Can STEEM offer a world where costs are not a barrier to education? Update on adding my brand to Steemit
Moving my online teaching brand and business to the STEEM blockchain is not an easy task. There are many factors to think about and providing an optimal solution for both my Students and my revenue stream has been a challenging obstacle. But I believe blockchain holds the secrets to making education free for all. I just hope that STEEM is the right block.
My biggest fear is reputation. 10 years I am working online, growing and nurturing my business. Engaging online to become an influencer in my field of expertise and working hard to convert followers to buyers. One wrong move and I could lose many of the followers I have gained. Steemit with such a difficult learning curve and the wait for an account, if not done right, could be that wrong move.
My second fear is loss of revenue. With lost of reputation, my course sales will go down, and if I were to move to a model where the courses are available free here on the STEEM block, who will vote my content to ensure I have an income?
I am sure many of you are wondering, if I have such fears, why I am making this move? One of my reasons is the large cut taken by centralised organisations. A good portion of my revenue each month comes for Udemy and other online learning sites. These are third party centralized platforms and they come with many problems. @themarkeymark touched on some of it in his post The Dirty Secret about Udemy.
Although I am a best-selling instructor on Udemy, I make $2.5 per course sale and the learner pays 4 times that at minimum (Udemy is a constant sale where all course are $10). They really don’t make it easy for instructors.
What Have I done So Far?
So far, I have done the following:
1. Recently set up the account @theexcelclub representing my existing online brand
2. Installed Steempress.io to my website for cross posting
3. Ensured @theexcelcub was whitelisted by @cheetah as it was important that some of my existing content was moved to steemit
4. Upload a full free course to DLive (along with other material). This course was existing content that I had. However, on my own site and also on Udemy the videos are bit sized. I did not see to much value in adding 30+ videos to Dlive so instead I edited the videos into their modules, having 5 longer videos instead. Exercises and other course material is also available via the posts. However, downloads are hosted on dropbox at the moment as steemit does not currently offer a file share option.
5. Ran a test webinar on DLive – this webinar was aimed at Steemit users that wanted to learn how to use SteemSQL and Excel to get Steemit earnings information.
Moving to Marketing
With all this in place, all I need is some students. So, I have come up with a concept to attract learners and have begun a marketing campaign around it.
The concept is simple. Although not a learning management system, the Steem blockchain gives me the ability to reward learners for their efforts in the course by way of upvotes. And so was born #learnandearn.
After looking around the internet for some time, I could not find anyone offering a way student can learn and earn at the same time on a decentralised platform. Do I have a Worlds First, Learn and Earn FREE online Excel course? It seems I do 😊
Imagine a world where cost and finance are no barrier to education. This is an exciting experimental opportunity to improve your skills and earn $ at the same time. Removing cost as a barrier to education
The limitation posed by Steemit 7 day payout rule was also an obstacle. One of the things about online courses is the reoccurring revenue. To overcome this, I have devised a course deliver format in line with #learnandearn
Each week a #LearnandEarn post will be published from @theexcelclub. This post will link back to the course material (already posted to steemit and now past the 7-day pay-out). I have created a standard format but I would love you to take a look at this and give me your feedback so I can fine tune the post and process.
https://steemit.com/excel/@theexcelclub/learn-and-earn-basic-excel-for-basic-bookkeeping-week-1
Now with a course ready, a #learnandearn post I am ready to get some students. First, I wrote a post on my own site and with Steempress I also published to Steemit. The aim of this post was to make people aware of this #learnandearn experiment and to be a touchpoint and landing page for further marketing. Again, I would love your feedback and hope that you take a read, its not to late for me to make changes 😊
https://steemit.com/steempress/@theexcelclub/worldsfirstlearnandearnexcelonlinecourse-nogkgrtzfz
I intend on using traditional social media marketing to market this #learnandearn Excel course. I started with a video and posted it across a number of platforms. Over the next while I will push this to as many funnels as I can.
For the paid advertising I started with a very focused Facebook campaign.
And will be rolling out other paid campaigns too.
This is the video used
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The Future
I reckon its going to take about 8 weeks of pushing this before I see any benefits. One of the obstacles is the waiting period for a Steemit account. So the marketing for this week may only generate activity on the third or forth #learnandearn post. This leaves me with a problem of ‘social proof’ on the posts and that’s where you can help. It would be really nice for people looking at the posts to see some engaging comments and activity, so if you have a few minutes spare you could really help me by leaving a comment (not spammy) on the #learnandearn posts by @theexccelclub. This is a link to the first one. I would be very grateful to get support from existing steemit users on these posts while I build the brand and the marketing kicks in.
I also need some power behind @theexccelclub so I can deliver on upvotes. More about that in the next update. Exciting times ahead.
Taking this further
Steemit is an experimental platform and this idea is also an experiment. If I can pull it off it will be awesome. I am also interested in the ideas of tokenizing #learnandearn and maybe even creating a DAPP that could compete with Udemy and other teaching platforms. The problem is, I don’t have the coding skills to do this. So, if there is someone out there that thinks this is a viable project and would like to work in making it a reality I would love to hear from you. Can STEEM offer a world where costs are not a barrier to education?
