It's already been done and it's free!

[Robin Andrews]

So I was planning on making really engaging and fun projects for school kids to learn programming, but it turns out these already exist for free. Like here: https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/codeclub/python-module-1

These are really good resources for "Code Clubs" which are run for free by volunteers throughout the UK. I was once asked to run one by a librarian who was surprised that my response was somewhat indignant - like you wouldn't usually as a plumber to fix your pipes for free.

So I'm feeling discouraged. Those resources are really good, and exactly the kind of thing I had in mind.

What should I do with this discovery? I'm still trying to determine how to productize my experience and expertise as a Computer Science teacher. Do I do the same but better? Make it more interactive? Make video courses instead? Crawl under a rock?

Any insights appreciated.

BTW my efforts so far can be seen here: Blog - Compucademy

 

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[Rabby]

Lots of things have been done, both for free and otherwise. What you should think about are differentiators, things that:

• you can focus on that others wont
• people care about, or would care if it was an option in the market
• you can do with a paid product/service that a free service probably won't have

There are after school code camps/clubs/schools that people pay for, so it is possible to collect money for teaching kids to code. Maybe there is a way to do it without being physically present. If that's your goal.

Some things you might do:

• Have teachers or tutors available to help kids in your online program
• Focus on a certain type of coding, like games, minecraft, modding, graphics, or [...]
• Teach peripheral skills like art and design
• Teach 'advanced' topics
• Pay free online schools an affiliate fee if they send a student to your advanced program
• Change your media - make it an after school club, or a competition, or a book, or [...]

I don't know if any of this stuff will work for you, nor does anyone else. I do know that you should not get discouraged every time the thing you want to make exists... it always exists in some form. In other words, our view of our own originality is always exaggerated. It's ok though, because everyone making new products has a similar handicap; just work with it.

 

[Rabby]

Subscriptions, mail order kits, some things I didn't mention. Look at who you're pitching to - is it kids, teenagers, parents, teachers? Who is your product geared for? Is it for kids directly, or is it a lesson plan for parents or teachers. Expand your thinking and talk to different audiences until you discover unmet needs.

 

[Primeperiwinkle]

I can find an entire 1st-12th grade curriculum online for free yet there are easily fifty top selling homeschool curriculums out there.

Same for math, language, and anything else you can imagine.

Just because it’s out there for free doesn’t mean ppl have the time to search, set up or implement those programs. I could change my own oil for “free” but I don’t and never will.

Make a great product that doesn’t treat kids like little monkeys that need to be entertained and you’re gonna be able to sell. Make a great product that DOES treat kids like stupid little monkeys who need to be spoon fed and you’ll sell a lot more.

Don’t give up.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Marketing is a value skew.

Present your offer as much better than the FREE version (with some skew of the features as well) and you will be able to charge for it. You can also bet that the FREE version probably isn't doing any advertising since there is no price point or revenue model.

 

[luniac]

All the time on the Unity3D(game engine) reddit people ask about paid learning courses like on Udemy.
This is despite there being a quite extensive official free Unity LEARN section on their official website with lots of tutorials.

People just wanna pay for something i guess.

 

[Walter Hay]

Marketing is a value skew.

Present your offer as much better than the FREE version (with some skew of the features as well) and you will be able to charge for it. You can also bet that the FREE version probably isn't doing any advertising since there is no price point or revenue model.

What a great thread. This is a very common problem, and a lot of helpful comments have been made so far.

I think MJ's suggestion is the best by far. You can sell something identical to another simply by choosing a different color.

When Henry Ford said "Any customer can have any color he wants, as long as it's black", that worked for him because it was a crucial part of his planned efficient production system that kept the price affordable.

If another manufacturer could have produced a car of equivalent quality at the same cost, but offered a variety of colors, Ford might not have sold 15 million model T's, and the other manufacturer might have become very rich.

Walter

 

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[Sadik]

I am in the exact same situation. I am making a SaaS for which there are two situations:

1. There is a large market leader on a freemium model who claims to have over 2 million users.
2. There are MANY websites which provide the same service for FREE! Of these there is one who has implemented the service in much of the same manner that I am planning to.

I am STILL creating my service. Here are my reasons which may help you.

1. Worst worse case scenario, my service fails entirely and I am unable to sell. I would lose a few months of coding time plus less than ten thousand dollars I would have spent. I CAN afford to lose both without it making any effect on my life.
2. Even if I fail with the SaaS, I still GAIN tonnes of knowledge and experience building it, marketing it and selling it. So it's a hundred times cheaper than going to university!!!
3. None of the Free services are advertising. So I have an advantage over them.
4. My Feature set includes certain variations which I believe are worth the price. I am communicating the difference in my marketing.
5. Since there is a large player on a freemium model, clearly people are paying in spite of existing free services. The challenge is to convince them to buy from me instead.
6. The potential upside is huge. If this succeeds, this has the potential to get me to FU Money! So NOT building it is the bigger loss.

