When do points come through for tutoring on LingQ?

I’m just wondering when the points in my account will come through for tutoring at LingQ. It’s the first time I’ve done it so I’m not sure.

Thanks.

You get the points when you send the report to the student.

Oh. I missed the lesson on Friday because of confusion with the times. I then sent a lesson report saying ‘student did not show’. Me and the student re-arranged the lesson for yesterday. I then sent him the report via e-mail because I couldn’t send it via LingQ. Do I need to let Mark or Steve know me and the student had the lesson eventually?

Yes, you should contact Mark. Do only click on “Student did not show” if you are not willing to do the conversation. Otherwise you are not able to send the report. I usually cancel the conversation and make a new arrangement. When I cancel the conversation the student get back his points and can easily make a new appointement (But you don’t have to do this. This is your choice).

I think there is a maybe a bug. I thought the rule is that if a tutor is willing to have the conversation and the student missed the conversation the tutor would be payed if he click on “Student did not show”.

@ anthony123 - It looks like your learner was using his free Getting Started conversation to speak with you. That means he paid no points and you will get no points. We do require tutors to provide this free conversation and it often leads to future paid conversations with these learners. Hopefully, your next conversation will earn you some points! :slight_smile:

Didn’t the tutor get a note that it is a free conversation?

I didn’t get any note when I did mine, just found out when I sent the report.

If you don’t want to give that first free conversation then you have to set up only group conversations (newbies can’t book for those).

No, at the moment there is no notice that it is a free conversation. That is in our list of improvements. In the meantime, you can use the learners statistics as a guide to the possibility that they will be free. Sorry about that.

I’m not sure, but if a learner uses the 500 points for writing correction then tutors get paid, don’t they? I had the impression because a student sent me writing entitled “LingQ 101, Getting Started” and I got points for that. But maybe he was a paying member.
Or has this been changed? Do new students just get a “Free conversation” voucher and no points now?

Reinhard that is a little known secret… :wink:

We expect most users will use the points for a conversation which is provided by the tutor for free. However, if a user does use it for writing, the tutor will get paid even though we don’t. We will monitor how often this happens and it is happening a lot, we will restrict Getting Started points from being used there. Keep in mind that we have instituted the free points to get more users speaking to our tutors and hopefully seeing the benefit so that they pay for future conversations.

“We do require tutors to provide this free conversation and it often leads to future paid conversations with these learners.”
"You can use the learners statistics as a guide to the possibility that they will be free. Sorry about that. "

Tutors of the LingQ, unite!

It is this writer’s view that the management should pay for promotion costs, if this is really a commercial site.

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I wonder where we are.

“No taxation without representation.”

Yutaka, Thank you for pointing that out. Some time ago there was a discussion about this topic on the forum. I’m not glad about the situation. But I got the feeling that I’m strange because I was the only one who complained about this. Others said that they’ll try it. Steve told me I can cancel the conversations if someone signed up for a free conversation. But now Mark explained that I get no note if this happens. Now I checked my points and … yes, there was a free conversation. The student never showed up again. That was exactly my concern when Steve and Mark introduced this model for free conversation.

I think it is okay if Mark and Steve wants offer free conversations. But I don’t want to offer it. It is an advertisement for LingQ not for me as Mark and Steve want to see it. I need no advertisement. I think tutors should be able to set “no free conversations” on their profile. That would be fair.

The solution to offer only group discussions don’t work because if I want to offer 3 hours that I’m available on LingQ I have to create 12 group discussions if I want to enable students to sign up for more than 15 minutes. I have students who usually sign up for 30 or 45 minutes. So I need a lot more time to create conversations in this way. And the lessons page looks strange if I do this as you can imagine. At the moment I’m thinking about offering no conversations. I would only set up conversation if my “old” students ask for a conversation.

I do a lot of things for LingQ for free. No one has asked for it. I do it liberally because I like LingQ. But now I’m forced to offer conversations for free. And I really hated when I’m forced to do things. Sorry. Yutaka has touched a sore spot.

By the way, I’m a paying member. Isn’t it a bit strange that I should offer conversations for free?

Oh. I had no idea that we had to give free conversations. It seems a bit harsh on the tutor, especially as if you have to disrupt other plans to make the conversation.

This subject has been discussed at great length. We would like to encourage our new learners to experience the benefits of talking to a tutor, someone who might encourage them in their discovery of LingQ. It is also a way for the tutor to get to know learners who might become their students. We do not feel that this is a big burden. If you find a new member has signed up for a discussion feel free to cancel if you think the member is new and not paying for the lesson. As to whether there is some way of identifying these non-paying discussion participants, over to Mark.

How big a problem has this been for tutors, in fact?

The major reason we did this was to encourage more members to try speaking with our tutors. This mostly benefits the tutors.Yes, we are using it as a marketing tool for the site, but mostly it is a marketing tool for the tutors, which is why we don’t feel badly asking tutors to do it. Most of our tutors don’t seem to have a problem with it. I do agree that we need to tell the tutor that this can happen and include an alert when this type of conversation is created. We will do this.

@ Yutaka: will you be leading the Vancouver Tea Party? If you were a tutor, I would have to start learning Japanese, simply to see whether you would give free trial lessons…