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Comment by freedrull | Hacker News Reader

I'm kind of wondering how sustainable a pay for screencasts business is. A couple people seem to have burned out on it (railscasts, Gary Bernhardt). I'm not sure if its the expectation of getting something new up every week or two weeks is too stressful or they just run out of material. Is it possible to keep it going without getting sick of it or running out of things to talk about?

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There exist many successful screencasts businesses. I think the main problem with "subscribe monthly for unlimited access and new screencasts every month" is the "new screencasts every month" bit. That is an issue with the business/charging model, not with publishing screencasts for money.

There's no reason why somebody with a back catalog of 200 episodes who doesn't have desire/bandwidth to record more can't sell access to the back catalog and fairly easily get to $X00,000 per year.

There is probably some merit in the season model that American television takes. "I'm going to release 12/18/24/whatever episodes over the next six/eight/twelve months" is probably more sustainable than a weekly screencast pledge. Gives the author some time off to recharge, and (perhaps more importantly) some time for technology to evolve.

Since I have a background as a poker player one of the coaching sites (deucescracked) followed a season model whereas the others (cardrunners, leggopoker and later bluefire) were more similar to "release videos on a somewhat set schedule but not too strict"

It might actually be worthwhile comparing those sites to subscription based techcasts since both are in the business of selling expert knowledge.

One major difference I see is that the selling point of poker sites is that the players are successful so there might be value in a screencast site that focuses more on "rockstar developers" etc.

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