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[samweekes]

Pob lwc efo popeth Arun. Ro'n i'n gorfod dychwelyd i Dorset am sbel yn ddiweddar, er mwyn gwaith parafeddyg. Dw i'n deall dy sefyllfa di'n llwyr felly! Dw i'n dal i son am SSiW efo pawb wrth gwrs!

[tehuti]

Hello Aran,

I looked at the web site services you are offering. While I might be up for having a web site designed, as a way of being able to give money to SSiW through my company, I am balking at the hosting prices this involves, since this would be a permanent expense of which I guess SSiW would only get a small percentage. I am currently with Daily, and my hosting costs £1.99 per month, which also gives me as many different addresses as I want @ my domain name and 5,000MB web space of which I am using 1 Mb.

All my web site does is say "Look, here's a translator for the following languages:.... " I don't need shopping carts or anything complicated like that. I thought sometimes about having an attached blog, which I can't have at the moment, but it really is not a priority because I guess no one would read it. In all honesty, I think my web site is more there for vanity than to bring in clients, and also to give me a permanent domain-related email address in case Gmail ever withdraws service.

I'm wondering why there is not a much smaller hosting option for people who do not need massive capacity and complex set-ups. I am not really happy about increasing my hosting costs by 500% every month for ever for no obvious reason.

Sorry if this is wet-blanketish, but I felt I had to comment.

Krys

[Aran]

Diolch, Sam! Gobeithio bydd modd i ti ddod yn ôl i Gymru cyn bo hir...

Diolch, Krys - no, for a one or two page brochure site, this level of hosting (of which we get about 10%) is overkill. It's really about functionality - this is using hosted software which has a lot of very powerful features (including 24/7 high quality support) and which is upgraded centrally (very important), and hosted on a top quality cloud platform which makes it about as resilient as is possible.

We don't offer lighter packages because of my extensive experience of building websites over the last ten years or so - the vast majority of the work involved, counterintuitively, is almost always with follow-up issues, and they're not dependent on the complexity of the site. I've had sites I've done for £2k go through on cost and on schedule and have no further issues - I've had sites that I did for free as a favour turn into headaches eating up hours of time every month. So now, I work with a package that allows me to charge a flat fee for the build, stick to schedule, and then make sure that follow-up issues are handled (extremely well) by the host. For any site that needs more than just brochure-type features, or that needs absolutely reliable uptime, it's a strong option - for very small static sites which aren't a main part of a business, it's beyond what you need, and we understand and accept that...

[Sionned]

I've had sites that I did for free as a favour turn into headaches eating up hours of time every month.

And that, in my experience anyway, is the exact problem. If you do something for free and/or as a favor, they keep asking more and more or wanting this and that tweak. You've got the right idea creating a flat fee schedule and working up from there!

[Llex]

I would definitely be interested in conversation lessons via Skype or Google+ (is that the same as Google Talk?), though I feel like i ought to get back to where I was before a long lay off before I attempt it. Moreover, I think it would help me get to the point where I'd feel comfortable taking the plunge and attending a Bootcamp while I'm just across the channel in France (I just have to convince my wife that we'd be able to find childcare near the bootcamp site).

Lex

[Aran]

It'd be great to talk to you, Lex... I'm sure you're right that getting back into the swing of things with the lessons first of all would be the right thing to do - it will definitely mean you get much more out of conversation practice.

How many children do you have? I'm sure we could figure something out for Bootcamp...

[meirionwen]

Yes, interesting times, and many of us are feeling the pinch somewhat. However if there are 15,000 of us following the course and even HALF of those have joined and are giving a modest contribution each month, I am sure they could manage another 50p a month. That would be just £6 extra year, and times 7,500 makes £45,000.
May I propose we all do that if we can possibly manage another 50p a month? Many a mickle makes a muckle ( or is that English?)
Just an idea!
Meirionwen

[Aran]

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Meirionwen - that's a very kind thought indeed, and we appreciate your support enormously.

As I said in answer to Margaret, though, who made a very similar offer earlier in the thread:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5481&start=10#p58803

...it is very important to us to work a way through this without resorting to putting emotional pressure on people who are already giving us enormously valuable support. We really, honestly don't want our existing subscribers to dig into their pockets any further...

I'm afraid that not remotely near 50% of the 15,000 are paying subscribers - it's more like 3%! - but we think that's a sustainable model in the long term, and we think that the general idea of people who want to take their Welsh as far as they can subsidising people who just want to learn enough to get by is a good thing, morally speaking.

We'd very much like to see a world in which anyone can learn a decent amount of any other language for free, with the costs covered by the people who really want to push on through to real conversational success...

***

Also, the enormous support we've had from people signing up for the conversation classes is doing a fantastic job of making sure we can keep the wheels turning for now, so it's all looking as though we are going to find a way through, with the enormously kind help of the most supportive learning community I'm aware of anywhere in the world...

[Lostforwords]

. . . I'm afraid that not remotely near 50% of the 15,000 are paying subscribers - it's more like 3%! - but we think that's a sustainable model in the long term, and we think that the general idea of people who want to take their Welsh as far as they can subsidising people who just want to learn enough to get by is a good thing, morally speaking. . .

Morally speaking, yes. But does it pay the bills?
Beth am . . . a) Charge for Course 1 and offer Course 2 free. Or b) offer the first 10 lessons of Course 1 and Course 2 free and charge for the remainder of the lessons.
Although I am almost certain never to be able to embark on Course 2 I consider my current subscription as a "thank you" for the generous and enjoyable offering of Course 1. Hmmm, don't think it works as a realistic business model though. Some lateral thinking's called for methinks.

[Aran]

Diolch, Ffred! You're quite right that there's a need to match principles with cold, hard reality sometimes...

Although I am almost certain never to be able to embark on Course 2

Hey, none of that! You've been getting ever closer to the end of Course 1 - so we will definitely get you through into Course 2 at some point...

Hmmm, don't think it works as a realistic business model though.

I think it does. We've been hurried into the jump a fair bit before we would have chosen, because of losing my external hours, but with the help of a handful of fantastic conversation classers, we're managing to keep the show on the road, which is actually very encouraging at this stage. It looks as though in another six months or so, we'd be able to sustain one full time job even without the conversation classes.

If someone had said three years ago that we'd be able to create one full time job, without any government funding, out of this approach, in just three years - well, we'd have been a bit sceptical - we've thought for a long time that you need a larger pool of potential learners for this approach to be self-sustaining - but it now looks as though we can at least break even with a minority language.

If the model works to the same extent with larger languages, it will start to look genuinely sustainable...