Pay or not to pay?

Open Forum
1

We have so much members here who are interested on LingQ. They are helpful with answers in the forums when others are asking, often they are providers too but when I am looking on their profile, they are most Free members.

Perhaps we can have here information from Free members why they don’t want to be a paying member. Are they missing any help or tools? Have they any problems? Is it enough what they can have as Free? What are they missing at LingQ?

Perhaps some of them do not notice that points for conversation or writing are cheaper for a Basic member (50% !!!)

2

I have just joined in the last week, I will probably upgrade to a basic member (at least for a month or two) but am improing my language skills until then to make it worthwhile, because if I write/speak now, there won’t be much I can write/say.

3

I plain to pay in the future, but right now I can’t but I spread the word about lingqbecause it is a great website. my goal is to bring more to lingq money and members. remember that a present free memder is a future pay member.

thanks james

4

Exactly. A present free member will be a future paying member. Don’t worry too much about it.

5

No, Vincent, not always. Many people continue to use the site free of charge.

However, a much larger group of people come and do not use the site at all. We first have to improve the ease of use and attractiveness of the site to the point that more people do more things on our site. We will also be developing more reasons for joining as a paying member. But all of this takes time since our resources are limited.

6

Well the simple fact is, is that most people will use the site as non paying members, it’s just the way the internet works and where the economy is heading. When people start to need tutors then they’ll start to pay. When I need a French tutor in the future, I’ll upgrade to something more than basic. At this point for spanish I should be grandmother more and lingq doesn’t offer anything for Polish…

The simple fact is that internet startups that seek to make a profit through premium content do not survive, if you need case studies type in anything plus a ‘.com’. People don’t seem get this yet, that the old form is dead. I would say free members should have to deal with ads or something… I don’t have the answer but leaning towards making all your profit through premium content probably isn’t the best strategy…

7

If I would like to pay I could not because paypal only accept credit card payment in my country and I never use credit card on the internet. I suggested to add moneybookers as a payment option.

That said I do not think I would pay for what I get up to now.

Many reasons…

On livemocha I could never make other hear my speaking exercises - the recording option never works for me. Here you need to pay to try it. The only way I will be sure it works here would be to be able to record my speaking in mp3 and upload the file to my tutor.

About the mp3 and the transcribe - I have already a lot of data - all free from the internet. Lingq is one more source for that - a lot of what is available here is available elsewhere - often in a more easy way and with a best preview on the technical quality of recording and difficulty of language. And with a best preview on the quantity of data available (I do not mean the size of the file but the number of them).

We pay here to use the lingq (the vocabulary learning tool) well I have free softwares which do the same - offline

We also pay for tutor but I do not know the quality of the tutors. For what I read from tutors in my native language - their quality is not worthy the price.

I would like to see statistic on the community how many people are native speakers in my target languages - how many of them target my native language - how many are active members and so on…

I get an email telling me one member puts me as her friend but I do not see anything on the site ? Now I take her as a friend but what is the advantage ?

I understand the site needs money but the site also needs members

I also think the price is a lot too high. The minimal of 10 usd is half what I pay for internet and internet is more expensive here than in the neighbouring countries.

Do you pay something to website owners where you take material from. I know they puts their matrerial for free but I am about sure you are not supposed to make money out of what they offer for free. I know we pay for all the work beside but all your work with the lingq would have no (or a lot less) value without the material of other websites. You do not pay money to members who import material either that they takes from the internet or that they produce of their own.

I hope I am helpfull - Strong criticss are still more positive than silence, I think

8

One of the weaknesses of LingQ is that new members do not pick up all the functionality of the site very quickly, I propose that this is may be your case. I will address some of your statements one at a time.

“On livemocha I could never make other hear my speaking exercises - the recording option never works for me. Here you need to pay to try it. The only way I will be sure it works here would be to be able to record my speaking in mp3 and upload the file to my tutor.”

I am not sure what you mean. If you want to add something to the library, you record it, transcribe it and import it. If you need a tutor you arrange a time for speaking or you send some writing for correction.

