Steve: Yeah, we will be sending out an email. Sean is working on it right now.
Sean: Definitely.
Steve: An initial email to basically explain the concept and then those of our members who want to take part they would then click and say yes I'm interested and then they would get a second email with a coupon number and some instructions as to where the coupon is used and so forth. Sean: Right, I've done the screen shots for those today and you sent me the text this afternoon so after these Tips are done then that will be the next . Steve: I wish you'd look at the text again just to make sure we all like it. You know, there's always some last minute massaging of the wording to make sure we're all happy with it because I think this could be an important initiative obviously. If we get members recommending members, we get more members recommending more members and I think in the past part of the difficulty has been you know, a member says you know you should try this, I like it, it's good, but then there's the credit card obstacle at times, it's only two weeks. I think this makes it easier for people to recommend their friends.
Mark: Well we'll see. Steve: We'll find out. Mark: We'll find out and I think it will be interesting to see what response is and it will be interesting to see what the invitees do do because our experience in the past of giving away free memberships has not been good. Jill: That's just what I was going to say. I am interested to see if those people even though they already know somebody using the system will in fact use it.
Steve: Well that's right and the difficulty we've had is that we have motivated learners and it's often difficult to pass that motivation on to someone else. But I have also heard, and this is kind of the other side of the equation, I have heard some of our members say I have been reluctant to introduce more friends to this system because I have trouble getting on to discussions right now. As I said to Sean, if I see a very good bottle of wine at the liquor store and they have a limited supply, I'm not going to tell Sean that this is good wine at a good price. I'll buy everything I can get and take it home. So, by the same token here I think some people may be a little bit concerned so we've got to do both. We've got to try to get more members and at the same time we have now been recruiting additional tutors and people will be seeing over the next two weeks or so the names of people who are coming on to help us provide more discussion opportunities. Sean: It's amazing that you brought that up because last night I was trying some Argentinean wines and I saw one sitting down by itself. It was $10. And like, it's by itself and there's a big open space, it's only $10, I've got to try it and it was really, really good. So nobody gets to find out what it is.
Steve: Ok, and they don't have anymore anyway. Sean: Exactly. It's all gone now. Steve: You can tell us now.
Sean: I don't even remember now. I'll have to look at the label for it. Steve: Oh ok.
Sean: But for $10 it was definitely very good.
Mark: Anyway I think it will be an interesting experience and if this goes well then it's something we would look at building into our site, either our current site or our new site. Building it in so there's no requirement to email us and send back instructions just to make it even easier. But we should be able to tell by the response we get and then the effect of how those invitees actually perform.
Steve: We'll have another discussion like this and we can talk about the results. Sean: The invitation thing in Vox seems to be working very well for them so maybe if done right it can be successful.
Mark: Well, yeah, I don't exactly know why they are doing that. I think partly because I think it's still in Beta. Sean: It reduces the amount of stammers.
Mark: Oh it reduces the amount of stammers for sure.
Sean: Right because you have credibility issues then.
Mark: Right. And it reduces the speed at which they have to increase their server capacity and so on. If they limit the amount of invites that are being sent out presumably because you can't go to Vox and sign up for an account. You have to ask them to give you one and I don't know if they do actually. Sean: Right.
I don't know. I asked them a couple of times for more invitations and they finally gave me four more.
Steve: Well, on the subject of Vox and podcasts and so forth I saw that letter that Carey sent around and there was some question about how quickly do we put content into the library and I think it was in reference to some news items but even in so far as podcasts, like I had a podcast on in a Vox blog this morning. How quickly does that stuff go, those new content items, how quickly are they moved to the library? What is our normal practice?
Sean: We have daily items that ? (4:34 3rd file) things that already have transcription that I don't have to send out but generally I'll try to get anything and once a week whatever I have available that needs transcription will go to Debi and the following week it will be back so I could say two week turnaround. Steve: Two week turnaround for anything we have to transcribe?
Sean: Right.
Steve: But where I have for example, I just read verbatim a post on the Vox blog this morning that kind of stuff would be typically loaded up within a few days or Sean: Yeah I could take within a couple of days. Steve: Do I have to tell you that I put it there?
Sean: If you want something put into the library you have to say here's this. Steve: It's probably a good idea. All right. Well there was one that I did this morning about vocabulary and so forth which might be of interest.
Sean: Ok.
Steve: So that's already on the Vox blog and it's a podcast and it might be worth while loading up. The other thing is there is only so many hours in a day so.
