ESLinsider reviews + “Trusted” reviews + 3rd party reviews

This post will point out some of the reviews on ESLinsider and offer additional input on some of those attacks left by troll competitors.

ESLinsider is my site. I started working on its videos in 2009. And it’s been online since 2011. It offers activity based teacher training especially focused on teaching in East Asia where I taught.

The best place to find reviews on ESLinsider is here.

Gintare’s review of ESLinsider’s course

But you may be wondering why aren’t there many on 3rd party sites?

But wait a second.

Actually there are on ESLinsider’s Youtube channel or on the Quora post I’ll mention later.

I’d like to point out that unlike many other courses ESLinsider actually has a lot of “reviews” if you want to call them that on its how-to videos on Youtube. And those videos are used in ESLinsider’s courses.

Take a look.

ESLinsider's Youtube stats

Here’s a comment from one of the videos:

“I’m a new teacher and these videos really saved my hide (they still do) and my students like these activities a lot. I would like to thank you…” – Luiz Felipe

A comment on the video above.

psychogemini's review of ESLinsider

Why I don’t use 3rd party TEFL review sites

The short answer is: I don’t like middlemen.

If you are searching for reviews on ESLinsider’s courses then I’ll assume that you are also checking out other companies too and you have probably been to some 3rd party review sites like:

  • gobroad.com
  • teflcoursereview.com
  • gooverseas.com

They make money by referral links and from advertising from the courses on their site.

You have to create an account there before people can leave reviews on your course.

I did initially create an account with either the goabroad or the gooverseas site (can’t remember which one as they look the same to me) a few years ago, but changed my mind and had it deleted for a few different reasons.

If I wanted a better position on their site and to be found there then I had to pay money.

Those sites are not “unbiased” like some say.

So instead of paying them money and helping their site grow I decided to put the review software on my own site instead.

DO YOU TRUST 3RD PARTY REVIEW SITES MORE?

Guess what?

Sites like Amazon have MILLIONs OF FAKE REVIEWS.

And like 25% of Yelp reviews are fake.

There are also plenty of fake reviews in TEFL too. In fact there are entire review sites out there that are fake and I’ll tell you about one later.

I don’t do affiliate marketing or advertise

Unlike most other TEFL courses, ESLinsider doesn’t have an affiliate program. Maybe I could make more money doing that, but I just don’t like it.

I don’t know about you, but to me it’s not very genuine. It’s basically like bribing people to write a review of you or link to your course.

Accreditation is another 3rd party

Accreditation in TEFL is also basically a paid review.

You may think accreditation is a sign of quality, but is it really?

  1. It’s easy to fake or it’s paid for in TEFL.
  2. It’s seeks to maintain the status quo on “standards”.

And…

The question nobody seems to ask…

What do you know about the accreditor?

The idea behind accreditation might be good, but some educational non-profit organizations say it doesn’t work.

I have taken two different TESOL/TEFL courses and both were accredited, but neither one was very helpful or practical.

And that’s the problem with “education”.

Accreditation isn’t about learning.

Learn more about TEFL accreditation.

ESLinsider is small and more like a mom and pop shop

I try to be transparent vs. not which is I think like most of the TEFL course industry especially online.

I didn’t originally design ESLinsider to be a course. Back in 2011 it started with how-to videos and an ebook.

I didn’t like the TEFL/TESOL course industry because of all the lies. The courses came later. It’s more popular as a resource (its videos) for current teachers.

I have no interest in being another look alike TEFL course. Are all the courses out there starting to look and sound the same to you?

I wrote a bit about TEFL copycats in this PDF.

I have taken some atypical stances not trying to fit in with what I don’t believe in. For example, accreditation and TEFL course “hours“. When it comes to online courses those hours mean nothing.

I completed a so called “120 hour” online TEFL course on Groupon in 8 hours, not cause I needed it, but because I wanted to see what I would get.

Until about 2016-17 I did name my courses with “hours”, but it never sat well with my conscience and then as the course developed more I changed it…

george's review of eslinsider

George has left a few reviews and his first one was left 4 years ago.

120 hour course->Advanced->TEKA

Also…

I don’t follow “best business practices” in some sense and I do criticize the TEFL course industry (some of my so-called competitors),  because this is ESLinsider NOT blue pill TEFL.

So…

I try to keep it simple and practical minus the hype and lies.

It’s not popular maybe because I didn’t do what other people did, but on the plus side I think you’ll find it to be more personable.

And one of my favorite quotes by Seth Godin was…

Regardless of how you measure ‘best’ (elegance, deluxeness, impact, profitability, ROI, meaningfulness, memorability), it’s almost never present in the thing that is the most popular.

