I strongly encourage you to first take the time to make at least one tutorial video that clearly demonstrates how Fluid works.
However, don’t stop making clear written instructions as well, but if a picture is worth 1000 words, a moving picture might be worth 10,000 words. Take advantage of that.
Right now Fluid is very confusing, and judging by the name, things should be smooth.
To me, Fluid is not worth the $50 value you’ve placed on it, though it might be if I had a clear understanding of how it works, or knew upfront just how steep is the learning curve.
I know the price drops to $30 with the introductory promotion, but it’s not worth $30 either–simply because it’s not clearly understandable how it works.
I am real hesitant to jump into something new, especially something I have to pay for–unless I can first get a sense of how something works and how it’s going to make my life better.
I can easily make $100/hour as a web developer, but buying Fluid for $30 will require me to then spend (at least) another 10 hours just trying to figure out how it works, then my actual cost just to explore the possibility of adopting Fluid into my workflow is $1030.
Even if I pay the full price for Fluid, my exploratory cost is still $1050, which is a marginal difference between the two costs.
However, if you create tutorial videos that I can first watch, and you show me how it works, you might sway me because you can directly impact my exploratory costs with just a 5-minute video.
Please don’t misunderstand me. You do great work, beautiful work. I’ve bought many of your stacks. I want you to succeed, and I want to know what else you have up your sleeve. I look forward to whatever you come up with next.
Let me give you a real world example of how important it is when a RW developer explains how things work.
The new theme Aspen was released by @nickcates just after you released Fluid. Aspen is priced at $80 but there’s a 50% off introductory price, which makes it $40–$10 more than Fluid.
One of the things I most love about Nick’s work, besides his awesome design skills, he always creates video tutorials to explain how things work on his themes and stacks. Even if there’s something I still don’t quite get, he’s just an email away, and he always responds.
All his tutorials and tutorial videos are easily found at NickCatesDesign.com.
At the same time his tutorial videos are also on his Vimeo channel at https://vimeo.com/nickcatesdesign. I’m actually subscribed to his channel to make it even easier to always find his tutorials.
I got notices last week I guess as he was uploading new Aspen tutorial videos–in advance of the actual Aspen launch. His videos are usually just a minute or two so I’d go look at them as he uploaded them. It was great.
I decided to buy Aspen just from watching his tutorials–before he actually launched Aspen, and I didn’t even know what the price was going to be.
I had a clear understanding of how it worked as well as figuring out which future projects where I could use Aspen.
