I need your thoughts about my Internet project

[Benfromfrance]

Hello everyone

I am new here and I’d really like to get your opinion about my future Internet business. I’m developping a method to teach the kids how to read with a major theme : humour.

As a speach pathologist here in France I’ve helped hundreds of children (mostly kids who suffer from Dyslexia) and thaught them how to read. I’ve always used humour since it is such a great motivation for them. I noticed that there are a lot of frustrated parents who aren’t able to help their kids.

Also a lot of french teachers here in France don’t always know the best way to learn the kids how to read. The level of reading of the french speaking children is lower and lower.

So I see a real need here and nothing exists to learn how to teach reading. There are about 200 millions french speaking people on the planet 10 % being children. Just in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec there are 8 millions kids aged 6 or 7.

I’m going to create a website where I’ll explain step by step the best way to teach a kid how to read. There will be videos for each stage with funny phrases to read with the child. I’ll ask the adult to type down the name of the kid and the names of his brothers, sisters and parents. The names will be automatically integrated in the phrases to make them more personal.

Clients will have to log in and will be charged a small amount of money (around 4 euros) every month. They’ll be free to stop whenever they want. I’ll also propose a life membership for a higher price. I’d like the program to be high quality efficient for the kids and to reach the most people possible.

So far I’ve created half the method. I should be done by the end of summer. I also foud a self imployed illustrator who is going to be doing the drawings to illustrate the funny phrases. Then I’ll create the website with the help of my brother who owns a 3D imaging business (www.miysis.be). One of his employees is a programmer and develops softwares.

Here is where I need your advices. You americans are so much ahead of us europeans in the Internet marketing business. The Internet marketters who are successful here in France use wordpress. My brother tells me that wordpress if for amateurs Jand that his programmer will create the website from scratch. What do you think about this ? Wordress or not ?

Second question : the strategy. A lot of Internet marketers create a page to grab emails and then send a serie of 4 videos one video every week or every three days and then propose their product with a long page before anouncing the usually high price of their product.

I don’t feel like using this kind of strategy but people here in France tell me it’s the most effective way to do it.

I’d rather like to find partners in the education field (bloggers etc) who will promote my website.

What do you think ?

Thanks a lot.

Ben

 

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[tafy]

Not sure a membership program is the best way to play it, I would start today building your blog, with great info. When your product is ready you can make it into an ebook and sell it with amazon or something. And remember to collect email addresses

 

[SlowlaneJay]

TL;DR Version
Idea: Website teaching you how to teach kids to read.
Question 1: Technical— Should I use WordPress or get my brother's programmer to build it from scratch?
Question 2: Marketing— Should I capture emails on a landing page, then follow up with value-heavy content, and then ask for the sale? OR should I find people who will promote my site for me?

________________

Question 1: I would use WordPress. Easy to find a developer and you don't have to rely on someone to make changes. If you need something changed quickly, you can do it or you can easily find someone to do it for you.

Wordpress is not just for amateurs. Lots of large websites run on it.

Question 2: Why would people promote the site for you? I like the other strategy better. In the first strategy you're providing something to the market. In the second you're asking for promotion and not providing anything in return.

 

[Benfromfrance]

Thank you for your anwsers. Jay thank your for summing up my questions

Ok for wordpress. It seems the way to go.

About the promotion of my site I'll pay commissions to the bloggers who promote my site. I talked to a few internet marketers who are ready to promote my site because they know their customer will be interested in my product.

Tafy I won't do an ebook since my method will be an application with videos and a system that insert the name of the child and the names of his realatives in the phrases. It will work on computers, ipads...

I didn't feel like starting a blog because there is a big debate here France about reading methods and I don't want to fight with people arguing about which method is the best... If I had to write read articles on a blog it would have to be about the different methods and that's a dangerous road I think. I'd rather just propose a reading method which works great and makes children and parents happy but if I don't use the blogging strategy my method might remain unknown.

Thanks again for your help.

Ben

 

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[Corbitron]

First off I would like to say that I am dyslexic and I think this is a great idea. This would even be good if you can make a course for adults. I live in Ottawa, Canada which boarders Quebec. I can speak french well but definitely can't read it even though I went to french school for the first 4 years of schooling.

As for your questions. WordPress definitely is the way to go. I have a WordPress site using a drag and drop theme builder and do not even need a developer. A developer may make things more professional and customizable though.

As for question 2. A membership website would be good. And you should build an email list and give out starter/sample content. You also use the term "A lot of" no need to be a follower. landing pages may be affective but not always. and paying partners to promote you website may not be a bad thing as well

 

[Kevin Peter]

Great that you are doing something good to the society. Would following the major brand way work? Initially having it for free, and once people are addicted to it, you can capitalize by charging nominal fee. I look forward to know if there is any way I can help you on the marketing part.

