta.
TVM
Steve

 

[beech1948]

Not just Magenta Steve but look at the whole DROPSHIP market programs there may be a Magenta competitor which works for you.

Al

 

[Steve Maskery]

Al
Do you really mean Mangenta or do you mean Magento?
I'm not getting the search results I expected.
Ta
S

 

[beech1948]

OOOOOOOPPs,

Magento is correct...sorry Steve.

Al

 

[Sheptonphil]

But delivery, that is more of an issue, especially overseas. It takes weeks to get to South Africa. Or at least it takes weeks to get from Jo'burg to the customer. And Italy, Greece et al are very hit and miss, too. A delivery system like this would solve all that.
S

Steve

If delivery is the main issue when selling the DVD's abroad, have you considered having iso's of the DVDs available to download from a link which can be sent to purchasers and create your own digital download stream. No delivery delay and the link can be made available for a limited time. You could also supply artwork for DVD printing if you so wished.

Just a thought

Phil

 

[Flynnwood]

But delivery, that is more of an issue, especially overseas. It takes weeks to get to South Africa. Or at least it takes weeks to get from Jo'burg to the customer. And Italy, Greece et al are very hit and miss, too. A delivery system like this would solve all that.
S

Steve

If delivery is the main issue when selling the DVD's abroad, have you considered having iso's of the DVDs available to download from a link which can be sent to purchasers and create your own digital download stream. No delivery delay and the link can be made available for a limited time. You could also supply artwork for DVD printing if you so wished.

Just a thought

Phil

Just to add to that, and assuming the purchase volume is manageable ... you could simply break down the DVD's into small video files and just email them to people that have paid. i.e "Delivery will be made by email within 48 hours"

There is free/low cost software that can convert the files for you.

Just include a simple license agreeement to discourage digital sharing, although in this instance I don't see piracy as an issue worth worrying about too much.

HTH

 

[AES]

Hullo Steve,

I've been following this thread with interest. It's great to hear that you will be operational with an own shop again next year and really good news if you are going to do some Router stuff - best of luck with all that, I look forward to it.

This is a purely personal observation but I don't see the DVD format as all that big a disadvantage, except in cases iof needing to ship a DVD (or set) to "Outer Mongolia". The DVD is compact, lightweight, (virtually) indestructable, is very portable, has an "easy to keep me" value, and if played on a PC, is dead easy to FF & RW as many times as one likes.

But as you say, the problem is people living in out of the way places and perhaps what we commonly do in the aircraft business may help you? We often "ship" very large Manuals and other materials in digital format (MUCH larger than the data max on a DVD) by means of uploading the material (one or more files, of any type you like) to a hosting site such as Dropbox - there are others, but Dropbox is the one my "employers" most commonly use - usual disclaimers.

Having uploaded you then send an E-mail to the recipient telling him that file/s "XYZ" are now available for download on the Dropbox site and that by using the password you provide in the alerting E-mail the recipient can download it/them any time he likes. Unless the recipient has a very slow connection the download time is quite acceptable and just for example, I have happily downloaded all sorts of very large multi-volume tech manuals in hotel rooms all around the place using the hotel's standard in-room WiFi. This Dropbox service does cost you (the data supplier) of course, and I understand it's a quite reasonable cost but I don't know how much in actual numbers, sorry. But I'm sure a quick Google will inform you.

Obvious I guess but in your case you would only provide the password to those who have paid you of course!

Maybe that helps?

Krgds
AES

 

[Sheptonphil]

If Steve has his own website hosted on a server like Freeola, there is unlimited capacity to store data and therefore make available the iso files. With a password protected 'members' section this could all be achieved with a maximum monthly hosting cost of £3 + VAT (free if broadband is with them). I host the Somerset Beekeepers' site on Freeola and the tech support is UK based. It also includes build your own website software free if needed. My wife's site, Fluffylodge (no, she does animal boarding) was built with this software.

Phil

 

[Steve Maskery]

Phil, Andy
Thank you both very much for that.
I had assumed that a 4.7G download would be unrealistic for most people. I sometimes forget that most people have proper broadband (I'm working through a Smartphone.....).
When you send out usernames and passwords, does the system log how many times it is accessed from each user? You can see what the problem might be - user JoeB sends an email to all his mates in the world with login details. I know my DVDs are copied, one young man rang me and told me he'd done so, but most of my customers are, shall we say mature? - and respect my intellectual property. One guy rang me wanting is money back. I had no record of his purchase. It turned out he'd bought it from some dodgy site and the download didn't work. He lost his money and wanted me to refund him! I put him right.
So I am concerned about security, but the convenience of this method is very attractive, especially as it seems I wouldn't have to alter the format of what I have already.
Lots of googling to do, methinks.
TVM one and all.

 

[AES]

Steve,

On the Dropbox set ups I've used I think once the recipient has the password he/she can download as many times as he/she likes. BUT I do believe that once a user has downloaded once there's nothing to stop you, the "supplier", cancelling that particular password for ever more.

Why don't you contact Dropbox and ask - I'm aware that there is some VERY confidential/sensitive material sent by Dropbox so there must be some quite good security (I guess).

OTOH, once a recipient has one of your DVDs (in whatever format) ASAIK there's nothing stopping them copying the files and sending them all over the place - but then again, I see that my Fawlty Towers DVD from the BBC has some sort of anti-copying software included within it. No idea what's involved/how it works but again I guess it should be possible for you to go that route if copying is a problem (which, from what you say above, does seem to be the case - personally I don't know, I've never tried to copy one of your DVDs).

Good luck (and please hurry up with the router stuff - grin) ;-)

Krgds
AES