

Show HN: Teachity - find a tutor or be a tutor online - panther2k
https://www.teachity.com/

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Turing_Machine
Some immediate thoughts:

The featured projects and tutors on the home page could be linked so you can
find out more about them without signing up.

As a prospective teacher: How do I get paid? How often? What cut does Teachity
take?

As a prospective student: How do I pay (credit card, I assume)? What happens
if I don't like my tutor (refund policy, etc.)?

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panther2k
Thanks. I'll add some copy to the front page to clear up some of your
questions.

Payments are all done through Stripe Connect. Right now Teachity isn't taking
a cut, but if the site ends up getting enough users then I'll start
experimenting with pricing... as a comp, I think airbnb is 6-12%, elance is
~9% of each transaction.

Refunds are tricky. Everything is run through Stripe so I can't directly issue
refunds above Teachity's cut. If people have a really horrible experience/no-
show tutor I can ban the tutor and give refunds out of my own pocket although
that wouldn't be sustainable. I'm working on a feedback system, so hopefully
that will head off most problems... although you need enough reviews for that
to be effective in the first place.

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amfeng
Hey there, I work on Connect at Stripe. Sorry if there was any confusion
regarding refunds and Connect: you can both make refunds back to the customer,
and refund your application fee back to your tutor.

Would love to help clarify things, feel free to email me at amber@stripe.com
as well. (:

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sc00ter
Pagination buttons aren't working (current page isn't highlighted).

Logging in as a tutor, and then returning to the home page throws up the
Stripe flash behind the Featured Projects and Featured Tutors titles.

How do I see the virtual classroom without bidding on a "project".

 _We have hundreds of expert tutors, teachers and advisers from around the
globe standing by._

Really? I'm user 38.

~~~
panther2k
Thanks for catching those bugs, I'll fix them up.

Classrooms are created when a bid is accepted so there's no way to navigate to
one of the actual classrooms beforehand. I should probably incorporate a
screenshot or preview of the classroom on the home page.

I guess I wrote that copy in a fit of optimism! Corrected it so as not to be
misleading.

Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
sc00ter
> I guess I wrote that copy in a fit of optimism! Corrected it so as not to be
> misleading.

 _We have expert tutors, teachers and advisers from around the globe standing
by._

Glad the optimism hasn't worn off :-) Stripe only works for the US and Canada,
so...

And _Welcome to the world's premier online learning marketplace!_ is a bit
spammy, and yet twee at the same time. Quite an achievement! ;-)

~~~
panther2k
You're right about Stripe, however it's just the suggested payment method. If
they don't use it, I don't get paid but I'm not going to try to keep people
walled in, especially in light of Stripe's limited availability ex. North
America.

I'm going to stand by that one, even if just to save a little pride. ;)
Technicalities FTW!

~~~
sc00ter
> I'm not going to try to keep people walled in

Then why can't I hide the ugly red banner?

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derekja
what if I can tutor in some topics and student in others? Should be able to
see the list of topics w/out signing up.

~~~
panther2k
Hmm, you should be able to navigate to the project board without signing in.
You would be able to see all the jobs that have been posted by students + the
broad category buckets. Or did you mean I should highlight the categories on
the home page?

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minussohn
The default bootstrap-template could have been modified, at least.

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agscala
Also the "hero banner" or whatever it's called has some serious artifact
issues. It looks almost like a magic eye

~~~
panther2k
Heh, my photoshop skills are sub-par. I've been putting off replacing the
banner with a more robust site intro/overview, sounds like I need to make that
happen.

