It’s time to introduce the two newest members of the TeachStreet morale team:  Abbey Road the morkie (maltese yorkie mix) and Stella the French Bulldog. Ever since it’s been a whole lot of cute as they run around our office bringing everyone joy. We couldn’t keep the cuteness to ourselves — so here’s a video:

Of course, we’re also now fully embroiled in puppy training — if you need to find a trainer check out some of our Dog Training listings!

It’s been a long and glorious summer up in the Pacific Northwest and the TeachStreet team has been taking full advantage of long days and warm nights… while at the same time working diligently on a little summer project that is officially launching today: TeachStreet Pro.

TeachStreet Pro is  a new suite of tools for TeachStreet subscribers. TeachStreet Pro makes it easier for teachers to connect with new students, collect payments online (without any teacher processing fees — that’s right no fees!) and grow their business.

Our CEO, Dave, has been so excited about this new offering that yesterday, in anticipation for today’s launch, he created the following video explaining the benefits of going Pro:

If you don’t have time for the video, here are the key new features we’re offering with TeachStreet Pro:

• Free Credit Card Processing — that’s right, Pro Members get free online payments!
• Customize your profile and class pages with your own personalized banner
• New members-only marketing tools (Craigslist ad tool, tear-sheet flyers, and table-top signs)
• Priority placement across TeachStreet site, search, and student e-mails

We’ve also made it super-easy to try out pro — with a 14-day trial you can sign-up without any hassle.

What are you waiting for? Go check it out now!

A couple of weeks ago we announced that we would be launching TeachStreet Payments in July… and today, at 9:34 our engineers pushed the button and we are now live with PayPal powered payments on TeachStreet.

TeachStreet Payments make it easy for Teachers to get paid by students — with minimal fees and hassle. Here’s how it works:

Teacher payments are assessed fees that have been designed to be fair and competitive with other alternatives on the market, while covering the costs related to processing payments and lead generation.

>> Learn more about Payments related fees.

We’re super excited about the launch of this new feature — and hope you are too! If you have any questions about payments, please do not hesitate to contact us.

When we launched the original format for classes on TeachStreet we had one goal: get awesome classes live on the site quickly and easily. Over the last year, we’ve learned a lot more about what makes a class awesome and the needs of Teachers and Schools to list their classes on the site. We also heard that the class editor that we had was “good” but not good enough.

So, with this release, I am excited to announce some BIG changes to how classes are listed on TeachStreet that we hope will improve your experience.  With the new Listings Editor you can:

• List anything related to an area of expertise be it a class, event, workshop, private lesson or office hours. If you teach it, you can list it — for FREE.
• Have a class with sessions in different locations, with different teachers, prices or dates.
• Pause a listing when it is no longer available
• Accept enrollments and payments for your listings

As part of this improved experience,  we changed the format for listings from “Classes” with a specific topic, location, teacher and price to Listings (subject related information) that can be associated with multiple sessions (location, date, teacher, price information). Our goal with the new “Listing & Sessions” concept is to provide you with a more flexible and extensible listing platform.

To help make the transition easy, we have already migrated all of our existing classes to the new Listings & Sessions format. We recommend that Teachers review these changes to confirm the updates to pricing information and listing format.

>> Manage your listings

To learn more about Listings and Sessions, visit the Listings Help Page.

We have modified our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy with the release of Payments. The purpose of these changes are to add information on how payments are managed in our system, the reasons for which a refund will be processed and the responsibilities Teachers have once they accept payment.

Here is a summary of the changes:

• Terms of Service, Section 2: We have defined “teacher” and “student” for purposes of the Terms of Service.
• Terms of Service, Section 8: Identifies that student enrollments are pending until approved by the teacher, and that the teacher has 4 days to review and accept or reject an enrollment.
• Terms of Service, Section 9: Once a teacher accepts payment, the teacher is responsible for making good on delivering the session to expectation.
• Terms of Service, Section 9: If a teacher does not accept a student enrollment, the student will receive a full refund.
• Terms of Service, Section 9:  We have added an obligation by you to provide accurate credit card information and to comply with PayPal’s applicable policies.
• Privacy Policy, Collected Information: We updated this section to include instructions on how to delete your account and remove your information from TeachStreet. We have also noted that it may take search engines, such as Google, time to remove this information from their index and that removal from their index is out of our control.
• Privacy Policy, Payments Transaction: We have added a section to clarify the type of information that we do not store related to transactions, and an obligation by you to provide accurate credit card information and to comply with PayPal’s applicable policies.
• Privacy Policy, Refund Policy: We added a section that clarifies the conditions under which we will issue a refund, which is whenever a teacher rejects enrollment either through a rejection by the Teacher or by not responding to the request within 4 days.

If you have any questions, please contact us.

Links:
Terms of Service
Privacy Policy

Over the last few months, members of the TeachStreet team have spent a lot of time in the field meeting with teachers and searchers. We’ve traveled to New York, to California, to Denver and we also kicked off a series of “Tea Time” feedback sessions in Seattle.  We heard a lot about where we are doing well, where we can improve and what you need. One piece of consistent feedback stood out: add payments to class listings.

Well folks, I am excited to announce that in July we will do exactly that. And, because we know that payments might not be for everyone, we wanted to give you advance notice with all the details so that you can set your account preferences before we launch.

So, first up, here’s how it will work: Student enrolls,  teacher accepts, teacher gets paid.
Ok, so there are a few more details – but we promise that it’s basically that simple.

