ziizoo blog

Is anyone seeing the “waiting to connect” error on a consistent basis? Poor Rene Jumper can’t seem to get around it, but my impression is that most everyone can successfully enter a session now. Please let me know if this is not the case.

Also, Rakhi Agrawal took the initiative to create and upload two promotional posters to the Facebook tutor group. Feel free to download and print them out. And if you have a creative urge, we’d love to see what you can do. Be funny, edgy, cute or bland - it’s your call. Just upload them and then let us know they are up there.

Robert

Courtesy of our Google Mini, below is the list of the top 50 UNRETURNED searches on ziizoo.com for the month of January.

1. asian languages
2. professional & academic counseling
3. romance languages
4. Organizations that sets up standard units
5. slavic languages
6. metric system
7. metric system help
8. middle eastern languages
9. performing arts
10. mark-up languages
11. abigail moeller
12. according to Mohs scale of hardness, which mineral would mineral would have a hardness of 10?
13. alegebra
14. english measurement
15. motion
16. swot
17. calculs ab
18. carrying capacity factors
19. cells
20. elements
21. fermentation
22. fithgrademath
23. how to call a 6 sided shape
24. kochen
25. lauren sinclair
26. law vs. conscience
27. productivity software
28. programming languages
29. programming/scripting languages
30. proprtties
31. protor/algebra
32. sinclair
33. Stoichiometry
34. western philosophy
35. 2x 3x y=
36. african languages
37. agincourt
38. algebras
39. algrbra slope
40. alli smith
41. ancient greece/rome
42. atomic / molecular physics
43. below human hearing
44. calculas
45. can an eel light up a light bulb?
46. capacity
47. carrying
48. carrying capactiy factors
49. chemistry scientific notation
50. conversqation of charges

Courtesy of our Google Mini, below is the list of the top 50 RETURNED searches on ziizoo.com for the month of January.

1. algebra
2. chemistry
3. physics
4. math
5. algebra 1
6. calculus
7. algebra 2
8. mathematics
9. elementary algebra
10. elementary math
11. geometry
12. basic math
13. basic geometry
14. high school math
15. elementary geometry
16. college algebra
17. english
18. high school geometry
19. basic grammar
20. essay writing
21. essay writing help
22. fractions
23. english literature
24. harvard math
25. sat essay
26. english essay writing
27. math equations
28. kids math
29. college essay writing
30. editing
31. ap calculus
32. effective essay writing
33. english language grammar
34. biology
35. poetry
36. grammar
37. math tutor
38. critical essays
39. science
40. spanish
41. pre-algebra
42. advanced mathematics
43. english
44. integrals calculus
45. trigonometry
46. ap chemistry
47. essays
48. sat
49. algebra i
50. chain rule

Log-in and win a 4×5 graphire wacom tablet!

Yes, it’s that simple. Log-in and win a $165 wacom graphire. Over the course of the next two months we are going to give away four tablets - so roughly every two weeks a new winner will be announced.

If you have not used one before, wacom tablets are really cool. Basically they turn your computer into a notepad. Check out this review on Amazon for detailed product features.

With a tablet you can take full advantage of the ziizoo whiteboard and draw on it as though you were writing on a chalkboard. Drawing geometric shapes, solving math equations, handwriting notes and much more are a cinch using a tablet.

That said, the promotion does have some basic rules:

1. The promotion is only available to tutors.
2. To qualify, tutors must have a complete profile - a picture, summary description, service tags, and academic information.
3. Only the presence statuses of “available” or “active session” will count - any time with a presence of “away” or “offline” will not count, even if you are logged into ziizoo.
4. Unanswered session requests will result in a 30-minute penalty.
5. Unreturned emails will result in a 15-minute penalty.
6. Active session minutes are worth 2X (e.g., a 30 minute session is worth 60 minutes for this promotion).
7. Promotion is limited to one wacom tablet per tutor

Tutors already using tablets have said they greatly enhance the online tutoring experience - the tablet is a tool every tutor should have in his/her toolkit! So what are you waiting for? Log-in and win!

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about the promotion.

Good luck!

It was a short month but traffic to the tutor profile pages was still strong. Below are the top 5 tutors by total number of page views for the month of December. Congratulations again to Jeff Seguritan for 1,700+ page views in a single month.

1. Jeff Seguritan : 1,714
2. Kate Sims : 589
3. Dalmo Mendoca 325
4. Jennifer West : 283
5. Michelle Sharp : 110

Like Amazon or Google, search results on ziizoo are a function of a lot of things. While the precise algorithm is our own secret recipe, we thought we would share these five easy tips on how to improve your placement in search results.

