I agree with you Vera.
The limitation of assignments is much less painful.
Could you tell what are this different website for learning? I haven’t met any one so far…
Come on, it is only $10 per month for the basic membership and you get 50 slots!
I think the free membership is there for people to try out the system, and to filter out the “not-so-serious” learners. The rest of the learners are serious enough that they are willing to pay the $10 fee, or more.
Paying a fee to a service also has another advantage. You can yell at the support team when something goes wrong.
and you can expect improvements 
10 bucks is not much but it’s relative. There are people in the difficult situations. Me myself am waiting for some income flow into my account to buy the membership
I think the ultimate question is, does the service worth the 10 bucks/month?
When we look at the market of language learning, it always amazes me how people would be willing to pay hundreds of dollars for books and classes, but they expect everything free from the Internet.
I am using a lot of language learning tools on the Internet. LingQ is one of the only 2 websites that I pay for. The other also costs $10/month, but it provides a different service. The rest just happens to be free. Otherwise, I am also willing to pay a small fee for them.
There is no good services that are free. They are either being paid for by someone else, or they are going out of business soon.
Maybe make the free membership a time-limited offer?
I have had one, two and three month trials of other products and that seems a sensible way to introduce new customers to the service. If they haven’t convinced themselves that it’s value for money after one (even two) free trial periods, then it probably itsn’t value for money for them.
LingQ is the only language learning tool I have seen that I actually want to spend money on each month, and without the free trial I wouldn’t have come to that decision.
Let it stay as it is… 
In fact, we are going to be implementing a limit on the number of LingQs you can have in your account. We will also remove or increase the limit on Active Assignments for Free members. The LingQs limit seems like a fairer way of providing a limit. Those members who are active will hit the limit and those who are testing will be more free to explore than they are now. We feel that anyone actively using the site should pay for it, since you are benefiting from its use and we are certainly paying to provide the service! 
For those who are unable to pay, we will look to provide more opportunities to earn points which you will be able to use to pay with.
skyblueteapot,
“i find the 5 active assignments limit for free accounts flipping annoying, because you have to open an assignment to be able to download the audio.”
Really? When I view my archived items I see a download link next to each one. And it’s easy to right-click and save - even just pasting the URL into Windows Media Player is enough to let you play back the audio.
Mark, what will be limit? I’m concerned, I don’t want any limit and I’m not sure if I can afford the highest membership…
I agree. Without free trial I also wouldn’t habe come to LingQ. But if the restrictions to hight I also would not try. I would not do efforts to learn how a site works when I know that it is limited. My decision for LingQ depends at the first sight of the good conditions for a free account.
Now, some months later, I upgradet. Without pressure. And I wouldn’t stay at LingQ it the restrictions was to high. I think the actual system works good.
This is a hard issue. I totally agree that people should pay for the benefits of using LingQ. And I think that the prices are pretty reasonable around here, although I recognize that money relative values can vary enormously among countries.
By the other side, I used it for free for about 3 months before I finally decided to become a paying member. As with Vera, this period was fundamental for me. Also the annoyance of archiving items forced me a little bit!!!
I had already found the old “the linguist” site on the internet once or twice before, but always refused to pay US35 for something that I didn’t know at all!
I don’t know for sure, but I guess it would be more interesting finding effective ways of showing people how LingQ really is meant to be used than restrincting free usage too much. Also, you have a lot of texts in the library that could be imported because the authors understood they would be accessed for free, so this is an issue…
Other thought that I have in mind is that maybe you should focus a little bit more on intermediate to advanced students. I don’t think I would have the courage to try French from scratch if I hadn’t had this successfull experience improving my English here. Also, intermediate and advanced students are the ones more likely to spent money on events and writing.
