I first stumbled upon LingQ about 15 years ago. I’d seen a video of Steve’s and thought I’d give it a go - the free version anyway.
I really just didn’t get it. Ran out of LingQs almost immediately, and thought it was a complete waste of time. Any time I saw one of Steve’s videos pop up on YouTube I thought “I’m not watching that, it’s just the guy who likes to plug that weird, annoying app that serves no clear purpose”.
I’m not sure what changed. I did eventually watch Steve’s videos and something chimed with what my language learning experience had been up to that point. Maybe because I was no longer a poor student I didn’t baulk at the idea of paying for a subscription for something. Either way, I gave it a go just over a year ago and can confirm it is very useful. I use it to top up my French and Spanish which are already quite good, and I started Italian from scratch and am now on my second novel in Italian. I plan to dedicate more time to Greek in the coming year, and wouldn’t think of not having LingQ as my go to tool for doing that.
So, in short it’s a fantastic tool. Very effective. But the limitations of the free version are pretty much the main reason why LingQ didn’t have over a decades worth of business from this customer