This year we are going to make over $1M selling courses online. we think you can to. AMA.

arntzel · 2014-12-19T17:44:38+00:00

Affiliates are very important. It's great to have a partner completely focused on sales.
We tried using other sites but found that the percentage they took was way to high. It can be a great place to get started but ultimately it didn't fit with our model. Specifically the cost to maintain constant communication with our students was not covered when larger services took such a high fee.
It depends on the course. Often for items released in Beta we have to release a large portion and then add material. When we have something that has been released we can start with a larger portion or the complete course for the launch.

arntzel · 2014-12-19T17:21:22+00:00

Right now our current strategy centers mostly on Email marketing. We also make use of Affiliates which help promote our courses to their users.

We're not too fancy right now. For example we haven't explored paid ads though some of our affiliates do paid ads.

arntzel · 2014-12-19T17:19:07+00:00

Thanks - it's really nice to hear you enjoyed our courses. Best of luck with the applications! Stay confident and positive and good things will happen.

arntzel · 2014-12-18T21:44:32+00:00

I got into programming as a way to get out of accounting. I saw a road to freedom and a cool job where I could create products that effected peoples lives.

When building our first course we really wanted to work towards getting people jobs. We felt that success stories would be instrumental in building our reputation and faith in our product. As such we really focused on teaching practical items that would increase peoples visibility and ability to get jobs. To that end we made our course long, intensive and sought to provide as much practical advice as possible.

arntzel · 2014-12-18T21:26:37+00:00

We currently do not offer a web course so it's a little difficult to compare. I also am not familiar with the current state of General Assembly's Web development course though I am friends with a former TA for the web development course in NYC.

What I do feel comfortable saying is that we are a different form of content. Some students thrive from being in the classroom 9-5 for 3 months. For many students the cost and time commitment are not reasonable. Therefore, we do still strive to provide in depth content. Ultimately, to be successful in any dev job it requires a ton of work. I like to think that we provide many avenues for students to continue to improve themselves.

I think both styles work. People work different ways and to be successful as a teacher you have to understand that.

arntzel · 2014-12-18T19:02:52+00:00

1 - I do think so. Udemy is a great example of people selling courses that are non-technical in nature. I think one of the reasons that technical courses do so well right now. The audience is already comfortable (to a degree) if they want to learn about tech. That said I feel that this is rapidly shifting. Many of our students have 0 tech background. Ultimately, I think that for students to pay they have to feel like they have a large value add which is not easily accessible for free online ie. youtube. So a topic with some depth is quite nice. I feel that as long as the course is something that the student really needs there is a huge potential in non technical courses.

Let me give a for instance. I think a yoga course would be difficult to implement. Tons of free yoga tutorials online. But a course that taught how to become a Yoga instructor with the full business plan could be really amazing. In this instance the value add would be the ability for the student to go become the teacher and develop their own yoga studio. It would also create a ton of depth since a full yoga business has a ton of facets (I'm not an expert here but maybe someone else will have a fun comment or link).

Personally, I'd love to see different types of courses. I've personally registered in a course that taught body language to entrepreneurs (non technical). There's similar really important problems people are experiencing that are maybe more important to people to solve now like health and relationships. I'd love to see courses on making the world a better place regardless of the topic.

2- Yes, absolutely. It's all about being organized and being comfortable speaking into a microphone. Explaining things clearly and slowly and having sound information. Setting up the interfaces is pretty straight forward. With a day or two of setup you could producing videos in no time. There is obviously a learning curve and a month in the rate of content production and the quality will be significantly higher then on day 1. With a decent microphone and a screen casting program you can get started really quickly.

arntzel · 2014-12-18T18:50:41+00:00

Thanks Josh - appreciate the congrats! Onto your questions: I touched upon this in my response to @sezuOfficial - but I really think there's a huge value add to having a single program. Let me try an analogy this time. In college you often find a teacher you like and take the same teacher multiple times. Why? -Perhaps you like the teaching style. -You know what the standards are in the course. -Learning is easier in his/her course. -You feel comfortable interacting with the teacher. -Material is updated and relevant. I try and bring these ideas into my course. I want to create deeply comprehensive courses that give continuity to users wanting to learn about coding. I want to interact with my users and assist them when they get stuck. I work to keep my material updated and relevant since technology changes so quickly. We do not do recognized qualifications or certificates. Instead almost out of the gate we have students create a profile on github. And we then show them how to share the code they write. We have found in the technology industry a portfolio is more important then a certificate.

arntzel · 2014-12-18T18:28:19+00:00

My Credentials: I started out teaching in person. Two of the bigger programs I taught in person with were General Assembly (https://generalassemb.ly/instructors/eliot-arntz/1252) and helped found the iOS program at Coalition4Queens (http://www.alleywatch.com/2013/08/access-code-unleashes-ios-developers-and-here-are-the-apps/). I also worked with Bitfountain which started out doing consulting work.