Shameless Promotion
@steemcommunity is a witness project from myself and @abh12345. There are many good witnesses out there and doing your research is important. I hope you will take the time to read our witness introduction post and consider us as one of your steemit witnesses .
wow, this is something very interesting by uniting #learnandearn to attract students, both of these things are being sought by the students now including me, thank you very much when you never stop to publish the science you have, really a tough mother and very smart in managing the life of 2 world, real world and virtual world, I really support you and whatever it is, I will always On mom😀, well done .
@mrday thank you so much for your support, you are an awesome supporter and always say kind things
A brave move! I'm going to reread and maybe I can help somehow. I'm really fond of supporting cheap (free) learning.
all help, advice and feedback is welcome, thank you @jefpatat you rock
Hi Paulag. It is a tough one but think you have made the right decision. The #learnandearn is a positive as it will attract students. Somehow you need to be supported as this is your business and need to make it financially viable. I am sure in the years to come you are going to look back and see it as a smart decision.
well my personal account ( this accounts) is nearly dolphin status, but that's not going to be enough to support this, so in my next update I hope to have some news on this. Thank you for your comment and feedback
Hey @paulag I have been following you for a a while and you are really a true gem for steem and are constantly discovering new ways to improve how this network is to be used.
(then we at @swisswitness are far behind just promoting it here in in Zug)
I would offer you another way of sponsorship if that may help?
We are only a small witness with 120 SP but we will give a full upvote for all the posts of the @theexcelclub as a witness.
and you might want to change your witness vote request. they changed the top 50 to top 100
you guys are in the top100 and as such no longer need to scroll down and type the name
Thank you very very much for your support, small you might think it is, it will add value to the idea. I need to take a close look at @swisswitness, its hard starting out as a witness and I know how much the support is needed.
Just seen your posts now on the change for the witness page, how awesome. Thank you for the heads up and for taking the time to read this post. :-)
you are very welcome, and we would indeed really appreciate all the witness votes we can get, yours included :-)
you already had my vote so I cannot add a second time, lol
I wrote a while back on whether steem could provide the next online learning platform. The main drawback was the 7 day payout period so I like your clever way of prolonging the payout period.
Wish you the best of luck with this venture.
oh do you have a link to that post, would like to read it and the comments? I think with this way the course can be evergreen (once the content is :-))
Thank you for your comment and best wishes
Sorry for the delay in replying. Here it is:
https://steemit.com/dtube/@stevelivingston/n6wy11dt
Best wishes with the transition!
Your post has a typo for your new account -- "theexccelcub" should be @theexcelclub. You might want to change that.
I'm a big fan of Excel, so I'll definitely be following. 😃
thank you for the heads up on the error, now fixed.
And more awesome to find an Excel fan 😃
3 years ago it was time for me to decide the university that I wanted to go... We live in a very wrong world, where either you have money and go to schools where the best teachers are (obviously money attract the best). Or you decide to try your luck on others where you will need much more luck to get into the job market after you finish your degree.
its a serious problem. I was rather lucky and got a good education, but my parents worked so hard to make sure I did. It would be so awesome if costs were not a barrier
Good luck, Ma'am.
thank you kindly
This transition shall be a significant progress, should it work out as you intend to. When entrepreneurs are able to smoothly transition existing businesses onto the blockchain ecosystem (not just STEEM), this will accelerate the mass adoption that everyone is waiting for. All the best @paulag!! Would like to find out more about your progress in transitioning :D
wish it was a smooth transition, but there is so much to think about and the systems are not really there yet for what I want :-)
Wow, I wished I thought it through like you, I tried to do something similar called steemitcourses. My hope is to create courses by various tutors on steemit to teach a particular skill. I managed to get one on photography and some on teaching how to write. I was unable to proceed as I lacked delegation and the commitment from some. I would say that this is a great idea, hopefully I would be able to better it in the future.
It has always been a dream for me to make education not just accessible to those in the rural community, but to help them change their lives for the better.
hi and thank you for stopping by. I am interested in hearing about your experience. Having SP to do this would really really help. Maybe if others also try something similar, the bigger accounts would see the benefit and help out, but these things are a long process and I need to prove it can work. If you are doing more, please do use the #learnandearn tag, I will try keep my eye on it and support as much as I can (not that my vote is worth that much)
Hey there, well I started something called steemitcourses. My goal is to minimize on the teaching and maximize the one to one tutoring with the students. The problem first and foremost was commitment. Some were ok initially but life took over and they slowly stopped. Price of steem had a role to play in all that too.
Initially, we were going to get a nice delegation from steemiteducation but it didn't work out as the leader's account got hacked. So, we are now on temporary hiatus.
I love the idea that you are doing think it would be great to work together eventually of making education not just accessible but profitable. I'm alvin by the way, I'm a teacher trainer and second language teacher in real life.