• TeachStreet users will be able to “enroll” in available sessions from Teachers who have enabled payments. Users will click a “Sign-up” button and then be given the option to confirm their enrollment request and submit payment. If a Teacher doesn’t have payments enabled then students will still be able to contact them via the “Contact Me” button.
• By default, all Teachers are opted-in to payments.
• Payments will be powered securely by PayPal.
• Teachers will have the option to accept or reject a student enrollment (within 3 business days).
• If a Teacher rejects an enrollment, the payment will be refunded in full.
• Teachers will have a management interface where they accept or decline enrollments and can review previous payments.

We’re starting with basic features to make it easy to sign-up for classes. We’ll continue to add features and management tools based upon your feedback.

So, now to fees.
We want to be upfront about our cost structure. We have tried to build out a pricing model that is fair, competitive with other alternatives in the market, and that will help both your business and our business grow.

• All transactions (payments to Teachers) will have a 4.9% Processing Fee.
• New customers (1st time payment to that teacher) carry an additional 2.5% New Customer Fee.
• At launch, all disbursements (transfer of funds to a teacher) will happen immediately when a Teacher accepts an enrollment and will have a $0.99 Disbursement Fee. We plan to move to a monthly or on-demand disbursement process at a later date. There are no fees to Disburse Payment!
• The Minimum Listing Price (cost of a class)  will be $5.00 (or free).
• All listings that are free carry no transaction costs. We believe that free, should be well, free!

For example, if your class is $65.00 you would pay $3.19 in Processing Fees, plus the $0.99 Disbursement Fee. Your net payment would be $61.83.  If the enrollment was for a new student (a new lead from TeachStreet), Teachers would pay an additional  $1.63 for a net payment of 60.20.

In addition to the above, students will be assessed a convenience fee at the time of purchase. This fee is 5% of the listing cost with a $0.99 minimum and covers all student-related transactions costs and customer support.

Not yet ready to enable enrollments for your listings?
In July we will activate payments for all Teachers on the site (we will send a reminder when the date has been set). When payments are activated Teachers will still have the option to accept or decline an enrollment. However, we realize that some Teachers or Schools may want to turn off payments at launch. We understand that, so we have set up an opt-out process. Just complete the form below, by  9:00 AM PST on July 8th PST, and we’ll turn off the payments option at launch. If you later decide that you want to accept enrollments through TeachStreet, you can turn on payments in your account once the feature is available.

Have Questions?
Contact us – we’re here to help and would like to hear your thoughts.

UPDATE: 7.12.09 The form is now closed. If you have questions about TeachStreet Payments, please contact us.
UPDATE: 7.12.09 We have changed our fee structure to remove Disbursement Fees. This blog post has been updated to reflect that change. NJM

As you already know, we’re on a mission to provide you with the tools you need to accelerate your teaching practice.  Well, we’ve been stepping on the gas ourselves, and are pretty excited to share our latest improvement to the site….

Announcing…..the teacher….Dashboard!

The Dashboard is designed to answer the question, “what should I be doing on Teachstreet today,” and from this daily starting point you’ll be able to easily monitor your online marketing efforts and stay on top of what’s going on in your subject and city.

Check out this guide to help you understand all of the features of your new Dashboard and how you can use them to achieve your teaching goals.

We created the Dashboard based on your feedback, but we’re not stopping there.  Don’t be shy!  Tell us what you think of this first version or what else we can do to help you get the most out of Teachstreet and build your business in our forums.

Also, every new feature has awesome people behind it that make it happen. So there are two major shout-outs needed:

Phil “the dashboard” Nash.
Phil is the rockstar developer / engineer / coding master that built the dashboard that you see today. He built incredible systems to collect the data, analyze it and make it useful for you. He also made it all pretty — aren’t those graphs awesome? On top of all this — Phil put in the loooong hours to make it all work. Thank you Phil!!

Dave “the dash” Sanford
Dave is the product manager that defined and designed the dashboard. The initial whiteboard scratchings were magically turned into the cool product you see today thanks to his product specs & guidance. Thanks Dave!

Since we launched widgets a couple of months ago we’ve had two consistent and popular requests: (1) a widget that displays all your classes and (2) a widget that displays your reviews. Well, last night we shipped both of these widget types! We hope you enjoy them.

Here’s a picture of the two new widgets:

My Classes & My Reviews Widget

Feedback?
If you have feedback on these widgets, or if there are other widgets you’d like to see, let us know! I’ve kicked off a thread in our forums – so post your feedback here:
http://www.teachstreet.com/forums/inside-teachstreet/new-widgets-my-classes-and-my-reviews/60/page/1

T-Shirt Giveaway!
Also, we extended our Widget Free T-shirt giveaway. If you install a widget by Sept 1st, and fill out the form letting us know, we’ll send you an awesome, collector’s edition, TeachStreet T-shirt. We send out T-shirts monthly. To find out all the details, and fill out the form, go here:
http://blog.teachstreet.com/learn-new-things/add-a-widget-get-a-free-t-shirt/

There is a lot going on at TeachStreet. Here in our office in South Lake Union a normal day consists of a series of lively conversations about new and exciting ideas we have to make the site awesome and awesomely beneficial to the active teachers and learners in our community. But, we also know that we can’t work in isolation — in order to build awesome products for you — we need your feedback!

So, we’re kicking off a summer series: Tea Time with TeachStreet. On select Wednesday’s in June, July & August,  between 4:00 and 6:00 we’ll be demoing new ideas for the site, changes we’re considering and fixes we’re making.We’d love it if you would join us for an informal feedback session — with Tea and Crumpets!

Hello Chicago!

Late last night we launched TeachStreet Chicago — our  first mid-west city. Residents of the Windy CIty can now access almost 10,000 instructors, classes and events in their local area. Offerings range from Furry Dogmother’s dog training classes in Homewood, IL to Lasky Martial Arts & Yoga in Chicago, IL.

We are super excited to welcome thousands of new awesome Teachers to the TeachStreet family.