sometimes i have a hard time following video tutorials

Mighty Mysterio

ebergerly said:

Keep in mind that if you're expecting someone to write out PDF tutorials, it generally ain't gonna happen. Especially if you're talking about people doing free tutorials on youtube or whatever. Doing a video takes a whole lot less work than sitting down and writing out a tutorial with pictures and so on. And if they're doing freebees, they'll generally do what easiest or what they enjoy doing. And few people enjoy sitting down and typing out pages of instructions, and then coming up with illustrations, etc.

Instead they're far more likely to do a 3 minute video, without voice, just showing themselves maneuvering around the screen, and somehow you're supposed to figure out what the heck they're trying to show you because they wiggle their mouse cursor.

Most people generally don't do for free what they think they can get paid for. Especially over the long term. Yeah, they might do a few videos for grins, but there's really no reason to continue if they're getting nothing for it.

You're making very valid points. A lot of online freebie videos are done in the spirit of instant gratification. They don't feel like "work" to the creator because they aren't "work." :)

If some sort of script has been written prior to the tutorial (or the tutorial has been tightly rehearsed), then creating a PDF after the fact isn't nearly as hard. You could even use screengrabs as the illustrations. I know, because I've done (and attended) online training sessions for my day job. It's time-consuming to do it right, but if you're working from a strong foundation, time-consuming isn't necessarily unduly difficult. 

I think that the very best tutorial creators out there (and some of them have been mentioned in this thread) understand this on a very deep level and that is why they turn out tutorials that are truly educational and worth our time. 

Slightly off topic - my least favorite online tutorials aren't actually badly filmed YouTube quickies. They are the clickbait Photoshop tutorials that require loading over 20 pages to accomplish something that could have been done in only 3 pages.