Pixel2Life, Tutorialized and Good-Tutorials: the Difference

 

I've submitted a lot of tutorials over the last three months - they're the primary way I get traffic to my website. I thought I'd share my views on the differences between what I regard as the three biggest players: Pixel2Life, Tutorialized, Good Tutorials.

Pixel2Life - Of the three sites Pixel2Life has the most comprehensive categories; as well as listing tutorials of the more popular programs and languages such as PHP and Photoshop it lists some lesser-known categories such as Fruity Loops and Autodesk Combustion. The more you submit to Pixel2Life the more you realise how professionally it is run. You can submit tutorials via a user account and view which of your tutorials are awaiting review. You can also elect to be notified by email if a tutorial is approved or denied. Furthermore, you are given a reason albeit a general one (e.g. too basic). Pixel2Life add tutorials on a half-hourly basis which means any of your tutorials that are approved will stay on the home page for a reasonable amount of time. The Pixel2Life team also take the time to review the title you've given your tutorial; they often change it by adding a few words here and there. Don't be put off by this - they always add more detail to your tutorial and it shows they've really taken the time to look it through. Pixel2Life is run by a team (although I don't know how many) of people who seem to do a great job at filtering out all the bad tutorials. The amount of traffic you get from Pixel2Life varies greatly on the subject matter; Photoshop will always bring in more than anything else.

Tutorialized - Tutorlalized was founded and is run by Kurt Schell. Kurt has put together a popular, all-round tutorial database that can generate good traffic for your website. The categories are not quite as exhaustive as Pixel2Life but they should serve the needs of most tutorial writers. Tutorials are submitted via a user account; although you can see the status of your tutorials whenever you log in there is currently no email notification system. Tutorials will show up as Pending until they are either Approved or Denied. I've got one that shows up as Broken, as in broken link, I've emailed Kurt to say the link is live but I've heard nothing back. Traffic-wise, Tutorialized is similar to Pixel2Life in that the amount of traffic you get depends on the category. Tutorialized is updated slightly less regularly than Pixel2Life - sometimes days will go before more tutorials are added. This makes Tutorialized somewhat a gamble - if you happen to get a tutorial on the front page prior to a period of inactivity you can find your tutorial on the home page for a few days. Conversely, if your tutorial gets added with lots of other it may not make it onto the home page at all.

Good Tutorials - Despite the generic name, Good Tutorials is Photoshop-only. Good Tutorials, or GT as it is affectionately known, will drive more traffic to your website on a per-tutorial basis than either of the other two. Like Tutorialized, GT is run by a single person, in this case Zach Holman. Zach has built up the largest Photoshop tutorial database available; considering it's a one-man show the site always has fresh content. I've yet to have a tutorial declined from Good Tutorials but I know of others that have. I get the impression Zach screens for quality rather than originality - although most of the content is original some searches yield large numbers of very similar tutorials. If you want some serious traffic GT is the one to submit to - when you make it to the GT front page you know about it! Such is the popularity of GT (it ranks number 1 for "tutorials" with Google at the time of writing) that once your tutorial leaves the home page you will still get a steady flow of traffic. You have to keep checking the site to see if your tutorial is listed - GT does notify you of tutorial approval or rejection.

Here are the links to the sites:

Pixel2Life
Tutorialized
Good-Tutorials

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