Does anyone think it's ironic that Khatz did a complete 360 from his previous view that
forums (AKA fora) are a waste of time to a place where you can "get cool tools, links and techniques" ? I agree that forums have their use,
but most popular sites have a forum ...What makes a forum good or bad is it's users, their devotion to language learning, their knowledge, and friendliness (or lack thereof).
It takes a lot of work to build a good forum community, and will Khatz have the time to devote to it if he's making a new paid product every few months? (AJATT.talk, sentence packs, etc)
I only read AJATT when I need encouragement in Japanese lately, but the site has been useful to me.
I know bandwidth doesn't grow on trees (also, maybe not many people click the donate button under every post) , and his site is getting popular with Japanese as well as learners of other languages, not to mention various the AJATT-inspired non-Japanese blogs popping up (spanish-only.com...), if he can find a way to pay his
web host's fees doing what he loves, that's great, I just don't think many people will buy into it at those high prices.

Also, these "native Japanese writers" who will edit the Japanese articles, is he just
getting his friends to help him? Maybe he's giving them a share of the profit...

kendo99 Wrote:But, if AJATT is something you personally enjoy, and your income is not so limited that this would preclude you from buying other sources, then it could be well worth the money.
...
I think I said that right beneath the quoted text

Yes, you did say the same type of thing, but I'm wasn't quite clear on whether you were saying it's worth it or not.

Asriel, ok, I see where the ambiguity was in what i wrote. I agree with you that dollar for dollar, you can get more bang for your buck elsewhere. At the same time, I'm aware that to a lot of people, worrying about getting the most "bang" out of ten bucks isn't a big deal, there are sound economic reasons for charging what he's charging--even if you can get more value elsewhere, and some people will just want to support AJATT, Khatz, etc for a variety of personal reasons.

jettyke Wrote:If he loves to do what he´s doing, then why shouldn´t he try making a living by doing what he really likes to do. After all his efforts, I dont think he should be doing some boring work just for the money.

I agree with you.

It isn't like he's selling food to starving people, no one will die if they can't buy his products. As someone said, if you don't want to pay, you can basically find tools and prepare your own learning materials for free. Taking that into account, if he's honest to his audience (i. e. doesn't try to convince people they absolutely need something only he can give them, etc.), then more power to him. Who wouldn't love to make a living from doing what you really like to do?

The thing I strongly disagree with and just feel is unnecessary and a wrong move is cutting the comments from the blog. If you want to profit, you should charge for new things you provide, instead of taking out something you've been already giving for free and that doesn't cost you a cent. Besides, by cutting the comments he'll be shutting down a stream of ideas and inspiration both for his readers and for himself. Lastly, by cutting the comments he's putting a stop to the growing of the very same community who put him where he is now.

If he pulls it off, more power to him. It's never easy to monetize anything. Even the most innovative product in the world needs some luck to monetize; the right exposure, advertising, blah blah.

But I agree with a great deal of the above sentiment -- someone (who doesn't even study Japanese, oddly) pointed me to AJATT when I was expressing some dismay at traditional methods. I put off reading it for ages because it seemed like a cluttered, confusing mess. I just wanted a general guide but couldn't find it.

Eventually located the introductory bit, waded through it, found out about RTK, googled around for further information and found these forums and, subsequently, RevTK. Any generally great advice I found from there on out came largely from here -- even with a lot of conflicting and differing opinions on how to go about things, it gives people options to try everything and see what sticks, as opposed to one, rambling, kind of vague overview.

Bokusenou Wrote:Does anyone think it's ironic that Khatz did a complete 360 from his previous view that
forums (AKA fora) are a waste of time to a place where you can "get cool tools, links and techniques" ? I agree that forums have their use,
but most popular sites have a forum ...What makes a forum good or bad is it's users, their devotion to language learning, their knowledge, and friendliness (or lack thereof).
It takes a lot of work to build a good forum community, and will Khatz have the time to devote to it if he's making a new paid product every few months? (AJATT.talk, sentence packs, etc)
I only read AJATT when I need encouragement in Japanese lately, but the site has been useful to me.
I know bandwidth doesn't grow on trees (also, maybe not many people click the donate button under every post) , and his site is getting popular with Japanese as well as learners of other languages, not to mention various the AJATT-inspired non-Japanese blogs popping up (spanish-only.com...), if he can find a way to pay his
web host's fees doing what he loves, that's great, I just don't think many people will buy into it at those high prices.

