When I speak to teachers and schools I always promote LingQ as a resource, and adjunct, and even suggest that LingQ would be more effective if coordinated by a classroom teacher. I also try to convince schools that it could be a means of recruiting students, and then of maintaining contact with students. I will keep trying, but so far we have simply struck out. I attended the American Teachers of Foreign Languages Conference, and handed out dozens of name cards and talked up LingQ. I have visited schools and universities and teachers conferences, and even presented at some. It is expensive to do this and the results are meager.
The bottom line is that it is very expensive to promote a brand, beyond our means, in fact. However, we do have some advantages and the activities of our members can be very important. The best example is the blogging activity of member Gintaras in Lithuania, which has brought us many many members.
StumbleUpon is a good suggestion. Can we ask all of you here to stumble LingQ and try to get friends to do so as well? We will also look at how else we can encourage people to stumble LingQ.
Steve said: “I have made many efforts to persuade language teachers and professors at university to use LingQ. I have been met with scorn, hostility, or indifference in almost all cases.”
Yet they swallow Rosetta Stone whole!
These people are poor deluded leftists. Sie sind echt nicht mehr zu retten! :-0
@odiernod - Is there any way to direct people to a specific website in StumbleUpon or do they just have to keep clicking “Stumble” until they find it?
Nevermind – found the link now.
If everyone can click here and click “I like it!”, it would be much appreciated: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2kjqaI/www.lingq.com
Also, if you get a chance, any reviews are also welcomed. 
How about challenging the competition to some kind of dance off?
It’s the modern version of the battle to the death.
Better still: hire a hitman to take out the CEO of Live Mocha! 
(Se Steve fosse un killer professionale potrebbe farlo fuori lui stesso!)
Se Steve fosse un killer professionale, non ci sarebbe dubbio chi avrebbe ucciso il CEO di LiveMocha (visto che hai appena svelato al mondo il suo segreto!).
Use those Italian Skills to get in touch with the Italian mafia.
I was in Sicily, the heartland of the Mafia and only met friendly people. I really recommend Sicily as a place to visit. We need more LingQ members in Sicily so I can go back there and have a big party.
As for schools,
It’s funny that your experience is so different than mine. I can’t recall ever meeting a teacher who insisted that meaningful learning could/must only take place in a classroom. I think everyone, even people who have never studied a language, understand that you can’t learn a language from classroom exposure alone. Nevertheless, these people must be out there I guess. But most teachers give homework of some kind though, which would seem to indicate that they consider it useful to study outside of class…
I think that anyone who spent some time looking through your blog, or looking through the forum, would come across some pretty, putting it delicately, negative comments and viewpoints towards teachers. I don’t know if that is a factor.
And there are different conditions in different countries. In Japan, as I’m sure you know, the purpose of English class (especially in private schools) is to prepare students for English examinations. Extensive reading/listening at the expense of grammar/vocabulary drilling is not considered an effective form of test preparation. If someone could demonstrate that 6 years of extensive reading was much more effective than six years of grammar drilling for Japanese students - with respect to English examinations - than you might start to see some change. But, Japan being Japan, there’s relatively little scope for individual teachers to make major changes to the program.
In BC, individual school boards tend to have a lot of freedom, and indeed invidual schools and individual teachers tend to have a lot of freedom.
At any rate, one feature that would be very useful on LingQ (for schools) would be the opportunity for langauge exchange (for free). Particularly in Canada, it amazes me that there isn’t some program to foster language exchange partnerships between anglophone and francophone schools.
As for why so few visitors become active users of LingQ,
LingQ is not so useful unless you are a paying member. Yes, you can download free content, but you can do that in a lot of places. LingQ also doesn’t have the language exchange element that a lot of other sites have.
For me anyway, the main benefit that LingQ has is the actual function of linking words and phrases. I used to make flash cards for new words/phrases but that was very time consuming. I don’t do that anymore. If I see a new word outside of LingQ, I just assume that I’ll come across it in LingQ sooner or later, and when I do, I’ll link it - or I’ll just import the text…
LingQ also lacks explicit, step-by-step lessons, which a lot of people like and think they need.
So, to me, it seems like LingQ’s appeal is going to be limited to people with fairly high motivation and self-discipline who understand input-based language learning and are willing to pay a small monthly fee for unlimited linking.
You’re going to lose the people who are mostly looking for language exchange, the people who aren’t familiar with input-based language learning and who feel that they need explicit explanatory lessons, as well as those who simply won’t pay because 100 links is not enough for them to determine whether or not linking is an effective method of language learning.
Is there any possibility of including advertising on the site for non-paying members? Or expanding into language exchange?
"So, to me, it seems like LingQ’s appeal is going to be limited to people with fairly high motivation and self-discipline who understand input-based language learning and are willing to pay a small monthly fee for unlimited linking.
You’re going to lose the people who are mostly looking for language exchange, the people who aren’t familiar with input-based language learning and who feel that they need explicit explanatory lessons…"
I think this is spot on. I don’t think it is necessarily more traffic that is needed. What would work best may be to just convince current traffic numbers that input based learning is the best method.
