One of the worst pieces of help a person can get online is from an incomplete tutorial. Many of the ones I have encountered that do this leave room for a business to do the rest for a fee.
However, does this really help anyone? Not really, especially when it leaves the job half done. Does this mean that the person who wrote the tutorial will do the job half-assed as well? (Excuse me for my crudeness, but this is a peeve of mine.)
It is understandable to run a business, but in a open source development community this tends to be a let down, especially for the fact that the developer writing the tutorial has learned from other developers… meaning where they are today is not from their own efforts, but by learning from others. And most likely, learning how to code was learned from tutorials published for free.
This is a big problem with some developers. They want to horde all their secrets, but release half-assed tutorials that miss some of the important parts.
For example, I recently did a Drupal to WordPress conversion and while I was able to get 95% of the tutorial, the last 5% was missing. When I contacted one of the tutorial writers, they wanted me to pay for them to do the job. I did not need them to do the job, but to correct their tutorial to make sure it was complete. This is the MigratetoWP.com owner. I am not linking them because I do not recommend developers that are like this.
I was further disappointed when their response was that they did give their script out. I did not want the whole script. I wanted the part that they failed to provide in their tutorial.
So, my response to this developer: “Don’t publish incomplete tutorials.”
Aside from that, I will be writing my own Drupal to WordPress tutorial that will be far more complete.
Are you a developer who has experienced a similar issue with other developers in the open source community?
I think it is very rude what they do to us! I understand that they need money, but they could find an other way for making us pay, insted of making a fool of us…
Nice write Nile better to do not follow these types peoples search only blogs those are providing free tutorials
Oh yes Niles, that certainly is a gripe of mine also. When I first started using Thesis a few years ago, I used to hunt round for tutorials a lot. I had already learned a few programming languages, but not php. And, it was a bit confusing.
So, when I copied code that wasn’t correct, it was very frustrating.
Have a great weekend Niles!
I am not a developer, but I can easily understand your frustration. Unfortunately, there are many people, in all the niches, that post a guide or a tutorial claiming to be complete. When you want to put the instruction into practice, you find out with disappointment that you need more information to get the job done.
Nile, you fell for an old trick! I had to use a tutorial once to correct a serious error on my computer. The final step was missing, but I could get it for $49.95!
I searched my little digital heart out and found a disgruntled soul who out of spite posted that missing info on his blog. I put $5 in his “tip jar.”
Enjoying reading your stuff! Keep on! Blog on!
Yeah, it would be better not to make tutorial at all if it is incomplete. Incomplete tutorial will only discourage the one who needs it.
well all gives basic command even in major things like php, Joomla and even WordPress videos tutorials.
OMG THANK YOU!! A couple of years ago, I was asked to do an HTML to WP conversion. I searched the ‘net for DAYS and found tutorials that were incomplete and asked for either a service fee for help or a membership fee to a private forum. WTF?
I found one tutorial that was more complete and asked the writer for more help (he said he would answer questions)…it took him a month to answer back. By that time, I had found a WONDERFUL person on the WP forums who basically did it for me in less than 5 minutes. LOL
My problem of not knowing how to finish it all up still remains even though I got the job done (with tons of help). Maybe you could do a comprehensive HTML to WP conversion tutorial? LOL
Nile,
finally I understood why sometime I cannot understand certain tutorials… (I always give credit to my “tech” ignorance) now I know the REAL reason that give me hope to be more tech savy soon 🙂
Thanks so much for bringing this fact in the open, people like you know is a tutorial is not complete, but someone like me, well, is not easy since we do not know what is all about and we depend on the people who make the tutorial and if they do not complete them and we cannot do some stuff… automatically we think that we did not get it…
Interesting topic for me, and I thank You very much for making this information available here.
nickc
Nile,
Such an important topic and a great post about it. I have been frustrated intensely when I sign up for a training, as I did to learn Optimize Press, and the instructor wastes time (on my time and money) taking polls. That is okay when you are giving a free webinar. But I wanted to learn, in detail, how to use Optimize Press. I wanted to understand exactly how to upload a banner (what size, etc.), how to set up a membership site in organized easy to understand detail.
