To give everyone a lot of advance notice, from March 1st, 2010 we will introduce a number of changes to the pricing structure for ChinesePod subscriptions:

1. Premium and Guided subscriptions of selected lengths will rise slightly.

• Premium 6 Months: $149 (was $139)
• Premium 12 Months: $249 (was $239)
• Guided 6 Months: $249 (was $219)
• Guided 12 Months: $429 (was $399)

2. Basic subscriptions will now be priced at 50% of Premium subscriptions.

• Basic 1 Month: $14 (was $9)
• Basic 6 Months: $74 (was $39)
• Basic 12 Months: $124 (was $69)
• Basic 24 Months: $199 (was $129)

3. Students will now receive a 25% discount across Basic and Premium subscriptions (previously 20%).

Prices for existing one-month subscriptions, the Executive Plan and the Praxis Pass are unaffected.

To view, renew, extend or upgrade your account, please  go to the ChinesePod payment page (you'll need to sign in as normal).

Why the change?

Since September 2005, the prices of ChinesePod subscriptions have been pretty much unchanged. With a new Chinese year we feel it is time to update prices to better reflect the value we offer. We take great pride in the quality of our audio lessons and routinely hear from our students that they are the key part of our service. We are adjusting prices for Basic subscriptions to better reflect this perspective.

A Basic ChinesePod subscription provides unlimited access to an ever-growing library of 1,300+ quality audio lessons and full transcripts plus ongoing professional study support on the lesson discussion boards.

With this in mind, we have revalued Basic, pricing it at 50% of a Premium subscription.

Good news for Basic subscribers!

We have gotten a lot of feedback for our Learn Chinese iPhone app. One of the complaints we have heard is frustration from Basic subscribers that they are blocked from downloading lessons. We agree. If you can do it on the website, you should be able to do it on the iPhone. As a result, in the latest 1.0.8 version (available in the App store since Jan 31) of the iPhone app Basic Subscribers are now able to download lessons to help them learn on the go.

What else do we have planned for 2010?

A year is a long time, but in the next few months we will be working on:

• A full grammar guide (finally!)
• Better support for students with teachers (e.g. Guided, Virtual School, Executive Plan)
• A new dashboard concept to replace the current home page to help make the service easier to understand.
• Continued iterations for the iPhone and Android apps (sneak peak: the iPhone app will soon have support for Traditional Chinese!)
• API's (we hear you WeLoveChinesePod people)
• As well as more and more lessons

Some of you have recently received user surveys from our ChinesePod Community Advocate, Scarlett (username Ousijia), or taken part in interviews with John Pasden. These are part of our efforts to better understand what our users want and need, so we can work to improve and grow our services accordingly. We greatly value this feedback and it is an important part of our planning process.

We welcome your feedback here and are happy to answer questions you might have.

Thanks!

Hank.