Taking InstantCert to the Big Time

[ShotoJuku]

Originally Posted by sgloer

No response; in my experience with them, Excelsior has never been good at responding to emails... Also, I took another look at the publication and I didn't see any evidence of advertising.

Does TESC or COSC have some kind of periodical that an ad can be placed in??

[Dakota]

Here's another thought. Do you have anything you could offer for sale on eBay (a month's membership, a study guide, etc.)? I have seen plenty of eBay sellers that are only selling something in order to attract peoples attention to something else that they want to sell you "offline". If done carefully, I don't think this would be wrong. I suspect there are a lot of people searching eBay for books and study guides that they plan to use when studying for a CLEP or DANTES exam. Anyone have any experience with this?

Russ

[sirjake]

Originally Posted by Dakota

Here's another thought. Do you have anything you could offer for sale on eBay (a month's membership, a study guide, etc.)? I have seen plenty of eBay sellers that are only selling something in order to attract peoples attention to something else that they want to sell you "offline". If done carefully, I don't think this would be wrong. I suspect there are a lot of people searching eBay for books and study guides that they plan to use when studying for a CLEP or DANTES exam. Anyone have any experience with this?

Russ

Actually, that is *exactly* how I found out about IC. I was searching for CLEP material, ran across an auction for a membership here that explicitly stated that I did not need to make a bid to get a discount, came to the web site, entered the discount code, got my first month for 14.95, and the rest is history.

[snazzlefrag]

Originally Posted by sirjake

Actually, that is *exactly* how I found out about IC. I was searching for CLEP material, ran across an auction for a membership here that explicitly stated that I did not need to make a bid to get a discount, came to the web site, entered the discount code, got my first month for 14.95, and the rest is history.

Hey! Welcome back SirJake,

I was starting to get a bit worried about you.

Hope you are well,
Snazzlefrag

[timiny]

I debated quite a while before signing up for InstantCert. There is so much junk study material out there, its hard to judge what is worth spending the money on. Once I did sign up, I was very surprised to find the link to this forum in the Members area. If I had known about the forum earlier and had read the posts, I definitely would have signed up for InstantCert membership earlier.

I would strongly recommend you put a link to the forum in the prospective students area.

[sgloer]

Originally Posted by timiny

I would strongly recommend you put a link to the forum in the prospective students area.

Thanks, we'll most likely be doing that in the near future.

[ken972]

Hi! Ive been using InstantCert for a couple of months now but this is my first post in the forums. I agree that a myspace page would be a good idea. Seems alot of us here are on myspace...it would help to spread the word about instantcert by mouth. Everyone checks out each others page..they might see a link to an instantcert group and want to check it out. It could be an official instant cert group or a group dedicated to people taking exams to help finish their degrees.

[Casey1300]

I would suggest metatags on your website. Im not sure if you have them yet or not but key words such as cleps, clep testing, clep study guides, dantes info, etc would help so that when people type that in the search engine it will pull your site up. Try to get your site in the first page of results and you should have many more hits. A link to this forum under prospective students would be a good idea also since its free and it would help people in making the decision to sign up.

One last thing, magazine advertising might work well. A mainstream educational magazine or even a college newspaper. Ill PM you a link where you can advertise in college newspapers.

[J-Cubed]

Originally Posted by sgloer

Thanks, we'll most likely be doing that in the near future.

I agree whole heartedly with timiny. If I would have had access to these forums, I would have known instantly (pun intended) that this is where I wanted to get most of my study materials/ideas from. As it was, I researched a ton of other sites/systems - none of which really gave me a good idea as to what they would really do for me. This site was the least expensive (other than the free sites offering info only - not study material). That is ultimately why I signed up here. I am very happy with what I get and have already recommended this to others.

[kitanis]

Originally Posted by sgloer

The military is an excellent idea... Besides having active duty customers post our flyer at their education center, I'm not sure what we can do.

Originally Posted by sgloer

I believe the Air Force and Navy already offer their own free courses for CLEP prep, so some of their education advisors seem reluctant to consider other prep services.

The free services you mentioned for the USAF are Peterson AFB website which is mentioned on this forum quite a bit. It provides some GREAT practice tests.

The Base Library provides National Learning Center Guides to Dantes exams.. sometimes it has Schaum Outlines for CLEP courses. Sometimes you have great Video checkout systems for studying for courses.. but most of the base libraries have removed them from the shelves because the tapes wear out. My last base had Fantastic Cassette tape systems for most courses.. but the tapes were worn out before i was assigned there.

I took the liberty to talk to a education counselor about InstantCert the other day and I too found the reluctance to it from him automatically.. He told me that it was a Scheme to builk money out of people and you get better results by buying a book out of Borders. Luckily i am a Computer System Administrator for the AF and logged into a terminal at the desk I was sitting at and SHOWED him the flashcards. He was amazed and flabergasted, and started to asked alot of questions. I took him through some of the flashcard courses and then showed him this forum, he was amazed although he did not have much good to say about Excelsior College.

He had me show the site to the main education counselor and I got a small lecture about how it was a pay for service site and they could not recomend it to students. I asked the question about what was the difference between studying for CLEP with a brand new book from a private bookstore and this website with a small support forum, OR applying for Tuition Assistance for a maximum of 14 credit hours a quater (The Main college on base is quarter system school, the other two are Semester System but have very few courses available). and I got a counter that sounded like canned answer.

I think the education centers in the USAF are trained to push the CCAF with the standard education insitutions on that base. If you want to go beyond that, it has to be out of their playbook otherwise they faulter and try to disuade you from doing what they think you should do. My own Flight Commander is going through Grantham College online and he told me that the Education Center constantly tries to get him to withdraw from there.

In the end.. I got to leave a few flyers for Instacert and I noticed that one of them ended up on the Un-Official bulletin board from possible colleges outside of the area.. Its a start.