6 Tips for Writing Great Tutorials

Do you get a lot of compliments on your work but make few sales? How cool would it be to sell the design without having to part with the finished piece? More often than not, pieces don't sell because of the price. Don't you dare lower it; its worth every penny. But if your item on Etsy is getting tons of hearts and not selling, its definitely time to write a tutorial.

With a few hours of work, you can create a professional looking .PDF tutorial that shows your customers how to create their favorite piece. Let them do the work, and enjoy the income from a hassle-free product that can be sent via email.

• Be original. Stick to your own designs and ideas, since they are your biggest selling point. Let other people pour their time into documenting and photographing the projects that even girl scouts are doing. Have something new and unique to share with your audience and they will gratefully let their Paypal buttons do the talking.

• Start at the beginning. On the front page, be sure to have a title, copyright, legal, and contact information, recognition of other contributors (photographer, etc.), list of materials and tools required, a description of the project, and at least once clear photo of the finished product.

• Write first, then take pictures. Follow your own directions and photograph each step as you go along. Do your instructions make sense? Now is the time to adjust your copy if they don't or if there is more information about the step to share.

• A picture is worth 1,000 words. Some customers will skip the text altogether and read your tutorial as pictures. Use only clear, close-up, and uncluttered pictures of each step. To get good closeups, use the macro setting (little flower button on your camera), no flash, and daylight. If you must use artificial lighting, daylight bulbs will do well.

• Formatting counts. Organize your text and pictures so that they work together. Separating them makes the work visually confusing and can frustrate your customers. A good, widely used format is to have pictures on the left and the corresponding text to the right on each page.

• Send out free copies to friends. Your hard work will pay off soon enough, but first you need to have it proofed. Send it out to friends with varying familiarity on the subject and ask for feedback. You can be as specific as you want, and even include a questionnaire about how you did. Consider it quality control, and listen to every bit of feedback whether you agree with it or not. Don't forget to say "thank you", even if the review sucks.

Making a tutorial is 100% free. If you don't have MS Word, you can download OpenOffice and use it's word processor. To create the .PDF, download/install CutePDF, select 'print' wile your word document is open and select 'CutePDF' under the printer drop-down menu. Click 'print' and it will automatically convert the file to a .PDF. Its that easy.