MindBites FAQ

Built on the philosophy that everyone has something valuable and unique to share, MindBites is a place where anyone can design, create and post instructional content for sale. We offer real people, individuals like you, a self-publishing platform to share their knowledge, skills and passions with others through audio and video lessons. These lessons can be promoted and previewed across the web, where others can purchase and download them using credits costing $0.99. The result is an inspiring community of discovery that hopes to revolutionize the way the world shares knowledge.

Built on the philosophy that we all have something valuable to share, MindBites is a community of discovery and a self-publishing platform where anyone can share their knowledge with the world. Specifically, you can:

• Explore and purchase unique instructional content
• Learn directly from others
• Participate in an inspiring new community
• Publish your own lessons for a world-wide audience

As a user, you gain access to a unique community of discovery with content found no where else. As an author, you have the opportunity to self-publish your own material to share your passion while earning money for yourself or a charitable cause.

MindBites is a self-publishing platform that allows anyone to share what they know by means of audio and video lessons. Aided by our Author Enablement toolset, authors can create content utilizing basic consumer tools and upload them to our site via their home internet connection. With customized titles, descriptions, and preview images, your lessons are promoted with ease and professionalism to a worldwide audience. Additionally, authors can upload auxiliary materials to complement their lesson, such as text documents, pictures, and graphs.

Users are then able to browse, preview and purchase the author's lessons using credits purchased at MindBites for $0.99. Once purchased, the media files are available to be viewed in the user's browser, and, in most cases, downloaded for future use. Documentation of these purchases can be found under your MyMindBites page.

The result is a new type of learning community where individuals can share their passions with an audience hungry for unique information.

Nada. It's free to register with MindBites. This will allow you to participate in community forums, request specific topics in the Wanted listings, as well as gain access to free lessons and promotional offers. Additionally, you'll be free to explore our extensive instructional catalog and watch lesson previews at your leisure.

For authors, posting on MindBites is completely free of charge AND for each lesson sold, you'll earn 65% of the lesson price after a $0.29 transaction fee. We know, you don't have to thank us.

Beats us! That's up to you, the authors. You see, unlike most other video "how to" sites, the content on our site isn't picked out by a handful of people in our main office (who, while they do have a broad range of interests and talents, simply cannot begin to imagine everything the world out there wants to learn). Instead, anyone, from anywhere, can add to our catalog (or catalogue for you educated types). The result is some pretty interesting and unique material, to say the least! However, we do stress that MindBites is focused on instructional content, i.e. lessons that inform the viewer on how to do something.

What you will certainly NOT find on MindBites is content solely for entertainment or pornography; we feel that the internet is saturated enough with this type of content, so users interested in such will hardly be left wanting. In any case, if you think you've come across something inappropriate, please flag it as such.

To inspire people to learn, grow, and share.

The home page is usually a good place to start to see what's happening. You can also browse lessons under the Explore tab, check out the Community page, or peruse the Wanted section. Finally, you can always use the search box located in the upper right-hand corner of every page.

To see the lessons on the site you need to have a recent version of the Flash plugin installed. We recommend Flash 9, although you should be able to get by with Flash 8 if you already have it installed (some features may not be visible, so upgrade if you can).

Well, you don't for sure. MindBites lessons are made by everyday people. Some are going to be brilliant and exactly what you wanted, others not so much. We do our part to ensure your satisfaction by giving you the ability to preview the lesson and look through the ratings and reviews of others who have already purchased it. If you're lucky enough to find a lemon, our apologies. In this case, please be sure to leave feedback warning others not to make the same mistake. Additionally, if the preview just didn't accurately set your expectations and you're unhappy with your purchase, please contact us. We'd love to make amends and definitely want everyone to be happy with their experience. To that end, please check out our unconditional guarantee lower on this page.

Anyone. We firmly believe that everyone has something valuable to contribute, and as the world becomes more connected and technology proliferates, sharing your knowledge has never been easier. Authors include professional instructors, life-long hobbyists, businesses, DVD creators, and yes, even you (please poke yourself in the chest for us).