"About the mp3 and the transcribe - I have already a lot of data - all free from the internet. Lingq is one more source for that - a lot of what is available here is available elsewhere - often in a more easy way and with a best preview on the technical quality of recording and difficulty of language. And with a best preview on the quantity of data available (I do not mean the size of the file but the number of them). "

I invite you to share your sources, we can add them to a database of copyrighted audio and matching transcripts.

"We pay here to use the lingq (the vocabulary learning tool) well I have free softwares which do the same - offline "

Could you share this resource so we can see if it is equivalent in connectivity to dictionaries, ability to pick up surrounding phrases, highlighting capability across texts, ability to reference examples across texts, etc ?

'We also pay for tutor but I do not know the quality of the tutors. For what I read from tutors in my native language - their quality is not worthy the price."

Could you give examples? Or if you feel it is too sensitive in a public forum, feel free to email examples to the people who operate the site.

"I would like to see statistic on the community how many people are native speakers in my target languages - how many of them target my native language - how many are active members and so on… "

You can get that info through the Friend search function. It is not aggregated on your personal profile page, but I don’t think that is important to a huge number of people.

"I get an email telling me one member puts me as her friend but I do not see anything on the site ? Now I take her as a friend but what is the advantage ? "

I agree. That should be fixed.

"Do you pay something to website owners where you take material from. I know they puts their matrerial for free but I am about sure you are not supposed to make money out of what they offer for free. I know we pay for all the work beside but all your work with the lingq would have no (or a lot less) value without the material of other websites. You do not pay money to members who import material either that they takes from the internet or that they produce of their own. "

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that LingQ itself just provides a platform and doesn’t produce content, instead using member created content or importing non copyrighted content. First, LingQ has produced a huge amount of original content. Second, the platform needs programmers to maintain and build it, which cost money. To see the value of this platform you have to appreciate the functionality of it.

1 Like
9

I want to emphasise “copyrighted audio and matching transcripts” is for personal use, not to be shared on the site.

10

I have every intention of becoming a paying member, since recently getting back into the system after quite a hiatus. The main reason is, of course, the limitation on the number of words you can save. Although I could simply delete them when I hit the limit or transfer all my vocab to my SRS, it becomes more awkward with every language you add. Not to mention, it’s more convenient to have all your saved words highlighted for each content item you open, rather than just the ones you haven’t deleted. So once I hit the limit with Spanish, I’ll become a paying member for sure.

11

This is an interesting discussion. Here is how I see it.

First of all we need more active users. The advantages of LingQ, and its ease of use, in other words the overall attractiveness of the site, is not strong enough for enough people, yet. We intend to fix this. Even people who love LingQ have trouble persuading their friends to use, and that includes me. As Vera pointed out on a German thread, most people are probably not prepared to invest the effort needed to learn. Perhaps only 10% of people who sign up here are prepared to put in the time. However, we are not getting even that 10%.

We are going to make LingQing easier, and to make the benefits of LingQing greater and more obvious. We are going to make it easier to understand what to do. We are going to improve the Library to make it easier to find content you like and at your level. We are going to make it easier to LingQ outside LingQ. We are going to make it easier to export and import lists of words and phrases, and much more. We want people to create many more LingQs, and to grow their vocabulary. Vocabulary growth is the key to language learning in my view, while the major learning activity is listening and reading.

Ultimately we want to rely on people paying $10 a month because they feel it is worth it for the advantages of participating in this learning community, which integrates the language learning process in a convenient and effective way, provides unique functionality, allows people from around the world to interact and help each other. To provide this service costs money, a lot of money. We need revenue to cover this cost.

The internet is a competitive space. We are not entitled to anything. We have to earn the following of people who see value in our service . We are not there yet. However, I believe we will reach a tipping point, and then interest in LingQ will spread. We think that is the best way to promote the site. In any case we cannot afford to spend lots of money on promotion.

