As a creator on youtube, I’m always trying to find new ways to improve videos, whether that be editing, script writing, broll, or even thumbnails. It’s a constant struggle of constantly oneuping yourself. I mean, my 1st videos weren’t good. And it’s only recently I feel like I’ve found my stride. So what did I use to learn new skills? Youtube. There’s so many fantastic tutorials out there, that the content is nearly limitless. So, why does Skillshare exist? A video platform where professionals can create classes, and users can pay a subscription to learn. If Youtube has limitless content, is something like Skillshare needed? That’s what we’ll be trying to find out with a little review.

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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:35 How Skillshare works
4:28 How is it for Skillshare Teachers
5:42 Personal User Experience
10:18 Did I learn anything?
11:20 Skillshare Alternatives
12:46 Conclusions


Skillshare Class Guidelines: https://help.skillshare.com/hc/enus/...

Let’s talk about User Experience. I wanted to focus on improving skills I already had and develop a new skill as well. I started some classes on improving my YouTuber skills. Primarily for YouTube as a whole and thumbnails. Secondly, my fiance and I are moving in together next year. And she’s got a good eye for interior design and styling a room. I, on the other hand, thought these flashing colorful rainbow lights on my desk were cool. Yeah. I got a lot to learn, but I’d love to learn more about it so that I’m not a nuisance when we start planning out our space. So those were my goals.

The average Skillshare video is higher quality than the average youtube video. The audio and video presentation ranges from ok to excellent. YouTube on the other hand is filled with varied video and audio so quality of youtube content is a mixed bag. YouTube has more content but the quality is like rolling a die. You’re not guaranteed quality content if you click on a random video. Skillshare classes treat your time differently compared to YouTube. On YouTube, as a creator you have to force yourself to be entertaining, hook viewers at the start of the video to keep viewers watching, plug sponsors through the video, and ask everyone to like, leave a comment and subscribe.

But on Skillshare, the intros just get to the point of the subject right away, and thumbnails for classes are free of clickbait. So I’d say the quality of content on Skillshare is a filtered version of YouTube. The amount of content on Skillshare is less than on YouTube. If you filter a category by when a video was released on Skillshare you’ll find that there aren’t too many educational videos being released every single day. But if you do the same on YouTube. There’s a lot of filtering required. Overall, I felt that when using skillshare I learned things quicker than if I relied on only YouTube. Here’s an example. If you’re into videography and type in “How to color grade”. There’s plenty of videos on it from fantastic creators. But these videos are short, and they fill in small pieces of the puzzle. On Skillshare, I feel that type of scenario is less likely to happen, because you spend so much time learning from just one teacher, they usually fill in most of those missing gaps throughout the course. Okay, so after all that. I felt that at least for my video editing, and youtuber skills, it added new perspectives, tips and tools to my skillset, and the classes reminded me of things I forgot. As for the interior design thing? I can say I helped pick out things for our potential new space that met even her seal of approval and managed to even correct her on one of her picks.

Conclusion time. I do like Skillshare. BUT. I don’t know if it’s worth paying the price for it for everyone. I really suggest you take a look at all the content Skillshare offers, watch some of those free “introduction to the course” videos and see if you enjoy the teacher and the content. Then make sure there’s enough content for you before you sign up. While the content on the platform is nice, a 1 year subscription is $100, and I don’t know if everyone could find enough content they’re interested in to use the service and be interested for an entire year. I feel like the sweet spot for most people would be around half a year but if you did the monthly plan that’s already $120. I think the monthly cost is too high. If it was $10$15 a month then I’d feel different. Personally, I like Skillshare, and think it will get better with time but I think at its current monthly price, many people would rather spend some extra time on YouTube to try and meet their educational needs than pay a pricey subscription.