Howcast: A Free, Fun, and Reliable Platform for Everyday Learning 106

Howcast is a free daily learning website with content that is both interesting and reliable. It mainly offers more than 30,000 practical tutorials in the form of videos, covering areas such as arts & crafts, entertainment, food & drinks, health & wellness, home & gardening, and relationships. The site uses short videos and illustrated articles to explain DIY methods, everyday life tips, and some trivia, with a total of 25 content categories. In the industry, it is called a "video content farm," which means it relies on producing a large number of evergreen, universally useful instructional videos to attract search traffic and then makes money through advertising.

Howcast's main approach is the "Emerging Filmmakers Program," which recruits students and amateurs to submit footage and provides a publishing platform, paying them based on view counts. In its launch year, it was featured on TIME magazine's "50 Best Websites of the Year," and in 2009 it received two Webby Award nominations. Today, the site has close to 200,000 videos in total, with around 25 million views per month across its own site and platforms like AOL, Yahoo, and YouTube; 80% of views come from off-site, with YouTube being the largest source.

Howcast Core Features

• Content format: Mainly short videos on a wide range of topics—from writing a cover letter to what to do when you run into a bear—characterized by being short, useful, and easy to understand.

• Creation model: It runs an "Emerging Filmmakers Program" that encourages users to submit their work. Selected short videos earn the contributor about $50 each; once a video reaches 40,000 cumulative views, the contributor can also receive half of the ad revenue from that video.

• Partnerships and distribution: In addition to user-submitted content, it also produces short films in its own Howcast style, and has collaborated with Playboy, JetBlue, Nestlé, the U.S. Department of State, and others. The content is available on its own website as well as platforms like AOL, Yahoo, Hulu, and Dailymotion.

Howcast Platform Advantages

• Broad content: Covers everyday needs such as lifestyle, hobbies, skills, and relationships.

• Practical value: Tutorials focus on "how-to" and directly help users solve problems.

• Free access: Users can watch many great tutorials at no cost.

Key Questions

Q: What is Howcast's positioning and what are its main resources?

A: Its positioning is a free, interesting, and reliable place for everyday learning, aiming to provide users with practical skill-learning content. Its main resource is a library of more than 30,000 tutorial videos, with the slogan "Learn Anything. Anytime."

Q: What main areas do Howcast's tutorial videos cover?

A: The main areas include arts & crafts, entertainment, food & drinks, health & wellness, home & gardening, and relationships, among others.