If you click on the Contact Us link at the bottom of any page (or here), you can send a message to our team.

Man you new age types are a lot of work aren't you? Ok, here goes:

People teach people
Passions are spread like the wind
Nirvana online

The price of each lesson is set by the author of that lesson. Authors can price their lessons in increments of $0.99, which, conveniently, is the cost to purchase a single credit.

Sure.

Generally speaking, you have two options. You can either watch the lesson streamed online (viewed in your browser as a flash video), or you can download the lesson to your computer (where you can watch it with most common media players or transfer it to your iPod, iPhone, etc). While these options are both available for most lessons, there are exceptions. In the rare case where an author is uncomfortable allowing downloads of the lesson media, the lesson will only be available to be watched streaming online. We'll be sure to let you know if this is the case in the text of the lesson description.

To get technical, the media formats you'll find on MindBites are MP3s for Audio lessons and M4Vs or MPEG-4s for videos, these being selected due to their widespread use. Screencast lessons, however, are allowed in a variety of formats. If Windows is telling you that it cannot recognize the file format, you most likely just need to download the free Quicktime player from Apple. If you have any questions about how to use these formats, please let us know and we'll be happy to help.

Well, that depends on the device. As iPods have become the most common in this market, MindBites has standardized all its video instructionals for ease of use with iTunes and iPod/iPhone transfers. In fact, once downloaded, you merely need to open the video in iTunes, import the file (if it didn't automatically), ensure that your iPod/iPhone is set to synch this video and you're ready to rock and roll.

Though MindBites lessons are generally asked to be compressed into iPod-ready formats, this does not mean they are incompatible with other portable media devices. Actually, most will accept the formats as readily as an iPod and with as much simplicity. If this is not the case, however, there are a myriad of free programs out there that should be able to convert the media for your device with minimal hassle and complications.

Well, how the heck should we know? It's your computer. OK, we're just kidding. We download stuff and lose it all the time. Since we don't make you download and install yet another piece of software to compete with iTunes, Windows Media Player, Real player, etc. etc., the media files are downloaded to your machine just like any other file you download from the Internet. We suggest creating a MindBites folder either on your desktop or some other easily locatable place where you can keep all your lessons together and organized. You should be able to search your machine to find ones you've already downloaded. Another way is to launch your media player once you've watched your lesson, and look under recent items to pull it up. Failing that, you can always return to the lesson page on our site to download it again.

In most cases, you have forever. The two most notable exceptions come at the behest of a lesson's author. First, if an author specifies that the lesson is only to be available online (streaming in your browser), you're obviously not going to be able to download it. This again, should be made clear in the lesson description. Second, if an author chooses to remove lessons they have posted on the site, we will notify users who have purchased these lessons to let them know that they will be unavailable on the site after a prescribed date. In this instance, you will be notified 30 days in advance of the lessons disappearing and no longer being available for download.

While we at MindBites hope and strive to encourage a community of proper and quality content, we cannot offer any assurance as to the caliber of the lessons or the accuracy of the instructions they contain. Please use your own judgment and any available information when both selecting a video for purchase, and when utilizing any techniques demonstrated. And for goodness sake, be careful!

If you feel that there has been a technical error with your purchase, please contact us. If you believe that the original file the author uploaded was faulty, again, please contact us. We will contact the author and try to resolve the issue. If you can play the file, but you think the content is poor, we understand and sympathize with your feelings so please rate the material and write a review accordingly such that your opinion can be shared with others. It's important to us that you're happy with your purchase, though. So, in addition to your review, please let us know. We'll promise to make it right with you (see Satisfaction Guarantee question below).

While we obviously don't control the content posted on MindBites, we still want you to be happy with anything you purchase. To that end, we offer a satisfaction guarantee. If you're unhappy with a purchase, we'll be happy to remove it from your account (provided you haven't already downloaded it) and either credit your account or refund your money. The only catch on this is that we ask that you do your due diligence before purchasing (watch the lesson preview, check out the length of the lesson as well as its ratings and review) and before downloading (watch the lesson online to make sure you're content with it). These capabilities are there to protect you and help you to avoid the heartbreak of a disappointing purchase. Additionally, please don't forget that you are part of a community. If you're either happy or unhappy (or even moderately ambivalent) with a purchase, please help inform other members of the community by leaving a constructive and honest review and a rating of the lesson.