All the reviews that are written on my site are written by people who have taken courses there. I also kept some testimonials (2012-2016) which started long before I set up the reviews on my site in 2016.

As of right now there are 30 (5 star) reviews on ESLinsider and 1 with just a 4 star rating, but no written review. I ask people if they can leave a review when they finish the course, however they aren’t obligated to.

There I do say that I may delete a review if they don’t use their name and email used in the course.

Why?

I say that to prevent possible trolls or evil competitors from writing a malicious fake review like some of the people below did.

Does ESLinsider have any bad reviews?

Well, to be honest there are a few that were written by people who used troll accounts.

They didn’t take a course with ESLinsider although one of them claimed to.

One troll claimed that I was selling diplomas, perhaps he saw this drawing I did and believed it.

Duh…

But if you search Google for the keywords “ESLinsider diploma” you won’t find any place where you can buy a diploma on my site.

If you search:

eslinsider reviews

You’ll see some negative pages that were written by the people below.

“Trusted” TEFL reviews?

There’s this other newer site out there that claims to be “trusted” who wrote a fake review of my site and attacked me on Quora, TEFL.net, etc. His sites are called “trusted” TEFL reviews and TEFL online pro (the winner of some fake award on that “trusted” site) and ACTEFLC his fake accreditation.

He owns the review site to write fake reviews and promote his other site.

He formally had a similar review site scam called ITTP and teflonlinereviews.com.

Now his scam is called TEFL online pro and “Trusted” TEFL reviews.

Related:

Why do I point this out?

Because if you do a search for reviews and my site then you will likely find stuff he has written to make me look bad.

Like this:

Or this.

Here’s a comment from the video above.

bezzerb's review of ESLinsider

Aside from that…

 

Any critical reviews?

Like not from trolls???

Yeah, 1,000 dislikes on the videos in the pic above which is like 11% of the people who watched my videos and pushed either the like or dislike button.

And here’s a critical email I got once about the course:

“I understand the level of difficulty between the courses. However, in the 20 hour course, when answering the questions, the answer could be easily seen in the text that was meant to be studied.

I would suggest more of a challenge where studying the context is mandatory to correctly answering the question. Not just searching for the match to the question.
That is my personal opinion. Other then that, the material was well put. Thank you.” –
Sarah Gilbertson

My thoughts on that are why should I make it intentionally more difficult to learn? I try to make it easy not hard. Some teachers make you want to work for no good reason.

Not me.

I intentionally broke up all of the text into mostly small bits because that’s a better way to learn AND I put the answer right there as I didn’t think hiding the answer would help.

Listen to Seth Godin’s comment.

“Open book open note ALL THE TIME. There is zero value in memorizing anything ever again. Anything worth memorizing is worth looking up.” – Seth Godin

ginatare's review of ESLinsider

“Not Well-Known, Yet Has Invaluable Information and Advice From a Great Teacher…

At first I was hesitant to take Ian’s Advanced Course, since there didn’t seem to be much information about it online. However, I can now say with full confidence that Ian has put together a masterclass catalog of teaching materials, each presented in a clear and logical way, with a great website to re-find anything if needed. The course pages seem to be frequently updated and Ian is incredibly quick to respond to submitted assignments or messages.

Direct communication with Ian is a huge plus. There are a few assignments to submit (Lesson Plans, mainly) and Ian gave me very detailed and meaningful feedback on every one. – Kyle P.

Read more reviews of ESLinsider’s online courses or ask me a question.

Last words…

You’re reading this on my personal blog, but you can also learn more about ESLinsider here.

Also there are some reviews on a guide book that I wrote on Amazon and other related posts below:

And more on ESLinsider…

Starting something new is difficult

It’s hard to start something new.

It’s hard to get there and getting there is the battle. Actually it’s not that the place you want to go to is worse, but the difficult part is getting there or making it through “The Dip” as Seth Godin says.

It happens everyday and there are a lot of ways that it manifests itself.

In my experience it’s hard to:

  • to work out.
  • to get to jiu-jitsu class.
  • to start a new project (video, art, article, etc.)
  • to change your habits.
  • to get ready for work.
  • to move.
  • to change.
  • to start anything new.

But really in so many cases it’s just starting. It’s not the actually thing. The hard part is just transitioning from where you are now to where you want to go.

And so much of it is in your head.

For the last 8 days or so I have been working on this video. And it started with inertia. There was a sort of dread and this ughh feeling cause I knew the first part of creating it would be boring.

But at some point you get over the hump and it becomes more fun.

