The Straits Times featured an article on language exchange today, for which I was interviewed. Click on the image to read the article!

Check out this previous post if you’re interested to set up a language exchange yourself.

Why do we list language courses and schools openly? If Yago is a business, how does Yago make money? This is a question frequently left unasked, but one that will undoubtedly have surfaced in many of your minds.

Yago is not a language school. We are a website about language schools. What we aim to do is two-fold:

1) Make it easier for students to find a language course at a school that fits them

2) Help language schools find suitable and motivated students

It is with (2) that we earn our revenue. Language schools advertise in different ways, including on Google, by giving out flyers, by buying billboard space and in newspapers such as the Straits Times. And now they can also list their courses with us.

We have made a website that we believe is helpful to students. We don’t flood it with advertisements, and we collect reviews for courses, so that you really know what kind of course you are signing yourself up to.

So how do we get paid? Language schools can list a limited number of courses with us, and receive a limited number of enquiries, for free. If they receive more enquiries, they can choose to pay for a monthly subscription, or pay a commission for every student who signs up through.

In the education world, it’s common practice to pay commissions to education agents when they bring students. We don’t really believe in the traditional way agents work, because they may make choices on the student’s behalf, based on which school pays most commission.

We openly display schools’ names and courses on our site. You as a student can make your own choice and then contact the school directly.

It won’t cost you anything extra to contact a school through Yago as compared to contacting the school directly. The only difference is that if you contact the school through the “enquire now” buttons on Yago, we will get credit for referring you to the school.

At this moment we are looking for a charity in the education / language / culture sphere to sponsor with 10% of our revenues. Let us know if you have any suggestions!

We’ve been working on it for a while, and today we’re ready for prime time: our website has been updated. The major changes are:

Easier feedback: School ratings are important to our site and we are very eager to collect more of them so that all of you can get a better idea of what is happening inside the schools you find on our site. We’ve made it easier for you to leave feedback on your course our school. No longer do you need to create an account before you can leave your rating and comment. Just provide your name, rating and written comments and hit “submit”. Note that your evaluation needs to be first hand: you need to have actually attended the course / school you evaluate.

Search by country: We have recently added the Beijing based Chinese language schools Hutong School and Minsi International and more foreign schools are on the way. So you can now search by the country where the course is taking place. If you have recommendations for really good schools to learn Chinese in China, Korean in Korea or what more, don’t hesitate to let us know!

New products: You can learn a language in many ways besides attending courses. In fact, many of you may not have the time to attend a course on a regular schedule. That’s why we’ve started to add language learning apps, software and books to our website.

Instant chat: On the bottom right, you find a little bar with a chat function. If you are lost on the site, looking for suggestions, or have feedback on our site, you can pick up a chat conversation with us. We will try to be available as much as possible during office hours, but if you find us offline, you can drop us a note and we will get back to you as soon as possible, latest within one business day.