Progress and ads and money….
Today I edited and posted two sessions. These will go live tomorrow and the next day. So, now I do have a one day buffer. Also, we recorded 2 vocabulary building sessions and 1 dialog. I hope to intermingle the dialogs and vocabulary building to keep it more interesting for you. But I have already staged the vocabulary sessions in wordpress and I do not want to manually change the post dates on several sessions. I am hoping to write a WordPress plugin to do that at some point.
Ok… Now about the ads.. You will notice them at the bottom of the pages again. Which might surprise you considering on of my earlier postings. I have a theory that google favors sites with adsense on it. So, I am going to leave one ad at the bottom of the page to be safe. And it will be a while before I can remove the side ads on many of the pages.
Now about money… I keep wondering if I can improve the quality of this program, add a lot of additional resources, and really build up the audience, would it be possible for this site to make enough so that in combination with other things, I could do it full time. What are your thoughts on this? What do you think is the best way to do that?
premasru said,
November 2, 2007 @ 10:40 pm
I was just reading something you wrote Nathan, and in that connection thought it might be good to have a dialog using the words of the the previous day. One day vocabulary building, next day dialogue. Maybe that is what you were already suggesting.
Jennifer F. said,
June 4, 2008 @ 2:48 pm
Hi Nathan et al…
I have been going through all the old posts and listening to your podcasts – Love them! It seems I am only the second comment on this post though after over a year!
In order to do this full time (it’s totally possible!) I definitely have a few suggestions.
1. I would redo the website and make it more professional/less messy. I actually question the usability of this blog format. I think it would be better to have an actual website with the same listen online/download option for the podcasts. If it was in page form it would be easier for you to have a navigation taking you to sections of lessons, rather than day by day seemingly random lessons as the blog is right now. Don’t get me wrong though – wow, you guys are doing an awesome job.
2. I would work on making things “buyable”. I saw you mention somewhere making CDs. You could easily make a CD of lessons with a corresponding book compiled from your posts. You have so much information on here. I’d love to see it organized better and viewable in an easier format.
3. Promotion. Anywhere and everywhere.
4. You would probably have to start finding some folks to sponsor your organization so that you can do all the above numbers I have listed. I would assume you would hire a designer to help make things easier to navigate and organize in a proper manner and get a very professional website going.
p.s. did I mention I am a graphic designer? I would LOVE to help you in your endeavor of this website/organization. I am co-owner of a startup design firm in San Francisco – my partner and I are originally from Texas
Keep up the good work!
admin said,
June 5, 2008 @ 4:17 am
Thanks Jennifer for your comments and suggestions.
1) I definitely agree that a better format would be more helpful. I was wanting to create a better organization for the sessions. I think one thing I could do is create a better set of categories and re-categorize the podcasts. Before the last WordPress upgrade, visitors had the ability to rate podcasts using a 5 star system. I would like to put that back. Plus, I think it would be useful for the site to be able to keep track of which podcasts people listened to, that way people could see which ones are still remaining.. And I was also thinking it would be useful to keep track of the words, phrases, and skills that are in each podcast so that the site could review everything that they had been exposed to so far. Also, the ability to search podcasts for key things. What do you think about these ideas? How would your recommend changing the navigation?
I was also thinking about some type of wizard that would quiz people about why they want to learn Hindi, how much they already know, how much time they have to learn, etc. and would recommend a set of podcasts to listen to in a particular order.
2. Yes, definitely need to figure out other ways to increase the revenue. I think we will have to work on putting together a book and CD combination like you suggest. I think this will have to come after the improvements in the site though.
3. I definitely agree with your thoughts on promotion. I have tried to put the podcast in all the podcast directories. I have tried to email other Hindi learning sites to get links. Also, I have sent messages to Hindi learner news groups and mailing lists. I think at the point, we are going to try to create ways for our listeners to promote the sites through encouragement to tell their friends, classmates, and colleagues. Have some media they could use like posters to put up at the local Indian grocery/movie store. Widgets and banners to put on their facebook, myspace, blog, personal website, etc. I was wanting to create a promotional video for YouTube as well. What are your thoughts in this area?
4. You are definitely right about needing to find sponsorship. Before seriously looking into this though, I wanted to get the number of people signed up on our mailing list and daily visitors. As of June 2008, we have about 350 people on our mailing list and have about 300 visitors to the site a day. I think both of those numbers need to be in the thousands before I can seriously think about getting sponsorship. It is growing at about 20% a month. So I do not think it will be long before we get there. What are your thoughts about this?
I would be interested in your ideas on how to improve the site. Please let me know more. What do you think about our new logo?