FREE members add to our in house dictionary (User Hints) every time they LingQ, and in some cases they contribute content. If they are active, they will spread the word.

We will not charge for content, premium or otherwise. We receive the content free of charge and pass it on free of charge, this cannot change.

We do not have enough traffic to live from ads, but this might be a solution for FREE members in the future.

It takes time to integrate a payment system with LingQ. We are going to stay with PayPal. PierreM, I assume you can understand that we cannot add a new payment system every time one user, who may or may not be prepared to pay in any case, asks for it.

As for your objections to LingQ, Dooo has answered but I would add the following.

  1. Unlike Livemocha, we do not have learners recording themselves in order to have others in the community comment on it. This is not a function that we offer. We may in the future.

  2. There is great content available on the internet and there are many excellent learning tools, ranging in price from free to very expensive. The consumer has a great choice. Not everyone will want to use LingQ.

  3. Your idea of what makes a great tutor is different from mine. I do not look for academic degrees, but rather the personality of the tutor. But here again that is each consumer’s choice. We intend to enable more of our learners to tutor each other. We are developing the Community and Friend functions and I expect we will see more Friends tutoring each other and helping each other in different ways in the future.

  4. LingQ provides a service, one that not all will find useful. We cannot please everyone. We are one of many options available on the internet. Language learners have a choice today that did not exist 20 years ago. LingQ is but one example.

12

Interesting is, that on other places where an offer is free too you have to register.

I am asking, is FREE possible because they use my address for advertisement?
Then, I like more to pay a fee and be sure, my address is not used for this.

I wonder, here in LingQ you are able to earn points without being a paying member.
Why should those members pay?

13

I am not a paying member. First of all since i havent got any way to pay. I havent got Visa or Mastercard and I am to young to have paypal.

If I had a way to pay I am not sure if I would have done it. I have other resources which works almost as good. I have to say I find many of the German text boring. I find it more interesting reading newspapers, listening to radio shows and podcast in German than reading texts here.

The only thing I use Lingq in at the moment is Spanish. I am using the “Who is she?” series. I find it helpfull that the text is in both English and Spanish, but the translation seems different in some parts. Not that I know since I dont know much Spanish.

I find the vocabulary thing in Lingq bad. I am using Anki, which works much better. It gives me a set of words each day and I rate how well I know it. If I say its har it will show up the same day or the day after and if I say it is easy it might not show up for another 12 days. In Anki a word is never learned and I will be able to be reminded of the word less and less frequentley for each time I review it. So I am not tempted to pay to be able to save more words here. I only save them to be able to look them up quickly, but I could have done it with some other program to and I delete them when I know them quite well.

For the clicking on a word and then getting the translation part I am lucky enough to have a software called iFinger. I can doubble click anything anywhere and it will translate the word into Norwegian. In Lingq I only get the English translation which isnt a big problem since I usually understand it, but IFinger is easier.

Because of these thing I dont want to pay since I feel that I would be paying for something I could get for free. For the tutoring part I wouldnt pay either. I usually have no problems finding people to chat with on the internet in my target language. Then I can also find people who are around my age and have got my intrests, which make them the perfect tutor. If I pay here I dont know what the tutors are like and I might discover that I dont get a long with them or have anything I want ot talk with them about. Since I havent got any problems finding people to talk with for free I cant see why I should pay for getting someone here. I really dont want tutoring, but people to talk to in my target language and then it works better to find them myself somewhere on a big language exchange site, than on Lingqs small community.

I have to say that I like Lingq, but it is not the only site I use and I find other sites easier to use, even though most of them havent got all of the things Lingq has, but by using serveal sites I find that I get everything I want, for free. I guess your problem is that many sites offer the same things as you for free.

I like that you have got audio for so many texts which makes it good to use in the beginning stages. You have got beginner texts which is hard to find other places unless you buy a language learning course. Thats why I am still here, but when my SPanish gets a bit better I will be able to read harder texts and then it will be easier finding texts I understand other places and with my use of iFinger and Anki I will have almost the same things as I have on Lingq. There are many podcasts I can listen to and read at the same time.

