A couple of days ago, I posted up our new Plus members-only tutorial, How to Make a Time Machine-like Icon. There is a long thread of comments going on there about why we are charging for the Plus membership. Since perhaps some of our readers feel this is unfair, I thought maybe I’d write out a bit why we do this to explain. Then maybe everyone will be happy … or at least not confused!
OK, so first of all in case you hadn’t realized, we have a Plus members section that we charge nine dollars a month for, where you get the sample PSD files for tutorials and occasional extra tutorials (about once every two weeks). And there are complaints about (a) why we charge for content and (b) why we need to post about it.
I can only assume that the complaints are mostly because of misunderstanding, so here’s a post explaining a bit about the site and how it’s run. I’ll try to keep it interesting, but can’t make any promises :-)
The Business of Starting Web Sites
To explain about why we have this system, I’ll begin by telling you a bit about me and Web sites.
You see I like starting Web sites—I *really* like starting Web sites :-)On my days off, I sit around thinking about new Web sites and ponder ideas for the current ones. I carry a little black book around with me everywhere, where I pour in ideas and calculations and estimates and logos and names. So a couple of years ago, along with a couple of other designers, I started a business to do it called Eden. And our business is going well, which is why I had the chance to start Psdtuts+!
But here’s the thing: if you start a Web site like this one, for example, you very quickly create a job for yourself to keep it going. Someone has to write the tutorials, someone has to put them up, someone has to maintain the site and the server and so on and so forth. And who’s going to do that? You!
But what if, like me, you *really* like making new Web sites?
How can you start more Web sites if you spend your whole time running the previous one? I’ll tell you what happens, you start to not maintain the old project, because now you have a fun, new project. Over time, updates slow down, maybe the quality drops, and it takes forever for new features to appear. And if you do it a few too many times, the sites may even die off.
It’s clear we’ve built a great product. The site is super popular. But right now, I spend most of my working week running it—chatting to writers, putting up and formatting posts, going through submissions, approving comments, working on features.
Although I enjoy this job, I can’t keep that up! Why? Because I want to start more sites. For starters, we could make a Flash tutorial site, or a CSS tutorial site, or all sorts of other tutorial sites, all showcasing amazing practioners, cool effects, and great communities—to say nothing of all the non-tutorial ideas I have!
The solution is to make Psdtuts+ a site that operates by itself, even when I’m not here. To do that, you need to have a system for how it all works. You need to have a business.
Why Psdtuts+ is different
One of the reasons I think Psdtuts+ is doing well is that we try to be very professional about it. This isn’t a hobby site, though Photoshop is my hobby. It’s not a creative outlet site that I maintain on weekends, though it is a creative outlet. And I’m not a junior writing to improve my own skills, even though they do improve by writing.
Psdtuts+ is a business.
Being a business is actually a really, really good thing. It means, for example, that we pay our writers fairly and we provide compensation for general contributions. It means we create posting schedules that are pretty consistent and are getting more so. It means that the server rarely, if ever goes down, even under sometimes tremendous load. And it means that even though the site generates literally terrabytes of bandwidth every month, you’ll never see a sudden "We ran out of bandwidth" notice.
It also means that, although the site has run for six months and hasn’t actually generated a profit yet, that we just absorb it in, and keep it running. This is possible because it’s a business.
And we’re only just getting started. Actually there’s still a lot of work to do to systematize the site. And things will get better and better over time.
Now put yourself in my shoes.
You’ve started a Web site that’s running great, really popular, but is taking up lots of your time. You need to move to the next project soon and don’t have time to do everything. But you don’t want the site to go downhill either. What do you do?
Here we are, and it’s time to turn Psdtuts+ into an awesome, self-reliant Photoshop tutorial Web site. Where do you start? Well, first you need an editor, then you need a set of writers, a method for finding new writers, a developer to build features and improvements, and to pay all these people … you need cash.
Advertising … Nope!