The other thing I’m not sure is a good one for LingQ is this permanent denyal of the usefullness of stabilshed language learning systems, mainly classrooms. Although I’m sure I don’t have the patiente for classrooms anymore, maybe some people need the classroom setting for a variety of reasons, but yet they could benefit from LingQ in parallell while they don’t feel confident enough to give up their classrooms. But if you always put things as a matter of choosing between classroom or LingQ, they could go away without even trying.
The other drawback of this is that it can give people a bad first impression. Some people are tired of those 15 minutes-a-day language courses that don’t work at all, and can think Steve is just another guy trying to sell the paradise for a small fee.
I don’t know, these are only some thoughts not very well tied together yet.
Just my 2 cents: I would like to see LingQ become like a Facebook, in other words, a social networking site with a language learning flavour… where I can sign in everyday, make friends, send messages to them, have a look at what they are studying (if they allow me), have content rated, encourage language exchange, look at pictures/videos of their holidays in exotic locations, …with a bunch of extra services to be paid for like tutoring and writing correction… but also pronunciation correction through recordings of readings. Also I don’t mind being data-mined and have targeted advertising thrown at me if it keeps my costs down.
Ed,
We, too, would like all this stuff! The fact is that it all costs us time and money to develop. Having said that, we are moving in that direction and will be rolling out a start on our community this week, we hope!
Vera,
Regarding the LingQs limit, it will function as the Assignments limit does now in that you will be able to delete LingQs from your account to make room to add additional LingQs. That way you can continue to use the site for free as long as you like. If you would like to have us store all your LingQs and data, then you can upgrade and create unlimited LingQs. This also deals with anapaula’s concern with content that is provided free. It will still be possible to study for free on the site so nothing changes vis a vis content providers.
Greg,
We have not yet decided on the limit but it will probably be between 300 and 500 LingQs.
Mark,
300-500 words is not much, it can be done in a few days.
But if the next level, i.e. basic membership will allow to store unlimited lingqs that’s ok, but I guess you will limit this as well and that will make this system pretty inaccessible. That’s my opinion.
Mark, you know that I’m now a paying member. But if I was stopped at a early moment because of limitations I think I would never have reached the moment when I decided to become a member.
I my opinion I would have visit the site, saw the limitations and leave and never become a knowlegde of this great site. If I saw restrictions that I reach maybe in a short time I think I have leaved the page. What a pity!
For me the importent thing to try out was the high free access.
For me the importent things to get a paying member was the forum that give me the feeling that members are very welcome and I want to be a part of it and on the other hand it was the possibility to make conversation with a tutor and the rates shows quite fair.
I think the hint of anapaula to focus a more on intermediate to advanced students is helpful.
I have done hard discussions with some content providers and have to make sure that all at LingQ is free and only the tutoring (Conversation and Corrections of Writing) causes costs. This was not easy. I got problems if you restricted the useness. They accepted that tutoring causes costs. It is not only that content is free. It is also important for this content owners that the system at all is free.
Free functionalities and materials are very important, I guess that the site would have no users if they were paid.
I think that I would pay for a low membership but not for a membership that costs 40 Dollar or something like that. And for people from other countries, where the wages are smaller, it might be even harder to afford. There is also a huge difference in the quality of the different language areas. The english library is way ahead of the other ones. I understand that you have many important decisions ahead of you and hopefully you will find good solutions to those problems. You can’t satisfy everyone and I believe you’ll master this task. However, deleting LingQs is the worst solution and I would either stop using the system or upgrade. Because of the actual small size of the community that is certainly not the right way. It would provoke a decrease of the number of members and what the system needs are contributing members.
Vera, I think that is a hard demand, that ALL has to be free only exception the tutoring tools!
Irene, I found the actual limitations are o.k.
It is not a demand from me. I have only apprehensives if the community grows if there are more limitations.
The best promotion is that members tell other people from LingQ. I told it about 10 or more people and they are all interested. This can enforce LingQ too.
Vera, in my brain is always a little business thinking and so is my thought:
What helps a language company to have a lot of members and too less are willing to pay?