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:
| Augmented Reality | Data Science | Artificial Intellgience | Virtual Reality | Design | Game Development |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Augmented Reality | Data Visualization | Machine Learning | Mobile VR | Logo design | GameDev Tutorials |
| Big Data | Robotics | Desktop and Console VR | Mobile App Design | GameMaker Tutorials | |
| Data Analytics | Natural Language Processing | VR Games | Web App Design | Unreal Engine | |
| Text Processing | Self Driving Car | Art and Illustration | Love2D | ||
| Data Warehouse | Computer Vision | UX design | Unity | ||
| Data Mining | |||||
| Wolfram |
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
| Free | Single | Triple | All |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0.00 | $9.99 | $14.99 | $19.99 |
| 1 topic | 1 topic | 3 topics | All Topics |
| Limited to 3 hrs of free livestream watching per month | Unlimited access to premium projects | Unlimited access to premium projects | Unlimited access to premium projects |
| Up to 10 non-premium projects per month | Unlimited access to project playlists | Unlimited access to project playlists | Unlimited access to project playlists |
| Limited playlist access | Download project files | Download project files | Download project files |
| Download project videos | Download project videos | Download project videos | |
| Access for mobile apps | Access for mobile apps | Access for mobile apps | Access for mobile apps |
| Advertising interruptions | |||
| Send project requests* | Send project requests* | Send project requests* | |
| Watch in high or low resolution | Watch in high or low resolution | Watch in high or low resolution | |
| STREAM FOR FREE | No Advertising | No Advertising | No Advertising |
| 24hr Customer support | 24hr Customer support | 24hr Customer support | |
| Unlimited project creation | Unlimited project creation | Unlimited project creation | |
| up to XGB video storage per month for non-educational content | up to XGB video storage per month for non-educational content | up to XGB video storage per month for non-educational content | |
| Set videos private | Set videos private | Set videos private | |
| Opt out archiving | Opt out archiving | Opt out archiving | |
| Team Channel | Team Channel | Team Channel | |
| 24hr customer support | 24hr customer support | 24hr customer support |
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.
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.
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View Comments
Quote: "creating valuable educational content requires that content creators spend significant amount of time preparing and structuring their project tutorials for streaming". This is where it's a problem. I'm paid $50/hour at Packtpub for reviewing books. As a teacher, I'm paid $70/hour to teach NodeJS, big data, Python and Django (mainly in engineer schools and at some big companies it's much more). You think this way: "teachers who need to earn money should spend many hours to prepare and structure their project tutorials for streaming"... this is not possible!
I see liveedu as a platform to share live streaming. *Live*. And the word "live" implies "no preparation". And fun. And chat, and exchange with viewers.
If you want professional courses, *prepared* courses, then I'd better make a 100% prepared video and sell it to Packtpub, I'll earn much more money.
I think the way liveedu is changing is not good: you're trying to be "between" what sells Packtpub (= professionnals video around $70 each, and those are really pro videos) and "very fun" like livecoding was used to be. You should stop asking people who are streaming to spend many hours of preparation, because if you do so, you loose all the fun that livecoding had. Try to find another way of monetization. For example: the chat. Maybe allow four sentences / 30 minutes if they dont pay. Or whatever.
It seems you have some misunderstanding. Live does not mean 'no preparation'. Live just means the content is streamed live, but it does not mean random and silent streaming of unstructured uneducational content. LiveEdu is focused on real projects and not beginner level tutorials. It is all about real projects people can learn from and download resources. Viewers don't come on LiveEdu just to watch silent screens where it is hard to follow what is going on. Best content creators on any live or video site do really prepare their content somehow even if it is not obvious. when it comes to educational content preparation is even more important!
As you mentioned you earn money with your work, we also have to pay content creators and business operations costs. The use case you described is not one that is profitable for LiveEdu to focus on as explained in detail in the article.
I understand that you need to earn money, like everybody else.
When you said: "LiveEdu is focused on real projects and not beginner level tutorials. It is all about real projects people can learn from and download resources."
