Free trials, PH’s and Penises oh my!

Before I start this post I want to say kudos to Cambly for continually updating and improving the platform for tutors. This post is about a much welcomed change in free trials and tutor visibility.

I’ve been on Cambly for several years now and while it’s a great way to earn some extra money from home at a time to suit you, it also has a few pitfalls. The main one of these if you’re a tutor, is obscene and lewd speech or behaviour. Yes, sadly that IS a thing. In my time at Cambly I’ve had students use obscene language in class as well as several expose themselves and more. (I’m gonna leave the “more” to your imagination.)   See my other post for details.

In my experience, practically all of these obscene calls have come from free trials. You’ve probably seen the ads on social media “Hey use this promo code for a free 15 min trial of Cambly”.   This is the reason I don’t take Priority Hours (PH’s) or go “visible” anymore, I just take regular paid students who book classes.

But now Cambly has decided to address this and I received an email recently that said Cambly were “bringing free trials back.”  To be honest that’s a little misleading as  they didn’t remove free trials, what they actually did was “…Remove the free trial program in most countries. Free trials will only be offered in limited countries“.   But on further reading of the latest email, it seems that while free trials “are returning” (they never really went away), we as tutors now have the ability to  be visible to paid students only, and to not be visible to free trials. Hurrah!!!!!!

•  “This change allows you to easily update your visibility status while tutoring, including for free trial students. While the ability to be visible to “paid users only” existed in particular situations, we’ve expanded these preferences to all tutors, even on Priority Hour! “

Here at Camblyland we are an ever growing group, with a network of tutors that keep in contact with us. I decided to take a quick straw poll, and the majority of us would not take free trial students.  why would we?  Why would we expose ourselves (no pun intended) to the weirdos out there, when we can get classes with paid students who are more likely to be serious about taking a class. Why take a free trial for 10 or 15 minutes minutes and then hope for another to take up my time, when I can get a paid student for 30 minutes? If I refuse free trials it wont impact my lessons, I’ll still get students, but they’ll be paid students that want to learn.

If you’re a tutor, Cambly has put the ball in your court. If you’re happy to take free trials, that’s fine. If you want the option to turn them off, you can.  As stated above, it seems that a great many tutors may remove free trials completely. BUT…. I’m guessing that this wont last long.  Cambly is a business, a business that is interested in growth, a business that wants to be the biggest and best. For any business using a subscription based model that wants to grow, free trials are a MUST! Think Netflix, Disney+ etc. Free trials are useless if tutors don’t accept them, and it seems from asking around the team that a lot of tutors wont take them at all, given the option.

So make the most of the new ability to remove free trials, because I don’t think Cambly will want to lose such a huge market for pulling in new students, and they may change it in the future. 🙂

Until next time. Alice.

“Tut, tut, child!” said the Duchess. “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”