Show HN: Learned By Me - $15 Spanish tutoring sessions with top professionals

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6509755

by mfrank • 13 years ago

6 7 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

We recently started Learned By Me (www.learnedbyme.com), a company that connects terrific experienced Spanish professors and immersion school teachers from South America with students and learners from around the world for Skype tutoring sessions for $15 / 45 minute session.

Your feedback would be much appreciated! We can discount your first lesson to $1 if anyone would like to give a lesson a try. (Just sign up on our site and use the code: HackerNews at checkout)

Email Michael at learnedbyme dot com if you have any questions / comments that you would rather not share on HN. Thanks!

iamthephpguy2• 13 years ago

Clickable - https://www.learnedbyme.com/

iamthephpguy2• 13 years ago

I may not be your target customer, so do take my design comment with a dash of salt.

1. Your site design seems to be targeting young children with the colors overflowing outside the borders, or yellow highlights on the text. Unfortunately it also makes your site seem not very professional.

2. After I choose a date for a lesson and a teacher, maybe the availability calendar could show me the same date I chose, so that I need not scroll to find the date I had already chosen

3. In the FAQ/Support section, do put in some information on payment modes - credit card, paypal etc.

mfrank3• 13 years ago

Thanks - all good feedback and we'll work on it!

_delirium• 13 years ago

Miscellaneous comments:

1. Like 'iamthephpguy', I found the site design a bit out of keeping with what I imagined the positioning to be (I could be imagining wrongly!). The graphic design gives a sort of school-age learning vibe, but the copy gives more of an adult-professional vibe. What's the target audience?

2. I like the basic pitch, though. If the price is actually possible to sustain while keeping up quality, $15 for 45 minutes of a professional's time is quite attractive.

3. The site gives the feeling of a general-purpose tutoring market. I'm not sure this is the best way to go, versus picking a more targeted niche, like language tutoring. I could be wrong, but I think the pitch you have here, experienced South American teachers tutoring you for $15/session, is stronger than an open-ended tutoring-on-any-subject pitch. Especially because general platform sites can have a tendency to end up feeling like a ghost town, if only some categories have real activity.

mfrank3• 13 years ago

Good feedback. Ya, we ended up alpha testing our site with both Spanish and Chinese but ended up launching with just Spanish because its easier to try to initially build up a marketplace with only one subject as you point out (to avoid the ghost town feel).

Maybe gearing towards language tutoring at this point makes sense

brickmort• 13 years ago

I grew up in a spanish household speaking english and spanish. Now I'm in my twenties and I've found that speaking spanish in the household is VERY different from speaking in public, like when you have to speak in a formal manner or an informal (friend-to-friend) manner. I end up feeling like I can't speak spanish very well in these social scenarios, like I'm speaking like a caveman due to all the bumps I hit when I don't know the formal way of saying things. Then I get super self-conscious

In that sense, I may give this a shot in the very near future. In the meantime, good luck on the venture, I like the idea :)

mfrank3• 13 years ago

Yep - everyone has different goals and reasons for learning spanish so having a one-on-one who can create lessons that are customized to your needs has been a real differentiator so far.

Show HN: Learned By Me - $15 Spanish tutoring sessions with top professionals

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