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When free language sites turn to profit | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 1 of 27 11 June 2013 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd like this thread to be about people's thoughts/experiences when a good free site decides to reduce it's free
services to increase it's profits. For example: LingQ Upgrade I know it sucks if you're a free user and your services are cut. But I just don't understand the anger level of some of the free users. Actually, this happened to me with Chinesepod many years ago, when they stopped giving away all their audio. But it turned out to be a good thing in the long run. It forced me to try out other free sites, and I came to see Chinesepod wasn't that great in comparison. Have you seen something like this happen before? Can you give an example/share your experiences? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jondesousa Tetraglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/Zgg3nRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6263 days ago 227 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Mandarin, Spanish | Message 2 of 27 11 June 2013 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Not to high-jack your thread but can I ask what other free resources you found that you really liked besides Chinesepod.com? I am heavily relying on it as a resource and am always happy to learn from other students who have previously been down the path.
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 27 11 June 2013 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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If free services are taken away, it sucks, but as a free user, you're in a pretty bad position to be complaining. It's odd how we're willing to pay so much for mundane things like a cup of coffee, but wouldn't pay the equivalent for a monthly service.
I had started working on a series of lessons teaching Japanese pitch and a certain other user on this site wrote to me saying that if I didn't make these lessons available for free, he'd stop talking to me! Come on, now... At some point, you put in time, you are entitled to charge for it. No one has to buy it. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jondesousa Tetraglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/Zgg3nRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6263 days ago 227 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Mandarin, Spanish | Message 4 of 27 11 June 2013 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | ||
Absolutely, Arekkusu! Just like with AJATT, I was an avid follower for several years before Khatzumoto started charging for certain parts of the site. I wasn't angry at all but some people were furious. If he put so much time and effort into his work he can charge for it. It is up to the user to decide whether or not they are willing to pay for access to it. I don't get why people get upset about it since no one is forcing you to buy the service. Either you pay and play or you don't and move on. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 5 of 27 11 June 2013 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
That's a fair enough point. But consider that ten bucks a month is 120 for the year, for essentially a teach yourself course,and they'd surely like you to continue paid membership for more than a year. Not many are willing to pay that much. A lot of these sites seem to want about ten bucks a month, which just seems out of touch with the rest of the industry (unless Rosetta Stone is your ony price reference). R. ＝＝ 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 27 11 June 2013 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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At some point your hobby may take up so much of your time that you have to start charging for it - or you
would have to stop. I see absolutely nothing wrong in that. If some of our more accomplished polyglots teach, or write books, or put things out on the Internet I see no reason why we should be upset if they charge for it. No one is forced to buy anything. The only situation which I find inexcusable, is when some of the less accomplished polyglots start charging for teaching languages they do not really know themselves. The pupil is often unaware of the low quality of the product, which makes the situation uncomfortably close to fraud. My language skills have put food on my table and a roof over my head for my entire life, as a guide, a teacher or working within international affairs. Polyglots or websites making money of their skills or their content really are not that different, it is just that we are used to getting everything for free online. For a number of reasons I have cut down on most of my subscriptions lately, but paying for this site is one of my top priorities. The fun and motivation that I get out of this site is worth three times what I pay. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Haksaeng Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6197 days ago 166 posts - 250 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 7 of 27 12 June 2013 at 4:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I was using LingQ for free on a very occasional basis when they made the change. I think I've been a member for a while (can't remember when I signed up) but I'm flighty in my study habits and haven't used it consistently.
I was not using the site as it was designed to be used. The whole system seemed confusing and convoluted to me. Also, with a free account you can't really see fully how the system works, so there were things I didn't understand about how it worked. I think they'd be better off allowing a two-week free trial to give people a taste of everything available on the site, and then cut them off if they don't want to join. Or how about this: if you renew, you get a free month. One thing these sites do wrong, in my opinion, is they give the freebies to the new people and don't reward their long-term customers. Anyway, I signed up as a paying member, mostly because of the intense whining and foot-stomping from the people who were mad at the cutbacks! When I got cut off, I was ready to walk away with no hard feelings because I didn't think the site was that great for me. But when I read some of the tantrums in their forum, I thought maybe the site was better than I realized. So I paid up and yes, as a paying member the site is more useful and has better features, plus when considering becoming a paying member I was motivated to read ALL the explanations and watch the demonstration videos so I understood the site better. Not sure how long I will stay, since my study methods change a lot. Incidentally, another site that I was thinking I might start paying for is Korean Class 101.com, but when I poked around there it seemed like a ghost town. The forum, which used to be very active, is almost silent other than some complaints about the lack of new, interesting content. I guess their customer base has moved over to TTMIK, which started with a huge amount of free content and is now rapidly adding new services that are pay-per-use. TTMIK is doing it the right way, I think, offering free content to those who want it and then, once they've established themselves, offering OTHER content for a fee. I imagine that requires a large initial investment by the owners. Probably LingQ alienated some members by offering free service and then snatching it away. They would probably do better to develop new premium services and require payment for those services right from the beginning, while continuing to provide the same level of free service hoping that it will cultivate new paying customers. Maybe their mistake was offering too much free service in the beginning. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 8 of 27 12 June 2013 at 8:41am | IP Logged | ||
(I'll just mention that this is from my experience 5 or so years ago, so it's possible things have changed. Also, I was specifically talking about podcasts, not any "other resources" that they had at the time.) For a complete beginner English speaker, Chinesepod is a good choice. After you reach lower intermediate, there are several much better podcasts out there, IMO. Some of it is personal preference, but I think most would be better off with no English, or at least less English than chinesepod at this point, for example. I won't get into much detail here, but 3 that I really liked are chineselearnonline, cslpod & imandarinpod. Edited by leosmith on 12 June 2013 at 8:46am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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