Comments on: Progress On UniversityTutor.com

By: Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong — Sat, 15 May 2010 02:26:20 +0000

Thanks for the info, yep Webex seems to be the high end solution and may be the way to do. Thanks!

By: Phil@financetutor

Phil@financetutor — Thu, 13 May 2010 10:40:46 +0000

Brian, thanks for responding.

We use webex. Its a paid service but comes with phone support etc. There are other free services out there which we should be evaluating too.

By: Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong — Thu, 13 May 2010 08:23:12 +0000

Thanks Phil! You said you do online tutoring. What platform do you use to work with students? Is it an online whiteboard? I’ve been looking into some options to integrate with UniversityTutor.

Thanks!
Brian

By: Phil@financetutor

Phil@financetutor — Wed, 12 May 2010 09:29:37 +0000

Hi,

Being an online tutor, I am truly understand the issue you addressed. Your though process is amazing. I like the way you have written things in a step by step process. Hope to implement it and check for results.

Thanks for the post. Keeping writing!

By: Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:16:52 +0000

Hi Raf, ahh ok my bad. Yes I do run some ads on there via Google Adsense. From my experience the majority of people buying those ads are other tutoring companies – which is ok with me because I might not have the right tutor for them in a particular area. So if they are going to leave the site anyway, I’d rather get paid for it.

But the idea of running a site with revenue purely from ads is not super exciting for me personally, unless you only want to cover hosting costs and a little more or you are trying to build the next facebook (unlikely). There is not enough money in it. Freemium as a business model (with perhaps some ads on the free accounts as a supplement to your revenue) is what I prefer.

Any other questions just let me know…
Brian

By: raf

raf — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:22:04 +0000

Hi Brian
Thank you for your reply
regarding my question about online advertising, i think i wasn’t very clear. Sorry for that. I was not asking if you are advertising your website online, but about putting adds on your website and making money from online advertising.
I think, (although i have no experience and i wanted to double check with you) that lots of universities might be interested to do some advertising on your website to target the students. Some companies might be interested to advertise for the tutors.
What if on the long run, your website becomes totally free for students/parents and tutors, and your clients become the companies, schools and universities that wants to reach them by advertising on your website? Any thoughts ?
Kind Regards
raf

By: Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:44:44 +0000

Hi Raf,

Thanks for the comment. You’re right, there is no reason I couldn’t charge both the client and tutor, it just seemed like too much of a hurdle on the client side. I haven’t delivered any value yet, and the ask them to pay first will lose 99% of people right there. With tutors you can give something away for free and only ask them to pay later.

I’m using Adwords and others for online advertising now. It accounts for about 25% of total traffic and is somewhat expensive, but converts over the long term. Hope this helps!
Brian

By: raf

raf — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:14:15 +0000

Hi Brian
First, i am really impressed by your work and I really thank you to share all this information here.
I went through your different business models (one-off fee from clients, subscription fee from tutors after trial period and the better trial period, and then the % on hours teached).
My 1st question here is why cant you use both models together and charge the client a one-off fee and the tutor a monthly subscription fee ?
Second: I have tendacy to think that online advertising is a very deep market and I am really wondering why there is no mention of it: have you tried to go this way and it didnt work out ? You dont beleive that it will boost the revenue ? or simply you are already using it and it is not really something worth mentionning (i did see some google ads though on your website) ?
Kind Regards

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