This partnership increased my income for a few years and helped me reach my financial goals much more quickly. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it.Īt one point, Acquia reached out about a partnership to offer BuildAModule memberships to all of their subscribers. There were many reasons to build this tool - accessibility for the hearing impaired, English-as-a-second-language learners, search engine indexing, and most importantly to me: being able to scan the content of a video quickly to reduce wasted time. One innovation that proved valuable to lots of people was the interactive transcript - a column of text that scrolled down the side of the video as it played, and which could be clicked to jump to different parts of a video. Video learning has its downsides, and I developed some systems to help address this. The next several years were centered around honing the process of creating content and presenting it in a way that felt responsible and compassionate. I think it happened to be the right time, and I managed to connect with the right people to get the word out. I feel very lucky that I reached that juncture as quickly as I did. We needed about $3k a month to meet our expenses, and within a few months I was making that with BuildAModule subscription revenue. I released it with a subscription model, charging $29 / month, with a discount for 6- and 12-month memberships.Īt the time I had one infant son (hi Haven!) and my partner and I had worked hard to reduce our expenses to a bare minimum. I took a leap of faith and quit all my contracting work to focus on building a new version of BuildAModule, with content that covered more areas, and spent three months building it out. Interest grew, and requests were being made for videos on other subjects. Often I was nervous that maybe I'd reached some saturation point and there wasn't really a market for what I was doing. The process of creating videos was slow and arduous, but eventually I was increasing my library and watching sales go through in unpredictable waves. It was a good deepening in the lesson of not allowing imperfections to keep me from moving forward - a lesson all my most valued mentors have reiterated. I didn't make my first sale for a while, but when I did start making sales, I was shocked that people actually enjoyed the amateur content. I charged a $49 one-time fee for access to all the videos. My first products were a few small collections of videos on how to build Drupal modules - thus the name BuildAModule. Books like The 4-Hour Workweek gave me a sense of the power of products as opposed to hourly work, and by the time Matt reached out to me I was trying to figure out how to create them. Hourly work could get me there eventually, but to not miss out on my kids' childhoods, I would need to accumulate resources much faster. My ultimate goal was to be as present of a father as I could be to my children, and to do that I needed enough money to feel secure being at home with them without working for pay. The reason I put so much work into BuildAModule was because I wanted to free myself from the constraints of hourly wages. We haven't talked for a while, but I still know I couldn't have done it without your support. There was much doubt and uncertainty, and he gave me encouragement when I needed it. Matt gave me lots of mentorship and cheerleading when I was starting out. I had a hard time believing him, but something resonated and I started working in that direction. I of course wish I could transpose the entire BuildAModule interface over (particularly the interactive transcripts), but for now I hope that this will at least give access to those who can still benefit from the library.įor those of you who have enjoyed BuildAModule, who supported it and learned with me year after year as I discovered what exactly I was trying to do, I would like to offer an explanation about how this decision came about and some of what I've learned along the way.īuildAModule was originally conceived when Matt Petrowsky at ISO FileMaker Magazine reached out to me after watching a couple Drupal-module-tour videos I'd made and suggested that I could probably make a living making educational videos for Drupal. I have posted all 2200+ videos for free on the BuildAModule YouTube channel, organized by collection. Just a quick note that BuildAModule is a DBA (Doing Business As) for Implied By Design LLC., just in case you're here due to any unfinished business / payments / etc. Please contact me if you need anything or have any questions. It's a tough call, but one that I believe will ultimately free me to pursue other endeavors more fully from here on out. After careful and lengthy deliberation, I have decided to take BuildAModule down for now.
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