How to become a Scrimba instructor
Kick-start your career as an online instructor with Scrimba, and reach thousands of knowledge-hungry developers.
If you’re an online instructor or interested in becoming one, Scrimba is a great way to get your name out there. Every month, over 100.000 people watch Scrimba tutorials, and we’re always happy to feature content from the community on the front page, plus spreading it via Twitter and our growing newsletter.
This article will explain in detail how to create a Scrimba screencast, and also give a few tips in order to make you successful. If you have questions, please ask us in our Discord server.
To submit your application to become a Scrimba instructor, please fill out this form.
What to create?
First of all, your tutorial needs to be about client-side web development. Scrimba code runs in the browser, so it needs to be about a browser-based technology. There are some other technical HTML and JavaScript limitations as well, which you can read about here.
Subject wise, the Scrimba community especially love casts on React, Vue, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. I’d recommend you to think about subjects that are popular these days, and even keeping an eye on the latest trends in web development. That being said, screencasts about web development basics are always interesting as well.
As for the length, I’d recommend you to create tutorials that are between 5 and 10 minutes long, and if you need more time, simply create a playlist of casts rather than one very long.
You can use any spoken language you want, but we’ll only feature English content on the front page. Also, please write your title in the language you speak in the tutorial.
Title + description
It’s very important that you spend some time composing a good title and description. This can be the difference between your tutorial drowning in the wealth of content out there, or getting a steady stream of traffic from both the Scrimba search and Google. Egghead has written a great article on how to name your screencasts, so read that one and follow their advice.
Submitting your tutorial to us
To increase your chances of being featured on the front page, on Twitter and via our newsletter, please email me (per@scrimba.com) with a link to the tutorial once you’re done with it. We reserve the right to modify the title to make it compelling enough.
Also, do let us know if you’d potentially be interested in creating a full-blown course on Scrimba. Many of the creators behind popular Scrimba courses got started this way: they created content for the community, and we liked their style, so we simply offered them a flat fee to create a full Scrimba course.
If we go ahead with a full course, you’ll either be compensated with a flat fee or via selling the course on Scrimba.com and splitting the revenue with the platform.
If you have any questions, or if anything is unclear, feel free to reach out via mail (per@scrimba.com).
Step-by-step instructions
Let’s now go through all the steps you need to take in order to create your tutorial. It might seem as a lot, but it’s actually much easier than to do it using regular video.
1. Click the CREATE button
2. Choose a template select SCREENCAST
In this dialog you’ll also choose the topic, title and a template.
3. Prepare your project
This can, for example, include adding boilerplate code, creating new files and folders and importing NPM modules.
4. Hit the RECORD button
5. Choose a microphone and hit CONFIRM
6. Code while you talk
7. When you’re finished, hit STOP RECORDING
After you hit ‘Stop recording’, you’ll get the ability to either save or discard the current recording.
8. Edit your recording
To open up the edit tools, click on the BRUSHUP button in the top right corner:
That’ll bring up an audio timeline, in which you can remove sections from your screencast:
You can also continue recording from any point in the timeline. So if you’re pleased with your first two minutes, but not the rest, you can start a new recording from exactly two minutes. This will replace whatever came after two minutes with your new recording.
More detailed instructions (including video tutorials) on how to edit your screencast can be found in our documentation.
9. Hit PUBLISH
10. Fill in metadata and hit PUBLISH again
You’ll also be asked to set the privacy level. Make sure it’s set to PUBLIC.
And that’s it! The screencast will be located on your profile page, and you can share it via its link. If you’re interested in getting featured on the front page, send an email to me (per@scrimba.com) and I’ll take a look at it!
Every minute someone watches your screencast your karma will grow, which you’ll see in the top right corner on your profile. If you’re interested in publishing your screencast on YouTube as well, simply do a screen recording of the Scrimba cast and upload it to YouTube. You’re of course free to do this.
Finally, head over to the terms section of our docs to read more about the terms in which you create content on Scrimba.
Good luck! :)
