Oscar,
Anderson owns the rights to his book and can do what he wants, anyone else has to abide by these copyright terms. I can give away my property, but not your property.
I regularly buy books on the internet. I will by better apps, like dictionaries, for my iPod touch even though free ones are available. Free is a price, just like one cent or one dollar. The price has to match the value of the product when compared to the competitive products available. The price is determined by the owner of the product, and has to take market conditions into account, like the availability of free stuff.
We do not know whether our members would pay 5, 25 or 50 points for member created content. Members would only be able to charge for content that they had created, where they own the copyright. I would imagine that any third party content at LingQ would have to remain free.
By the way, when we had paid content at the Linguist, the cost per lesson was between 10 and 50 points as I remembers, mostly around 25 or 35. I am not against the idea of allowing our content creators to charge what they want for their lessons. Once we add our expanded Notes page they can add explanations and notes. They can also add translations and videos. I believe that our members are creating wonderful lessons and can get even more creative with these additional tools. I believe that this should be better rewarded. Maybe we should set up some way for them to advertize their lessons as well.
With regard to the tipping jar, I once research a wonderful website put out by a theatre troupe in the US, where they offered free recordings of stories. It was quite a popular site with teachers and learners and people interested in hearing stories. They had a tipping jar, and eventually gave up as they only made $250 dollars a year via donations. We are not Wikipedia. Tipping revenues would not amount to much, in my view.
I am philosophically opposed to the tipping jar. It is not obvious that those with more income would tip more. It is, in my view, fairer to put a price on a product and have everyone pay. Everyone would include “free” members. Free members who create content or tutor will earn points, the rest will not be able to access this content.
These are just thoughts. We have not decided anything and want to hear everyone’s views.
Sorry for the typos.
One day we will be able to edit the Forum. Maybe that should be sooner rather than later, so that people writing in their target language can go back and fix up their posts after correction. Of course for natives, like me, who make spelling and typos, there should be no editing function to expose their carelessness.
Just to put my point clear,
Edwin said:
“This is the law under the science of Internet economy. Content itself ‘wants’ to be free
[…]
If you want to understand more about the economy of ‘free’, read Chris Anderson’s book ‘Free’.”
To my surprise, although the book is also offered for free, it’s also being sold on Amazon. According to the first statement, the content of that book doesn’t seem to want to be free in some cases.
Also, from Edwin’s opinions, what I understood is that people who wants to charge for their content (not in LingQ, in general) are silly, old-fashioned people who don’t understand how economics work (“free economics” I should say).
I am not against the book of this author, who I guess has very interesting stuff to read. I am against the ideas of trying to force people to adopt a phisolophy or model because there are strange laws that the rest of mortals don’t understand, or the world should be in other way, or the people should behave differently.
Let the people decide what they want to do. That is the authentic freedom.
@Steve: ‘free’ is a price. In fact it is a special price. It has some strange ‘emotion’ attached. The margin between free and 1 penny is largely different from the margin between 1 penny and 2 pennies.
Successful marketers (not only Internet marketers, but marketers in general) know how to play around with the concept of ‘free’. We see slogans like “buy one get one free”, which is really not free.
Like Angela said, the point is not to give everything away for free. But one has to strategically give away stuff that he might think is of value. The decision would look irrational at first. But if the strategy works, he will be able to make much more back in some other way.
@Oscar: I think you are adding words to my posts, and I will not comment of something I have never said.
“This is the law under the science of Internet economy. Content itself ‘wants’ to be free.
[…]
If you want to understand more about the economy of ‘free’, read Chris Anderson’s book ‘Free’.”
is exactly what you said in the page 3 of this thread (April 25, 2011 03:07). I am not adding or modifying anything.
"I have submitted a Chinese writing a few days ago, but I do not get it corrected. " - hape from another thread.
@Peter: I guess the writing correction service at LingQ also varies.
@Hape: are you writing philosophical essays? It seems like your writings tend to take longer time to be corrected. 
Lang-8 has fast turn-around time (usually within a day). I hear this from other users and have personally experienced it. If I have long essays, I would break it up to chunks of 2-3 paragraphs, and I only use simple sentence structures.
Unlike content, I personally think services should be paid for. So I am not against the idea of charging writing corrections. But if we really want to encourage members to write more (as currently discussed in some other threads), this is something worth a try.
@Oscar: you added […] (just kidding) I am assuming that you are earning good points in your tutoring services (I am one of your customer too). I think you should use your free content to build your brand, so to attract more people to sign up with you. I don’t see why you would want to jeopardize this business model.
@steve - Maybe we should set up some way for them to advertize their lessons as well.
@edwin - “building your brand”
Um…I’m not used to jumping into raging debates…but I was thinking that the profile pages could be enhanced so that the tutors could do this. Some of them already try by listing their services and lessons, in their bios, but the bio isn’t very eye-catching. And it is also possible to see a bit about their conversation/writing correction acitivities…
But what if it were possible to access all of a tutor’s services directly from the profile page? When I pick up my German study again, I could go directly to, say, Vera’s page to book a conversation, send a writing, or, most importantly for me, link to her lessons. These might only be links to the places we already go to do these things, but we could access them from tutor’s page.