Ok. I've made some videos and sometimes I see how many coders are streaming. Best I found one year ago: 20 streamers online. Best I found this month: 7 streamers online. Maybe the streams are good quality. Maybe with those 13 who stopped streaming, 13 were making silent screens. Or maybe 3 were making silent screens and 10 ran away when they see what livecoding is now. It's your choice to try to earn money this way.
We are more keen on quality than quantity as announced here: http://blog.liveedu.tv/moving-quantity-quality-content-liveedu/
We are focused now mainly on PREMIUM PROJECTS (https://www.liveedu.tv/projects/premium/) and NOT non-premium projects. All our company resources are now focused on premium projects. Our goal is to get 50 scheduled premium projects per day instead of 600 unscheduled non-premium projects. With the focus on premium projects, yes there is going to be a drop in non-premium projects. Non-premium content creators can still stream but it is not something LiveEdu will focus on or market. Non-premium project content creators are to market their content to get viewers following this guide: http://blog.liveedu.tv/liveedu-content-marketing-manual-for-streamers/
As elaborated, for the 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.
LiveEdu has lost their way. With ever GUI tweak or pricing change, they have pushed more and more people away. How many people are going to go from a platform that was free and relatively versatile to having to pay up to 20$ per month? The content is still put out by people that really do what they want with no guarantees that they will screw over the view by either stopping in the middle of the project, or by just screwing around in general. I strongly support the streamers that move to Twitch or other platforms. I was a huge advocate for the site in its infancy because it gave freedom to both the viewers and the streamers to do what they wanted to, then the freedoms have slowly been taken away. I understand that there are bills to pay, but alienating current and past content creators and viewers is not the way to do it.
Just because LiveEdu was free in the beginning does not mean it will be free forever. There is no free lunch forverer anywhere ;) Like explained in the article LiveEdu is focused on monetizable education tutorial projects that viewers will pay for to watch and practice with. This can be premium or non-premium projects. Pricing starts from $9.99/month which is less than $0.50/day. We are focusing our limited resources on paying viewers as we are a business.
As explained in article, LiveEdu is not targeting silent non-educational projects as they are neither monetizable nor worth watching. Such content can be streamed on other sites that are more suitable for it.
Bye Liveedu.tv [*]
As explained in the article we cannot offer the service for free forever as there is monthly costs to cover. If you expect LiveEdu to be free forever without a sustainable business model that will not be possible. The use case that viewers like watching and also willing to pay for are structured educational projects. Silent projects and streams that show up time-wise randomly on LiveEdu is not something viewers watch and is also not monetizable.
Content creators that create structured educational projects will paid out monthly: https://www.liveedu.tv/make-money/
Yea, I understand it. Anyway in my opinion you're too fast trying to earn on everything - on streamers, viewer..
For example I never want to earn on my streams.. On our facebook group called "LiveEdu.tv Streamers" people are saying this same..
As we explained in other comments, we cannot build a business just on the use case of the hobby streamers who stream sporadically just for fun. We have monthly business operations cost to cover else we cannot run the platform long term. If you want some viewers to access content for free more than the free tier will offer, you can buy Pro subscriptions for them. We offer Pro discounts on bulk purchases.
As explained in the article we cannot offer the service for free forever as there is monthly costs to cover. If you expect LiveEdu to be free forever without a sustainable business model that will not be possible. The use case that viewers like watching and also willing to pay for are structured educational projects. Silent projects and streams that show up time-wise randomly on LiveEdu is not something viewers watch and is also not monetizable.
Wow, I was preparing to come back on the streaming scene with Live Coding but all this paying plans are going to put a lot of people away. Like lot of people I stream for the love of sharing my knowledge. All I want is to share it freely. Some people can afford to pay while other don't and you are penalizing those who can't.
Since the junk content do not get any audience, the good one gets it all. Viewers are smart and will only go to the good content, ignoring naturally the bad. Making people pay to watch will also penalize the streamer that wants to reach the largest audience possible regardless the income. As you grow, you automatically get more donations. But it's going to be extremely hard to the streamer to grow his audience if you cut that audience from the start.
If we could make LiveEdu free forever we would. But this would not work as explained in article. Content creators that create structured educational projects will paid out monthly: https://www.liveedu.tv/make-money/
For $9.99 or $14.99 per month I don't mind if the premium projects I can watch are good.
