Ask HN: Could my language reading & learning site become a startup?
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.
http://readlang.com
Today the developer of a similar open source tool doubted that I'd make enough money to pay for the time I'd spend.
The quote and my response are at http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35462&PN=1&TPN=5 - messages 34 and 35 respectively
What do you think? Do you think this site (once ready) and subscription model could be profitable?
6 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 22.7 ms ] thread--- 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.
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!
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
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