Having some of Steve’s best blog posts and videos promoting the science and results of input based learning, as an introduction to the lingq site, would be a really good step.
The real problem, I believe, is that reading and listening is far more effective than lingq’ing.
For lingq to be successful it would need to move away from ling’ing as it’s differentiator and move into marketing top quality audio/text premium content (which I understand it is looking at).
@Bortrun :
So, to me, it seems like LingQ’s appeal is going to be limited to people with fairly high motivation and self-discipline who understand input-based language learning and are willing to pay a small monthly fee for unlimited linking.
Spot on! I couldn’t agree more.
LingQ will not be bigger. Lighthearted learners will go to the other simple, eye catchy and distinctively instructed language sites.
Only linguists will stay here.
@Daisuke: “Only linguists will stay here”
That’s my feeling, that LingQ could be better targetted at educators, scholars, researchers and individuals who are comfortable with a more scholarly approach. It’s not a mass market, but it’s not tiny either, and such people will be more active LingQ’s evolution as a new approach to language learning than the masses of casual language learners who don’t want to have to get used to anything new.
Another possibility could be the prospect of LingQ becoming two-faced: one consisting of Rosetta Stone-like courses that masses are willing to pay for (without necessarily seeing real results); and the other keeping the current functionality for those of us who, to a large extent, know what we’re doing. No doubt the former would be a much more lucrative market.
We have digressed a bit from the marketing issue. The discussion about how appealing LingQ’s methodology is, might be worth a separate thread, which I may start later today.
I believe that we have solved a lot of the problems related to how to use the site. We have had strong growth in paid membership over the last 18 months as a result of a number of measures we have taken. We have made videos, increased explanations, send out messages to newbies, all about the system, and how and why it works.
Only a small percentage of visitors to the site stay. But then if people could try Rosetta Stone for free and then not pay after a month if they did not continue using it, only a small percentage would pay as well.
We are satisfied with our conversion rate. We need more traffic. We know from our statistics that traffic is what determines our conversion rate. We are largely unknown because, unlike buusu and Rosetta Stone we do not have a large promotion budget.
Bortrun;
We have advertizing for non-paying members and it generates very little revenue.
We have a form of language exchange with our tutors. We are not in favour of going the free route. There are many other sites which offer that service.
I cannot tell you how many teachers and educators I have spoken to. There are individual teachers who understand what we are doing and like it. Most are indifferent. They have their own programs and methods. But then we are always willing to try again.
Peter,
We have to be true to what we are.
Okay so let’s summarize the promotional tactics available without a huge marketing budget:
#1. Media Interviews
Advantages:
Steve is a confident public speaker, a charismatic and persuasive talker. He has a personal story to tell of multilingualism which most language enthusiasts would tend to find very interesting and inspiring. Could reach huge audiences.
Disadvantages: (None that I can think of)
#2. Classic Guerrilla Marketing
(i.e. printing promotional flyers and slipping them among the pages of dictionaries, grammars, etc in large bookstores)
Advantages:
It might not be apparent to the buyers that the flyers were unofficial – i.e. it might seem to them that LingQ had the endorsement of the big-name publisher.
Disadvantages:
It might be difficult to do this on a very large scale without having a network of LingQ-agents. And could there be legal blowback from the publishers and/or bookstores?
#3. Promotion to teachers and schools
Advantages: (Pretty much as for #1)
Disadvantages:
There is a sense in which LingQ might be perceived as a “threat” or “competitor” to professional educators. (In my opinion significant sections of the teaching profession are also institutionally leftwing and anti-Semitic – and would thus be unlikely to give Steve and/or LingQ a fair break.)
#4. Promotion at universities
Advantages:
There may be niche-markets here. For example, Theology departments where non-specialist linguists are looking to learn Ancient Greek and Hebrew; Archaeology departments where non-specialists are looking to learn Latin or Anglo-Saxon, etc. Also the central foreign language centres and language labs - inasmuch as these are separate from the main language departments.
Disadvantages:
As far as main language departments go, the same disadvantages would tend to apply as with schools (i.e. the existence of institutional hostility to outsiders.)
#5. Blogging, Youtube, Facebook, etc.
Advantages:
There could be potentially huge audiences if LingQ could do something which would “go viral”.
Disadvantages:
So many other folks are out there that it may be like shouting in a hurricane…
Are there any others that I’ve missed out?
I’m doing a lot of blogging, twitter, some videos and I’ve created a facebook page for German learners related to LingQ. Additinally I’m recording the GermanLingQ podcast with Jolanda, not for the money (I give the points to Jolanda), just to promote LingQ. I’ve added the official LingQ podcasts to a bunch of German podcast lists. What I’m interested in is if there is any effect. Unfortunately the people who come from these sources to LingQ are not listed on my reference list, only if they click on the badge, but usually I link to lessons without the chance for a reference. So I’ve no idea if I have any success. Is there any chance to get knowledge of this for me?