Also, these "native Japanese writers" who will edit the Japanese articles, is he just
getting his friends to help him? Maybe he's giving them a share of the profit...

One, to pay his webhosting fees? Please, at $80+ a year? he could make a living... But we have to realize that to Khatz language learning is not even his main priority anymore. He probably has many business ideas and outside of language learning, and is likely trying to use his website to build up capital. If you take a look at books he has recommended in the past you will see many of them involve business aspects if you've read some of them, Khatz is very much an entrepreneur, but I am still disappointed that he did it to such a high extent with AJATT.com, and in my opinion the idea it would have been much better to have introduced this membership ajatt plus stuff as the first commercial thing that he has done with ajatt. Many more people would have been likely to join in my personal opinion. But now that he has shown that his other products have not only a high price but also not really a large amount of quality content imo again.

Nukemarine Wrote:Out of interest, if someone is willing to pay any of you 30 to 80 dollars for each hour worth of consulting or effort would you accept it?

Setting up their Anki, setting up their subs2srs, setting up their study schedule, reviewing their progress, demonstrating how to use common references, setting up a VLC player for kanji subtitles, etc.

Very similar to the analogy for reasons to buy a book. The above takes EFFORT. That EFFORT can bring a premium price if it's backed by knowledge and experience that'll take time to gather on one's own.

People don't normally go to college with the intention of giving away the benefits of their training for free. They expect a salary. Likewise many here have gathered (or already have) a wealth of knowledge and experience that surpasses what would be found at the average college. Is it shocking some will be willing to be paid for to utilize it?

PS: I don't think it's worth paying for AJATTlus seeing what all is already available for free, however at least the forum will be free of tourists.

If Khatz is smart (and he is), he'd translate his older articles and repost them once per week under a Japanese blog theme (Like, AEATT). This will attract Japanese that are learning English. And I think Japanese people can appreciate Khatz's level of Japanese more so than those learning Japanese could ie easier to accept the merits of the advice.

I think there are more Japanese people wanting to learn English and are willing to pay for what they think is premium advice.

If Khatz somehow read this recommendation, you'd probably have just made him a stack of money.

Khatzumoto held off as long as they could, it was a good run. They did what only a few sites do, they avoided much of the gimmickry and rabid subscription-hunting and 'what can I throw out there that'll get me a profit?' mindset that you see at a lot of places, but the guru/hierarchy thing was always lurking there, subject to the mockery of a few. ;p I'm sure he avoided a forum because that would make him 'one of the people', subject to treatment as an equal you disagree with. Now he's found a way to do both. ^_^ I would've thought having mod/admin status or something would've been enough, though. I'm sure he'll make extensive use of such things, with money concretizing it all.

Most of the great ideas about language learning/self-study these days come from RevTK and a few free blogs of people who ought to just come to RevTK, in my opinion. I can't think of anything people will get from AJATT+ that won't already be here or could be gotten and developed here freely simply because we don't have gurus and hierarchies and money-hunger about everything.

Admittedly, there are some structural issues that I often lament here. There's a lot of tools and ideas that are too little used or shared and developed, and I also constantly wish I had more money to donate to Fabrice, resolve, cb4960, and all the other peple who devote big chunks of time to constructing and maintaining these sites and programs that are easy to take for granted. But honestly if I *had* to pay for even a fraction of all the stuff I use, I'd be 'in the poorhouse' a million times over. I can think of 100 things I use daily which I'm grateful for, but couldn't afford to donate to and probably wouldn't know about if it cost money to access...