Sean: Right now it's all these email things that I'm focusing on so when I first come in in the morning I'll do content and then I'll get on with these but you do anything you want, just send me an email right after and I'll flag that and Steve: All right so I'll take the initiative then to email you if I want this put up. And obviously and we appreciate the feedback we get from our members, we really do appreciate it but obviously we can't respond to every situation immediately because there's only a small group and there is only so many hours in a day. Sean: Right.
Steve: But at least people are interested so that's good. Sean: Like that health one, there is no health content available. We managed to get that pet's thing up now I have a back log of stuff from Debi because I sent her all those CDs Mark: Oh yeah, right. Sean: So there's quite a lot of things to go in just from that. Steve: In what subjects?
Sean: The radio talk shows.
Steve: Oh Laura, Dr. Laura. They are very popular.
Jill: They are very popular.
Sean: Shannon Nelson is now Steve: You know on the subject of health there have got to be some content out there with both audio and text. Maybe not a big priority. One person asks for health, we're not going to spend three days looking for healthy content but whenever we do have an opportunity it seems to me there has to be some good health stuff out there. Sean: You'd think. Steve: You would think. Anyway.
Jill: Even if there's nothing with audio and text I would think, I mean there's got to be articles that are not copyrighted. Steve: Oh there is medical stuff that is not copyrighted.
Jill: And this woman, this woman in particular, that's what she's interested in. She's got a PhD in nursing and teaches at nursing so she's interested in Steve: Why don't we ask her to find it? Jill: Well I've already kind of, she brings it up every single time I talk to her. Steve: Ask her to find, I mean tell her find some stuff. If she can find some stuff that's not copyrighted we'll do the sound. Mark: We also have fair use because we're educational. Steve: There again, you're familiar with that, I'm not, but I think where our learners are interested in a specific subject, depending on their level but if they can find infesting websites, send us the text or send us to the websites. We can go there and we can record it.
Mark: Well we do have a forum. On the forum whether it's a thread or what you call it but a place on the forum where we ask people to suggest content that we should go after and to list actually content that they've found that might be of interest to other learners. Steve: Do we get much response there?
Mark: No we don't get much response there. Nor do we get much response on the forum. I think we have another forum where people can suggest times, discussion times that they would prefer to see and we don't get much response on there either. Mark: The more popular the blogs are getting the less popular the forum is getting.
Steve: In general in the world or just on our site?
Sean: I'd say in general in the world but on our site especially because when I was first working here I would be on the forum every morning and having discussions with people following up with new learners and everybody was talking back and forth that way. But now that we've got everybody on the blogs, that dried right up. Steve: And it's the same people. Jill: And is that technical stuff because I still have a ton of forum questions every day and I don't notice Mark: Those will stay because . Jill: You're talking about technical question type Sean: I'm talking more of just community on the blog. Mark: The questions that you get are questions related to the content and when people, ask your tutor.
Jill: Yeah.
Steve: Ok, so those are questions when people Jill: Save a word Steve: save a phrase and they ask for a tutor. That's good, that's good that that's being used. We want it to be used. Yeah.
Jill: Yeah, for sure.
Mark: I think that pretty much covers it for now.
Sean: When are we going to do the two weeks, the half price on your first month, are we going to go ahead with that instead of the free Steve: No I think this other initiative Jill: Recommend a friend. Steve: Yeah, we talked about that as another approach right?
Mark: Yeah, one doesn't preclude the other so we're going to do this invitation thing hopefully next week. At the same time now we're looking at rearranging our front pages and rearranging the content and looking at the design as well so I think probably when we launch the new design we will try no free trial, we'll try immediate sign up for half price with 100% money back guarantee Steve: For the first month. Mark: for the first month.
Sean: And the Tips and all that will be coming out at that point so people will get a lot of support.
Steve: Well we should have had the Tips; we should have the Tips by next week.
Sean: Right, but I'm saying we will have it all established and running smoothly by that point. Mark: Right. And the other thing that's interesting which I think we'll probably add too which I saw on the Aweber site was that because they also don't let people have a free trial. But what they do offer is a free E test drive is they call it which is just a series of emails over the course of a week, every day talking about a different feature that is available on the site and it's just a way for people who aren't sure, ok, send me some stuff basically is what they're saying and then they'll get introduced gradually to the system over the course of a week and hopefully sometime during that week they'll come back and sign up. Steve: It's funny, we do get emails from people who are offended by the fact that we ask for a credit card. Some people are even offended by the fact that we actually ask them to pay.