The result was a mish mosh of four 2 hour webinars. In order for me to locate the piece of information I need at a given moment in time, I would have to wade through 1 1/2 hours of the instructor talking to maybe find it – if it is even in there. But then there is the membership site to sign up for at a hefty fee to maybe get the help I expected in my paid course.
And now, in order to use Optimize Press, I got to their incomplete tutorials to try to figure it out. All very frustrating.
On the other hand, Kimberly Castleberry created a course to teach how to blog. She has specific, detailed, short webinars for every imaginable piece needed. And if it’s not there, I am sure she would spend the time to help the student. That is what business is and should be all about. Providing unbelievable, over the top, service.
Warmly,
Dr. Erica
Great point Niles – I’ve seen this as well, and I agree with your point. It does seem like some content providers are really stingy when it comes to doling out the information and when that happens you can’t help but question the value of what you’ll get should you actually decide to pay for the rest.
Nile,
People like that make me sick. As you know, I have over 80 Free WordPress video tutorials on my blog and on my YouTube Channel.
Someone recently suggested to me that instead of giving my stuff away for free, I start doing exactly the perpetration you just described. The person was genuinely trying to help me monetize my site, but why would I want to do to others exactly what I Hate being done to me?
The idea of deliberalely creating incomplete tutorials makes me sick. Early in my career on WordPress I encountered such tutorials whereby you needed to pay them to get the rest of the tutorial for free. Like you said, you get 90 to 95% done then Boom, you are stuck! Very annoying! I would never treat my visitors like that.
Thanks for sharing!
~ Jupiter Jim
You’re totally right!
Thanks a lot for bringing this up, it’s actually bothered me from time to time lately!
In addition, it might sometimes be a good idea to review the tutorials inbe has put out, just to make sure that the recommended resources still exist or that the data one needs to insert is still valid.
Putting out good quality will prove its worth on the long run!
So thanks for the post and keep up the good work like you already do!
Ben Lehnert
Interesting that you got *any* answer from the tutorial writer; in most cases i find missing information in a tutorial the author doesn’t even respond on hints & ideas for their input 🙁
Hello Nile! Jeez, I happened on a heap of incomplete tutorials but I have so far not come across anyone who wants be to pay for the last step! Goodness me that can’t be a very well thought out business model. Duping people in to a false security like that is really nothing less than rude and would not compel me to buy anything to be honest. When you have that Drupal to WordPress tutorial written. I’ll happily share it. I have zero Drupal experience myself but have a good friend who builds most of his sites using it. Incidentally what do you think of Drupal as a platform Nile, have you much knowledge of it?
Timely article, Niles. Sharing information and giving all you’ve got when you say you provide training has now become the accepted way to do business online.
it’s the only way to go. Can you imagine someone doing an interview on their new book, and then not sharing information because they want you to buy the book?
That’s just not the way business is done anymore – thank goodness. i am very glad for the change.
It’s also refreshing when someone gives a training and doesn’t hold back. They are the people that I will buy from time and time again.
Thanks for the post, and have a great weekend.
Angela
You are right Nile, such tutorial are given just as a teaser and when anyone really gets interested in them, the owner ask for money. Of course we know that nothing is free but it is much better that it is mentioned openly and clearly. This way others don’t get frustrated. It happened with me to.
Hahaha! this post was kind of funny! You should write a post about how people post a problem on a forum, and when they find the solution to that problem they don’t tell everyone how they fixed it
I understand your frustration.My personal favorites are the various help forums. There is always some mock mounting you have to endure while the various internet trolls that occupy the forum vie to make sure you understand they are smarter than you. My personal favorite “Google it.”
I’m with you there, Nile! I suppose the idea is to hook you so you will want the complete program. But if that’s the case, don’t call it a tutorial… You’ve got the right solution. If you see a need, fill it, and you can bet there will be lots of people who will thank you for it!
