TeachStreet, a Yelp-like service for real world classes (cooking, dog obedience, music lessons, ballroom dance, foreign language, golf, yoga, etc.), is launching a marketplace feature for teachers to be able to coordinate payments from students. TeachStreet, which serves seven metropolitan areas in the U.S. including New York City, Silicon Valley/San Francisco and Seattle, allows instructors to upload information about classes. Users can look for available classes, and read and write reviews on the course and the instructor. Currently, the site includes a selection of more than 135,000 classes and teachers, across more than 700 subjects and categories.
TeachStreet payments enables credit card payments for a portion of teachers/classes, letting teachers who are unfamiliar with e-commerce be able to elicit sales leads from the web. TeachStreet’s founder, Amazon and JibJab Alum Dave Schappell, tells us that the site is powered by PayPal Website Payments Pro to make it easy for both students and teachers to use the system. TeachStreet charges students a 5% for booking and charges teachers a 4.9% processing fee. Teachers pay an additional 2.5% first-time-student payment fee to TeachStreet. While adding a listing and profile on TeachStreet is free, teachers only pay out to the site when a sale takes place. TeachStreet plans to also let teachers also opt out of the fee-model and pay monthly fee but the pricing has not been determined.
TeachStreet doesn’t just simplify e-commerce for teachers. The site is also letting teachers use a call-tracking service (powered by Twilio), which gives teachers an 1-800 (or local) number that allows any messages to be forwarded to email and lets teachers keep their numbers private. TeachStreet also provides teachers with data and analytics, including number of visits and views, number of sales leads from e-mail messages, phone calls and site-visits, and competitive information on other teachers and classes in their categories and geographical areas.
There’s no doubt that TeachStreet’s new features are going to be particularly useful to teachers who want to implement e-commerce to get sales leads, but don’t want to pay to power the site themselves or simply don’t know how to navigate the process. It’s seems like a win-win for teachers, especially considering that TeachStreet’s fees are fairly low. TeachStreet has had a bittersweet year so far. The startup had a small round of layoffs in the spring, but rebounded with a $1.2 million extended Series A funding round in May from Madrona Venture Group and Bezos Expeditions. Competitors include School Of Everything and Libersy.
No way… This thing got a funding of $3.45M ???
Awesome name, logo and slogan.
never heard of this site till today, looks promising … will try to use it.
Is this to help students buy their grades? I am not sure why I would ever give my teacher any money.
Why use PayPal? It they have their own ePayment systems then the charges may be reduced.
Any logic to use PayPal?
-mptest
PayPal’s rates are actually quite competitive, especially when you take into account Amex. Many people don’t take into account all the extra fees that credit card processors charge but that PayPal does not.
I am assuming it is just far simpler to use.
this would have worked years ago. way way way late.
That doesn’t make any sense without explanation.
congrats teachstreet team!
great to see a useful, functional payment service for students & teachers get rolled out
also tip of the hat for using Twilio for the phone call integration. nice job.
[disclosure: I'm a personal investor in TeachStreet, and also in Twilio on behalf of Founders Fund via FF Angel]
An impressive step forward from the Teachstreet gang (really good folks there, BTW). I hope this reaches a lot of teachers, as this really does solve a pain point for those running private classes.
Congrats TeachStreet team! Looking forward to seeing your success moving forward!
Congrats Daryn and the rest of the TeachStreet team
Congrats to the Teachstreet team and Dave. Great site and service for teachers.
We signed up for TeachStreet about a year ago and have posted courses off and on ever since. So far, we have seen very little traffic from the site, and I haven’t seen much impact on our business. We were a bit irritated when “Zach the Dog” arbitrarily posted photos on our class pages…
Still, I do think the site is a good idea. Training companies and private tutors have a lot to gain from a centralized class-listing service, especially if they have a unique offering and solid content. Seeing multiple learning options in one location should make it easier for the learners to separate the good from the bad and choose something that really fits their needs.
I’m not sure that payments will be helpful to us. I definitely would not pay a fee to use the site at this point. Glad to hear that there are 135,000 classes and teacher listings, but how about learner numbers? Based on stats from the TeachStreet dashboard, in our training category (ESL) there are only 9 “people who want to learn” but 52 “people who are experts.” Similar ratio for “business communication skills.” This may differ considerably by region or by category, but so far it hasn’t been helpful to us.
I look forward to trying the service again once the learner numbers are up.
Ovient — thanks for the feedback — I quickly looked at your profile and listings — you’d likely perform much better if you (a) added a photo to listings and profiles and (b) asked a past student (or several) for a few reviews. Currently, without images or reviews, we’re not able to heavily promote the class (i.e we can’t syndicate to other services)
Everyone else — thanks for the feedback — it’s a huge day for us in our 15-month ‘live’ history. And, it’s been a fun and busy day for us, fixing some of the obvious misses (based on what customers are telling us on the phone and e-mail!) and things that we couldn’t get in before we pushed the site live.
Onward!
Anything that reduces the friction for entrepreneurial teachers is a positive step. I think all people who teach whether it’s online or face-to-face would prefer to spend less time worrying about technology and more time focused on sharing their knowledge and passion with the world.
Dave-
I appreciate the suggestions, and I agree that there is a lot we could do to enhance our profile on TeachStreet. I guess what I am looking for is a significant incentive (learner traffic stats) so I know that there will be payback for spending time (or paying staff time) to enhance the profile.
As I said in my original comment, I think the service is a great idea, and I hope it continues to grow, and I just noticed some additional tools you are providing to help teachers promote their classes on other sites as well. I see the value, especially for individual instructors who don’t have a strong Online presence of their own.
Hey Marc — we’ll spare everyone else the thread in comments
I think Joseph reached out to you directly — hope we can make this add value for you!
Congrats Teachstreet team! I’ve used the site to find classes several times in the past, and had a great experience. I just wish I had more time, my piano and arc-welding skills both need some work.
Also, their Twilio integration is top notch, sounds very professional and should really help teachers and students communicate effectively. Great work. (Disclaimer: I am with Twilio)
-jeff
Twilio.com
nice writeup teachstreet. congrats
Nifty little service, eh!