How to Write Good Tutorials (Exclusive Article)

1. Introduction
2. The purpose of tutorial creation and selection of a subject
3. Stages of creation
4. Publishing

Introduction

Being the editor-in-chief of www.webdesign.org I deal with many tutorials every day, and I've discovered that there are a lot of really bad ones out there. And the most frustrating fact is that a very small percentage of those tutorials make a really good impression. In this article, I will give good criteria for tutorial writing, and then explain how to create an excellent tutorial.

The purpose and subject

First you must be specific about the goal of your tutorial creation. It can be a tutorial designed for submitting to other websites to gain additional traffic, or it can describe and promote a particular product (plug-in, effect, or template). You might even create a tutorial for improving your rank in search engines based on keywords in texts and picture titles. Further, I will provide you with the basic details of tutorial creation.

From the beginning it is necessary to choose the proper subject for your tutorial. This should be an interesting and popular subject, but not one that has already been written on many times before. The subject title must attract people and include keywords that search engine spiders recognize. Let me give you some examples of good tutorial subjects considering your specific goals.

1. At www.templatemonster.com I saw some templates using a "square effect". These templates were very popular, so I decided to write a tutorial describing the process of "square effect" design. The subject was quite important because lots of people were buying and downloading this kind of template, so the title was popular, and I made a real impact with the new article.

2. You can track the most popular new subjects in the Internet and use them as a basis for tutorials. When Star Wars' "Revenge of the Sith" was released it had the largest attendance of any motion picture of that time. So, I wrote a couple of tutorials devoted to the Star Wars Universe. Thanks to search engines there were many visitors who wished to learn how to make a light saber or a hologram effect. Since there were many similar tutorials describing the light saber effect I decided to create the "best" light saber effect, and provide a script in order to give the reader that effect with only one click.

3. If you are going to use a tutorial as a source of keywords for search engines then you can write an article or tutorial with all the keywords in the text, rather than describe the process with graphics and illustrations that do not attract SEO spiders. A fine example of this is an article devoted to Portfolio Section development.

Just turn on your imagination: almost everything can be an interesting subject for tutorial - oncoming holidays, post cards, unusual effects, drawing of various objects. The most popular subjects in tutorial collections can be a source of new ideas - the main rule is not to copy, but to create something new, interesting and unique. It is even better if the subject was never previously written about.

After you have chosen a subject you can start writing your tutorial.

Stages of creation

For the beginning I recommend to draw a complete effect in Photoshop and then proceed to the title and steps description.

Now, after you got the resulting effect, it is high time to choose a title. This should represent the idea, be catchy and contain some keywords. The title should contain from 2 to 5 words; not too long to scare some people and not too short to be unnoticed. For example, the title "Drawing Animated Heart". Here are 2 keywords: Heart and Animated. It's middle-sized, only 3 words, but from this title you can judge about the tutorial. This tutorial title is quite easy to remember and not so common.

So, let's get to tutorial contents.

1. It would be very nice if you put a short description of the subject in the very beginning of your tutorial. Also you can say a couple of words about the reason for selection of a certain subject, or where that effect can be applied. After description I strongly recommend to place the final picture of an effect, so reader could catch the whole idea of your tutorial. For example you can look how I started this tutorial. Here I gave short description and resulting picture

In case you work with an original picture and want it to be changed, then it is always a good idea to place both pictures close to one another: original one and changed. Or you can make a rollover like I did in this tutorial.

Rollover to see the result

2. In the middle of a tutorial there should be a description of your steps depending on the expected skill of a user. Complexity, clarity and variability also depend on the user's skill. If this tutorial is intended for novice, then its description have to be as much detailed as possible. You should explain the layout of tools used; describe tool settings in the most detailed way. This method is good enough as it covers the most part of users, but it will be quite boring for advanced users to read, as there are too much of inessential text. If you are going to write a tutorial for advanced users then you can omit descriptions of tools and filters layout, and give only basic description of all settings. Such tutorial is very good to read, it gives lot of space for creativity and variations, however it is very probable that novices will get stuck on some not well enough described part, and will not be able to go further. So I've found an excellent method for tutorial to be appropriate both for novices and advanced users. These are java script tips. The main point is that only basic steps are described in a tutorial. And more information on some parts is placed in java script tips. So advanced users can avoid reading tips, and novices can study some nuances. You can find more examples in any of my latest tutorials. If you are writing a tutorial for professionals then there is no need to describe any successive steps. Just showing the right direction will be enough: main ideas, specific features, key points.

3. After each one or two steps I recommend to add a picture with an intermediate result. It makes a tutorial more vivid and lets us make sure that reader is following the right way. Sometimes it easier to show what you want with one picture; in another case it could require several text paragraphs. I also recommend using pictures of the same size. They would look naturally and a reader would not get confused as well. In addition to pictures with intermediate results it is also good to give some extra pictures containing settings of filters and effects. It also adds visual expression and makes understanding of a text easier. Picture titles must be meaningful and correspond to reality. It is always necessary to add an alternative text which would be similar to a title. Besides adding some vividness to your tutorial this is a good way to make your website rank higher in search engines and improve picture indexing. Optimize the size of your picture in order to avoid horizontal scrolling when you use resolution 1024 x 768 pixels. In case you want to add a high-resolution picture just place a link for it in a separate window, or its smaller copy, which pops up to a full sized picture after clicking it.

Click to enlarge

4. In the end of a tutorial there should be the resulting picture. Encouragements, examples of other fields where certain effect can be used or how it will look in other setting will be in its place as well.

In this tutorial I gave one more example of a picture based on this effect.

While writing a tutorial try to use standard spoken language and avoid slang. You should remember that it is a bad taste and some readers with poor knowledge of English may not understand it. I insist on using a spell checker to check the text of your tutorial for possible disappointing mistakes, because it can make a bad impression of an author and tutorial. Try to avoid complex sentences, use short ones, simple enough for understanding.

You may use numbering or paragraphs for dividing the text into parts. Numbering allows reader to understand current steps better, as well as percentage of work done. Also it will allow you to make references to previous paragraphs later (for example, repeat number 3). But it has one drawback - text becomes dull and directive. When you use paragraphs for dividing the text, it becomes more literary, and you preserve division into logical parts.

Publishing

On finishing your tutorial place it on your website. After a while Google and other search engines notice it and you will get new visitors. However there are more effective ways to increase your traffic -for example, submitting your tutorials to so called "tutorial farms". I'll give the URLs of main ones with description:

www.good-tutorials.com - The largest and the most popular tutorial resource devoted exclusively to Photoshop tutorials. You can easily submit your tutorials to this resource.

www.webdesign.org - This website hosts all the tutorials so there is no any chance to find a broken link. Also authors get 2 backlinks to their site, as well as the information about the author where they can also place your links and info.

www.pixel2life.com - There are many categories on this website - you can submit here not only Photoshop tutorials but tutorials on almost all other kinds of software.

www.tutorialkit.com - Huge database of Photoshop tutorials written by professionals with every day updates

www.tutorialized.com - Here you can find a large tutorial database with many different categories. You can submit tutorials on most kinds of software.

www.tutorialoutpost.com - One more website devoted to Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and 3Ds Max tutorials. The database is quite large .

Other websites are not very large but promising, there will be no lot of traffic from them but you can get certain benefit by submitting tutorials to these websites.

psworkshop.net
www.tutorialman.com
www.pslover.com
kaoz-tutorials.com
www.howthenetworks.org
webdesign-tutorials.com
www.pimpmycom.com
www.dwphotoshop.com

Well now you know enough to write a good tutorial. Make your first step - look for the proper subject:)