Willena Flewelling
I am not a developer but I can understand your problem and in fact it happens with everybody who searches at Google. Many times tutorials are not updated and causing serious problem and left the person with further troubles.
This is hilarious. Since the beginning, I have always tried to find real-life examples of what we do online, because it really works that way.
In this case, I pictured somebody building half a bridge and waiting for someone to come along and pay for the other half. It almost sounds like extortion.
A much better approach would be to build a free footbridge, and along the way mention some traffic stats and other information that would convince people to pay to have a full car bridge added.
In other words, give a complete tutorial for something simple, while touting the benefits of hiring a pro to do something much more powerful.
i have personally enconcterd with this thing many times it feels very sad and feelslike ur efforts have been wasted
Incomplete tutorials are a sign of laziness.
I used to be in IT and let me tell you, I feel your pain. It’s not only the poor writing that drove me bonkers but it was the attempt to BS me when I did ask a question. It’s sad that these guys used an incomplete manual to extort you but hey, that’s what you have to do when you’re not that good.
By the way, your site does ROCK!
Nile,
At first, I didn’t know what you meant by leaving the tutorial unfinished for a business to complete. After reading your entire post, I now totally understand. Yeah, it’s a bad practice. I’ve only encountered this once.
I searched Google for a long time trying to find out how to make a quiz with some Adobe platform. I think it was Fireworks. I actually did some of what the tutorial said to do, without reading the entire thing. Therefore, I did certain steps, my quiz began to look good, but…… I couldn’t finish it completely.
I was mad… and they were the only ones that had a tutorial on this subject. Needless to say, I’ve done without any quizzes made with Fireworks.
Great post. You are right. Many people put tutorials on their websites by claiming that they are complete and helpful, but when we bring them into practice, most of them proved to be incomplete and they don’t help us either.
Hi Niles,
I perfectly understand what you mean. The worst thing is that we do not know that the tutorial is incomplete until the last moment. To be honest, the incomplete tutorials (especially those which turn out to be incomplete all of a sudden) are so annoying that I usually do not pay for the rest of the guide.
I hope that some day people will understand that helping can be much more rewarding than selling.
Very frustrating, I’ve spent far too long going through tutorial after tutorial trying to find the answer to a problem when it really should be there in the first one.
I agree. It is very frustrating when you are on budgetary constraints and as a new blogger you are trying to learn the ropes. Unfinished tutorial many time turn out to be nothing more than just a way of getting you to pay someone to do the work you want to do. It is very rare to find someone who has a honest to goodness tutorial to teach you how to write a creative blog.
Is true, spent hours trying to do an thing that doesn¨t work at final, we must be good bloggers
Hi Nile,
I’m with Nick here! Now I can understand why I cannot “get it” on some tutorials. I have no tech background, nor want to spend my time learning about it. However, I do want some kind of understanding in order to hire someone to do it for me. – All of it!
On the tutorials I have gone through in my niche I can understand your frustration. I’ve paid a pretty penny for some and came away with “and then what do I do?” Very frustrating.
I do not like to be put in a position where I’m on a learning curve and the last piece is missing. All that time wasted makes me want to Rant to say the least.
Your integrity and honesty shines through in this post. As always!!!
Thanks,
Donna
I agree that having incomplete tutorials can be very frustrating but I’m sure these people don’t do this on purpose and have good intentions, for the most part.
So true.
Not just with programming but sometimes, I see articles on sites like ezine where they discuss half the topic and then provide a link at the bottom to get all details.
Sometimes it seems fair that they are just trying to get some traffic for their site and its up to them how much they want to share for free.
I completely agree with you. An incomplete tutorial can not get solution to your problem. It is nothing but waste of time.
I can completely understand how frustrating that must be. To get through 95% of the course only to find you can’t complete the task. As a course creator I like to provide full tutorials for people to get the feel of my work but I believe in creating complete ones even if they are free. You want to attract not dispel people and your experience didn’t lead to you becoming a customer but had the opposite effect.