All I can do on this site is ramble in turn, for the most part, and hope everyone just keeps the same mentality and passion to share, and think! I don't want to 'commit' to anything anyway, not by subscription or self-study tool/project deadlines or whatever, so I guess I'm happy with the site as it is... as a hub it's still a million times faster and more robust than anything anywhere else you care to name, re: language self-study.

But damn, turning other peoples' ideas and energy into some sluggish factory behind your pay barrier? Or perhaps making them into peons in your own little feudal system where the onus of new ideas is on you? Or maybe providing learning materials of the type that other people are already discussing how to construct+share freely elsewhere? Meh.

nest0r, I think the value in AJATT at this point is mostly motivational. Even the lazy kanji cards weren't extremely original until I modified it. But some people draw a lot of motivation from khatzumoto, and if he wants to charge for it, more power to him, in my opinion. He wouldn't be the first. Any organization/community/etc is gonna have problems. Either there's a tight hierarchy and its stiffling or the organization is loose and can be chaotic. Anyway, I think all your points are valid, but I don't fault him for trying to find a way to monetize something he's put several years of work into. I would be fully on-board with capitalism if everybody could do exactly what they love for a living, so when i see someone going for it, I tend to be supportive even if I'm not sure that the product fills a new niche.

EDIT: I will admit the forums here seem to find a nice balance between order and chaos, mostly because most folks are fairly mature most of the time, myself excluded.

I don't mind if you have to pay for some of his stuff, because I'm not gonna pay for it.

Believe it or not, some people are in fact too lazy to search for easy-to-find, free directions and would rather pay someone else do it for them.
I'm only mad because I haven't thought of it first and can't take advantage of those people.

This is why I feel like I should hate Geek Squad, but, I'm not the one paying $100 for them to set up my PS3...

@kendo hehe, Right, well, you can encourage Khatzumoto to convince people to go to locked down, pay-only RevTK and to sell artificially scarce products rather than to come to sites like this and share them freely. That's a dystopia to me, though. I'm against gurus and selling people the best way to catch fish, rather than simply generating and sharing ideas and tools. Money isn't the end, it's just one possible means, and these things have no intrinsic fiscal value, and deforming their shapes toward money as ends is simply deplorable to me.

It seems to me you're being excessively diplomatic/lackadaisical about this in conflicting ways (a large number of comments to everyone in the thread that doesn't say 'more power to him', yet not really substantively suggesting anything) and somewhat influenced by your recent interactions with Khatz, re: lazy kanji cards or something? So I'm sure you're looking to see the best in the situation, and certainly the further this thread continues, the more polarized and inaccurate towards what Khatz is actually doing it'll be. So be careful about what direction you're prodding your own discourse and its responses in...

There's just so many possible models for earning reward/money incidental to doing what one prefers and/or loves, in this brave new world, and it's only a few rare sites and relatively small number of people who have managed to break away from the same generic system that's kept language-learning stagnating, and now to see that breath of fresh air and growth subverted towards the same stagnance just irks me.

I agree with kendo99 for the most part. While I never followed AJATT all that strictly, I have read many of his articles (some more than once) and always valued Khatz's website simply because he was best at one thing: motivating me when I was in the dumps. And although I'm far from being all Japanese 24/7, learning about his methods is what inspired me to really make an effort to increase the amount of Japanese I was exposed to. I was already listening to music and browsing manga and stuff, but I really made it a concrete goal to get more of it after reading some of his articles.

I don't feel AJATT's usefuless was ever in its ability to "teach" or whatever. I think it's the motivation for a lot of people. While I understand that not everyone is a fan of Khatz's writing style, I usually enjoyed it and most of his humor. Some of his articles do ramble a bit and lose focus, but there are quite a few gems there still that really showcase the beauty of simplicity.

I also do not fault Khatz for trying to make some money. Khatz had a pretty good run on not advertising, no forums, and all that usual crap. It's the way the world works imo anyway. Business101: "If you have a product or service of value that people are willing to pay for, then why not take the chance?" Sure you might lose some loyal followers, but you can't keep everyone happy no matter what you do during your stay on Earth. If Khatz can make some money on the side doing something he loves (and I think he is rather good at), then more power to him. I only wish I could do the same thing at this point in my life.

