This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What kind of review platform would be best for online learning? That is today's listener question. So many people are doing all kinds of online learning these days. Maybe you buy courses, maybe you access them through the library, maybe you use a service, or maybe you just go straight to YouTube. So because there are so many options that can be overwhelming, that presents a problem, and today's listener has an idea for a solution.
They want to create a review site to help users compare options. So the caller today, Lisa, she's wondering how to proceed. She has applied her skills in observation to notice this fact, and she wants to then create a review website or platform in response. What might be a logical, feasible path to pursue? Let's talk about this idea and perhaps some next steps for her, as well as anybody else out there who is thinking about an idea and just wondering, okay, what are my next steps?
What do I do? How do I make these decisions and March 4th? 'Cause that, of course, is our goal. All right, stay tuned. Detailed question from our listener and my answer coming right up.
[Music]
Hi, Chris. This is Lisa from Marion, Kansas, and I really like the show. Lately, I've even been listening while watching my two little boys. Can only help, right? Anyway, my side hustle idea is a review website for online art and design courses.
In my research, I found some generic reviews of the online learning platforms, but no websites focused on my niche. With all the people stuck at home and doing online training, I think this idea could be very successful. I also think I'm the right person to build it because I have a background in graphic and web design along with some freelance writing experience. My question is, what kind of review website would be best? I could easily create a review blog in WordPress, but I don't want to be the sole reviewer forever.
Maybe a year at most. I envision it having an aggregate review system because that seems more practical, but it's also more daunting for me to create than a blog review site. How would I find people and convince them to leave reviews on my nothing site? Or is it possible to do a hybrid of the two, or am I overthinking it? Thanks, and I look forward to your answer.
[Music]
Lisa, my first advice is start with the version you can launch now, not the version you imagine 12 or 18 months from now. Building out like a complete aggregator, meaning a site where a lot of different people submit structured reviews, that definitely is valuable, but it's also the hardest version to start with. You need traffic, trust, system design before a bunch of people, most likely people you don't know, voluntarily give you free labor in the form of course ratings. So I think the fastest way to get this off the ground, which we always want to encourage people to do, is more of a hybrid. So phase one is like curated reviews from you.
Maybe not forever, but just enough to see the database, 15 to 20 perhaps detailed high quality reviews. That gives you a foundation and also gives early visitors something to explore. And then the phase two I think is to open the door for user submissions. Keep the format as simple as possible, maybe just star ratings, difficulty level, strengths, weaknesses. The more controlled structure you have in this situation, that's gonna increase the credibility.
And then I think your background actually solves the biggest credibility hurdle. Like you're not just a random internet person out there, you're a designer and a writer, you have some experience with online learning, that gives you immediate legitimacy. And so in the early weeks, the goal is not to be neutral, it is to be useful. Like your perspective is a feature, in other words, it's not something to like hide from or try to bury. So I think that's what you do to get started.
And as for getting people to leave reviews, I would think maybe core specific outreach, like find students or learners who have publicly posted their course projects, some platforms like Behance or Dribble, Reddit, Facebook groups, Udemy, et cetera, reach out to them. Perhaps some kind of creator partnerships, course creators always want more visibility. A lot of them will happily point their followers to a third party site that features their course, especially if it's not affecting their revenue, and especially if your reviews are fair to them, of course. And so I think like, are you overthinking? Not really, but you might be jumping ahead a little bit.
The aggregator is a noble vision, but that only works when the site has some gravity and reach already. So build the gravity and reach first. That's my suggestion for you, Lisa. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being out there.
Listeners, thank you as well. I'm so grateful to be able to make this show for you every day, seven days a week, for more than nine years and counting. Everything about Side Hustle School is free. All the archives on the website download stream as much as you want, 3,000 plus episodes, and subscribe and follow for more. That's it for today.
My name's Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From The Onward Project.
