Lift Academy
Make new friends, learn life skills
Lift Academy is going to be on hold for awhile until I can clear some major blockers out of the way. I was well into the mobile app development for the community, I am just going to pack it in with some mothballs for now until the time is right to unpack it and get it out into the world.
One of our new users found us while searching for "how to make friends". He was the 2nd signup on our new user community for Lift Academy. A day or so later and he was matched,accepted a friend request, and now has a new friend to play online games and chat with, in a SAFE environment. I am so thrilled!!
I have a low-cost ongoing promotion running to bring users by my landing pages as I tweak them and smooth things out. I built them in spurts so there are lots of rough flows still, and messaging is confusing as I've pivoted TWICE in the last month.
However, someone honed in on one of the value propositions and signed up for the membership tonight.. to find friends!
Also, someone ELSE signed up for a class I don't even have scheduled yet :)
As Step 1 of learning my customer acquisition cost, I started putting some ads on FB. Basically as soon as I finish tweaking a page on the site, I try to build a (terrible) ad for it to test the messaging. So I've gone from knowing nothing about my CAC, to having a basic idea of what it will cost just to bring people to my landing page.
Right now, ranging from $0.60 to.. $8.69. So I can tell which messages didn't resonate at all. Going to try a "good" ad today to see if it goes under $0.60 much.
Excited for the next step.. getting a conversion to a sale!
Took almost a month but I’ve set up the community site for Lift Academy. It’s a Creep-Proof online community for kids. It’s really barebones at launch, as I built it from scratch and have a pretty innovative registration process.
I could have gone with a premade community solution, and I checked some out. However, I want to be tightly integrated into the sites and events/classes and have much sturdier processes for keeping out bad behavior.
To get to launch, I had to push past a lot of personal misgivings about readiness. Finally I decided that if it provided some value, wouldn’t hurt anyone, and was trackable, then it was releasable.
It’s free at the moment so I can get some feedback, as I’ll start splitting my time up into marketing much more than it has been.
Shifting focus from online assessments to building a kid-safe community and serving their educational, gaming, and social needs.
Last week was formational. I've been working on this project for like 7 weeks now. The first four weeks were specifically geared around creating online tests to help kids measure the summer gap. It was a successful endeavor in that it worked very well for the intended problem, but the timeline was tricky.
Grade-level assessment testing is annual or semi-annual in appeal, and I'm already past the ideal sales and marketing cycle. The next one won't happen until December for mid-year progress testing. In response to a huge outcry I've seen, changed focus to work on Phase 2 a little earlier than planned to address a more prescient issue.
Kids are lonely. What was hoped to be an end to it is staying for awhile due to delayed school openings, and it's a longer term problem anyway, which goes beyond homeschooling and COVID-based isolation. So this week I took several days to really focus on what it would take to combat that on an ongoing basis, and came up with a great solution which solves a series of problems.
A series of shows, set up as joinable Zoom calls or live webinars. Mixture of education, encouragement, and entertainment. It would be backed by a community, and serve as a friend-finding group as well for the games/apps kids love to use. I tossed the concept up on my page and got heavy interest in it.
This gets me to Phase 2 sooner, which was offering online classes. I originally was thinking of something competing with other online schools, but with a community as the focus I have a different starting point.
Project
Make new friends, learn life skills.
Lift Academy
I paraphrased, but it's close enough to the full title. I'm trying to get a decent pattern of content out which will introduce what I'm doing to more people on different platforms. Soon I will be launching a paid product and want there to be some kind of content build-up to that.
So here's my latest Medium post..
Why I’ve Learned to Love Writing Assessment Questions
It was the first real use of the 4th Grade Assessment, which included questions on Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft. This student was someone who normally does struggle a bit in a classroom setting (really needs 1:1 and different learning style support). When his class switched to remote learning in the spring and then the state waived all requirements for standardized testing which happens at the end of the year, his parents were really left in the dark about his readiness to enter the next grade in a few weeks.
After taking the Lift Academy 4th Grade Assessment, we saw which exact areas he needs some refreshers on still. Now we have the opportunity to take a few days of targeted learning and cover those areas so he is in the best position to enter 5th grade. No expensive testing, no weeks in summer school.
Making a new assessment test for an entire year's worth of Common Core learning objectives is quite a slog. Some if it is extraordinarily dry. However, I have grown to truly love parts of the process and the potential the questions have to lift the spirit of the child taking the test.
Still have a long way to go for doing assessments for the other grades 3-11, and adding many MANY more tagged/sponsored questions. But for now, 4th and 6th grade are done.
Late last night I launched the MVP of Lift Academy. It’s an online Common Core testing site in the first phase. I launched with a Back to School assessment for 6th graders. I’ll be working on the other grades over the next couple of weeks. As I neared the finish line this week I still had a couple major questions to solve.
The first question was how to setup a path to move from free to paid. I decided to go with an unlock mechanic. A student could take the test and hit a button to see the higher-value report elements mixed in with the free version. For the free test (or coupon code), the button just functions as a show/hide. For the paid version, the button will pop up an in-line paywall. I did a little tech proof of concept to make sure this would work OK, and I’ll finish building it out as people use the free version for a few days.
The second hiccup was thinking about how one major segment of my target audience would want to use the site. I’ll be talking to parents mostly, and they will ideally want their kids to take the tests. But they won’t be test-takers themselves!
So I added a simple “setup notifications” option to let someone create a special link to send. They’d be notified when someone starts/completes a test using the link.
Now the next chunk of time will be split up into dev and marketing. I’ll be out in the world talking to people and finding the messages which resonate, and working on tests for the other grades too.
In the meantime, happy MVP launch day!
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I'm so glad you were able to arrange your future almost the way you wanted. I also wanted to study in other countries, but my country does not allow me to travel with the pandemic, so I turned to sites that can give me the same chance as you, only in the locality. At the moment, I received most offers thanks to https://sarkariprep.in/news/. So if you want to make a living in India in the future, you are welcome, and you could find a stable and well-paid job. It gives me pleasure to help young people with perspective, so I hope my advice was helpful. I wish you much success in the future and good luck.
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