Bottom line, if the service / product you are creating is good that you would yourself pay for it as a user, it doesn't matter how many others are providing the same service. Your job is to communicate the VALUE to your potential buyers.

 

[COSenior]

There's a major difference between free classes online and effective classes online, free or paid. As a classroom teacher, you know about instructional design. Have you ever noticed what's missing or doesn't work in most online classes? Effective instructional design. It's different for online than for classroom, and I'd be willing to bet most of those free resources are mostly information dumps with maybe a practice prompt, if that. Sadly, that's the state of affairs in online courses, thanks to the trend of the 'gurus' to suggest creating a course for anyone who wants a digital product to sell.

Look into a program called The Course Design Formula, which was developed by a friend of mine who has 30 years' experience and two master's degrees for instructional design, one in online instructional design. If you go through her course to design yours, you will definitely stand out from the crowd. That's my affiliate link, by way of full disclosure, but I'd stand solidly behind the referral even if I weren't an affiliate. I took the course, and it's worth far more than she's asking.

By the way, just because there are a lot of free resources, that doesn't mean your paid course won't find buyers. A big part of what people pay for is convenience and your 'special sauce'. You can even make money on curation of the best of those, if you wanted. Your marketing will also play a big part in it.

Good luck!

 

[drpeppehr]

Exactly what MJ said - it's all about marketing.

There's tons of content out that will teach you programming, languages, etc. All for free.

You contort your own edge through marketing. Say for example you teach spanish to kids. What's better about your service that a free service like Duolingo? Just try to level up your service as best as you can and I'm sure you'll find that you can profit off this.

I used to play around with Raspberry Pi 3's and found that their company's content was beyond excellent for learning. I made a smart mirror with one as well as disabled all the advertisements on my home network.

Take a look at their team before you dive into this. Our team - Raspberry Pi

 

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[Robin Andrews]

The Raspberry Pi foundation is fantastic, but their level of fantasticness is worrying - they offer free online courses which really don't suck, as well as lots of other really good free resources.

I hear what people are saying about standing out, but I want to get a sense of whether there really is a need for paid products in this space before I fully commit.

I don't think Computing teachers in the UK are a good target audience as there appear to be only 4,000 of them in secondary schools, and many don't believe in paying for resources.

As the population of the UK is relatively small, the home ed market could also not be sufficiently large enough to meet the law of affection.

So I'm a bit stumped. I do know that schools in the UK are really struggling to employ Computer Science teachers as the pay is poor and the conditions too - so there is a reasonable demand for online tutoring, but that is my day job, and I want to break out of the time-for-money trap.

I'm thinking that maybe the American market would be more lucrative (certainly much larger), but I don't know what I would offer. I don't know the K-12 curriculum very well, but it might be worth learning it. Or I could just offer resources for beginner to intermediate programming in Python regardless of level, so adult learners would also benefit.

It is SO hard to know what to do!!

 

[StrikingViper69]

Maybe a better market is kids who are self motivated to learn. There are a ton of self motivated learners out there.

You could have a subscription where they get sent parts every month and coding lessons on how to make things.

There was a magazine called "Real Robots" in the UK that did something like this, it ran for quite a while. Every month you got a new part of your robot and slowly built it up added functionality to it. It was pretty cool. Downside was that it took forever to build it.

Maybe mini projects where after 4-6 weeks the project is complete and a new one starts.

If you're already a teacher, could you brainstorm a few ideas, present them to your class and see what they get excited about?.

EDIT: In terms of value skew, helping people work through stuff better than it is originally presented is a good skew. If you can make your educational process so that literally anyone can work through it, your customers will think it's great

 

[Rabby]

but I want to get a sense of whether there really is a need for paid products in this space before I fully commit.

I think that's unknowable without some kind of market engagement. You don't have to build a whole giant product line and then try to sell it. You can find out what people want, by talking to them or selling a micro-version of the product (Saturday webinar for example), and start getting a feel for what they're willing to pay for. If Ras Pi foundation does a particular thing well, maybe you don't need to do that exact thing. But there are lots of things you can do with Pis and microcontrollers.

 

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[Rabby]

Also worth mentioning, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is about selling/spreading Raspberry Pis. They want more businesses and more people involved with the Pi. So you're potentially friends. Maybe ask them where they think there is a need, see if you get any ideas.