Jill: Period. Period. That we should correct writing for free.
Steve: Well that's right. There seems to be this culture on the web that thinks things are for free but realistically most people don't work for free so if we have teachers and if we have programmers and if we have staff and so forth, I think the big people is are people getting value for money because you can't go to the store and take a pair of shoes for free. You have to pay for them. But you don't want to pay $100 for a pair of shoes that fall apart in one month so the issue is really you are rewarding people who have put a lot of effort into creating something that you find of value and that's what we're trying to do with The Linguist. So, A, I don't feel at all embarrassed about asking people to pay so that we can pay the people who work here. Jill: Then we wouldn't have this service. Steve: Or we wouldn't have the service. That's right, In fact you know just as an aside, I spoke to someone from one of the Provincial governments here in Canada who saw our site and they came on and then they quickly cancelled Jill: But he never had an active account to begin with. Steve: No. No. But he didn't cancel. Mark: Oh he didn't? Steve: So I phoned him and I said you know you're with this government immigration department. Can we at least introduce you to what we're trying to do here and see if it might help you achieve your goals in your department? Oh that's ok, we're building our own. I said, ok, but you know we've already got something that we've spent five years developing. Well yeah but you probably got, you're sponsored by the BC, by the British Columbia government right? I said no. The whole assumption is that somebody somewhere somebody else is going to pay for it. In our case nobody's paying for it except ourselves and we're enjoying it and we're enjoying developing these relations with our members. So yeah, we have to charge. We think what we charge is extremely low compared to really any other similar service and certainly compared to the cost of going to a school Mark: I mean value for dollar, you know where well you learn as well as with us just about and everywhere you go probably costs you ten times if not more. Steve: I am quite confident that the person who's with us for six months will learn at least as much, if not more than someone who goes to full time school for six months. Jill: Or more.
Steve: That might sound pretentious but we've had our learners tell us. Mark: At least as much.
Steve: Let's say it's the same. Mark: But we know it's not. Steve: Ok, but let's say it's the same with us for six months, the person stays at home and spends $195 US. If they go to school they have to travel, say to Vancouver, they have to pay $150 for registration, another $150 for this and Jill: A thousand dollars for that. Steve: And then they spend $1200 a month for six months so that's $6,000-$7,000 versus $200. At any rate enough of that. Another issue people get offended at is that we ask for a credit card for the trial but the point is that when we had an open free, you know, with our trial comes a tutor, comes writing correction, come a bunch of services and when you have it totally free two things happen. One, you get a number of people who are not the slightest bit interested in your program but oh it's free, sure have a look. No I didn't like it. Good bye. Plus the number of people who have told us that I've paid for my month, I haven't got my writing in yet, I'd better write because the month is over or I better get my discussion, I'd better take advantage of it, there's no question that once you have made a commitment and giving your credit card information is a commitment even though you are not going to be charged, it's a form of commitment. So, those people are more likely to put the effort in. So that's kind of the justification. I hope, you know, some people might still be offended but Mark: You hope? Steve: it's basically the results. No. I hope people understand why we do it. It's basically a necessity. Jill: Right.
Mark: Yeah I mean even on the whole issue of paying for stuff on the internet, it really irks me because you go to a site where they are providing a neat service and they are making it available free but then they ask for donations. That really bugs me.
Jill: Or extra thing that you can pay.
Mark: Extra things, that's one thing. Steve: That's ok. Mark: The core thing is free and then you pay for extra stuff, that's ok, but if they have a service and it's free and aren't we holy but if you want to support us with donations, that's very much appreciated. So what you're saying is I have made something that's of value to people. Rather than charge them a fair price for it I'm going to beg for money. That' really bugs me. Why is begging better than charging a fair price?
Steve: Not just begging. I'm going to make some people pay and other people are going to get it for free. Mark: Exactly.
Steve: And it's not necessarily the people will more money who are going to be the ones who pay. Mark: No for sure not.
Steve: It's going to be the more conscious people who are going to pay and they may or may not be the ones who can afford to pay and very often the people who could afford to pay a lot but hey that's good, free yeah. Good I'll take it. It makes always a lot more sense to have something that is reasonably priced, good value for money and those who want to use it, they will pay.
Mark: And to be fair I think if we are able to offer that and convince people that that's what we offer I think people are happy to pay. Sean: Yeah, and we have that. We have the free service which the Lesson of the Day, and then we have the pay service which is the premium one with all the extra components to it.
Mark: Ok.