I agree with you 100%, Nile. It’s a tease to take someone half way there and not complete the job. I usually tune out to this sort of thing and never buy. Can you imagine being wooed by your lover, being brought to the brink of ecstasy only to be told the climax will cost you? UGH!
RICK
This sounds like a scam, and a lie–they promise something complete–the tutorial–string you along and fail to give what was promised when it was described, then try to charge money for what was promised for free. Everybody hates being lied to, and it sure won’t help one’s business.
Amen Niles, this infuriates me no end. If you want to sell online, you must educate people, incomplete tutorials is not the way to go.
A very awesome blog post. We are really grateful for your blog post. You will find a lot of approaches after visiting your post. I was exactly searching for. Thanks for such post and please keep it up. Great work.
tutorials must b cmpltd..
Hi Nile,
I am not a developer but being a net user and a tutorial seeker I too have come across this “incomplete tutorial” frustration. It wastes your time, doesn’t supply you with information and leave you with nothing but irritation. Its a practice that should be somehow stopped. People doing such stuffs should be heavily charged for leaving their tutorial undone. I know m a little blunt. But this how some times one has to be. Thank you for putting up such subject into projection of article.:)
Why are people so selfish these days? Just For some Money they aren’t giving full tutorial.In such cases, it would be better not to make tutorial at all if it is incomplete and let them realize their fault . they are causing inconvenience to all which brings no good to their business.
lol nile, this one makes me laugh. incomplete tutorials are not going to help anyone. it seems the writers were blackmailing you, lol. thanks for sharing this post.
Hi Prabhat! It is not just me, but others having this issue with finding incomplete tutorials. The point of the tutorial was for that developer to share his knowledge. However, he threw his information on his site like it was money on a string. He wanted people to get through his tutorial and still have to contact him. That is not the purpose of a tutorial.
i someone really needed find out your published incomplete tutorial than the person will only applause you in a different manner lol
I write how to guides and tutorials and also find it frustrating when I read half-done, incomplete or incorrect guides. Please spend time searching for computer tips, tech tips, and walkthoughs often to find sites that let them down. Thank for spending some time on this great topic.
I also hate youtube videos with 6-7 different parts and no link to the next or previous parts! ahhhh!
hy
this is very nyc article thank you so much for sharing please more articles share i am waiting
I hate when people don’t finish their tutorials. It’s absolutely pointless to start one in the first place at that thought. I mean, why waste your time and everyone else’s?
While I don’t use tech tutorials, I couldn’t agree more. On our blog posts, we always aim to provide clear step by step instructions on how to earn or redeem frequent flier miles and points, including screenshots, and see it as complementary to the part of our business that is award travel bookings. The way we see it, some people have more time than money and will always book their own award tickets; our paying customers, on the other hand, will still continue to pay us to book their awards due to the time and complexity involved for many of the awards flights.
Yeah, I am 100% agree with your point. Nobody likes incomplete tutorial. If anyone start any tutorial, he should complete. Its show his reliability & trust.
Oh yes this happens lot of time…
The main reason maybe people try to copy stuff from other site without the knowledge of the stuff and end up with something which is completely incomplete.
Its just a complete waste of time!!!
Nice article Nile
Cheers,
MJ
I can certainly agree with the incomplete information passed off as a tutorial.
I am not a developer and not much into coding so your level and mine are really very different. However since I am so new I have found premium themes which leave a beginner totally confused and at a loss on how to put together their website.
I have a two sites now on premium themes which allowed me as a novice to set them up. Not exactly point and click but close enough. I had a couple other premium themes which just left me scratching my head.
So I agree with our tutorial assessment. Provide it all or don’t.
Thanks for reminding me.
Wayne Melton
The thing is, incomplete tutorials don’t actually help a business ling term. There was a similar issue with technical help forums a few years ago. If you wanted the answer to a problem, you had to join and pay for the answer (having found it in search engines- ie it would show up and look promising, but clicking the link brought up and popup saying “Join to see the answer”). No wonder Google dropped these from their SERPS.
