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10 Essential Sites for Tips and How-To’s
The advent of the Internet and social media have spawned a number of how-to sites, which has made finding tips and resources easier than ever before. We’ve put together a list of 10 essential sites where you can find or in some cases contribute tips and how-to’s on a wide range of topics.
No matter what your interest, these sites will connect you with the information that you’re looking for. What are your favorites?
instructables
instructables, “the world’s biggest show and tell,” is a how-to tips and video sharing site that is quite popular, judging from its 3.5 million visitors a month. The instructables community shares projects, recipes, and hacks among one another. There are groups, forums, and scores of contests you can participate in to win prizes. You can share your instructables in slideshows or videos.
About
About, owned by the New York Times Company, is one of the most popular and credible resource sites today with more than 53 million visitors a month. The site has around 2 million articles, videos, and tutorials on subjects including health care, parenting issues, advice on travel, cooking, technology, and hobbies, among others. We did a simple search on the site with the keyword ‘how to’, and saw more than 597,000 search results. That is more than any how-to site on this list.
About is fueled by more than 650 About.com Guides who mass-produce around 6,000 pieces of new content every week. You can apply to become an About.com Guide if you have the expertise to write in a particular area and the time to share.
eHow
eHow has more than 100,000 articles and claims to have over 8 million people visiting the site every month. From a quick Alexa check, it is seemingly the most popular site among this lot, besides About. There are how-to videos and articles on a variety of topics ranging from cars to business, career, travel and pets, wedding and parenting. You can create your profile in eHow and contribute articles. There are forums where you can request specific tips to be written by other members.
WikiHow
Wikihow is the Wikipedia of how-to articles with more than 37,000 pieces written by volunteers. Like eHow, its range of article categories are vast and include everything from arts & entertainment, health, and relationships, to cars, hobbies, sports , computers, and more. Active WikiHow members take on the task of patrolling recent changes on the site, participate in various projects, keep contact through chat, forums and conference calls, and meet in person once or twice a year. Anybody can contribute to Wikihow.
HowStuffWorks
HowStuffWorks features articles, videos, and product reviews on a variety of topics including animals, auto, business & money, communications, computers, electronics, entertainment, food & recipes, geography, health, history, home & garden, people, science, and travel. Members can upload short how-to videos on the site. HowStuffWorks is owned by Discovery Communications.
ExpertVillage
ExpertVillage calls itself the world’s largest how-to video site and has thousands of them recorded by experts. These are all available free of cost to watch or download. Becoming a member allows you to rate the articles, bookmark your favorite entries, and make comments on the site. Some of the top rated videos we checked out were on how to do a snap kick for a martial arts fitness workout, how to sandpaper decorative picture frames to use for home decor, and how to iron under the buttons of a dress shirt.
You can contribute to the site if you have a license from a legitimate authority or extensive experience in your field. This is one site that has this particular differentiator from the rest in this lot, as the rest accept tips from one and all. You can also apply as a filmmaker if you are good at photography, and send your pre-recorded videos.
VideoJug
VideoJug was launched in 2006 and in the last two years has scored well above many of its competitors. It provides videos in formats like ‘How To’ and ‘Ask The Expert’ on a variety of subjects like food & drink, love & sex, beauty & style, sports & fitness, health, leisure & hobbies, technology, home, pets, parenting, cars, jobs, career, travel, cars, and many more. You can upload your videos on VideoJug. There is also a forum on VideoJug where you can post questions.
5Min
5Min describes itself as the life videopedia where people share tips and how-to’s in videos that are no longer than 5 minutes. Videos are available in categories like arts, business, extreme, fashion, fitness, food, games, health, home, music, parenting, people, pets, spiritual, sports, tech, travel, wheels, life tips, and knowledge.
You can register at the site as a member and create your studio, which is your personal space to save your favorite videos. You can share your own videos at 5Min and even smarten them up with tools from the site.
5Min has a Smart Player that allows the community to watch these videos in slow motion, or frame by frame, zoom in and out, etc. There is also a Speedbit Video Accelerator to speed up the buffering for any video at 5Min.
Sclipo
Sclipo describes itself as a social learning network for teaching through video and webcam, and meeting people of common interests. Here not only can you upload your educational and how-to videos, but also choose to teach other people through webcams. You can charge for such webcam lessons, which is one aspect of Sclipo that distinguishes it from the rest on this list.
Your videos on Sclipo can be on a variety of topics like business and finance, cars, hobbies, fashion, beauty, food, home, music, technology, and more.
Tipstrs
Tipstrs is another tip-sharing site with articles on a variety of subjects including tips/cheats for video games, stock picks, household cleaning tips, specials at bars and restaurants in your hometown, ebay tips, coupon codes for online retailers,upcoming band gigs, contests and sweepstakes, fantasy sports leagues, and gardening, among others. Users can write their own tips or bookmark a site on Tipster. Every week, a random tipster is chosen and awarded $15.
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