Here’s an interesting idea for people who have the right talents, one that can be a good one-person independent expert type business: be a screen caster. That would make you a freelance, you charge for your service, you don’t need a lot of equipment (although a few hundred dollars for some computer-related sound equipment might be a good idea), and you can do it from your home office.
For more on this, and examples, check out Screen Casts Rock at ReadWriteWeb. The post includes some good examples of good screenc asts, and some people who have done very well with it. Here’s a quote, beginning with the headline, “Huge Demand:”
There’s Huge Demand
Proficient screen cast producers should be cleaning up right now. There is so much untapped demand for this kind of service. Who else do you know that offers this kind of service?Want to be that person? Check out Beth Kanter’s fantastic screen cast tutorial wiki (no longer available). (See this awesome screen cast of Beth’s, in fact.) The future of screen casting is wide open, but we sure are glad there’s some great examples already for all of us to take inspiration from.
I thought this was a cool idea when I saw it because I do some of this myself, and I like to do it. For an example of me doing a screen cast, try this one:
This is from my Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan site, talking about how to integrate that approach with Business Plan Pro. It starts out like a slide show, but gets into the screen shots within a minute (it’s about nine minutes long in total). On this piece I’m using a $70 USB headset and $299 Camtasia Studio software, on a relatively old Windows XP computer.
Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.
