Hi everyone, long time lurker, first time poster. There's a lot of very experienced and knowledgeable people on this forum and some advice would be greatly appreciated. I'll leave my chief concern at the end of the post for those who want to skip the preamble.
After reading TMF several months ago, the key points that stuck out the most were the following concepts: Solve a problem, give value, affect millions. Taking into account CENTS, my own skills, and the limitations of my imagination, I've decided that I need a product to sell.
The product that I am in the process of creating is a digital product which would teach people how to play the piano. I am about 70% complete creating my video series, but I'd like some insight from you all before moving forward as this will affect my content creation.
The idea of teaching piano has been done to death before. However, I'd like to look at the number of competitors out there as a marker of consumer interest. For the sake of value skewing, I've decided that I am going to take a unique approach to this.
The problem I'm trying to solve isn't necessarily those that want to learn piano (there are tons of products out there that will do this), but the problem of it takes too damn long to learn piano. Most people don't want to spend hours learning about chords, scales, and arpeggios, and then the result being that they can play Mary Had a Little Lamb... they want to play the songs they like. My idea came from when my friend, who has zero musical knowledge, had bought a several hundred dollar digital keyboard, and could play 30 seconds of this theme song from a popular Korean drama. He doesn't know any musical theory, and he can't play any other song, yet he was fairly skilled playing those 30 seconds of that particular song because he loved it. I realized that in order to get enjoyment out of playing piano, you don't need actually need fundamentals (I know I'm going to make a lot of enemies saying this). Therefore, I've attuned this product to do just that: Teach people to become good enough at the piano to get enjoyment out of it, in the fastest amount of time, at a very low price (either free or something like $5-20, more info below).
I am familiar with the niche of Japanese animation and games, and therefore I'd like to focus my product's teaching style to appeal to the demographic of fans of Anime culture who happen to want to learn to play piano. Thankfully, there seems to be a significant cross-over between Anime fans and piano players because Anime has some great musical soundtracks. There are a wealth of Youtube channels where pianists play popular songs from currently airing Anime shows which continuously drives channel viewership every season. While I'm only targeting this niche due to my own familiarity with Anime, for those who have heard of Akihabara in Japan, the fact that it seems this specific market is also quite fanatical in spending money for Anime-related collectibles and products is a bonus.
I always hated the idea of having a Youtube channel because it violates the commandment of entry. However, the more I thought about it, the more I decided this approach was the one I wanted to take, due to ancillary revenue sources such as affiliate marketing of products, sponsorships by industry giants such as Crunchyroll, and of course brand development/recognition.
My problem is this: The main selling point of my digital product is a teaching gimmick that I've come up with, and this gimmick can be transferred to other people once it is revealed. It's like revealing how a magic trick works. With this in mind, based on everyone's experience, what makes the most sense?
Would it be better to build a Youtube channel, develop brand recognition and following due to ease of access, teach my "gimmick" via a series of about 8 videos (the bare, bare knowledge of going from zero piano knowledge to knowing enough to understand how my gimmick works), maintaining the channel by uploading videos of popular songs from the new shows that come out every season played using my gimmick, then maybe once I've developed a following, package the videos together and sell them at a low cost as a digital product or simply asking for a donation (eg. buy me a coffee),
or
Package the video series into a digital product which is then sold either independently from a website, or through sites like Udemy.
With the Youtube path, I'm essentially revealing my trick (giving value first) and then hoping that people would reciprocate by donating or hoping some will buy a refined, packaged version of the video series (which teaches the same gimmick again), whereas on Udemy I may have trouble advertising how different my approach is compared to the other piano-teaching products out there. Additionally, I've never tried seriously teaching piano to other people so I can't even be sure that my teaching style will be successful (it may take several iterations to explain it in different ways). If I try a test run on Youtube and then sell a refined course on Udemy, if may run the risk of having already revealed my trick and having no one willing to purchase the course.
This post ended up being longer than I was hoping, but any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all for taking the time to read it!
After reading TMF several months ago, the key points that stuck out the most were the following concepts: Solve a problem, give value, affect millions. Taking into account CENTS, my own skills, and the limitations of my imagination, I've decided that I need a product to sell.
The product that I am in the process of creating is a digital product which would teach people how to play the piano. I am about 70% complete creating my video series, but I'd like some insight from you all before moving forward as this will affect my content creation.
The idea of teaching piano has been done to death before. However, I'd like to look at the number of competitors out there as a marker of consumer interest. For the sake of value skewing, I've decided that I am going to take a unique approach to this.
The problem I'm trying to solve isn't necessarily those that want to learn piano (there are tons of products out there that will do this), but the problem of it takes too damn long to learn piano. Most people don't want to spend hours learning about chords, scales, and arpeggios, and then the result being that they can play Mary Had a Little Lamb... they want to play the songs they like. My idea came from when my friend, who has zero musical knowledge, had bought a several hundred dollar digital keyboard, and could play 30 seconds of this theme song from a popular Korean drama. He doesn't know any musical theory, and he can't play any other song, yet he was fairly skilled playing those 30 seconds of that particular song because he loved it. I realized that in order to get enjoyment out of playing piano, you don't need actually need fundamentals (I know I'm going to make a lot of enemies saying this). Therefore, I've attuned this product to do just that: Teach people to become good enough at the piano to get enjoyment out of it, in the fastest amount of time, at a very low price (either free or something like $5-20, more info below).
I am familiar with the niche of Japanese animation and games, and therefore I'd like to focus my product's teaching style to appeal to the demographic of fans of Anime culture who happen to want to learn to play piano. Thankfully, there seems to be a significant cross-over between Anime fans and piano players because Anime has some great musical soundtracks. There are a wealth of Youtube channels where pianists play popular songs from currently airing Anime shows which continuously drives channel viewership every season. While I'm only targeting this niche due to my own familiarity with Anime, for those who have heard of Akihabara in Japan, the fact that it seems this specific market is also quite fanatical in spending money for Anime-related collectibles and products is a bonus.
I always hated the idea of having a Youtube channel because it violates the commandment of entry. However, the more I thought about it, the more I decided this approach was the one I wanted to take, due to ancillary revenue sources such as affiliate marketing of products, sponsorships by industry giants such as Crunchyroll, and of course brand development/recognition.
My problem is this: The main selling point of my digital product is a teaching gimmick that I've come up with, and this gimmick can be transferred to other people once it is revealed. It's like revealing how a magic trick works. With this in mind, based on everyone's experience, what makes the most sense?
Would it be better to build a Youtube channel, develop brand recognition and following due to ease of access, teach my "gimmick" via a series of about 8 videos (the bare, bare knowledge of going from zero piano knowledge to knowing enough to understand how my gimmick works), maintaining the channel by uploading videos of popular songs from the new shows that come out every season played using my gimmick, then maybe once I've developed a following, package the videos together and sell them at a low cost as a digital product or simply asking for a donation (eg. buy me a coffee),
or
Package the video series into a digital product which is then sold either independently from a website, or through sites like Udemy.
With the Youtube path, I'm essentially revealing my trick (giving value first) and then hoping that people would reciprocate by donating or hoping some will buy a refined, packaged version of the video series (which teaches the same gimmick again), whereas on Udemy I may have trouble advertising how different my approach is compared to the other piano-teaching products out there. Additionally, I've never tried seriously teaching piano to other people so I can't even be sure that my teaching style will be successful (it may take several iterations to explain it in different ways). If I try a test run on Youtube and then sell a refined course on Udemy, if may run the risk of having already revealed my trick and having no one willing to purchase the course.
This post ended up being longer than I was hoping, but any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all for taking the time to read it!
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