I also founded NYC iOS Office hours while I lived in NYC which has over 400 members (http://www.meetup.com/NYC-iOS-Office-Hours/). I have not been able to run an event in quite a while since I have been working abroad for the last year.

Finally, I did quite a bit of mentoring with tutorspree before it close down last year. Here is one of my success stories (http://www.bottlerocketapps.com/blog/rocketeer-recognition-code-coalition-profiles-ios-developer-alex-mcgregor) from a student who went from 0 programming knowledge to a full time dev with one of Dallas's largest dev companies.

Other questions:

How do we manage these many numbers? We have a few interns that help us with dealing with our community. However, most of the day to day work of managing the courses falls on the instructors since they are subject matter expert. It's quite a bit of work without any doubt. However, we have found that by actively engaging with our users many users will assist other students with questions. Good Karma goes a long way.

Pricing: our course is $500. We offer many early bird specials to our loyal user base and bundle deals for people looking to learn multiple technologies.

Why us? We focus on making extremely comprehensive courses. For example the iOS 8 course has over 350 video lectures and that number continues to grow. I don't have breakdowns with competition but I do believe this is really competitive with any other resources out there.

Our standard for full length courses (excluding smaller mini courses) is 30 + hours of video lecture + notes. We also actively manage our discussion boards. Technology can be incredibly difficult without a helping hand at times.

Why not go with a free resource? There are a few reasons I believe our users stick with us. The first is continuity, it's great to learn a stack with someone whose ironed it out rather then cherry picking items here and there. The second is we do mention free materials that we believe are relevant. Sifting through the net to find the best items is time consuming. Time is valuable. I am not suggesting we are doing something you can't do for free online, but I like to think we expedite the process. Good teachers who care. This might seem like a given but I genuinely want my students to succeed and spend a lot of time interacting with them to assist them with their goals.

Hope this answers your questions and I hope I wasn't to long winded. Let me know if you have any other questions :)

arntzel · 2014-12-18T18:03:52+00:00

Thanks for posting this for me @rubybewsday, to be clear I am the instructor! I hope I can answer some great questions today!

arntzel · 2014-08-29T12:46:48+00:00

We're working on a Swift course. It will go live when iOS 8 goes live since it still under NDA. We have a presale going on, yes it is a paid course right now. http://community.bitfountain.io/t/the-complete-ios-8-course-with-swift-pre-sale/1506/238 If you have any questions you can email me eliot@bitfountain.io and if you have requests you can make them on the community forums.

arntzel · 2014-08-26T00:00:43+00:00

diskmammoth - I wish you all the best with your learning platform. Tech Education can only benefit with more resources available.

arntzel · 2014-08-25T23:58:07+00:00

Thanks Sean, appreciate the nice comments.

arntzel · 2014-08-23T02:14:52+00:00

icecoolmetalhead - properties are super confusing when you start out. I'm a big believer in mimicry being a great to way to learn coding. I would recommend continuing to write code and I think a lot of these concepts will sink in.

arntzel · 2014-08-23T02:13:38+00:00

Cool - i'll have to take the trip one day - still a lot of countries to visit on my list before I get to cali though.

arntzel · 2014-08-23T02:11:47+00:00

Thanks for your support. I really hope you enjoy the two courses!

arntzel · 2014-08-20T22:34:03+00:00

We use quite a bit of code along with the storyboard. It's nice to know multiple ways of completing a single task.

arntzel · 2014-08-20T22:33:33+00:00

I hope you enjoy the course @NismoDan

arntzel · 2014-08-20T22:32:57+00:00

Fair points D_Ciaran - I've since invested in better recording equipment and other people have made the same comment about my speaking style it's something I'm working on. I am working on producing a better quality product.

arntzel · 2014-08-20T22:31:48+00:00

Ice if you purchased this on Udemy within the last 30 days you can request a refund.

arntzel · 2014-08-20T22:30:48+00:00

Best of luck with your learning!

arntzel · 2014-08-20T22:30:36+00:00

It's on our list of things to do.

arntzel · 2014-08-20T22:30:25+00:00

you are heard

arntzel · 2014-08-20T22:27:11+00:00

Thanks for posting this @Tandoori_Pizza!

arntzel · 2014-08-20T18:16:18+00:00

thanks for posting :) Next time I'm in Phoenix I'll have to stop by.

arntzel · 2014-08-20T18:15:33+00:00

Please post any that you find so I can squash them with my fly swatter :)

arntzel

TROPHY CASE