A New Business - git.debuggable.com
Posted on 24/10/08 by Felix Geisendörfer
It's almost 5am now but I am finally done. Our new secret business idea is life.
What is it all about? Well maybe it is best if you see for yourself.
The basic problem is that I have fallen in love with git. To deal with this addiction and to put it to good use, I decided to make screencasts about git.
However, I am not talking about the stuff you see everywhere else, but real quality material. It took me probably 3-4 days to produce the first screencast about resolving merge conflicts. Lots of it was because I explored technologies and techniques for production, but I think most of the future screencasts will still take a solid day of work.
But ... I also want to make some money with this : ). So here is the deal. Some material on the site (I will write quite some text in future) will be free. I'll also publish some shorter behind the scenes videos that show some of the things I have to cut out or interesting observations I make about git.
The real screencasts themselves however cost money. I set the price to $5.99 right now for the first 13 minute long screencast. I don't know if that is too high for most people, but it I think its a good value for what you are getting. After all looking over somebody's shoulder for ~$30 / hour is pretty cheap when learning a new technology : ).
Anyway, the site needs work & touches all over the place, but I really am forcing myself into "make it work" and then "make it work better" mode here. Too many small side projects of mine died because I got caught up in details. Won't happen with this one.
Alright, let me know what you think folks - I'm looking forward to some feedback, hopefully from some people who bought the screencast as well : ).
-- Felix Geisendörfer aka the_undefined
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git.debuggable.com, thats the correct link, just replace localhost
Hi Felix,
I would definitely recommend having a short narrated teaser/demo of the screencasts as I'm not quite sure if anyone is willing to pay $6 after just watching you for 30 seconds typing some stuff into TextMate and Terminal.
I'm a strong believer in screencasts and purchased quite a lot from Peepcode, The Mac Developer Network, Screencasts Online, Pragprog… but they all provide you with a basic overview of what you will get when you pay for it and I think that's mandatory when trying to sell them.
Just my 2 cents.
Greetings
The links include a git-vook directory, get rid of this...
http://git.debuggable.com/git-vook/index.html
becomes
Patrick: Yeah, good idea! I'll probably do voice-over the teaser today and add some more information on what is contained within the screencast. I just had to make a cut at one point last night : ).
Neil: Ok I think I finally fixed the links! Thanks!
Thanks to everybody who bought a screencast so far! Let me know if there are any issues.
Although I'm crazy about the track from the teaser, I agree with Patrick. Some sort of narration or explaining bubbles would really help alot.
Also I find myself pausing the teaser alot, so maybe a short break before executing the commands from the terminal would help the "slower" people like me :)
Keep up the good work!
Rasmus: Well the teaser is just so you can see what tools are used for the screencast. But I'll see about improving the usefulness of it with some good narration and possibly some changes to the cut : ).
Btw. the track is from Apple's GarageBand. I really like the jingles and stuff that come with it, especially since you can use them for commercial stuff like this!
Hi
I'm interested in buying this, but the paypal page is all in german which means nothing to me, it doesn't seem to let me log on or change the language. I do have a paypal account though. Can you suggest anything?
Change the country to USA and the language will switch.
ianmcn: Ok I finally figured out how to make the default language English. Sorry for the inconvenience. If you click the "Buy Now" button again you'll come to the english version of paypal.
Hey,
That's a great idea. I have tried messing with Git buy have found it too complicated to get into since we use SVN so much at the company I work for. I'd love to be able to git something like this to learn from.
Felix, it is great that you like git and want to spread the word.
I've done a technical review/proofreading of one of the screencasts on git from peepcode, and I know it takes quite a lot of effort to produce good material. Have fun, and don't burn yourself out ;-)
Note - this page (perhaps others) link to [http://git.debuggable.com/index.html] which is erroring for me:
Error: The requested address '/index.html' was not found on this server.
Obviously, I remove the index.html and it works fine. Just letting you know that you should update your links.
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I think this is a great idea and you're a great person to be producing the material. You'll just need to build your audience to make some money... I'd suggest making one or two full ones on topics you already know... certainly still an investment of time, but if you can gain popularity and search engine ranking... drawing in more visitors (and perhaps making a penny from google ads or something) - then you're main goal of selling a enough videos to make the venture viable, becomes more attainable.
Also, on a sidenote... why $5.99? I would think $5 is simpler and sounds cheaper to most people. A silly difference really, but I think psychologically significant.
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Felix fix the links, they all go to localhost :)