We respect people’s ability to protect and control the product of their hard work through copyright and other protections. Please don’t steal. MindBites authors are just like you, and they’ve worked very hard to prepare their lessons.

Unless otherwise noted, all lessons previewed or purchased on this site are the copyrighted material of their respective owners, and may be used only for your personal and non-commercial use. In certain instances, authors may specify materials as having Creative Commons Licenses, which may allow the creation of derivative works for non-commercial or commercial use. Please see individual lessons for details on any non-standard copyrights and refer to the Creative Commons site at www.creativecommons.org for more details.

If you suspect there is someone on the MindBites site who is violating another’s copyrights, please either flag the material as inappropriate or email us at info (at) mindbites dot com. Seriously, we joke about a lot of stuff around here, but we're serious about copyrights. We're completely serial.

The MindBites community is built on trust, connecting real people who want to learn with those who want to share what they know. The lesson files that you download will not have any technical restrictions that will prevent you from copying and moving the file to different devices for your personal use. We believe this is important since you may need your files on your iPod, your TV, your laptop or all of the above. Please do not abuse this ability by sharing files with people who have not paid for it. Our authors have worked hard to create these lessons! Please don’t steal! As an author, if you are simply too uncomfortable with the idea to allow users who have purchased your lessons to download them, we can certainly work around this. Contact us, and we can arrange for your lessons to only be available streamed online after purchase.

As with most sites, we need to collect some personal information to register you as a user and allow you to purchase materials. We are serious about privacy protection and will not share your information. For more details, please see our Privacy Policy [link]As with most sites, we need to collect some personal information to register you as a user and allow you to purchase materials. We are serious about privacy protection and will not share your information. For more details, please see our 'Privacy Policy'.

MindBites gives you the opportunity to share your specific passion, hobby or skill with virtually anyone. It’s fun, you’ll learn a lot, and you can earn up to 65% of your lesson’s proceeds for yourself or charity.

• Share what you have to teach
• Earn money for yourself or charity
• Promote your business or cause
• Enjoy trying something new!

Well, that's entirely up to you. We put no restrictions on subject matter, barring of course content of a pornographic nature. Still, if you're fishing for some inspiration, check out the for a list of user-requested topics and material.

Believe it or not, producing a MindBite is a fairly simple process. Start by selecting something you are passionate about and want to share with others. You can choose to instruct by means of video or audio format. Not sure how to get started? Visit the Author Resources page for more information and resources.

MindBites allows you to upload any sort of instructional video material, assuming you are the owner, which is subject to the following general guidelines:

• It should be instructional - please no entertainment-only videos (there are plenty of other places on the web for you to post these).
• It cannot be anything illegal, obscene or simply objectionable, including content that contains hate speech, infringes copyright, and/or violates personal privacy or obscenity laws and/or which we deem inappropriately offensive. MindBites does not allow pornography. For more details, please see our Terms of Use.
• It should be 350MB or less in size and in an acceptable format (.MOV, .M4V, .AVI, .WMV, .MP4). We don't accept Flash formats (FLV, SWF, etc). If you upload a file in an incorrect format, it just won't work. Sorry. If you're looking to sell audio podcasts or MP3 files rather than videos, we can probably make the site work for you, as well. Just email Chelsea at chelsea [at] mindbites [dot] com to get some details on how this could work.

You shall be solely responsible for your own User Submissions and the consequences of posting or publishing them. You represent and warrant that you own and/or have the necessary rights and permissions to use and authorize the use of these materials and that the submissions meet the requirements for submissions under the Terms of Use. We reserve the right to refuse to post any content for sale and/or remove it from the site for any violation of these rules or guidelines or for simply violating the spirit of the MindBites community as judged by our sole discretion.

