Our cut is 5% (like kickstarter), it's on the 'getting paid' faq page which we should make more prominent (it will be a big button on the confirm-your-email page).
Public no-login sample course is on the way!
Accessing your customers, they are listed in the participants page you get on the 'my courses' dashboard. Probably a csv export or something would be good, yes?
No problem. I'd just add the 5% thing right on the homepage (step 3), don't make me wait until signing up :). [Or rather, I won't bother signing up until I know the cut]. 5% is really good by the way; udemy takes 30%.
Customer export would be good. Might want to have some aweber / mailchimp integration but that's a good v1.
I think you're right, there's no reason not to explain our fee on the frontpage, and just link right there to the help page that goes into detail (update: added :)).
I'll also definitely add a csv export to the participants list, and do you mean some kind of mailchimp integration so you can send announcements and whatnot to your participants? That's an interesting idea we've thrown around a bit already.
As for Udemy's 30%, wow! Udemy is much more of a full-service sort of thing, it seems to me. More formal, they appear to do a lot of promotion and have a ton of community tools and so on. I think ultimately while both are about e-courses, they aren't really in the same market.
This is against my interests, but I was trying to imply that you are undercharging :). 5% is very cheap for hosting, charging, handling customer service, etc. You could probably charge 10-15%, and reduce it to 5-10% in volume (course sells over $xxxx for its lifetime). Gumroad, which is a simpler use case, charges 5%.
For the mailing list, I'd want a mailing list I own to be auto-updated once the user opts-in (vs me having to export then import into MailChimp separately, redoing confirmation emails, etc.).
Well, thanks a lot for your thoughts/insight on the subject. We discussed/thought/slept on it at length and still think the price is right.
The biggest single piece that convinces us is that the people we're aiming at are hobbyists. They are already using free tools (often wordpress + plugins, or similar) and only pay PayPal fees. We want them to stop screwing around setting up custom blogs and password protecting them (posts are 'lessons', upload videos to vimeo and password protect those too, etc) and use something end-to-end/hosted instead, for which they pay a small cut of their revenue.
As I mentioned earlier it's the same fee structure as kickstarter, and it seems to work well for them.
Comments
As an e-course creator, some quick feedback:
* My very first question: What's your cut? Have a FAQ page listed prominently.
* Have a public, no-login, sample course so I can see what it looks like end-to-end. How are courses branded?
* How can I access my customers, esp. ones I refer from my site? Do I get an email list? Will you be sending them info on your own mailing list?
* Can I sign up with Facebook/Google/Twitter (I don't want yet another account)
Hey thanks for the notes!
Our cut is 5% (like kickstarter), it's on the 'getting paid' faq page which we should make more prominent (it will be a big button on the confirm-your-email page).
Public no-login sample course is on the way!
Accessing your customers, they are listed in the participants page you get on the 'my courses' dashboard. Probably a csv export or something would be good, yes?
Working on signup with twitter.
Thanks again!
No problem. I'd just add the 5% thing right on the homepage (step 3), don't make me wait until signing up :). [Or rather, I won't bother signing up until I know the cut]. 5% is really good by the way; udemy takes 30%.
Customer export would be good. Might want to have some aweber / mailchimp integration but that's a good v1.
I think you're right, there's no reason not to explain our fee on the frontpage, and just link right there to the help page that goes into detail (update: added :)).
I'll also definitely add a csv export to the participants list, and do you mean some kind of mailchimp integration so you can send announcements and whatnot to your participants? That's an interesting idea we've thrown around a bit already.
As for Udemy's 30%, wow! Udemy is much more of a full-service sort of thing, it seems to me. More formal, they appear to do a lot of promotion and have a ton of community tools and so on. I think ultimately while both are about e-courses, they aren't really in the same market.
This is against my interests, but I was trying to imply that you are undercharging :). 5% is very cheap for hosting, charging, handling customer service, etc. You could probably charge 10-15%, and reduce it to 5-10% in volume (course sells over $xxxx for its lifetime). Gumroad, which is a simpler use case, charges 5%.
For the mailing list, I'd want a mailing list I own to be auto-updated once the user opts-in (vs me having to export then import into MailChimp separately, redoing confirmation emails, etc.).
Well, thanks a lot for your thoughts/insight on the subject. We discussed/thought/slept on it at length and still think the price is right.
The biggest single piece that convinces us is that the people we're aiming at are hobbyists. They are already using free tools (often wordpress + plugins, or similar) and only pay PayPal fees. We want them to stop screwing around setting up custom blogs and password protecting them (posts are 'lessons', upload videos to vimeo and password protect those too, etc) and use something end-to-end/hosted instead, for which they pay a small cut of their revenue.
As I mentioned earlier it's the same fee structure as kickstarter, and it seems to work well for them.