Premium membership changes

We're revamping how premium membership works to make it fairer for tutors and enable students to find the right tutor quickly.

Issues with the Previous System

Students:

We received numerous complaints from students about tutors who were unresponsive or lacked expertise in their advertised subjects. For example, a tutor who paid for prominence in 'Maths tutors' also appeared at the top of 'Music tutors' without relevant skills.

Additionally, tutors listed as local were often only available online, and vice versa, leading to student frustration.

Tutors:

• Unfair Subject Listings: Tutors had to pay a single membership fee regardless of how many subjects they taught. This system favoured those claiming to teach numerous subjects over those specialising in a few. For example, if two teachers had 100 coins premium membership each, the one who listed three subjects was at a disadvantage to someone who listed 20 subjects.
• Unbalanced Competition Across Subjects: Tutors specialising in less frequently taught subjects faced a disproportionate challenge. For instance, those teaching Yoga had to compete unfairly against tutors who taught high-demand subjects like Maths. This discrepancy arose because tutors teaching popular subjects could outrank specialists in niche areas, regardless of actual expertise or student demand in those less popular subjects.
• Costly Memberships for Offline Tutors: Offline tutors were compelled to compete with online tutors, increasing costs unnecessarily.
• Unfair Ranking for Small Payment Differences: If one tutor paid a bit more for their membership than the other — say 5001 coins instead of 5000 coins — they would always rank higher, even though the difference in what they paid was really small.

The New System

• Distinct Memberships for Online and Offline Tutoring: This allows tutors to be listed appropriately based on their teaching mode.
• Individual Memberships Per Subject: Premium memberships are now subject-specific, although a high ranking in one subject may positively influence related subjects. This structure encourages tutors to rank highly only for the subjects they truly specialise in.
• Rotational Rankings: We are now giving chance to tutors to rank higher in proportion to their membership. For example, consider two tutors, Arun and Ben, with memberships valued at 2000 and 2001 coins, respectively. Both will generally rank similarly in searches. However, Ben would rank slightly higher than Arun due to his slightly higher coin count. As a result, Ben's average rank would be slightly better than Arun's, such as 4.5 compared to 4.6.

These changes will create a fairer system where tutors rank highly only in their areas of expertise. This should reduce the cost of premium memberships in less competitive subjects and enhance the student experience.

It will also foster greater trust among students, attracting more learners and ensuring they find the right expert quickly. This, in turn, should benefit our tutors in the long run by increasing student enrollment.