And as others have said, it's not like he's strong arming people into paying him, if you don't wanna pay, then don't pay. If I had more spare money I would, just because I like to support the people who help me. It's the same for this site. I only wish I was ever in a financial position to donate money to Fabrice and others, but unfortunately, university and other necessities eat all of my paychecks.

Tobberoth Wrote:It's cool that he inspired people but turns out, from talking to a lot of people who were inspired by him and actually learned a lot of Japanese, that most people who actually are successful are so because they changed "AJATT" and did their own thing.

I feel sorry for the people who pay him and then just follow his guidelines because fact is, most of them won't get anywhere.

I agree with this. I do feel bad for the people who will blindly pay him and follow his methods to the letter and thinking they will learn much. Your first point is spot on as well, regarding people who were successful changing the AJATT methods to fit their own learning styles. I actually think Khatz wrote an article about NOT following his advice to the letter. "Everyone who was ever successful at something almost always ended up getting there a completely different way then they had planned at the start." Or something like that. It's all about setting goals, making a plan, and tweaking the plans.

@Offshore - (Saves me the trouble of editing comment to kendo99) -- I'm all about living a life of doing what you love, but I also understand that there's a system I'm contributing to. I want to help engender a system where people don't have to manipulate or take advantage of the ignorance of others in order to do what we love. I think a big part of that process of getting away from such a system is to encourage people to be creative in what they pay for and what they sell... I think that's different from saying 'Well some suckers need to be spoon-fed motivation, and he's a nice guy who's done a lot, so more power to him! Sorry chumps, wish I got to you first!' ;p To me I just think of hamsters on those little wheels when I imagine such a system.

Personally it's all moot and theoretical to me. I've always simply thought of Khatz as another forum member, so it's all just so bizarre to me to see this whole guru-blogger-template that people try to mimic on various sites. I mean I don't expect it to go away, but I'm not going to encourage it either. ^_^

To be honest, I'd be glad if more people made the sorts of resources we've brainstormed about in the past but don't have yet or find too much trouble to do for free, to organize and produce, etc., and it'd be nice to be able to buy or rather, recompensate for that. For example, unscripted dialogues and 'sound' walks. Someone even quoted Khatz on that 'talk' thing, which we've talked about on this forum before as an interesting idea that needs more resources. If they want to produce and sell that as a product before someone is inspired by the template and finds a way to encourage it for free (since we've failed to do so in the past), that'd be cool (though it's a shame that money had to be introduced before it got done, and I'd try to encourage ways away from that). Ditto with translated materials w/ break-downs for learners. But that's different from selling the 'metamodel' of AJATT and in a sense even selling the community as your own product...

Edit: What's especially insidious to me and I forgot to mention, is when people pay lip service to 'self-reliance' when they really want to do just the opposite, and sell it.

Is anyone really surprised that AJATT has continually been traveling down a road of monetization? Ever since the early days of his site, the entire blog has been scattered with referral links to Amazon, other endorsements and a big ol' donation button. Not long after, he introduced a (pricey) consulting service. Fast forward a few years and Khatz has (smartly) adapted to the recent blogger trends of selling e-books and subscription based services, and I'm not the least bit shocked.

Perhaps I'm a cynic, but I thought it was completely obvious from the start that AJATT wasn't entirely meant to be a free, community service from the goodness of Khatz's heart. Granted, a huge portion of the site is freely available, but I honestly can't blame the guy for expecting a little compensation for his work, and I'm surprised that anyone is shocked or offended by the notion. God forbid anyone try and make a living on the Internet, right?

I mean, I haven't and most likely won't buy his stuff, myself, because it's of little value to me anymore and his writing style grates on me Just reading the sales pitch for his newest, subscription thing made me roll my eyes and close the page before I reached the end. Christ, dude.