1. Availability The single greatest (and easiest) thing you can do to improve your placement in search results is to log-in. We heavily favor tutors that have set their status to “available”. Remember you do not have to be physically staring at ziizoo.com to be logged-in. You can have ziizoo open in a separate tab or window so you can surf the internet while staying logged-in.

2. Feedback In these early days, a single rating can help separate you from hundreds of tutors and multiple ratings almost guarantees a spot on the first search result page. One way to get some quick feedback is to participate in the 60 Minutes for Free promotion so students have a risk-free way of trying you out (but make sure they leave feedback!).

3. Profile/Credentials Next to logging-in, the easiest way to be found is having a rich summary description and adding all your academic credentials (including your high school!). Students are more likely to believe you to be an authority (and so will our search algorithm) if you have extensive academic background (as opposed to leaving that section blank).

4. Tags Students can’t find you (and neither can our Google search appliance) unless you have tags (and the more the better). While most students search on generic terms like “algebra”, many also search on more refined terms like “algebra II” or “quadratic equation”. Be sure to round out your profile by adding tags to your tutor services page.

5. Digital Locker Content All session transcripts are automatically stored in your Digital Locker, but you can round out your locker (and improve your placement in search) by uploading relevant documents in your Digital Locker - things like solution sets, syllabi, essays or anything else you think a student would search on. Update your Digital Locker by clicking here.

Need more help? Check out the Faculty Lounge section of our blog for other best practices.

Below are the top 7 tutors by total number of page views for the month of November. Congratulations to Jeff Seguritan for a whopping 2,700+ page views in a single month - that’s almost 100 views per day! It speaks to the power of availability and how it draws students to your profile like a teenager to a Wii.

1. Jeff Seguritan : 2,705
2. Michelle Sharp : 516
3. Kate Sims : 189
4. Charles Robinson : 152
5. Jennifer West : 135
6. Brian Stephanik : 110
7. Pearline Teo : 108

We recently started using Facebook’s new ad platform. It has been fascinating to compare it to Google Ad Words. So far the traffic has been impressive but the click-through and conversion has been terrible relative to Google. Anyway, I just logged into Facebook and saw an ad on my profile - now I think I know why Facebook has a looong way to go before they can catch Google. Check out the attached jpeg and see if you can tell why this perhaps the most poorly placed, ill-targeted ad ever.

A lot of tutors have been asking for an easy way to offer a discounted rate / “first time is free” promotion to new customers. In response, we have decided to launch a new promotion called “60 Minutes for Free” whereby all students will receive a bucket of 60 minutes to use with tutors participating in the promotion. Students are free to use the minutes as they please - on one 60 minute session, two 30 minute sessions, three 20 minute sessions, etc.

Tutors can opt-in or opt-out at any point - there is no obligation to participate - but we think it is definitely a “win-win” for students and tutors. The promotion allows tutors to invest in long-term relationships with students by giving them a risk-free way to sample their services. A special logo will appear next to tutors’ names in search results (as well as their profile pages) so that students can clearly tell that who is and is not participating in the promotion.

We plan to launch this promotion shortly after the Thanksgiving holiday but we will release more details (including how to sign-up) as the actual release date approaches. In the meantime please do not hesitate to blog us with your thoughts, comments or suggestions!

Thanks!

Robert Einspruch & Egon van der Hoeven
Founders, ziizoo.com

It has been six weeks weeks since the launch of ziizoo “beta” and things are humming along very nicely. Recently we have received a lot of questions about tutor rankings in search results. While our algorithm takes many factors into account, it places a lot of weight on “availability”. We do this because the vast majority of traffic is directed towards “available” tutors (students are inclined to ask questions when they think they have a real chance of getting a quick response). Anectodately, we have heard tales of tutors being overwhelmed by demand (particularly on Sundays) because they are the only ones logged-in.

Bottom-line: availability leads to traffic, which leads to sessions, which leads to feedback, which leads to an even higher ranking that, when combined with being logged-on, leads to even more traffic! So help us get the platform off the ground (and launch your tutoring business) by logging-in!

Also, many of you asked for a way to offer students a free session or special introductory rate in order to make prospective students/parents more comfortable with initiating a session. We are working on several changes to the way billing is handled to make this (and even more things) possible. In the interim, we have removed the credit card requirement for tutors with a $0 rate. So if you are contacted by a student and you want to offer him/her 15 minutes for free (for example), simply lower your hourly rate to $0 before the student initates the session, and then raise it back up to the normal rate after the introductory session is over. Click here for instructions on how to change your hourly rate or visit the “how to ziizoo” section of our blog.

Bigger and better changes are on the way, so stay tuned! It goes without saying that we appreciate your patience as the marketplace grows. And be sure to visit Mike’s blog for the latest site updates or feature requests.

Thank you for being a part of the ziizoo community.

Robert Einspruch & Egon van der Hoeven
Founders, ziizoo.com