Where do you get money to pay all these people? Advertising right? Nope! Advertising is a *hard* business to be in. If you’ve tried starting a site or a blog, you’ll know just how hard it can be. It simply isn’t that easy to make money from ads, even on a big site like Psdtuts+, and *especially* when you aren’t willing to compromise and put ads everywhere on your site and pop-ups and pop-unders and so on.
We do sell advertising across our sites, but it doesn’t pay the bills, and it’s inconsistent. Maybe that’ll improve over time, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
After advertising, we tried selling individual PSD files, but that didn’t work; they cost too much (Paypal fees become a bigger portion of the cost when the price gets lower) so people didn’t perceive value. And value is what it’s all about.
So We Made Plus
So we created Psdtuts+ Plus, where there is value because there are *so* many psd files and on top of that, there are occasional bonus tutorials. And so far the results are looking good, the Plus system is the oil that’ll keep this baby runnin’!
Sure, periodically there are tutorials that are only for Plus members, and yes we’ll continue to advertise them in a blog post because it causes a Plus membership spike when we do. But that’s OK isn’t it? 95% of the content is totally, completely, don’t pay a cent, free as the air you breathe. If you don’t want to pay, you can come to this site, learn a ton about photoshop, never say thanks, never pay us anything, never click an ad, never Stumble or Digg a post, never contribute a tutorial, never even lift a finger, except to click away at the end, and you know what will happen? Nothing. Because that’s OK, that’s your right to do so!
And the site will be here anyway, because of all the *other* people who do participate, chat, contribute, vote, and yes, some even pay money—for which I’m eternally grateful!
Not everyone needs to pay. You only do it if you feel it’s worth it for you. It’s my job to make it worth paying for. But if you’re not going to pay, all you need to endure is a few posts and notices about it, and maybe to press the skip button in your RSS feed. I think that’s OK, right? That’s not such a big deal to put up with?
I like to think that we have a really kick-ass community here, and I’m pretty sure that most of you *do* chip in, even if it’s just by commenting or uploading to the Flickr group. And that’s yet another reason why the site is so cool, because we all get involved.
Everyone Wins!
With the Plus system, we can continue to grow. I can finish building the system to make the site run without me, and then I can build more great sites that more people—maybe even the same people—get to enjoy. I’m happy because I get to build Web sites all day long, and audiences are happy because I like to think we build good quality sites. So everyone wins!
And how could anyone argue with that? :-)
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I think it is a great idea, and the moment I see a Plus tutorial I really want I will pay. Otherwise, keep up the great work!
If you can’t afford 9/month then you probably shouldnt have a computer to look at this site.. or let alone have photoshop.. or let alone have internet.. good lord… its soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cheap. – get over it.
I have purchased the upgrade all tutorials on this site are amazing and top quality – best resource on the web and well worth the money – the trouble with the internet download generation they want everytihng for free – wen i were lad we payed for things lol
I didn’t even know you had a plus section! *very daft*. Im going to check it out right now though! I love you’re guys site, even though I pretty much just read everything through RSS :D
$9 a month isn’t worth the amount of content you produce. This site puts out great tutorials, but for me personally, it’s not worth the money.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. BRAVO!!! People aoften forget that websites cost money even the small ones. This is why Net Neutrality is become such a large issue and needs to be maintained.
I like the subscription model you’ve put together. Like your other site flashden it would be great to see some user generated tuts (only of the highest quality) be shared across users in the subscription area. This way you get the best of what is hear now but also can share amoungst each other as a members benefit.
I see no problem with a plus membership, and I’m very grateful for the quality of tutorials posted here free. Who knows in future I may even become a customer ! (more thank likely!)
Keep up the good work!
I totally agree!
You’re absolutely brilliant. I’ve never found such a helpful website, and I aggregate it in NNW.
I’m gearing up for the paid membership, but anyone that gripes about it can go troll around much crappier tutorials websites.
Keep it up!
Keep it up guys, you are doing a great job.
