gdangelo

Most of the website/app is built with homemade components. For some of them, I've leveraged the UI components from Headless UI (https://headlessui.dev/) which is a project from Tailwind CSS.

Then, what feature do you need/want that isn't on this list? Finally, what made you consider looking at another platform if you already have everything you need on others? Thanks for your feedback.

I've just pushed some changes. You can now re-organize: 1. blocks within a lesson, 2. lessons within a section, 3. and sections within a course.

Check it out, and let me know what you think.

I agree. It is something I'll look into, supporting more payment methods.

Please see my comment above.

  1- An easy-to-use interface to create the content of their course, specialized in technical/programming courses.
  2- The freedom to organize their lessons as they wish. Instructors are not restricted to a specific format. Instead, they can choose from various blocks, as mentioned above.
  3- The freedom to sell their courses for the price they want without worrying about any promotional campaigns from the platform, for instance.
  4- Integrated payment processing, so they don't have to worry about setting it up themselves.
  5- A marketplace to host and showcase their courses.
  6- Tools to help them build up the audience they need to drive initial sales, such as offering free courses, presale courses, or using their custom domain (coming soon). I will also provide/include marketing tools to instructors to manage their audience right from AlterClass (coming soon).

As a primary goal for 2022, I will also keep driving highly relevant organic traffic to AlterClass. So that, on top of everything I mentioned, instructors could benefit from this traffic when launching a course with no audience.

I hope this helps you understand the benefits of choosing AlterClass to launch your courses. Please let me know if there is anything unclear, and as always, feel free to provide any feedback or idea you have. Thanks!

Thanks for your feedback! The tutorials section provides in-depth technical content to anyone for free. In addition, it helps drive organic and relevant traffic to AlterClass so that instructors with published courses can benefit from it. No more relevant traffic on AlterClass, the more potential students for the instructors ;)

You're right. I'm about to add them to the website asap. But, I'd like to emphasise that my goal is to give the instructors full ownership and control over their content, but also give them access to it beyond AlterClass.

Thanks a lot for your message. I'm glad it inspires you. Regarding your suggestion, I may release a course on how to build a SaaS platform using modern dev technologies.

Thanks you for taking the time to try AlterClass using the free trial. I really appreciate it.

Q1. I see the Code playground block as a mini code-editor that would give you the ability to run coding challenges your students will have to complete, much like what you find on Codecamedy for instance. Also, I'd like this code playground to support languages CodeSandbox doesn't, such as Python. Plus, in comparison to CodeSandbox, this block will feel more integrated to your course as it will be native to the AlterClass platform and not just an iframe embed into your lessons. Feel free to suggest any idea you have for this block :)

Q2. I thought about it and my goal is to add more blocks over time to give you as much freedom as possible in creating your lessons. I support YouTube videos as it is the most popular, but Vimeo is something I could easily add. I've added it to the backlog. Stay tuned ;)

Thanks for your comment and feedback on the marketplace. Right now, the AlterClass marketplace is more a way for people to launch their courses quickly without worrying about setting up their own platform and hosting the content. I won't compare myself to any app marketplace (like Apple or Google) as it is not my end goal. I want to give the instructors full control of their courses and give them the freedom to access beyond AlterClass. I'm still working on this, so stay tuned ;)

Thanks for your feedback.

Q1. Yes, the pricing model is something that has been pointing out several time here. I'll think about it and probably open the "Starter" plan as a free tier + the 10% cut. How does it sound?

Q2. Payment via PayPal for students is something I'll definitively support in the near future. Stay tuned ;)

Thanks for pointing this. I'm only supporting PayPal for payout for now as I ran into a blocker with Stripe when trying to implement transferring funds to instructors. Indeed, as students can buy several courses from several different instructors, I can't just use the "destination charges' feature from Stripe, as you mentioned, since that's for 1-to-1 transfer. So, I've looked deeper into this and even contacted Stripe about it, and they suggested to process the payment with Stripe Checkout once, and then create multiple transfers referencing the successful Charge that's created. However, again, I can't really use this because it is a feature that Stripe only support for their US users and I'm in the EU: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/cross-border-payouts. Hopefully, they will release this feature for the EU soon so that I could offer you to connect your Stripe account to receive your payments as an instructor.