Just my thoughts. Please bear with my spelling and grammar mistakes and feel free to ask if something is unclear.

Victoria

14

Irene,

There are many free sites on the internet still trying to figure out how to make money. Youtube lost 5oo million dollars or something last year.

Free members can earn points for contributing content or by tutoring. They no longer earn points for being learner of the month.

I think the biggest reason for paying is the ability to keep more than 300 points in your database. I learn most of my words by seeing them highlighted in yellow in new content.

15

Irene wrote:
“I wonder, here in LingQ you are able to earn points without being a paying member. Why should those members pay?”

I’m not sure a free member can earn any points (even from content they have uploaded). I think I read something a long a whie ago that you had to be a paying member to actually earn points - which is good.

16

Victoria,

  1. Boring or interesting is subjective. We have a variety of podcasts in German for advanced learners, and excellent content in German for beginners. You can also import texts.

  2. “Who is she” is one of several beginner contents that are available in many languages. Slight variation in translation is not really an important consideration in the long run. You just need exposure to the language and a chance to start acquiring words and phrases.

  3. I am not a fan of spaced repetition systems like Anki. I prefer to learn my words either in the texts that I read, where I find my words highlighted in yellow, or else I study in the Vocabulary section and choose what to review. Our LingQ email is just a reminder to me to review my words.

I like our system that is just me. Other people have their favourite SRS systems and we will make it easier to export lists to other SRS systems in the future.

  1. iFinger offers connections to dictionaries of your choice, for at least some of which you pay, from what I can see. We are also increasing the choice of dictionaries available and could easily add dictionaries for Norwegian if there is a demand to do so.

  2. Having experienced some of the language exchange sites, I prefer a more structured approach. However, I agree that we we need to make it easier for people to connect. However, it is not obvious that everyone wanting to talk in a language will also want to offer discussions in her own language, nor that her language is of interest. So I think the points system will prove more flexible and assure better quality in the long run. We have work to do in this area.

I appreciate you commenting in such detail. I recognize that there are other options. We want to make LingQ a learning community and learning space that is attractive to as many people as possible. I fully understand that many people will prefer other solutions.

17

Jeff,

I will have to check with Mark, but I think that all content providers earn points. Most of our keen content providers are paying members, however. I think you can argue either way on whether they should earn points. I think it does tend to engage people and increase the likelihood that they will become paying members.

You will, in the future, be seeing increasing differences in the benefits of paying membership and the inconvenience of FREE membership. However, there will always be a value to FREE membership.

18

I think ‘engaging’ people is the key. People will come here to learn for free and then after some time, when they feel it’s worth it, will start to pay, and seeing that they can help by adding content and getting questions on it is what will build the community and for some eventually make them paying members…

19

I like Victoria a lot.

I also use ifinger I did not know anki - I will try it. I use interlex to review my vocabulary and create my own dictionnaries.

Beside ifinger there are a lot of free dictionnaries online or offline go to Dictionnaires en ligne dans toutes les langues : index LEXILOGOS on this site I also get a translator of russian alphabet into french or german phonetic translation in western alphabet and virtual keyboards to easily type the letter that I do not have on my french keyboard.

For spanish I like

http://www…spanishpodcast.org about 40h+ of mp3 and pdf -
http://www.albalearning.com offer books in text and audio some in 2 or 3 languages, spanish, french and english

Both sites have the same negative point - one voice only each

For german I like Deutsche Welle
www.dw-world.de

Deutsche warum nicht for beginners
Wieso nicht for more advanced study
Then their nachrichten - the news audio and text

From them I also try missioneurope which offer one version to learn german, one french and one polish -

What I am looking for is transcribing of what I have in audio only from mp3 or from tv - and I prefer to exchange the same service for people who want to learn french than to pay for it.

No more time today I come back tomorrow

20

@Jeff
you are right, I read it too a while ago that only paying members are able to earn points and I think that would be correct.