Working on a site for learning anything, using format of Startup Stash. Is focusing on free 'bad'?
Hi all,
I love learning new things and feel passionately about personal development and education. Because of this, I've begun working on a side project which will seek to share resources for learning ANYTHING to anyone around the world with access to the Internet. Think Startup Stash but for learning anything.
My goal is to continue to create a giant list of topics people will want to learn about (algebra, chemistry, iOS development, javascript, language learning, drawing, web design, etc.) and list 10 or so free, online resources that can be used to immediately begin learning.
I'm curious what you all think about this. Do you have any comments or feedback on the idea itself? I'm afraid to fully commit to it because a site filled with free resources won't really make money, unless I add 'premium' resources -- listing sponsored websites or potentially linking to books on amazon?
Should I stop thinking of money and do it for the love and passion of the project?
Along these lines?
If so, I think it's a cool idea, and I've come across more than a few attempts at it. Ideally it would be open to crowdsourced contributions (in some way that can be monitored and damage-controlled) so that a truly broad menu of resources could amass.
Who is going to create all these courses? What do you mean by course? I don't see any point if it's another video learning site.
You should not stop thinking of money, it's a key point. You will lose any motivation soon if there is no any sign of money. Money is not bad and there are a lot of people ready to pay for the great educational resource. The key point how to make them great. The prices should not be high to make a lot of profit.
So to clarify, I wouldn’t be making any courses. It’s just a curated listing of resources that already exist to help people jump right into learning. I know from experience when I wanted to learn something, I spent a lot of time doing my own research googling trying to find tutorials, wasting time constantly doubting whether the material was good and taking away from actual time learning.
On my site, if you clicked Algebra, you would end up with a list of links such as:
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra
http://www.mathsisfun.com/algebra/index.html
https://www.mathplanet.com/education/algebra-1
https://schoolyourself.org/learn/algebra
So, do you want it to be kind of agregator like https://www.class-central.com ?
To be honest I really don't understand the problem. If I want to learn something (I learn to something new very often) I just look for any accessible resources and it's not a problem to find a good one. When I wanted to learn iOS I bought some book (big one, from "24" hours series), but as for TensorFlow I read some free books downloaded from Packt and of course the documentation. I don't know who and why needs to learn algebra if you already graduated from school or university. Library always has a normal good workbooks on math for free.
So therefore the key question is who is your target auditory?