I’d be interested in contributing a few high quality tutorials – do you notify the writers if they aren’t accepted? I’d like to know if what I write is accepted or not so I can use it elsewhere if it won’t be used on PSDTuts. What’s your usual turn-around time from submitting the tutorial to approving it?
In the words of the great Robert Heinlein: TANSTAFL (there ain’t no such thing as free lunch).
What is free for us, somebody has to pay, either in time or in money.
The price is really inexpensive (even for me: I live in a third-world country, earning about 350 USD per month in my daytime job).
Thank you so much for this website, and the AWESOME quality of ALL your tutorials.
You needn’t have posted this mate. The free tutorials go far beyond those on other sites and will keep those who are new to PS and those who are looking for new ideas well pleased.
Those of us who have signed up, have done so with no quarrels. In fact the $9 price seemed a little odd, why not round it up to $10? but i think this is a reflection of you personal and business ethos, you charge a reasonable price for your service and dont try to f*c* people over.
Getting the tutorial files to play around with is worth the $9 alone.
I hope in future you are able attract more artists to the site to help inspire us all.
I even anticipate the price going up at some point…not for a little while mind. :)
anyways…back to the tutorials for me…
Ps. $9 = around £4… nice
I just want to add…
not having a forum…. actually makes this site seem like a small family, i am getting to know everyones names!! forums bring added admin…
might need to add that extra $ now!! hahaha
dont rush the forum… try and keep it …well….. homely and not massive like the other art sites.
just my thoughts.
This is the best “why users need pay” explanation i ever seen…. this site is awesome, best photoshop resource on the web. Really great job Collis, in this weekend i will made other tuturial.
Thanks and congrats…
bye.
sorry, once i start….
please please please dont start doing other software tutorials on this site. I love the fact that all i have to do is check my emails and i’ll have a tutorial for photoshop…i have many other sites i can go to for my flash etc…
love this site!!!!!
Lets everybody be united pay this money, and make this site better than ever,
Well said, Collis. Your sense of business is inspiring. I love this site, subscribe proudly and look forward to seeing what else you come up with. Best of luck with the business.
The knowledge given on this tutorials is more worth than 9$ they actually charge. Idealism isn’t possible anymore those days so be thankful that people exists who write such quality articles. I don’t accept people complaining about FREE stuff – do it better yourself and show this!
I am acutally not really in need for those tutorials but giving support back to such a community is what me did signing up for the plus member section. All you need to do is to think about your dailly habbits (smoke less, think about what you really need) and spent that money into KNOWLEDGE. This will be in your head as long as you’re alive. What do you need more?
Perfectly understandable, let psdtuts live on! As the best tutorial site on the net!
no explanation needed. I would pay that for a tutorial in how to use PShop as a supplement for my classes.
This is the cleanest most professional psd tutorial website on the net and the small monthly fee is nothing compared to the quality of material here. Keep up the good work
im getting my my moneys worth.
Hey, I have to compliment you on this and the site in itself. As long as you don’t make it based on Plus, where most of the tuts cost us non-Plus visitors, then I’d be fine with that.
Great Post! Can you make a new Tutsite on how to, Build a Site like PSDTUTS.com not to compete with you but to learn how to make your own CMS system!
Thanks,
Soon to be a Plus Member!
Nice post here and explanation. I can’t afford the $9 per month because I am from Malaysia and it cost me RM30 per month … But still, I wish this site can continue rock the www. I am doing my tutorials too but the posting is not so frequent as I have my permanent day job.
I was thinking to submit my tutorial here but seem like I am not that level yet. Collis, do you think I my tutorial can pass your evaluation? hehe…
I understand what you’re saying. I think everyone here know such projects also need money. Or do they? Long story very short and straight forward: I co-run the third biggest internet-youth-community in my country and never had to pay a penny (except for monthly server fee). Yet, it holds 17 000+ regular users.
How so cheap? Popularity pays. Everyone wants to be a part of this community. It’s collab with capital C. You have resources to use that way 10 times as better as we have.