On the other hand, I also admit that I can't help but feel a degree of disdain for the whole guru, self-help model (I find myself in complete agreement with nest0r's sentiments on the subject), especially when monetary gains are clearly involved. Again, that's probably my cynical side speaking. Whenever I hear about how a gas bag such as Steve Pavlina is rolling in dough and blogging amidst another Caribbean cruise, I can't help but take a different, more skeptical, critical perspective on their content. That probably has more to do with my irritation toward said gurus' thunderous ego and their army of zealous, mindless followers than anything, though. (To say nothing of my own jealousy, of course.) But make of that what you will.

Quote:So I'm sure you're looking to see the best in the situation, and certainly the further this thread continues, the more polarized and inaccurate towards what Khatz is actually doing it'll be. So be careful about what direction you're prodding your own discourse and its responses in...

Good advice, I think I will actually just exit the conversation gracefully as these sort of things where people are involved and not ideas are where I usually end up putting my foot in mouth.

I have created another monster MUAHAHA!, I actually have only read a few of these later longer posts, I'm supposed to be studying guyS! haha, anyways go RevTK, we should think of ways to usurp Guru Khatz and make RevTK an even better site.

[ファブリス]

Yonosa Wrote:Not only has AJATT been usurped by RevTK

Has it? I always thought it was like a blog, so it couldn't offer the same kind of exchange like a forum. Is there a forum there that I didn't see?

A forum is different. He adds a personality to his blog and makes it unique. The forum doesn't work in the same way.

Monetizing a blog is very hard, even if you have loads of traffic. I couldn't tell how much traffic he has.

You users are very selfish at times, always seeing things from your perspective. From your perspective, we can sweat all day long and never get paid for anything.

How much do you think RevTK makes? Hardly enough to cover even the time I spend just downloading backups, managing the forum and answering a few emails.

I'm not here to judge the move from Khatz. But you need to come out of your little world and realize that you shouldn't take any of this for granted.

Some days some comments could really bring me down. Some of you are really an ungrateful bunch. I hope you realize that the main site AND FORUM are still here because of those who have been generous enough to donate in the past, and the EIGHT of you out there who have voluntarily taken a recurrent donation. You are the BLOOD that keeps this site online.

Who do you think I am? Rockefeller? Do you even realize the HUGE GAP there is between sites like Twitter and mine or AJATT's? Sites like Twitter open luxury offices and run on millions of dollars and don't even have any profits to show sometimes for more than a year !! This site makes on average less than 150 euros a month and many times I've wondered why I even bother.

For the record I had planned to make some kind of membership that gives people a few extras, the extras don't matter. It would be a way to encourage people to support continued development of the site, and generate more predictable income. Last month other than the brave EIGHT recurrent donators out there, nobody made a donation.

This isn't Amazon, Twitter, or smartfm. This is a hobby site by a single person doing this in his spare time. You need to seriously grow up!

Oh I do realize that I'm the one responsible for making this "work" better or no.

But this doesn't change the fact that you need to grow up and realized this IS NOT FREE. Even if it doesn't cost money to YOU it is not free. It costs my time and my motivation. It's only here because I care, the day I stop caring it's over. Wanna try recreate it, go ahead..

*end of my rant*

[ファブリス]

EDIT: Sorry I didn't get your post at first. Anyway you people need to realize that Amazon links for example, earn 4% on referral fees for book that cost usually under 30$ that's very little money unless you have a HUGE traffic.

Hey Fabrice, I agree with everything you said and tried to allude to it above, but I think no one is criticizing simply the act of trying to make money. It's more about constructive criticism on how to go about it... personally I was cursorily offended that AJATT was doing this:

"Access to AJATT Plus members-only AJATT forums (yes, forums), where you will:

* Buy/sell/swap media
o Save on shipping from Japan
o Save on buying new books, DVDs, CDs, etc.
o Make money on your used media and hardware that would otherwise go to waste
o Put to good use media and hardware (dictionaries, etc.) that would otherwise go to waste
* Work with other committed learners, encouraging and helping one other
* Get cool tools, links and techniques

* Save time spent finding and/or learning how to use cool tools, links and techniques

* Share your techniques and experiences

* Enjoy a safe, moderated, well-lit environment populated by polite, intelligent, good-looking, well-spoken, fun and mentally-stable human beings just like you.
* Get your questions answered faster
"

To me, this is RevTK, but behind a pay wall. I'd rather encourage people to come here and donate and appreciate this system than that sort of thing. Think about all the ideas and tools we share here, unrelated to how much we donate. We need you and this site to do it, and many of the programmer-gods in addition to you and resolve (not trying to fold Anki into this site, but you know what I mean) deserve some props/reward for their efforts as well, but I think it's fair game to criticize some kind of blanket (required) blog/forum subscription when it's not even new or irreplaceable. But then again, it's early, maybe AJATT has bigger plans that are worthwhile...

