1. Tell us a bit about OSTraining, how you got started and where you are now

Steve Burge

I’ve had two careers in my life and neither was perfect.

I was a teacher initially and taught in Mexico, Japan, Australia, the UK, and the US. I loved the job no matter where I went, but the pay was awful. I always did web design work to pay the bills.

By the time I moved to Georgia, in the United States, my evening job as a web designer was paying better than my day job as a teacher. So, I started Alledia.com and built web sites full time. Thus, web design became my second career.

What was imperfect about web design? Well, after a few years and a few dozen web sites, I was spending too long in my office, staring at the screen, wearing my pajamas all day and starting to smell a little. I started to feel the urge to teach again. A friend asked me to teach a Joomla class in Chicago: I tried it and loved it. That reintroduction to teaching led to more classes in Atlanta, New York, Washington, and other cities. We kept growing and by 2010 I ended up combining my two careers and becominga full-time web design teacher.

2. What have been some of your challenges with this business

We’ve experienced hundreds of challenges, but I’ll focus on those that are specific to running an online training company. There are three things that have been a struggle for us:

• Subscriptions: We struggled for a long time to find an ultra-reliable way to process subscription payments. We went through Authorize.net, PayPal.com and at least one Joomla subscription extension. There are just so many things that can go wrong with subscriptions. We ended up going with Recurly.com which does nothing but subscriptions and it does them well.
• Videos: It’s hard to provide a reliable video stream to everyone. There are so many local glitches, connection problems and speed problems with the internet. We finally solved the problem by moving to Brightcove.com , which produces multiple copies of every video we upload. Brightcove automatically detects if you’re on a fast or slow connection. If you’re on a fast connection, Brightcove serves you a high quality version of the video , and if you’re on a slow connection, they’ll give you a low quality version.
• A stream of new content: An odd truth about video creation is that it’s very hard to do it all the time . It’s very painstaking, detailed work and everyone working in videos needs to have regular breaks where they tackle other things in the business. So, it’s been a challenge to manage our video pipeline so that there is always fresh content for our members. We’ve ended up by working with a lot of different teachers. It works well for them to do videos for a while and then go back to live teaching or web design for a while.

3. Do you think online training will be replacing off line training at some point?

Yes, absolutely. Why? The simple truth is that off line training doesn’t scale. There are only so many cities we can visit and teachers we can put on airplanes.

We’re aiming to become an “online first” company.

“Online first” means we’ll get a majority of our revenue from online training. We’re on track to achieve that by September.

4. What are some of the most common challenges your students have when learning/using Joomla?

The major challenge is that the workflow is not as intuitive as it could be. Once people know what the workflow is, they can understand it and use it easily, but the user interface often gets in the way.

We use the reminder CASh: Categorize, Add, Show to help people remember the workflow. CASh applies whether you’re adding content, weblinks, menu links or many other things:

• Categorize: Go to Category Manager and set up categories.
• Add: Go to Article Manager and add articles.
• Show: Go to Menus and add menu links.

We find that people get confused if they approach this process in a different way. Some people try to make their menu links first, which is what you do in Dreamweaver. Others forget to create categories , and this leads to a disorganized mess of articles.

5. What are your plans for OSTraining for the future?

We’re going to dig far deeper into popular extensions. We’ve just released a security course covering Admin Tools and Akeeba Backup . Anyone can take this course for free at: http://www.ostraining.com/courses/class/joomla-25/security/view/.

Next up are K2 and JomSocial.

6. What’s missing now when it comes to Joomla training?

I’d love to see more of it. I’d love more people to give us competition. Whether we are website builders, template designers, or extension developers who are involved in Joomla in any (insert space) way, we need to be explaining Joomla to people. Most users are too busy to spend hours figuring things out for themselves. If you’re a professional working in Joomla, it needs to be part of your job to explain what Joomla is and how to use it.

7. What technology have you used for your online training?

We rely on five key pieces of technology:

• Platform: We use Joomla 1.5 still.
• Videos: All our videos are on Brightcove.com .
• Subscriptions: We process payments using Recurly.com and connect that to Joomla using a custom component.
• Newsletters: We use MailChimp to send out a packed newsletter every week. This is a key advertising tool for us. We have a huge readership who might not be members but enjoy getting the newsletters every week.
• Training classes: Guru!

8. What made you switch to Guru?

We needed a solid platform to show off our classes. Our class pipeline has become busier in 2012, and our staff is struggling to keep up with all the new classes. Guru has made that much easier. We can set up a new class in a couple of hours now, rather than it taking all day.