This helps a tutor build his/her “brand”. It also gives Lingq a “face” for beginners who might feel alone in their Lingq adventures.
@edwin, Oh yes, Edwin, I am earning so much money on LingQ, that I am planning to buy the whole Internet.
By the way, in my opinion, the only person who seems wanting to jeopardize LingQ is you by promoting Lang-8 through several posts.
That is a great idea Jingle.
I also think we can help our tutor/providers more, advertizing them more in our blogs and on the internet. It is in all of our interest to build up the brand of our favourite tutor/providers.
I prefer the model where tutors and correctors are paid for and earn from their activities, however little they earn at the present time. I wish it were more.
In that sense providing free correction would serve no purpose for LingQ, nor would providing a platform for free discussions. Such services exist elsewhere.
The decision on what to charge for content should be up to the creator. Unfortunately this is not possible at LingQ now, and it may be that it is not possible to get paid for this wonderful content when competing against free content. I am not against trying again, however, or at least letting the providers try.
In so far as using content as a lost leader for tutoring, this is also up to each tutor. Far more people use content than sign up for tutoring services, however. The content is the main product at LingQ, so to speak. From a business point of view it is tough to give away your largest volume product and then hope to make it back in a minor service activity.
Unfortunately tutoring and writing correction are still minor activities at LingQ. We are looking at ways to make it more attractive and easier for people to interact with tutors,but still based on our present paid model.
@Jingle: personal branding is more than putting up a profile page with some introduction video attached. People build blogs, interact with their potential customers, etc.
@Oscar: I assume most of us here know about Lang-8. I apologize if I have revealed something that should have been kept secret.
Who else was with LingQ when they had the paid content system a few years afo? I can’t just be the only one. Perhaps they could share some insights.
We had far fewer members then Edwin. We were new.
Steve,
The content could be the main product at LingQ, but in my opinion, it wouldn’t worth much if you take away the LingQ system that is built around it. The content is replaceable, but not the system.
Tutoring service is still an area that has not hit 'zero' yet, and both you and the tutors should focus on how to leverage this opportunity, until one day somebody comes with another crazy idea to offer language tutoring for free. It sounds crazy now. A few years ago, free writing correction service was unimaginable to me. I am not trying to promote any outside service, but this one serves as a very good example (at least to me) that some services could become free overnight. We should always be watchful.
I suggested to offer writing correction for free with several reasons:
- You want to promote members to write more (right?)
- You are currently competing with ‘free’ anyway. Why not?
- LingQ is not going to take much financial hit. If I am not mistaken, most of the points go to the correctors anyway.
- There will still be volunteers. You will give them a chance to ‘build their brands’ for speaking tutoring services
- The correctors can encourage the correctees to sign up for additional speaking tutoring services.
#1 means more writing. #5 would encourage more speaking. #4 and #5 would ease the problem with frustrated tutors. You are killing 3 birds with one stone.
Ok, may be I am too optimistic. But for sure it would be better than trying something that had failed before.
This is a great discussion. I am going skiing now and look forward to more comment from others.
Re your points.
- I am interested in promoting more writing only as part of our existing paid tutoring system.I want to build up LingQ as an elite place for better tutoring and correcting services, just as LingQ is an elite place to learn languages and interact with a select group of learners and native speakers.
I feel we will get better quality if people are paid. If we hear complaints we can talk to tutors or correctors. If the service is free we have no right to say anything. If people want free correcting there are other sites.
- We compete with free in everything we do. So does Rosetta Stone, Wall Street Institute, and the local language school. The consumer decides.
Yea, I enjoy tutoring right now, though I am 16 I think i still offer valuable tutor sessions. I am happy with how many points I get, I mean it does pose a problem about the 3 months elimination but I believe if I work hard I can reach the goal of 10,000 to cash in. So thats kind of my question to, Steve, what do you think about 16 year old tutors? like would you be tutored by someone in high school? or do you think security rests with a more qualified older tutor.
I would normally prefer to talk to someone older. To me the discussions are opportunities to engage native speakers in conversation. I prefer to talk to people with whom I am more likely to have common interests. However, we may have other learners who would prefer to talk to a 16 year old tutor, quite possibly, although not exclusively, people of a similar age group.
Would you not prefer to talk to someone in your age group in the language that you are learning?
Ethan, if you are interested in attracting people to sign up for your lessons, you may consider providing interesting content. People will then know who you are.
As a pure and quite active consumer of tutors’ service…
-
The idea regarding symbolic payment for hand-made content seems pretty interesting. Though it’ll obviously make me more cautious while choosing new lesson, I’ll be glad to reward those tutors, who provide really interesting (for me) content.
-
Writing submission in its current implementation is totally unappealing. Here it costs too much, if we compare it to more usefull and “live” speaking sessions. To practise writing I use free services like SharedTalk where I can write really extensively, thousands of words in one evening, getting ongoing fast&free corrections from native speakers.
I really like the writing correction engine here at LingQ (those amazing green&yellow marks, diagram, you know ) But every time I think about submitting paltry 150 words or having lively 15 minute discussion… No chances for writing.
“I prefer to talk to people with whom I am more likely to have common interests.”
Yes, me too!
But that would be the next level - I have still big problems to find a French tutor who is available around 8 - 9 am in the morning CET (even without common interests 