Currently, there is no cost for authors to post lessons on MindBites. We do retain the right to remove content that does not reach a minimum amount of sales after a certain period of time. In the future, there may be a charge for posting content.

MindBites accepts media files for upload up to 350MB in size in the following formats: iPod-compatible video formats (.mp4, .mov or .m4v) and most major screencast formats (.MOV, .MP4, .AVI, .WMV) with the exception of Flash formats (SWF, FLV, etc.).

MindBites limits you to a 350MB file size maximum. If you're really struggling to get your lessons compressed to 350MB or less (while maintaining decent resolution and production quality), I'd suggest contacting us or thinking about breaking the lesson into 2 or more parts.

Not technically. We limit the file size of your lessons (350MB maximum), and this effectively amounts to a limit on how long your lessons can be (while still maintaining some semblance of video quality). That being said, we do recommend trying to separate longer content into 10-20 minutes chunks or chapters. In this day and age, we find people more receptive to learning in focused time windows vs. more typically longer content.

Yes. Video files uploaded to our system get transcoded into a Flash version, which is used for both the one minute preview of your lesson shown on the site, as well as the full-length streaming version of the lesson. In addition, we transcode a MP4 version that should be roughly uniform with all of the other MP4 files on the site. This version is our standard download format. (we say "roughly uniform" because with all of the intricate variations in the files people upload, is is difficult to make the end products exactly identical. They do get pretty close those, and should all be iPod compatible. That being said, if you have a problem, let us know and we can take a look at it.) In general, the higher quality video you upload, the better, and the higher quality the version seen on MindBites and downloaded will be. For helpful information on media formats, tools and tips, please consult the MindBites forums.

The optimal format for uploading files to Mindbites is an MP4 or Quicktime file compressed with the h264 codec or a Windows Media file compressed with Windows Media Video 9. The recommended resolution is 640x480. A bitrate of 1.5 to 2 megabit should provide the best quality.

Yes, you can indeed upload supplementary materials that you think would aid in the user's experience. These materials can be in the form of MP3s, text documents, pictures, graphs, etc.

We’re serious about respecting copyrights and won’t tolerate those who violate them. Please do not post any materials that defy any copyrights. Upon notification of such, we will remove any such violations and will take any appropriate actions and cooperate with officials for especially gross infractions. For more information, please see our.

• Standard Copyright: A standard copyright affirms your rights over your original content as defined by United States law.
• Creative Commons Licenses: We give publishers the ability to select a variety of Creative commons licenses. These licenses are ideal for content publishers who wish to grant additional rights to content purchasers. For example, a musician might license a drum beat sample that other musicians can use in their work. You can learn more by visiting the Creative Commons website.

If you do with to use something other than standard copyrights, please indicate in your lesson description and ideally in the lesson itself as well.

Currently, there is no fee for posting lessons. Once online, your lessons will be available for purchase at the price (in credits) that you set. For each copy of your lesson sold through MindBites, you will receive 65% of the lesson price after removal of a $0.29 transaction fee. You can choose to keep all of these proceeds for yourself or donate portions of them directly to a charity of your choice. Your earnings are paid through a PayPal account with the minimum payment being $25.

If you are signed in to the site, under the MyMindBites tab, you will find your Author Dashboard. This will tell you how times your lesson has been viewed, the amount of total purchases, and will denote your various ratings, among other things.

We're pleased to hear you're enjoying it. By all means share your lesson as much as you can. We have tools built into the player and site that make it easy to email a link to your lesson or add it to another site. Additionally, you can embed a player on your own webpage, blog or other site that will exhibit your lesson previews. While MindBites does work to promote lessons on the site, we're admittedly a pretty small team that's spread pretty thin. Our most successful authors are definitely those that drive traffic to their own lessons (through other sites or blogs or links dropped elsewhere online). For more tips on promoting your lessons, see some of the resources in Author Resources.

