Submit a Tutorial

Want to submit a tutorial to Aetuts+? We’ll pay an agreed USD rate per tutorial published (make an offer!), and you’ll get to help your fellow After Effects aficionados!

What Are We Looking For?

We are looking for extensive tutorials using Adobe After Effects. You can also integrate other programs like 3D Max, Cinema 4D and Maya, as long as the tutorial primarily focuses on After Effects.

We prefer more complete, practical and extensive tutorials. Tutorials can be screencasts or written with illustrative images.

You must fulfill the following criteria:

  • You must send in your tutorial idea for consideration before submitting the full tutorial. Please include a link to a short video of the final effect you are creating. You should upload it to a service like Vimeo or YouTube.
  • Your tutorial must be your original work and not published elsewhere.
  • You must have a PayPal or Moneybookers account for us to pay you, all fees will be paid by the second week of every new month.
  • You will need to format your tutorial as per the format described below.
  • Your tutorial may be edited prior to publishing.

If the tutorial is accepted:

  • you grant a license to readers to use the knowledge and demonstrated effects shown in the tutorial in their own projects without reference to yourself, Envato or this site. They may not reproduce the tutorial itself, but they can use the techniques you teach.
  • you grant a license to Envato to be the exclusive publisher of the tutorial online. You may republish extracts online – for example on your own site – however the tutorial in its entirety should not appear elsewhere. You may also republish the tutorial offline in any way you wish – e.g. sell it to a magazine, submit it to a book.
  • you consent to the full tutorial, extracts, samples or examples from it appearing in other Envato sites, products and services, including the Plus memberships section, and that all profits will be redirected back into the site.

Photography and Source Images

Some tutorials make use of photos for their effects. There are a few things you need to know in this regard:

  1. DO NOT use images from Google Image search or simply taken from a website
  2. DO NOT use images from Flickr UNLESS they have a Creative Commons License for Commercial Use. In this case you must provide an attribution link back to the Flickr page you found the image on. Note you can find CC Commercial images on Flickr using their Advanced Search feature.
  3. DO use images you photographed yourself
  4. DO use images from free stock sites like SXC.hu and StockVault.net, BUT make sure you check the agreement for use in files for distribution. Sometimes you need to ask permission from the photographer. We need this because if the image is included in the sample file, we can’t distribute it unless you have permission.
  5. IF YOU USE images from a stock site like iStockPhoto, Dreamstime, or other THEN you are free to use the images in your screenshots, but in the source files you need to use a watermark over the image as they do in the previews on their sites. In other words you can purchase a stock image to use, but in the sample file you can’t be distributing the whole image (because the photographer isn’t receiving a royalty from the sale of files)

Please include links to the source of any images you have used in your tutorial wherever it has been used. If you do not include your image sources your tutorial will not be accepted, because we need to verify that the file is OK.

Thank you for taking the time to make sure the photos are OK, it helps protect the site, the photographer and yourself!

Credit All Sources and Use Common Sense

Always credit your sources and inspiration
When you credit your sources or inspiration for the tutorial, it’s clear that you aren’t trying to hide something. For tutorial submissions it also lets our editors check that the tutorial is acceptable.

Use common sense and Err to the side of caution
There are no hard and fast rules about copyright. Beware of “rules” like ‘copying 40% is OK’, there’s no such thing. And remember that even aside from exact words or images, it can be the idea or principle. If you think something might not be OK, then trust your gut and don’t do it.

Tutorial Acceptance and Payment

Please note, not all tutorials will be accepted. We only accept tutorials that match the site’s standards of both expression and quality of the final product.

If your tutorial is accepted, payment in USD will be made towards the beginning of the month after your tutorial has been posted on Aetuts+. Please note that if we gain evidence in this time that the tutorial or source images used in the tutorial have been plagiarized we will take the tutorial off the site and payment will not be made.

How to Format Your Tutorial for Submission

Screencast tutorials must meet the following requirements:

  1. At least 10 minutes in length.
  2. Final video must be in one of the following resolutions: 1280×720 (16:9) or 960×720 (4:3) for 720p.
  3. Introduce yourself at the beginning of the tutorial and say you are making this tutorial for Aetuts+.
  4. Final video must be delivered via YouSendItor another file transfer program. Also include an extra short preview video of the final effect, recorded in one of the resolutions listed above. You should zip both videos together.
  5. You must include a description of your tutorial and a 200 x 200 pixel preview image.
  6. You must lastly include in the zipped file your project file along with all of the assets used. To do this you must use the “Collect Files” command under “File” in AE. Here’s how to do it.

Written tutorials must meet the following requirements:

  1. Must contain either 20 steps or 20 images, to ensure adequate depth and detail.
  2. Must be in step by step format. One instruction, one step. Please see this tutorial for a demonstration of the format requirements.
  3. Tutorial must be delivered in HTML format with images included and numbered in order of appearance (i.e. first image is 1.jpg).
  4. Wrap all your images with this div tag: <div class=”tutorial_image”> </div> and make sure that none of your images are over 600px wide and that you can easily read any interface text at that resolution.

Get Feedback BEFORE Writing the Full Tutorial

You can send in a video preview and tutorial pitch to us for review prior to creating the whole tutorial. This will save you time in instances where the tutorial/image is not what we are looking for. You can do this by clicking the link below:

Aetuts+ Tutorial Preview Submission Form

How to Submit

Completed submissions can be made via one of these two forms.

If your tutorial is a screencast:

Aetuts+ Completed Screencast Submission Form

If your tutorial is text and images:

Aetuts+ Written Tutorial Submission Form

How to Produce a Great Video Tutorial

If you are planning on doing a screencast (but still worth reading even if you are planning a written tutorial), please read this great article on how to produce a great video tutorial.