E-learning SAAS

[jonsey444]

I rarely see any SAAS here related to e-learning e.g. courses. Is there any particular reason for that? I thought about creating courses on udemy, but the constant sales and overall quality of a majority of the courses don’t really attract me. Creating your own site and having a subscription option seems like a viable strategy (e.g. I’m subscribed to openstudiojazz.com). You could provide something unique in terms of the learning experience instead of just putting up a bunch of videos.

 

[wisprof]

@jonsey444 There's plenty of ed-tech platforms already out there. Building a course, building and maintaining the platform, and doing all the marketing legwork seems like much more work than necessary.

You'll get farther either focusing on the platform and recruiting influencers/teachers or focus on course content and recruiting students. Neither option is easy, but very doable.

 

[jonsey444]

@wisprof I was just thinking that the marketing might actually be easier if u don’t have to compete with everyone on the same platform. Recruiting teachers to come to your platform seems like a very hard task unless you already have a large following.

 

[wisprof]

@jonsey444 Ah, I thought you meant coding a unique platform from scratch. Yeah, I'm seeing more creators using whitelabel platforms over Udemy and the likes. I think Fireship has a custom solution though, and one of the best creators doing it rn as far as marketing.

It depends on your course pricing and marketing channels. If you have a large audience you plan to sell to frequently (upsells) a self-hosted/whitelabel platform is the way to go.

If you're pricing your courses under $30 and/or just building up an audience, I'd stick with Udemy or whatever platform of your choice.

 

[hollywoodb]

@jonsey444 I’m launching a new e-learning SAAS next week. I’m going with a freemium model and plan to charge creators for extra storage beyond what’s offered free, instead of charging learners to use my platform.

My hope is that clever and committed creators can earn a nice side income through viewer tips. I feel like I have a very unique spin on teaching/learning but I definitely expect there to be challenges in getting educators to adopt my platform.

 

[jonsey444]

@hollywoodb So tips would be the only way for creators to earn money?

 

[hollywoodb]

@jonsey444 At this point yes, unless you or other users were to take the content created from our platform and embed it somewhere else and sell it digitally there as a short lesson or course. What we offer is rather unique so I believe some users will definitely do this.

We hope to have a purchasable course option built into the platform eventually with a % split (majority going to the creator.)

 

[lucindaswart]

@jonsey444 I'm not sure about on this particular sub reddit, but I think its relatively common. It could also be bias on my end because I mainly work in e-learning.

Our product is a site for learning Japanese. I wrote the underlying LMS specifically for that niche.

I was previously employed in a few e-learning startups (of various sizes), including one dedicated to high school curriculum in Australia, another that helped universities manage their course catalogue (e-learning adjacent I guess, and far more complex than it seems), and one of my current clients is a SaaS dedicated to high school maths.

It might seem less common as its less sexy than AI, Blockchain, etc?

 

[jonsey444]

@lucindaswart Yeah probably. It is definitely more work than ChatGPT wrappers. What was the reason you decided to roll your own platform instead of using an existing one?

 

[lucindaswart]

@jonsey444 For us, we’re doing a lot of custom content that is tricky to model in a traditional LMS. We tried Moodle among others, and even plugins like LearnPress for Wordpress. While it was possible, it all felt extremely hacky at best.

I’m surprised there aren’t more LMSs out there, but most seem to be geared towards enterprise from what I’ve seen. Software like Elmo.

To expand on our content a little more: one of the core pieces of Japanese learning content we offer are Japanese stories, which include audio with line by line highlighting and inline grammar notes. This was very difficult to model in something like Moodle, and considering we have Japanese teachers writing the content (who aren’t developers), we wanted it to be as streamlined as possible.

 

[jonsey444]

@lucindaswart Everytime I came across moodle in my lectures during my master‘s I considered quitting the course.
I am also surprised that there aren’t many LMSs out there for custom content, but I guess as long as it isnt meant for large corporations the initial development cost is too high to accommodate all the different needs.
But seems like you found a good reason for developing your own solution.

 

[sabiname]

@jonsey444 If you’re thinking about creating & selling courses, that’s not SAAS (software as a service). So that’s probably why you wouldn’t see much of it on a SAAS sUb.

 

[jonsey444]

@sabiname I think if you have a unique way of letting the user interact with the material it is definitely a SAAS.

 

[sabiname]

@jonsey444 Not really. The SAAS would be the platform you build to allow you to do that (I.e. the software). But courses aren’t software and selling courses isn’t SAAS.

If users can only consume your courses on your platform you’re not selling software as a service, you’re just selling a service.

 

[jonsey444]

@sabiname So in your opinion Duolingo is not a SAAS?

 

[theodoric]

@jonsey444 We covered this in detailed in our Micro SaaS Ideas newsletter as part of e-learning, LMS, Course Authoring niches going in detail about all the profitable products and upcoming products in these areas.

 

[jonsey444]

@theodoric I will take a look, thanks.