I said at the beginning of this comment that incomplete tutorials don’t help business. The reason I said this is because no-one searching for a solution is going to pay (they’re looking for a free solution) and are more likely than anyone else to never come back.
Incomplete tutorials look like a pretty clever scheme to me, devious but clever. I wonder though if they really pay off. Usually a good developer will be able to fill in the blanks..and a good googler will easily fill in the blanks. Knowing what questions to ask is 90% of the work…Google takes care of the rest. Never been bothored by incomplete tutorials. Contacting the site owner wouldn’t even occur to me. It’s a free world. Not everybody needs to be a hippie (although the world would be a much cooler place if we all were hippies)
Thanks Nile! I am glad to read this post and this is really very useful thing who making their own tutorial.
They should always mind such points while creating their tutorial!
I think writing an article or releasing a video in parts can be a strategy to retain visitors but incomplete one’s are a totally turn off..!
Well, I do understand because full Tutorials and How Tos are really required.
Thanks for the information.
If a tutorial or manual is incomplete on purpose to extract money from the people, that just… well, unprofessional! Either sell it completely or make it really open source and that includes good and complete documentation.
Hi Nile,
It helps the business, but leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I know what you mean. Basically, it gets them started. I have seen some seo companies that show you some stuff you need to do and basically they will kind of tell you how to do on page changes (for free).
Lots of people don’t know how to change their websites that’s why they hire developers. So basically, they bank on the fact that that they kind of get you started, but it’s not really free. Just some short pre made pdf.
Garen
Dear Admin,
.Thanks for providing an effective Blog that offers complete synchronization between creativity and information.Your Blogs meets all the requirements of the readers and is user friendly and provide the best and best information to the reader.
Thank you so much for share the great information…!!!!
I totally agree with that incomplete tutorials aren’t helpful even waste of time when a tutorial failed for readers to guide. Very well written. Great post..
Nile you are absolutely right that incomplete tutorials don’t help anyone in any business or field. It is general thing that incomplete things have no worth and nobody can get help from it. Making tutorials is not an easy thing you have to research a lot and a lot of time consume to share and create tutorials.
Well said Nile..
Ya incomplete tutorial can not help any one .If these can not help any one then how one think That his incomplete tutorial will help him..I.E how he can think that his incomplete tutorial increase his reputation?Thanks for nice sharing Nile.
wow
that is a bold steps to put the one who provide incomplete tutorial
but
glad you mention it
it will save people
Incomplete thing is always dangerous for every one…you should have proper and complete knowledge of every thing…Thanks for awaking us…
Gr8 Post
Rather than solving the problem incomplete tutorials create confusion in the readers mind. So according to me whenever you are posting some information do a good research on the topic and step into the readers shoes while writing the post 🙂
Especially tech bloggers who write about web design,template editing shouldn’t publish posts with incomplete and confused.I say that some people have been given up the blogging because of wrong coding tutorials.This is another considerable topic to talk.I think that you would take few minutes to write this post…
Hey Nile,
Geez, that must have been frustrating and annoying. Not only because of incomplete service but also the response you got. Customer service is #1 especially if you are paying for something. This will only hurt them in their business…. better off creating your own because YOU know what you want better than anyone else …
hello
fully agree with you this time Yeah, it would be better not to make tutorial at all if it is incomplete. Incomplete tutorial will only discourage the one who needs it.thnx for this informative post nile
regards
sakshi
Yes, you are right. I hate the incomplete tutorial. It’s really just wating of time. If everyone wirte tutorial in that way, there is no real content on Internet.
I definitely hear you Nile!
In fact, this sounds like some of the low front end offer courses I’ve invested in
over the years!LOL!
I wouldn’t exactly call them junk courses, but clearly some of them were designed
for the sole purpose of, (either) trying to upsell you into a more expensive course.
Or to try and upsell you into some type of pricey paid monthly membership coaching
program!
Either way, maybe if their less priced product had delivered more value, the latter could have
and probably would have happened!