

Ask HN: Could my language reading & learning site become a startup? - steveridout

I've launched an early version of my language learning webapp which I plan to charge a subscription for once it's out of beta.<p>http://readlang.com<p>Today the developer of a similar open source tool doubted that I'd make enough money to pay for the time I'd spend.<p>The quote and my response are at http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35462&#38;PN=1&#38;TPN=5 - messages 34 and 35 respectively<p>What do you think? Do you think this site (once ready) and subscription model could be profitable?
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steveridout
The relevant bits of forum discussion:

\--- Quote LWT ---

I don't think that you will make a lot money out of such a language learning
website. IMHO you will never earn so much money that all the hours of work
will ever get paid.

From my LWT Project, I can only say that I worked on it about five full months
fulltime (around 1200 hours) in total. If one wants to earn about 30 Euros per
hour, which is a rather low "IT salary", that would be 36,000 Euros. You need
300 customers paying 120 Euros per annum to have the initial investment payed.
And that's only the beginning. There are server costs, you need a service
desk, etc.

\--- My response ---

Thanks for your honest opinion. You may well be right, it's the first time
I've started a venture like this, and it's a bit of an experiment with no
serious downside if it happens to fail.

My goals are relatively modest, I don't need it to make a _lot_ of money, your
example of 36000 Euros per year actually sounds pretty good, especially since
this could continue even if I wasn't improving the site. (In reality though, I
have enough ideas that I'll _definitely_ continue to improve it if it gets to
that stage!) I'm thinking of charging something more like 1 or 2 euros per
month, or more for more advanced features, since I think this is what I'd
probably be willing to pay for such a service. So to reach your example
numbers I'd need 3000 paying customers! But there are a huge number people in
the world who could benefit from this, especially if it runs well on smart
phones and tablets, and has easier access to content than it does currently.
Am I deluded? :)

Server costs should be pretty low, since a lot of the work is being done
client side in the browser, and the back end is pretty lightweight, a JSON API
running on Node.js and MongoDB.

------
NielDLR
Hey Steve,

the language reader market is currently a bit saturated with open-source and
paid alternatives.

However, I looked at your site. I'm a linguist with some expertise in web
development (<http://hanzicraft.com>, <http://polyglotlink.com> and some other
sites under my belt).

I really like the idea of a quick importing using a bookmarklet. My main
language that I'm learning is Chinese as this market has MANY options
(<http://3000hanzi.com>, <http://chineselevel.com>, <http://lingq.com>,
<http://duable.com>, LWT). It's hard to choose. I particularly enjoy
ChineseLevel mainly because I know the developer, so I'm biased.

In any case, I think it's possible to get at least some income with your
startup. To make it a full-time job is something else and depends on your
needs. Because the language reader market is saturated, you'll have to set
yourself apart from open source and paid alternatives. At the moment I'm not
exactly sure what that is, but I'll be trying your site to learn a bit of
Spanish and French (I'm a language learning addict).

I can help you with some more advice and testing if you want. I can also give
you some linguistic advice if it comes up. Send me an email:
niel@delarouviere.com

~~~
steveridout
Thanks for your thoughts.

You're right there's a lot of activity in this space, language learning tools
seem to be a common itch that developers like to scratch :)

I think Readlang's unique position is that it provides a very streamlined
workflow compared to the alternatives, it tries to remove unnecessary friction
and lets you concentrate on either reading or learning. e.g. to do something
similar to Readlang with other tools you may need:

\- LWT (the user needs to run the server software themselves with XAMPP or
similar) + Anki

\- LingQ (seems OK, but a bit expensive ($10 / month) and personally I think
the UI has too much clutter, and I don't like having all the words I
know/don't know highlighted in the text, it distracts me from enjoying the
content)

\- Manually switching between tabs when reading to translate and build
flashcards in Anki or similar

Maybe there are other tools that I'm not aware of. Thanks for your links, I
especially like the idea of chineselevel.com and I've been thinking along
these lines for Readlang - estimating the users proficiency based on the words
they translate and suggesting content of the appropriate difficulty. My big
missing link at the moment is built in content on the site, I'll probably look
into finding good public domain / creative commons content soon.

I'll send you a personal mail now...

Edit: one of your links may contain a typo: <http://duable.com/> \- this URL
is for a brand advertising company

------
aquark
Maybe ... I'm not looking to learn a foreign language right now, so aren't the
target market.

But my first thought was that this appears to use some kind of machine
translation ('import from any website').

So how reliable is this as a source for learning a language. If I was going to
invest time & money I'd want to trust that was I was learning was accurate!

~~~
steveridout
You're correct, it uses Google Translate to generate the in-line translation,
and offers a more in-depth translation from wordreference.com in a sidebar
(for the language pairs it supports). I find the Google Translate result good
enough to get the meaning the vast majority of the time, which is enough to
enjoy reading. When you start to learn each word, it's very much encouraged to
verify and edit each translation the first time the flashcard appears. I agree
that blindly accepting and learning the google translate results would be a
very bad idea. I'll also investigate different dictionaries and translation
services as the project progresses.

------
sharemywin
learn spanish has 450,000 search per month on google assuming 2% click through
and 10% free sign up you have about 900 free signups a month. Assuming $350
per month in advertising. At 1% conversion to say $75 per year cost. 9 users
at $75 gets $675 which pays for advertsing plus some. Give them 15% off if
they share on facebook or twitter. Advertise on Bing and add more keywords for
the other languages. Could turn into a half way decent business. People pay
$350 for Rosetta stone.

