Thought Leaders in Online Education: Adrian Ridner, CEO of Study.com (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: For eight years, you did the advertising-based model. What kind of numbers of users did you reach? What level of monetization were you able to achieve with advertising? As you know, content is very difficult to monetize with advertising.

Adrian Ridner: Yes, that is one of the things that we also realized, especially when we shifted to video. The investment into the advertising was not as good as it could have been to allow for continued scaling. We were probably at about 10 million to 12 million visitors a month. Even at that level, we were getting multi-million visitors per year. This is probably a lesson for me if I were going to go back in time. It’s far superior from that perspective.

I’m talking about easily 10x from a monetization strategy as opposed to advertising. That’s absolutely true. There’s a lot of other benefits. A lot of the functionality around adaptive learning was built by having more funding and by monetizing the product better. We were able to create more value for our customers overall, outside just the content.

Sramana Mitra: So around 10 million visitors was what you got up to. What percentage of that audience translated into subscribers?

Adrian Ridner: Just to be clear, I was talking about when we were advertising. Right now, we are at about 25 million a month. The education business is very seasonal. Right now, we’re back to school. There’s this huge increase in usage. During summer, demand goes down. Like all businesses, there’s a seasonality curve to it. I would say, on an average, we are probably adding 500 to 1,000 users a day.

Sramana Mitra: You mean paid subscribers?

Adrian Ridner: Right.

Sramana Mitra: At what point in this chronology did you introduce the accreditation of the fact that these colleges were starting to accept your credits?

Adrian Ridner: That was only two years ago. When we first started, we were first focusing on exams. There were other standardized exams like AP exams and college-level examinations. About two years ago, we started getting our own courses reviewed and getting credit recommended. At that point, we started letting users know. That is one of the big challenges. A lot of users just don’t know that you’re able to take these online courses, which are a lot more engaging and earn credit at the same time. We started with our first batch with eight approved courses. We have over 75 now.

Sramana Mitra: Until two years ago, your business was largely supplemental education. The high-end of your business now has college credits.

Adrian Ridner: Absolutely. Two years ago, it was supplemental and test prep. Today, it’s test prep and college credit.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Adrian Ridner, CEO of Study.com
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