A company with thousands of employees will stay with the providers they already use. As Berlitz is building up their online activities others will follow, Wall Street Institute etc, you name them.

Platforms will never be able to offer the same services to those companies as a platform is a platform or marketplace. Even if my apples are not A quality I can try to sell them. And if my apples are A quality I don't work for a platform.

So platforms are and will be for individual lessons only. But this is a huge market, too. In one or two years. It's like Twitter. Who knew two years back what it will be today?

To me platforms are service providers for teachers and students. They (should) make our life easier and therefore earn their commission or a monthly fee. But the rest should be up to the teacher and his student.

And for $5 you already get a decent webhosting, but as I said, you can start a business for $0, too.

The problems for teachers who want to do build up their own service is that they think
1. they think it is expensive
2. they think it is difficult

In the Academy they will learn that this is not like this anymore. With an investment between 0 USD and 5 USD per month you can basically offer the same services as the platforms do. So this is a great way to use the time unless platforms will work.

If you established yourself as an online teacher by then you can easily create new revenue streams by offering your services on those platforms.

So basically it's about maximizing your revenue, not about offering low cost or free services.

All the major educational providers should be very clear about how they can add value beyond the free basics you will be teaching us about. I would expect these providers will all be sending people to your classes to learn more.