The latest in our series looking at ELT-ers who’ve ventured out into business alone looks at the recent winners of the David Riley Award. Simple English Videos, run by husband and wife team Vicki Hollett and Jay Silber, combines the skills of an experienced ELT writer and a producer with a long career in TV, film and video. So, in keeping with their business, they offered to do their interview in video format!
Vicki, what is Simple English Videos all about?
It’s a free website for English learners, to which we’re constantly adding new videos. What folks might not know is that we make videos for clients in the ELT space too: promotional videos for products, organisations and events and training videos. Like this …
Has winning the David Riley Award made a concrete difference, or is it just nice to get recognition?
Winning the award hasn’t brought any new customers yet but it was jolly nice to get recognition. And, actually, you never know what can happen as result of something like that because it introduces you to new people.
In the video, you mention free videos on YouTube leading to paying customers. Could you describe your business model?
We make videos tailored to the needs of specific clients. So, if a company needs English training for its sales staff, for example, we can write and produce videos specifically designed for that. And we can make promotional videos too, of course. We’ve made videos to promote the services that ELT organisations offer and specific courses and events as well. I suppose you could call what we’ve been doing a ‘freemium model’ as customers are starting to come to us from seeing or using the free content on YouTube.
Get in touch if you have an ELT Entrepreneur story to share via blogeditor at eltjam dot com.
Featured Photo Credit: JimmyMac210 – just returned home from hospital via Compfight cc. Text added by ELTjam.
