Tech advice? Best tools to make a commercial-grade online instruction series

7-29-14 | Maceman

[Maceman]

I am planning to develop an online music instruction course which I intend to make available online to paying subscribers.

The content will be a combination of text, narration, videos/visual images with and without animation, and music audio tracks which will synch with the video/visual imagery.

I will not be using videos of myself in the course material.

When I first got the idea for this series of lessons, I was thinking in terms of making and selling it as a DVD, but now I think that idea is obsolete. Ideally, a user should only need a laptop or tablet to log into my product website and go through the lessons and ancillary material.

In going through the individual lesson modules, the user will need the ability to go through the entire module in real time, go back and review specific "slides," fast forward, etc.

I expect that I will be using Band-in-a-Box for music backing tracks and notation examples (which will often be synched with audio).

I am familiar (though by no means expert) in MS PowerPoint, but I am thinking that I need something much different for this project, which I plan to market worldwide and which basically has to operate using any Internet browser on any laptop or tablet, whether Apple or Android or whatever. (Not sure if I'll need a mobile app, and not sure that would be within my technical capabilities anyway.)

I'm more musical than technical, and am starting to look at online reviews and Youtube videos of tools like Prezi. I was in the middle of viewing a webpage with videos on the "6 Best Business Presentation Software Alternatives to Powerpoint," when I got the idea to reach out to my fellow Freepers to see if anyone has any suggestions that might shorten my learning curve and help me get into production more quickly.

As always, I will be very grateful for help from the technical Freeper community.

Thanks in advance.

[monkeyshine]

Have you thought about using Wordpress? They have so many add ons and I know many professors use Wordpress to present their online classes. Did you see this link:

http://wordpress.com/classrooms/

I am also interested in something similar but want mine to be as an app on a tablet because it will be used in areas without wifi or wire. Without taking away from the original posters thread any advice would be appreciated.

[monkeyshine]

I’ve used wordpress but i’ve never used Joomla but they may also have something up your alley

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/living/education-a-culture/courses

[PastorBooks]

I sent you a private message. There are a number of ways you could implement this.

Have you considered doing a Kickstarter.com or Indiegogo.com project for the funding? There are ways to raise the money for such a project without dipping into your own pocket.

http://kickstarter.com

http://indiegogo.com

http://patreon.com

Both Kickstarter and Indiegogo are used for web business launches like what you are planning. They are one-time funding projects with specific goals. Patreon isn’t time-limited and lets you build up a monthly supporter base.

[Maceman]

Thanks. I did get your mail message, and responded. At this point, I’m focusing on understanding what tools are available and what my learning curve looks like.

I’m hoping to do this with my own (limited funds) and a lot of time investment. Once I understand my technology learning curve, and what will be involved from a production standpoint, then I will see about outside financing if I need it.

I have raised business funding before, but I’m hoping I won’t need it for this project. I am being very conservative in terms of my potential sales revenue projections, and I’m thinking that this venture will generate a very nice cash flow for me as a supplemental income, but I’m not thinking there will be a lot available to pay back investors.

[MV=PY]

You might want to check out Camtasia.

I've used it off and on for five years through a few versions. I find it intuitive and powerful.

It can publish your final product to most any format you can imagine with good default settings (easy to use).