 

[Joe Middleton]

I would strongly recommend getting a Wordpress website. It's not for amateurs, but it's commonly used by amateurs because it's so easy to use. Most of my clients have wordpress websites. Because it's designed with amateurs in mind, it's really easy to edit the website and upload new pages. A few of my clients have had custom build ones (not how I say have had) but found it too difficult to use the CMS. With Wordpress there's a huge support network, which is something you'll be lacking with a custom one.

Secondly, who is it your product will target? Will you be targeting teachers? The parents? or maybe even private tutors? Have you thought about targeting schools themselves? actually getting in touch with them and selling your product to them directly. Then you could provide each individual institution with a login (or series of logins) for an annual fee or maybe even a one-off payment. This is just one option though.

 

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[HerpMogul]

I agree, WordPress is the way to go. Very easy way to have a professional look without as much headache.

How would you idea compare/contrast with sites like
www.fluentin3months.com/

They have a following so possibly connecting (if similar) with them or writing about how you differ could bring needed exposure to warm leads as well.

 

[Ubermensch]

@Benfromfrance

Check this out.

Source for text below" http://www.copyblogger.com/teaching-sells-is-live/

After much work and not much sleep, the Teaching Sells training program is open for business. Hopefully the combination of the free report and the site copy will stand on its own, but I thought I’d take a moment to address some of the questions I got in comments and emails.

First of all, thanks to everyone who emailed to thank me for the report and to say how excited they were to see what the training was all about. The response was more enthusiastic than even I had hoped for, and I can hope for quite a bit.

What is Teaching Sells?
The Teaching Sells training program is a comprehensive and detailed step-by-step guide to creating successful online training programs and multimedia membership sites. It’s a complete methodology for choosing profitable topics, developing dazzling content, attracting paid members and building air-tight websites.

Visit the site to find out more.

 

[Benfromfrance]

@Corbitron

Thank you for your message. You’re dyslexic so you know how hard it can be to learn how to read. I know that humour is a big help for dyslexics and as you said making a course for adults would be really nice too. Thanks for the idea.

In France the recent official studies determined that 20 % of the children who are 11 years old can’t read properly.

@Kevin

Yes I hope I can do something for society. I’m sorry but I didn’t understand your question about the major brand. I’m not good enough in English I suppose L

I would be ready to let people try the beginning of the method and then charge them if they want to continue using it.

@joe

Thank you for your advices about wordpress. I’m now convinced it’s the way to go. I just don’t know if I will be able to create my reading method that integrates the names of the child and his relatives into the phrases. I guess I could use wordpress for the main site (grab emails, articles, comments from users etc) and have a custom program for the users using my method.

My main target will be parents and adults who want to help a child learn how to read. They can be a grand parent, an uncle, a friend… I also think teachers here in France will be very interested in my method since they often don’t really know which method to use. Old French methods are boring for the kids (boring non amusing phrases) and the new methods use a global reconnaissance of the words and that method is a bad one since it stimulates the right side of the brain when the right site of reading is on the left side of the brain.

It would be great if schools were interested of course but I know it’s very difficult to make things change in the classical French school system. I know of some alternative private schools which would be interested in my method.

I hope to publish a real book with my method some day. Schools still like to use really books even though screens are becoming more and more popular.

@HerpMogul

You’re right my site could be similar to the fluentin3months.com website. They teach foreign languages it’s not the same field as mine but it’s the same principle. Blind teaching.

@Ubermensch

I looked at your website and it’s really interesting. It’s exactly what I’d like to do. I’m going to read it seriously. Thanls for the link.


Again thank you all for your help. It means a lot to me.


Ben

 

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[Benfromfrance]

Hello !

I can't believe a year passed by since I last posted here. During this last year I worked a lot on my project. I wrote the 500 phrases of the method, found all the image / sound combos. I also did a survey among french speach therapists about my project. In two weeks 200 speach therapists replied to my survey and 500 signed in for my list. I got a lot of positive comments and quite a lot of interest. That was a good motivation for me since I had been working on my method for months not knowing if there would be any interest in it.

My brother started creating the first 3D images for the method. Here are a few so you can see what they look like.















Two months ago my brother and I decided to start a company and put some money on the table to develop the 3D images (560 in total) and the website. This months his employees are going to create the images and we hired a programer for the website.

After years of testing this method with my young patients in my office and months of creating the method it's going to become real. I'm very excited and I hope it will help many children and adults to learn reading.

When the french version is working and hopefully successul we would love to create an english version with the help of an English speaking linguist.

Ben

ps: thanks again to MJ for the motivation his book gave me.