

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

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 &#x2F; 45 minute session.<p>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)<p>Email Michael at learnedbyme dot com if you have any questions &#x2F; comments that you would rather not share on HN. Thanks!
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iamthephpguy
Clickable - [https://www.learnedbyme.com/](https://www.learnedbyme.com/)

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_delirium
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.

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mfrank
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

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brickmort
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 :)

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mfrank
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.

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iamthephpguy
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.

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