Thanks! React / Next.js + Tailwind CSS

Thanks :)

What I mean by that is ownership and access of your course content beyond AlterClass. More coming soon :)

Thanks for the advice and your feedback.

For the authentication, I'm using the Next-auth.js library, and what I get from Github is only your Id, name, email, and avatar URL. That's it. Not sure why you've seen "full access".

I'll think about the free tier. And for the pre-orders, yes this is something I've though about and this is definitely something I'd like to avoid. I'll probably unlock the fund only if the instructor delivers (for first time instructors for example) so that I protect the students from losing their money if the instructor does not deliver and run away with it.

Taxes are calculated and collected by Stripe during checkout depending on the user's location.

Right now, I'm focused on online course creation. I've no plan for building a blogging platform. But I do have a blog on AlterClass with in-depth tutorials. If you are interested, I'm looking for guest authors ;)

Have a look and let me know your thoughts -> https://alterclass.io/tutorials

I see. Thanks for the update. Having TODOs is not a great experience for the students. If you'd like to list it for free, I suggest you, at least provide a first version of it that can teach something meaningful for the students. And then, you can still add more sections/lessons to it over time. I'll review it tomorrow morning and we will work on it together.

Thanks for your feedback. I've tried to be as transparent as possible about the fees on the platform, so that's why I've differentiated between AlterClass cut/fee and the Stripe fees for processing the payments. So when I say no transaction fee, I mean no extra cut/fee from using AlterClass. I'll try to make it clearer and obvious to the customer. Thanks for pointing this

Thanks for your comment. The payment processing fee is what Stripe charges and unfortunately I can't change anything about it. However, it is very low and I believe it is fair to take it out from the sales amount. In other words, if you make 10,000 (or more) sales a month, AlterClass cannot cover the Stripe fees for all those sales just with the monthly subscription. Finally, you can check out the following page where I compare Udemy to AlterClass for instructors. There is a nice revenue calculator and a detailed comparison table. Let me know your thoughts.

-> https://alterclass.io/udemy-alternative

Running, maintaining, and improving AlterClass is a full time job and it is costly. I'm putting a lot of time and effort into it. The monthly subscription is to help me make a living while helping others with creating and selling better online courses.

Could you please reach out to me from the chat on AlterClass.io so that I can help you with that matter? Thanks.

I invite you to try AlterClass and make your own opinion about it. AlterClass is free for 14 days (no cc required). I'd really appreciate your feedback.

I'm still very early and I'm still experimenting with the business model and how it can fit as best as possible with the instructors needs. For now, I've chosen to have a low price subscription ($9/month) for the instructors that don't know if they'll make a lot of sales. The $9/month helps me with covering the cost of running, maintaining, and improving the platform by adding more and more features over time.

In case, you plan to make a lot of sales (because you already have a huge audience on social media or Youtube for example), you can choose the other plan (Pro trainer), and pay no fee on each sale (expect for the Stripe fee). In either case, you can upgrade/downgrade at anytime and for no extra cost.

Today, you can launch your course for free, or sell it for a price you select from $9 to $299. However, your students cannot choose the amount they'd like to pay for the course. But thanks for the suggestion. I'll think about it ;)

Thanks for your review and feedback. I'd really appreciate you took the time to check all those aspects of the app/website.

Great! Thank you for taking the time to visit AlterClass. I hope to see your courses launched soon :) If you have any questions or need help, feel free to reach out to me using the chat on AlterClass.io.

Thanks for submitting your first course, "Building Typescript Libraries". I've received the notification, I'll look into it first thing in the morning tomorrow. Did you submit it just for testing AlterClass or for launching it for real? :)

I totally understand that the ownership of your course content is a concern for you and I'm working on a solution. I don't want to promise anything yet, but I do think hard about it. As an instructor myself, I understand that you want to own your course and have access to it outside the platform you used to create it. More on that soon.

Regarding the blocks/lessons order, it is not possible on the authoring system yet. I'm working on that too.