Ask HN: Thinking about making a website to teach people Excel. Good idea?

1 points by Im_a_throw_away 9 years ago | 3 comments

Hi HN!

I recently realized that a lot of people use Excel in their day job, yet most of them don't really know what they are doing. They could save hours of work per week if they knew how to filter data, use the VLOOKUP function, play with pivot tables, and so on.

I'm a web developper who knows a lot about Excel, and I'm actually good at writing tutorials. So I'm thinking about making a website with Excel tutorials, an email course, and a paid course (I have a lot of free time for the next 12 months).

It seems like a huge market, but it also looks like there are already a lot of websites doing that. Though most of the tutorials I saw are either out of date or not very clear. So I have 2 questions :

1. Do you think it's a good idea or not? 2. How would you get traffic for this website, besides SEO?

Thanks! :)

FiatLuxDave 9 years ago |

Yes, there is a lot of competition in this space. I know because I am an advanced user who often has to sift through them to find an answer. I don't know that there is a ton of money here.

That said, I think that the best way to be successful at this is to make a niche site (or sites) that address certain user communities. I work with a lot of physicists who use Excel for general data analysis (yes, I know, R or Matlab are better, nevertheless it does get used), and their questions are completely different from say, accountants. A site like "Excel for [insert profession here]" is likely to be a good way to get attention from that community and differentiate yourself from the general Excel help sites.

Best of luck with your projects

raooll 9 years ago |

have you looked at chandoo.org

chandoo.org

Im_a_throw_away 9 years ago | |

What's your point? I already know that there are a lot competition in this space.