At any rate, sorry to hear things are in such a sad and frustrating state for you, I think it's time to another RevTK donation drive: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=1392&page=2. ;p

I think you should feel free to more aggressively pursue donations and offer transparent strategies for earning money to keep this great community going. But I don't think it's comparable to AJATT Plus at all, and I don't think everyone who's been criticising in this thread is simply someone who is selfish and takes everything for granted.

Good luck, I think many of us felt a surge of inspiring/helpless panic at the idea of this forum disappearing.

I wish him luck. Personally I don't see anything that interests me in his offer, but he's welcome to try to make a little money if he can.

Maybe there will be more interesting content in the future, like video or podcast lessons? But I don't think that's his style. And even if he did it, if it's in the same tone as the blog, I don't think it would work for me.

[ファブリス]

Sorry I'm really, really tired. I should know better, I took it personally when I meant to react to comments on Khatz's site.

The thing that gets to me is comments that amount to: "the website hosting costs 10$ a month, so the website only need to generate 10$ a month". >_<

As for me I need to work my ass off, I'm totally aware that I don't work even a tenth of the time that Resolve puts on Anki for example. In many ways, I earn with this site what I deserve it's up to me to make it better.

Now for some sleep >_>

nest0r Wrote:To me, this is RevTK, but behind a pay wall. I'd rather encourage people to come here and donate and appreciate this system than that sort of thing.

No offense to Fabrice, but there are things on that list that koohii's forums just don't offer. And there's something not on that list that matters, too. Khatz's personality. And all the donations she -could- get aren't going to convince Fabrice to give up more of her life to make them happen.

Khatz, on the other hand, appears to be willing to trade his free time for some more money. It doesn't surprise me because he's a very front-and-center celebrity type, where Fabrice is more of a do-things-right-but-behind-the-scenes sort of person.

Eh. I can't help but wonder who's actually going to pay for it. It seems like most of the people who are doing AJATT are in high school or college and aren't the most likely of people to shell out $90 to post on a forum. I understand it's expensive, but I think he's misjudging his audience. He'd probably do better just offering kitschy overpriced merch. But what do I know.

A couple questions:
- Will the AJATT blog continue without the comments (ie. The Personality will remain free) or will all future "articles" be exclusive to the new forum?
- Can anyone give me some idea what an average/or a range of subscription rates would be for similar types of forum/sites?

As noted earlier, Mr AJATT gave several reasons why forums ought to be avoided. One repeated one was that there are too many egotists who like to argue why their views on language learning are better. I guess the blogger got tired of one-sided arguments. :-)

btw, wccrawford, I believe Our Brave and Deserving Leader here is a boy.

Thora Wrote:btw, wccrawford, I believe Our Brave and Deserving Leader here is a boy.

I coulda swore there was a discussion about this and it came out that Fabrice was female at the end of it?

Anyhow, Khatz has never said he's stopping the blog or the comments. In fact, he's been pretty vocal about how much all of his products suck and that you shouldn't buy them. That doesn't sound like he's trying to force everyone to them, to me.

As for sub rates for forums, the only one I ever paid for had questionable content (not sexual, mind you) that couldn't be obtained anywhere. And I got it free with the purchase of some questionable electronics. But I think it was on the order of $150/yr for saps that didn't buy the equipment.

I would have said that $10/month isn't an unreasonable rate to join an exclusive forum that promises quick answers to your questions, as well as a regulated media-trading system. In fact, just the media-trading system is worth that.