If you charge the lesson creators they will want to charge the students to recoup costs/make money. This is fine but it changes the entire dynamic of the website. The "web 3.0" example lesson plan becomes a moot example. All this information is free and the target audience most certainly is not going to be compelled to pay for this type of content. So your new target market becomes people looking for and creating "marketable skills" type of content. Content like lynda.com etc. Content that makes it clear students will get a return on their money.
I can see you building for traction and a lot of people setting up free lesson plans. Are these free lesson plan creators necessarily going to be the same market that would have a need for creating paid lesson plans?
I think the concept is solid, just doing some off the cuff thought exploration - good luck.
Your analysis is spot on, and our hypothesis is that if we can deliver a framework that makes online education much better, that there will be a variety of uses for it - everything from paid courses on SEO (in demand hi-tech skills), to free courses on fun things like "MacBeth in an hour" (launching later this week). Our plan right now is to implement an app store like model where educators can create courses for free, but if they want to charge for them, we get a % of the revenue.
If you charge the lesson creators they will want to charge the students to recoup costs/make money. This is fine but it changes the entire dynamic of the website. The "web 3.0" example lesson plan becomes a moot example. All this information is free and the target audience most certainly is not going to be compelled to pay for this type of content. So your new target market becomes people looking for and creating "marketable skills" type of content. Content like lynda.com etc. Content that makes it clear students will get a return on their money.
I can see you building for traction and a lot of people setting up free lesson plans. Are these free lesson plan creators necessarily going to be the same market that would have a need for creating paid lesson plans?
I think the concept is solid, just doing some off the cuff thought exploration - good luck.