Tutsplus (or just Tuts+)

We were introduced to Tutsplus through a link on a website. They said it was generating quite a bit of money through Ads, own products and affiliate links.

So they are successful.

But what do they do? Well they are a Youtube video based website which embeds the videos on their site and you can follow along with the text. It seems to be more graphical and software based and then spread open to incorporate business and coding. But the site has a graphical stint to it.

Stats:

1.3million Youtube subscribers
5.2k videos
128million views
924K followers on TikTok
138k followers on Insta
262K followers on Facebook
15k followers on Pinterest

So quite the social following.

There's also:

138 million backlinks
around 596k traffic/ month
It is also quite clean and helpful when you do start playing a course with good quality videos
the tutors seem to talk concisely and seem to know their stuff.

All around there is plenty of traffic and seemingly plenty of social love and support for the website. So you would think that the website is doing all it can.

It is, but can it be helped along?

How can Tutsplus be helped?

Tutsplus is a good website, but with all good websites it might need a hand.

Now again, this is not to say that the site or Tutsplus is bad or lacking (clearly the stats say otherwise). It is something that if we go onto their website, is there anything that can be improved- as a suggestion, rather than saying this needs to be changed!

So what can Tutsplus do?

Free course. This is something to test, but when I see "free course" there is an implication that other courses are to buy. So the course that I am watching is actually an intro, or a sales pitch to another course. Now it might not be that way, but that could be an assumption. This is a comment from Youtube (there are similar ones littered throughout the comments) "Did this guy actually posted an ENTIRE GUIDE without a sponsor or even an ad for a 3 HOURS LONG VIDEO ?"
Is there a way to match up the collections on your website like the ones on Youtube? So when you click on "learn about fonts" you get this:

But it would be nicer to actually have the "how to make fonts" first, or at least the beginners guide (if there was one) come first?

Are there any interviews? Like, celebrities in the genre that you can chat to, make it more grounded with that you are offering with what is out there
Can you do a Q&A. So one of the instructors having a session where you ask questions- maybe by invite or by cost?
Sometimes the drop down menus dont work when I am in one of the tutorials
Best. Is there somewhere where the webpages can be organised into "best/ most viewed" etc.
Is there anything about the types of software, pluses and minuses? I don't know if this is what you would do, but how about if someone has no clue of what software to use. Which would be good as a beginner, advanced?
Some of the links within the tutorials take you off page
What happens when you sign up? Most of the videos are free, seemingly through Youtube. So what is the point of signing in?
Moniterisation? I am thinking that you are trying to get people to sign up/ sell EnvatoElements- which houses things like fonts, music, templates etc for design. But on some of your pages you are trying to get people away from those pages with Ads, which seem like Adsense. Sure you have in context links, but sometimes it would be worthy to try some Ads for EnvatoElements. Then we have other links within the copy of some pages that link to somewhere else like this sentence: "There are a multitude of icon packs out there you could use, my choice of premium icons being the Streamline Icons set. If you’re looking for something free then using the IconFinder or Icons8 platforms could be of great help.". I am assuming this is not an affiliate link- because it would have said. But could it be, could you get some moniterisation from this link especially if it gets clicked on lots. And if it does and you are not moniterising, then could you find a product in your array that would do the same job?
Email. I don't seem to find one, but how about an email newsletter? Every course seems to be free (?) so once used people will just go away. You have fixed their issue. When they need another issue to be fixed do they come back to the site or do they search for a solution? Now with tons of content being given away for free the trust value of the website is huge. But, how many repeat visitors does it get? Ooh. I just found an email sign up- but it is at the very bottom of the screen of the tutorials. Can the signup text be different per tutorial. So "learn more about Adobe" or "Learn more how to create templates'. This way you are segmenating your audience.
Badges? I believe some companies have a badge of quality to their instructors- or that they have been through a course related to that application. Here are Salesforce badges:

Now this could be used in a couple of ways:

placing your instructors badges on the site. This also increases trust and confidence within what people are going to commit to
badges can be used to evaluate how far people have come along with courses, how they got on their course assessment (is there any?). They can place them on their website and show with pride, which also boosts trust and credibility to your site.

Social. Your social seems cool but mainly the visual ones- like TikTok and Instagram. Maybe your Facebook is your interaction and the others are the promotion. Are there any viral TikToks that could be recreated? Or can you create tutorials for people wanting to do social stuff and might not know what software is used. So I would have thought Creating a Time Magazine front cover would be more popular than saying, creating a magazine cover in Adobe?
Is there a tutorial for Canva? I think they could be an affiliate partner but seemingly they get a lot of social love and people use them a lot. They are similar to your Elements but you could state that you can use Elements within Canva? Again, it doesn't have to be Canva, but there are other software bundles online which a lot of people use but it would be nice to have tutorials for.

Anyway, we hope Tutplus all the best.

Check out more online sales articles at the Jasonera blog here.