You need money for yourself and your projects. So put most of your energy in that. But start a campagin for people to write PSDTuts themselves, for everyone. Like JPG magazine. Worrying about quality of tuts? Well if you screw it up, you can only blame yourself – it’s all about the way you put the campaign together. Start searching for rolemodels from deviantART, rasterized.org, phirebrush.org etc.
Only few people have made good money with tutorials. David Nightingale is one of them. Go and ask how he did it.
Too expensive. I can understand wanting to charge but a monthly fee seems out of line atm. A flat fee per tut might be better till you get up and running with more tuts, or even an option for either.
Geebus. I can honestly say this is truly sad if you have to justify WHY you have PSDTUTS Plus to those who are complaining about the 95% FREE QUALITY CONTENT. So what if there are a few +Tutorials that would cost $9/month. The rest are FREE.
Thanks for all the great work! Keep it up!
great article collis… :) thanks for sharing the information.
no creditcard…. no psdtuts PLUS!!!
“we try to be very professional about it… This isn’t a hobby site… PSDTuts is a business”
Then why make blog posts explaining these sorts of things? No professional business needs to explain why they need to make money.
@cain and collis: “Why don’t you make ONE superior tutorial site with flash, photoshop, etc.?”
No! Don’t do it! One reason that you may be overlooking when it comes to the popularity of your website is the fact that it is very specific content aimed at a niche audience, and it delivers the goods quite successfully. That is why we keep coming back. Also, the name “psdtuts” is kind of a brand in itself, and I expect to find Photoshop tutorials with a site named that.
Instead, stick with your plan of a family of CSS, Flash-related partner sites.
I just understand this whole “plus” think. Why should I have to pay to learn how to do something… or to get a great technique that someone perfected and took the time to create and post. I mean if anything is on the internet it should be free!
*End Sarcasm
The plus makes sense, its like istockphoto or something, you get great stuff at low prices… no one complains about having to pay a couple bucks for photos now do they? (well some do)
I think the reason why people are not so happy is because its not the norm to pay for tutorials… so many hundreds of sites give them away for free and quality is not a priority. So when someone finds quality grade tuts they want them free too.
Stay Strong!
This is a way more patient and thorough explanation than what I thought all the whining has warranted:
“Shut up.”
Kudos for being the bigger men. Good luck with the business!
Money makes the world go ’round, and this is America! Well, sort of. Thanks a million for finally creating a clean place where all of us can improve our design skills absolutely free! (if we’re cheapskates) Seriously, you can’t have your cake and eat it too; there’s no such thing as a free lunch, even for you. So on with Plus!
I also will contribute to make this site bigger, because al stuff its professional!! But strange that some people dont have to pay 9$ per month an they have photoshop and stuff like that, that costs more than 1000$+..!!!
Collis,
your site is HANDS DOWN the best photoshop tutorial site I have ever seen! Not only do you have AWESOME content, but you have it regularly. I can’t tell you how much this is appreciated!
As far as making your money, I think you should put some of the more cool upcoming tutorials on the PLUS page, since that will convince people that if they want the good stuff, they can pay a nominal fee. I love all your tutorials, but the Time Machine Icon is not as impressive as the all the others that I love so much. I think that if you placed some(not all) of the better tutorials on the PLUS area, then more people will sign up there. As far as all the ungrateful and cheap people that complain about having to pay money, there would still be plenty of great free tutorials for them.
As far as the Flash tutorial and CSS Tutorial site ideas, I think they’re GREAT! If you implement this professional, clean, high-quality style to those sites, you could rule the tutorial world!
I appreciate you providing free resources on the internet and I understand you need to make money. But let me provide a few points:
1. Your price is too high. $9/month = $106/year. That’s more expensive than NAPP and ComputerArts Magazine. Those websites currently provide more resources than yours. Start with a lower price then increase it as your website gets more tutorials. 1000 subscribers at $1 is better than 100 subscribers at $10 because it gets you more exposure.