Obviously the first step is making the best lesson you can. If it's a good lesson, people will buy it and rate it highly. That being said, make sure you utilize all of your tools to market your lesson to the fullest. These include the lesson title, description, 60-second preview, transcript or outline, and your screen image (you have the ability to upload an image to replace the one automatically generated for you). A good thing to remember when you're preparing your lesson is that video cannot be searched by Google or other search engines. Hence, the only thing that these entities can read is what you write. Generally speaking, the more you type in, the more likely your lesson is to come up in search results on Google or other search engines. Pay particular attention to your title as it gets special bonus points from a search engine standpoint given that it will show up as the title to the page and a part of the URL. Think through what search terms people will use to find the information you provide in your lesson, and make sure to include them in your lesson title and your lesson description. Another way to get extra search brownie points (to come up higher in Google or other search engine results) is to have other sites linking to your lesson. Google figures that, if other reputable sites think this page is important, then, heck, they should to!

To receive payment, you must have a current PayPal account. After your royalties have become eligible for use or withdrawal as denoted above, you can request a payment be made to your PayPal account. Payment requests are set at a minimum of $25 of author earnings and typically take from 1 to 3 days.

From the author dashboard, you should be able to view your earnings from the account summary section.

• Total Earnings: this is the total amount you've earned through all your lessons, including all amounts already paid out.
• Pending Earnings: this is the amount you are owed since your last payout. This does not include portions you've designated for charity, only what is owed to you. Once the Available amount reaches the minimum payout threshold (currently $25), you will see a "Request Payment" button, which is how you notify us to pay you.

We at MindBites strongly believe in supporting good causes and strive to make it easy for authors to donate part or all of the proceeds of a lesson to the charity of their choice. To do this, you'll need to go in to edit the lesson and select the 'Charity' tab on the left. When portions of the proceeds are designated to go to charity, this will automatically show up on the lesson page.

Hard to say. First, I'd check to make sure that the lesson has been published. Once you upload a lesson, the media is 'processed' and then the lesson is ready to be published. We don't automatically publish lessons once the media is uploaded like most sites, however. Instead, we want to give you a chance to go in and make sure you like what you see and that everything looks good to you before the lesson goes live (and is both viewable and purchasable by the public). In order to find out if your lesson is ready to be published, log into MindBites, go into your 'My MindBites' tab and select your 'Author Dashboard'. In the middle section of the page, you should see all of your active and inactive lessons. To edit attributes of any of these lessons (or publish any of them), simply click the pencil out to the right of the lesson in question. If a lesson is unpublished (but ready to be published), you will see a 'Publish Now' button on the bottom of the left-hand menu. Just hit that and your lesson will go live.

We do occasionally remove content from the site if it's been flagged as inappropriate or someone raises a valid copyright concern, but we'll generally contact you via email if this happens. If you can't figure out what's going on, don't hesitate to contact us.

First, log into MindBites, then go into your 'My MindBites' tab and select your 'Author Dashboard'. In the middle section of the page, you should see all of your active and inactive lessons. To edit attributes of any lesson (or publish any of them), simply click the pencil out to the right of the lesson in question. This will take you to an edit lesson screen from which you can edit titles, descriptions, title images, producer notes, supplementary files, etc. Additionally, you can alter charitable contributions from the sale of your lesson or replace the existing video media with a new video.

Yep! We recognize that many of our authors have other pursuits online. We're happy for you to promote these in your lesson description, in your lesson and on your author profile page. Course, if you just upload a commercial advertising your products or services or site to MindBites, we're pretty much guaranteed to take it down and grumble a lot about the whole thing.

I know it's hard to imagine, but building out a simple structure to classify everything that can be taught is no simple undertaking. If there are categories that you think are missing, please let us know. We're happy to add a category when we have enough lessons and authors that should rightfully belong in it. In the meantime, feel free to upload your lesson to 'Various and Sundry' for now. This is our 'catch-all' where we put everything that doesn't fit neatly into another category.

