Flexible Working Life

A little while ago, I blogged about Yudu, a fantastic site that allows you to publish and promote your work.

You can use Yudu as a publishing tool giving you the opportunity to share your work be it in the form of text, videos, images or audio.  I thought I’d ask Brian Critchfield, Yudu expert more about the site and to explain exactly how the whole thing works and how freelancers can benefit.

Here’s his answers to some of my questions, but if you’ve anymore, check out the FAQ or email them directly.

How did YUDU come into creation – has it been years in the making?

 YUDU Media has been in existence for about 7 years now. It started out as a bureau service converting printed publications to digital publications. The company built a tool-set to help them with this digital conversion and saw an opportunity to share this tool-set with the general market to allow experts to self-publish their content digitally. In April, 2008, the company launched yudufreedom.com as a basic self publishing tool. Then in September, 2008, it relaunched as yudu.com with a much more feature rich application.

Can you give me an example of how a freelancer could take full advantage of YUDU and make money from it?

The uses for YUDU are endless. As a freelancer, the first capability it gives you is to turn your content into stunning digital publications in eZine format. This protects your content much more than a PDF would and also gives you the chance to add live links, add video, audio, and Flash to your publication. The biggest differentiator is that YUDU gives you the mechanism to market and sell your publication to the masses.

As a freelancer, you now have a place to sell your works. Or you could provide ongoing content through a subscription managed by YUDU’s subscription tools. Or you could use YUDU to post your portfolio so that you can send a link to potential clients. Or you could offer free content as a way to capture reader information. All of these could be accomplished through YUDU. Like I said, the possibilities are endless!

Any success stories from YUDU that you can share? 

That is the fun part is hearing from users how much they love using YUDU. One that I just wrote a blog post about is Muchmor Canada Magazine who started using YUDU to publish their monthly magazine because it gave them a much greater tool-set and much greater distribution. Another one I wrote a blog post about is Hereke Silk Carpets, who uses YUDU for publishing their product catalog. This small business can now look much bigger than they are and can sell all over the world using YUDU’s tools and community. 

Thanks Brian for answering my questions and explaining about Yudu!