This is hurting a lot of people. We are going to lose a lot of interested people. And because of this you are going to lose a lot of pro members. I have pro membership but see no reason to continue it. As I will not have an audience anylonger.
This is great news. Time for structured projects I can learn from without the junk content.
LiveEdu is switching to focus mainly on paying viewers .... because they need to pay rent in the bay area.... Do not blame streamers because streamers never asked money for streaming. Streamers were always happy and enjoying a good community streaming for free. RIP LIVE*.tv Long life to Twitch!
The kind of streamers who stream educational projects that most viewers watch do ask for money as they spend a lot of time preparing their content and streaming like 20hrs per week. It is their valuabble time. Hobby content creators who stream occassionally their side project once a week or month is not what we are targeting. Third, we are running a business and it is obvious that we are not going to offer LiveEdu for free forever. Every business needs to run on a sustainable business model
The only thing that made livecoding special has always been that it was a streaming platform solely for coders. This way, a great community has built up, where coders were watching each other, discussing about coding related topics etc. Some people were even getting friends here in real life.
So personally I am very sad that it is going in this direction now and I have doubts, that this new way will be successful. Maybe I am wrong, but that's how I think about it.
The community for coders is still there and not getting removed. Maybe you misunderstood the article.We are only getting rid of junk content that no viewer wants to watch. Our company name has been LiveEdu since launch. LiveCoding was just a sub-topic name. Removing junk content will improve the quality of content for viewers. The coding community will always be there.
I disagree, the community is gone. Many of the streamers I knew from before are not streaming anymore, and they didn't just do silent streams...
As explained in the article "quality over quantity" LiveEdu is not focused on quantity:
http://blog.liveedu.tv/moving-quantity-quality-content-liveedu/
We can easily get a lot of content on LiveEdu if the only criteria is quantity. Quality of the content matters that is why we are decreasing the quantity to focus on quality (structured educational projects). Viewers are willing to pay for educational content versus random uneducational streaming. Yes, we will lose some content creators, but it does not matter.
Ok viewing it from that point of view you have reached all your goals. The quantity is really low.
https://media.giphy.com/media/zNbiX43QsqUAU/giphy.gif
R.I.P. have fun dying. LiveCoding was good, LiveEdu is shit. You just destroyed your whole community. You would have gotten away with a few ads, but this is ridiculous, if you were smart the community should be the top priority, they will even donate if it's good. But now, not streaming anymore on LiveEdu.
We are not targeting silent content streamers. Thus, it is ok for those to stream on Twitch/Youtube. It is not the type of content or use case we are focused on. Such content gets no viewers anyway. Ads are only viable for entertainment sites with huge traffic volume and not educational products. Donations are not a serious source of monthly revenue in our case.
I loved the idea of LiveCoding, but ever since the name has changed to LiveEdu things went down hill. There were many streams, and yes you said it before quality over quantity but not having anything on your website doesn't always attract people right? And just why are you putting a limit on the streaming hours of non-premium people. It's just bullshit, and you're asking money but I can't even watch a stream properly without it loading every 3 seconds, and don't doubt my internet. You are just telling people that they need to use something else (in other words). Or are you guys becoming something as Treehouse or Lynda. And donations aren't indeed a serious source of revenue, but if you had made your company non-profit you would have sponsors, which as the looks of it you don't have. Most of the online education should be free to watch (and I said free to watch, so ads are allowed). Which isn't possible I know, people should get their revenue somewhere but LiveCoding was that people could know from each other by watching a stream. Also: more community = more visitors = more ad revenue. Please think this through so the old community doesn't have to make a new LiveCoding ;).
If a project is a created there is no limit on number of stream hours for content creators. Where did you read that there is a stream hour limitation? Is this maybe an English language problem that you do not understand the article at all?
Can you file a bug report for the specific stream or video? There are many reasons that could have caused this. Such issues are the reason we are getting rid of junk content so we can focus on fixing issues on valuable content.
I'm picking this up as an insult. LiveEdu isn't very nice to it's users. What I mean is that you can only watch 3 hours of stream when you are not paying for LiveEdu. Which is clearly in the posted above.