The MindBites community is built on trust, connecting real people who want to learn with those who wish to share what they know. Unless arranged with us in advance, the lesson files that you upload will not have any technical restrictions that will prevent users from copying and moving the file to different devices for their personal use. We believe this is important since users may need your lesson on their iPod, TV, laptop or all of the above. While we do not condone the sharing of materials with others who have not paid for them, and we hope that it will not happen in our community, it is important to recognize that it can and most probably will occur in certain instances. If you discover such a circumstance, please let us know and we will assist in any way possible to help you protect your rights to your materials.

While we think this is critical for our users, we recognize that there are some authors with sizable content libraries that simply won't be comfortable with this kind of proposition. If downloadable videos is a deal-breaker for you, we can create a workaround solution that would allow your lessons, once purchased, to only be available streamed online. To talk more about this option, please contact us.

Hey, MindBites isn't for everybody, we won't hold it against you. While we always hate to lose authors, you, of course, have the right to terminate our relationship at any time if you so choose. To do so, please email us at support (at) mindbites dot com. We will remove your lessons for sale as soon as we can. The files will be maintained on our servers and available for those who have purchased your lesson to date. Additionally, we reserve the right to terminate our agreement at any time for a perceived or real violation of the policies and rules, or of the spirit of the MindBites community at our sole discretion.

Don't see your question? Ask us here.

If we add it to the list, we'll credit you for your brilliance!

MindBites has a satisfaction guarantee on all products that are sold through the site. A purchaser has 30 days to come back to us, express their discontent and receive a refund. Hence, we wait until this period has elapsed to pay out our affiliates per the terms of the MindBites Associates Program.

Simply follow this link, and fill out the quick form to apply. Simple as that.

Pretty much. A MindBites Associate is eligible to promote and earn commission on any lesson available on MindBites. The notable exceptions are that MindBites Authors are not eligible to sell their own lessons and earn commissions through the Associates Program, and you can’t earn commissions through the Associates Program on purchases you make for yourself, your friends or family, etc.

We certainly will. We offer an assortment of banners, widgets, and players to use in order for you to be as successful as possible as a MindBites Associate. Or, if it’s easier, you can just add text links to any page on the MindBites site with your Associate Code tacked onto the end. Check out this page for more information.

Once you reach $25 of available earnings (earnings from a sale become available 30 days following a purchase presuming there is no return), you can request payment via your MindBites Associate tab. Payment will be made via PayPal within 7 days to the email address associated with your account. In the event that you earn more than $500 in one calendar year, MindBites will require you to provide to us your Social Security number or other tax identification number for tax reporting purposes. Your social security number or tax identification number shall be used only for tax reporting purposes and not otherwise disclosed to any third party.

Payouts are made through a PayPal account to the email address associated with your account. Don't have a PayPal account? Sign up for one now!

No, silly. That is crazy talk. You CAN, however, tell all of your friends about your lessons and how THEY can make money selling your lessons on their site through the Associate Program.

It is actually quite simple, and we have provided a full explanation of the process on our MindBites Associate page, which you can access once you sign up to be an Associate.

I am glad you asked: Annual Earnings Threshold: $0 - $100 = 12% commission $100-$250 = 15% commission $250-$500 = 17% commission $500+ = 20% commission

In the MindBites Associate program your commission percentage is based on your accumulated earnings (not the accumulated revenue you generate). Once your total earnings reach a certain amount you move into the next threshold and therefore make a higher commission percentage. Let’s look at a fun example: Bob is a member of the MindBites Associate Program (clearly Bob is one smart fellow). Bob generates $700 in sales and, thus, for selling $700 worth of Product Revenue, he will earn 12% of $700 or $84. Once his earnings exceed a listed threshold (e.g. at $834 of annual gross product revenue sold, he will have earned more than $100), his subsequent sales will be compensated at the next threshold listed until it, too, is surpassed. Go Bob!

Sure are. At the end of each calendar year all Associate’s accumulated earning will be set to zero. But, guess what? Since we are launching the program towards the end of 2009, all earnings accumulated in 2009 will carry over into 2010.

You may not purchase products during sessions initiated through your own Associates links, and you will not receive referral fees for such orders. This includes orders to be used by you, your friends, your relatives, or your associates, in any manner.