2. Put some advertisements on your website. Unlike what you may think, we don’t get pissed off and say that we’re never visiting this site again because there’s ads. If people really get pissed off at ads, they probably already use Adblock.
3. Paying to download PSD files will not work as I expected. Nobody wants to go through all that hassle of paying just to download a PSD file. We rather look at ads (see #2) than to go through the checkout process.
4. There’s a reason why almost all the Photoshop tutorial sites have ads. That’s because it’s the only way. Some tutorial sites can provide PSD files, actions, brushes, and other resources because they have ads on their site.
5. The only ad that is annoying are popups and flashy ones with sound. Just don’t display those ads. Have you been to digg.com? Some of their ads from Microsoft look professional and are not annoying. I actually clicked on a few of them because I found it interesting.
The fact is that the tutorials are not unique. Don’t want to pay for the “plus” tutorials? Google it. As long as the site are not unique and _the_ best i’m just glad others made similar stuff for free.
Colin, I think Computerarts subsidises its website through the sale of its magazine? And even that has a huge amount of advertising in it…their advertising sections are getting bigger!
I think if this site can carry on running as it is with the number of people it has subscribed increasing gradually then i’m happy with that.
If those of us who can afford to or choose to pay do so knowing happily that there are some users getting things for free then thats fine.
Even those that pay get to use the free stuff.
So if you dont pay, what are you missing out on? an extra tutorial every two weeks? so big loss if you havent finished all the free tutorials. The PSD files? well you can do almost all the tutorials with your own files..which i think is the idea anyways…we dont want everyone posting the same image on flicker?
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THIS SITE!!!! NOT FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE ANYWAYS.
CHEERS
Adsense!
is the only way!
For those who still don’t seem to understand:
If you think plus isn’t worth $9 a month, you don’t join plus. If you think it’s worth it, you do. Simple as that. But if you don’t join plus, stop talking about how you could get a tutorial book for $50 dollars. If you think that’s better than PSDTuts, buy yourself a nice tutorial book for $50 and stop wasting your and other people’s time.
you should implement a paginator. So people don’t have to scroll 10km down here and write comments. I write here today, knowing and envying the awesome business you created. And wish the best of the best.. people $9 bucks is nothing for what you are learning.. cheaper than a 2-3 year career at university.
:) Cheers.
what can I do without a credit card??
Iris has it spot on… this should be moved to the top so its the first thing people see after the original post.
” For those who still don’t seem to understand:
If you think plus isn’t worth $9 a month, you don’t join plus. If you think it’s worth it, you do. Simple as that. But if you don’t join plus, stop talking about how you could get a tutorial book for $50 dollars. If you think that’s better than PSDTuts, buy yourself a nice tutorial book for $50 and stop wasting your and other people’s time.”
Thank you, godonholiday :)
Hi fellows,
Thou i’m not a paid owner yet i still think that a paid feature is a great thing. I rather would recommend PSDTUTS put up not intrusive ads like Adsense or like that. Most of the membership sites like gamespot, cheathappens remove ads after a member gets a paid membership, so if the visitors are not a paid member ads will come.
Good content no matter how many ads you put! will always attract people.
Thats all. For the people who thinks $9 is too much. (spend less on pron)
I love this website and appreciate the work invested in it – this is why I’ve registered to the PLUS program. This is my way of saying thank you, and as long as I can I will continue my membership although I do not “really” need it.
Please continue your excellent work, Collis, and don’t get discouraged by the cheap.
Roy
took me awhile to read through all these posts :)
and i’m not commenting on the ‘need to pay’ because nothing is really (basically) free in today’s time. i find the grumbles/complains over the top. i haven’t really tried going to the ‘plus’ so i won’t comment on the quality
You’re tutorials are amazing.. and I should say they are worth it even if you make it “Paid”.
You’re tutorials are amazing.. and I should say they are worth it even if you make it “Paidâ€.