Neat idea. This is how I first learned to code HTML when I was 10 - copying and pasting my friend's HTML on angelfire, and later, copying matts script archive for perl code.
I wonder what long term strategy is for customer retention? Once you get some of the core skills at a basic level, there can be a desire to reverse engineer websites on your own. I also see opportunities down the road for more hand holding, some students where they can't quite get the self serve to work on their own.
Please be aware that your homepage's background video is not being positioned correctly (jumps 50% to left) on Safari 9 — could be just me. -- hope it helps you squash any bugs in your page layout :)
Great idea. This is how I learnt to code when I was young. If I found a cool or interesting website that I liked, I'd have a go at cloning it by copying the frontend exactly and writing the code for the backend myself.
I eventually even started selling some of these websites as turnkey scripts for a little while, so others could buy them and setup their own version (often in their own language for their country). Supporting and updating/bugfixing these was eventually too much for 15 year old me so I stopped.
This is one of the problems in Silicon Valley, you should be building startups that are hard to duplicate, difficult to clone. Build the next Google, not the next Facebook.
Is there a way to try it for free? I find that I learn horribly via online tutorials and would never pay unless it was something I would actually use and learn from. Being able to trial the methods of teaching are fundamental to me ever spending a dollar.
Normally, I would think the same way. I might be biased but when I ask my student what they got after learning how to build those project, the answer might amaze you :)
I paid for a Team Treehouse subscription in their early days because of the quality.
I first tried a 2 week free trial, which I canceled because while good quality there was not enough content to justify paying. I returned later once there was more content (Ruby/RoR was added) I did a 50% off the first month trial and kept the subscription for 4-6 months.
I think it would be good to offer a one month 50% off discount, or maybe a similar "cancel in 2 weeks and you pay nothing" trial. With the number of products available, I was always hesitant to base my opinion on the free lessons except for maybe Code School. They were not comparable in scope to the other lessons offered and I was worried of a bait and switch, with the added kicker of being out $25-50 I could have used for another book or course.
Team Treehouse and other code schools mainly rely on theory but here we focus on product or app that we teach students how to build like AirBnb, TaskRabbit, Medium, KichStarter... That we called POA - Product Oriented Approach.
I wonder what long term strategy is for customer retention? Once you get some of the core skills at a basic level, there can be a desire to reverse engineer websites on your own. I also see opportunities down the road for more hand holding, some students where they can't quite get the self serve to work on their own.