There is an increase in our streaming cost due to higher usage of LiveEdu by users watching live streams and videos. We recently launched video uploading and about to launch our mobile apps as well as release new categories for topics on data science, game development, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, design and cryptocurrencies. Below  is a list of categories which will be released on each new topic:

Check out the new project directory! Cool, isn’t?

The recent development will lead to a higher streaming and business operating costs. Currently, we spend over 60% of our time and resources on viewers who do not pay for viewing content on LiveEdu. It is difficult for LiveEdu to monetize these viewers properly because LiveEdu is in the educational space and do not have the huge traffic gaming and entertainment websites have for monetization via advertising. In addition, we need to build out our streaming cluster infrastructure and expand our engineering team to cope with the workload of running streaming clusters, web and mobile apps. We cannot continue to offer LiveEdu for free to viewers because we have to cover the huge streaming cost, pay content creators and cover our business operational costs. To attract higher quality content creators and to improve the educational value of content (premium projects), we will be focusing on paying viewers. There is still going be free viewer account and free projects, but there will be a limitation as you can see in our new pricing plan table. Unlike Twitch and Youtube, LiveEdu is an educational platform and creating valuable educational content  (premium projects) requires that content creators spend significant amount of time preparing and structuring their project tutorials for streaming. Content creators will not continue to create educational content on a weekly base if there is no reward for their time and effort.

Focusing on paying viewers will reduce our workload, complexity of our product and increase content quality (premium projects) because content creators will be more inclined to generate valuable educational content if they get paid for their work. With this new change, we may experience a reduction of viewers on our site but, if we increase the content quality and user experience for paying users, we will be able to attract more paying users. In addition, we will weed out non-educational content (junk projects), focusing only on content where viewers can learn something from watching (quality instead of quantity). We will also screen projects before they start streaming. With the move to focus on paying viewers, we are going to expand our payment methods so that people can have more payment options regardless if they are from China, Russia, Brazil, Japan or India. We will also provide discounts on first-time payment for students if they submit their college ID to prove they are students.

When the pending release is implemented, there will 8 topics on LiveEdu and each topic will have its own sub-categories: programming,  data science, game development, design,  artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality and cryptocurrencies. As you can see in the new pricing plan below there will be  4 pricing tiers: Free, Single, Triple and All.

LiveEdu Pricing Plans

With a free viewer account, you can access 1 topic, watch 3 hours of live stream per month for non-premium projects and access up to 10 non-premium projects. With a free streamer account, you can stream premium and non-premium tutorial/projects as a content creator and get paid monthly, but your projects will not be approved for streaming if they are not educational.  If you want to stream non-educational projects you will need to buy a Pro plan to stream.

For viewers, the main difference between the Single, Triple and All plans is the number of topics you can access. If you have a Single Plan you can choose one topic out of seven. If you have a Triple plan, you can choose three of seven topics and the All plan grants you access to all topics.

For streamers, the main difference will be the maximum allowed video storage per month for non-educational projects.

LiveEdu Pro plans are pretty cheap and cost less than $0.50/day. It is obvious that some users will be mad, but we cannot run LiveEdu for free any longer especially when we need to pay content creators. Therefore, we want to focus only on viewers that value their career and skills development and are willing to invest less than $0.50/day for their development.

FAQ

Q. Why are you going to charge now? Are you guys greedy? Why not make everything free?

No, we are not greedy. Running the company costs money. We have not made any profit any month since the launch of the company. If we were greedy, we would have charged users from day 1. Imagine if you were not paid at your job at month’s end for your work. That will not work out long term for you. Right?
We cannot finance the cost of running the service (streaming servers, engineers, support, etc.) and invest in infrastructure (new streaming servers, improving streaming quality, hire more people, etc.) if it is free. LiveEdu has been free up till now, and it is time to monetize to be able to run the service long-term. In addition, content creators get paid some money to incentivize them to create more educational tutorial projects (premium projects)

We still offer a free tier to viewers, but after that, they need to go pro.

Q. Why don’t you monetize via advertising?

LiveEdu is an education product and not a media product like Twitch/Youtube. Educational products do not command the huge traffic volume required for monetization via advertising. That is why we are monetizing via subscriptions.

Q. Why are you moving your focus away from random streaming where content creators do whatever they want when they have time?

As elaborated, for the non-premium content, it is not possible to drive viewers on them (advertising) or sell content (subscriptions). We experimented with different ideas for a year on it, but none worked. It is time for us to focus our limited resources mainly on premium projects.

Q. Do you know you will have fewer streams and users if you charge?

Yes, but quantity of streams and users is not our core metric. We are focused on paying users (customers) and quality educational tutorial projects . Our goal is to get 50 scheduled premium projects per day instead of 600 unscheduled non-premium projects.

Q. Can I still stream non-premium projects?

Yes. Non-premium content creators can still stream but it is not something LiveEdu will focus on or market.

Q. Would LiveEdu continue marketing my non-premium projects for me?

No. Non-premium project content creators are to market their content to get viewers following this guide.
If they don’t, they will have fewer viewers and view time on their streams and videos.

Q. Will non-premium content creators also get paid some money?

Yes, as explained on this page. But to be honest, if you care about money then create premium projects.