OSTraining course pages powered by Guru

9. What are your favorite Guru features?

We love the ease of use. The process of adding training sessions is as easy as this:

• Click New.
• Enter a session title.
• Paste in the embed code for the video.
• Click Save.

Guru does everything else for us. It manages the class layout and teacher profiles. It tracks viewer activity and presents students with quizzes. It’s great to have all of this in one integrated package, specifically designed for online training.

10. What else would you like Guru to have that’s not on our roadmap?

The roadmap looks great as it is! It’s one of the reasons we moved to Guru.

To answer the question, I’ll suggest one thing on the frontend and one on the backend:

• On the fronted, I’d love to see a really good user profile page where people can show off the courses they’ve taken and the tests they’ve passed.
• On the backend, it would be nice to able to move course sessions from one course to another.

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Thanks  Steve and good luck!

Paola & Ricardo

Our first profile is of Paola Navarro of DeliciousCrochet.com. Paola is from Argentina and has a successful online store selling PDF files of her crochet doll designs.

Also known as amigurumi, crochet dolls are the “Japanese art of crocheting small animals or toys.” The dolls are made in a single crochet worked as a spiral, then stuffed and sewn together. The craft might have originated in Japan but it’s now a very popular art form across the globe, which makes it perfect for an online store selling digital products.

Paola’s designs are not only masterful, they’re also funny, with plenty of references to movies, celebrities and pop culture. For example:

The Monkey Wears Prada

Freddy Krueger Tux

The Good, the Bad and the Tux

These playful and original designs put  DeliciousCrochet.com at the top of the industry and generate a welcome flow of income.

Take a look at the site and notice how well it’s put together. Paola had a little help there: she’s married to Ricardo Corai, a CMS expert who runs our forum and handles our customer support. Ricardo helped her to put the site together and she adds the products and the content.

An Interview with Paola

Tell us about what you do?

I’m an independent crochet doll designer and housewife. Currently I’m managing two online stores where I sell my designs.

When and how did it all start?

In early 2007 I wanted to have my own blog where I could show the world all my crochet work. My husband was thrilled with the idea and helped me to put together my website. I received an amazing response from the very beginning and this made us decide to transform my website in an online store.

Why did you choose Joomla as your website platform?

DeliciousCrochet.com Store Created with iJoomla DigiStore

We wanted to create a website which allows me to show my work and sell it online. My husband found on iJoomla Digistore a dependable application which allows the administrator to easily manage files and is super intuitive for buyers. So I guess iJoomla Digistore made us choose Joomla! as my website plataform.

What was the initial amount of investment you put in this business?

The initial budget was very small. We hired a basic hosting, subscribed a club template and bought an iJoomla Digistore license. Shortly after we official opened the online store we got back our initial investment and started to get profits.

Was there a point where you knew “this is a great idea and I think I can make a living doing it”? Tell us about it

Since the very beginning we thought this was going to work out. We acted positively in this project and are very pleased to see the buyers satisfied with our products. All the time we receive the kindest comments from all over the globe and knowing my designs have reached so many places still surprise us, because all started as a very small project.

What kind of customers do you have? How do they find you?

Most of my buyers are women who just love crocheting and trying new techniques, it doesn’t matter if they are beginners or super experienced crocheters.

They first buyers found us through search engines and websites related to this particular craft. And fortunately, they went satisfied and recommended us to their friends and relatives. That’s how the chain was made and nowadays we had many return customers and fans of our products.

What do you like the most about selling digital products?

The most I like about selling digital products is they allow buyers from all over the world to receive what they’ve bought in just a few seconds, without delays or complications. Moreover, if you can count on an excellent tool as iJoomla Digistore, which shows the product, completes the transactions and delivers the product automatically, you can devote your time into creative work and customer care, knowing the operational tasks are taken care efficiently.

I think you’re a great example of a business that make a good living from selling digital products. Do you have any tips for creating a successful online store?

Well, I think an excellent customer service and having dependable tools taking care of operational tasks are keys to build a successful online store. Buyers must feel there are people behind the website which are responsive to their needs and concerns. And having the proper tools will help you to administrate better your time in a constructive way.

I heard Martha Stewart wanted you on her show, what happened?

Shortly after I started on this business and because my designs were different from those are usually found in the market, I received a message from one The Martha Stewart Show´s producer saying they needed to contact me in person because they were interested in my work. But, since I don’t live in US, unfortunately this could not be realized.

What’s your most popular product? Why do you think it is?

Nowadays I have many designs and among them there are some very popular. But there is no relation among these more popular designs, so it’s hard to find out the reason to explain their success over other products.

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Great job, Paola and Ricardo!

Do you have an interesting business or website that uses Joomla and iJoomla? Drop me an email, I would love to talk to you!