I also mention at the end of the video getting out of your comfort zone. I show a picture that I got from Wikipedia. It shows 3 circles within one another.

  1. At the center you have your comfort zone
  2. Surrounding your comfort zone is the optimal performance zone
  3. And then surrounding that is the danger zone

The Crosswalk

Here’s the latest creative video that I made. I first did a little beatboxing, recorded it, looped it with my computer and then scratched over it with my turntables.

I also used a little sound sample from the crosswalk ticker and some footage around the neighborhood.

Lately I have been watching a lot of Jordan Peterson’s stuff. He is really interesting. I signed up for one of his courses online called self and future authoring.

Some of the questions that are asked in the future authoring course I added to the video. Something to think about.

Why men make more money

Here are some interesting comments on why men make more money!

This is an interview with Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson who is a clinical psychologist at the University of Toronto and a former professor at Harvard.

I have been watching a lot of Jordan Petersons videos lately. Very interesting!

And this reminded me of some funny jokes by Bill Burr also regarding why men make more money.

The video quality of this is poor, but the sound is good. It’s funny!

2 Ways To Stimulate Autophagy & Why You Want To Do That

Autophagy is how a cell naturally clears away dead or unhealthy cells in your body. You can do that 2 ways and both of those ways require stressing the cell.

Way number 1 – exercise

If you exercise you can stimulate autophagy.

Way number 2 – fast or deplete your body of nutrients

Fasting and caloric restriction has been shown to increase autophagy.

Why you want to do that

Autophagy clears away the dead and unhealthy cells in your body. The older you get the more of these cells you get in your body.

So autophagy promotes health and healing in your body by clearing away dead and unhealthy cells.

If you are not doing these things then you are essentially speeding up your own destruction.

  • Reduce inflammation
  • Speed healing

Source:

A Super Fast Joomla Template – Minimal Code, Maximum Speed

Are you looking for a super fast Joomla template? How about a fast loading and responsive Joomla template? Or do you need a high speed solution to slow loading pages?

The problem…

Joomla can be slow

Here’s why:

  • lots of CSS files
  • lots of javascript files
  • unminified CSS, Javascript, HTML
  • lots of images and icons
  • Google fonts
  • lots of http requests
  • lots of components

And if you add Google analytics, Adsense, or Youtube videos they will also slow your site down. Although I share something later in the template that will speed up your Youtube video loads.

Out of the box Joomla is usually not optimized and it is often slow. This can depend upon the template, but there are often lots of CSS and JS files.

So I created my own template over the years that is extremely simple and fast.

Should a website be fast?

People prefer fast websites and since people prefer fast websites so does Google. It’s likely that the faster your website is the better you will rank in Google.

I don’t know about you…

But if I go to a website and it locks up my page because it’s loading a bunch of ads and other stuff I hit the back button.

And…

I silently wish to myself that their bounce rate goes up and Google demotes them.

If you want a lot of bells and whistles then you will pay

If you want a flashy website then it’s going to slow you down. Some things may look cool, but just add to the overall weight of the page.

The flashy stuff may look cool, but it doesn’t make up for something that is missing in your content.

The bells and whistles should be in your content. If you try to make subpar content look better by adding cool effects and what not then you will slow your site down.

Think Wikipedia or Craigslist.

Are these flashy websites? No. Are they popular websites? Yes. Why? Because they help people.

A flashy website isn’t go to make you any more popular.

Enter my speedy template that will get a 100% on most page speed tests

Javascript and CSS files will slow down a page. So how many CSS files does my template use?

Zero.

How many JS files does my template use?

Zero.

I eliminated them both.

What?!

Yes, it’s possible. Out of the box Joomla open source software is for everyone. It’s versatile and you can build a massive site with all kinds of different functions.

But what if you just want a simple site that’s fast and responsive in mobile view?

I didn’t need that much. I just wanted a fast simple site for my content which was mostly a blog and videos.

Is this template for everyone?

Absolutely not.

It’s for the minimalist. If you want a simple (minimal), fast loading Joomla template that’s responsive then this is it. If you want something fancy then this is not for you.

How can a site work without a CSS file?

As per Google’s recommendation for small css files I inlined the css. This template uses very little CSS.

How can a site work without Javascript?

Javascript is often used for Joomla components, so if you don’t need any components then you probably don’t actually need to be loading Javascript files.

By default Joomla is going to load a bunch of files. But they can be removed.

If you decide that you want to load these files or need them for a component you can add them, but remember that comes with a cost. They will make your site slower which may decrease your ranking.

How does this template do on speed tests?

You can check out this minimal and super fast Joomla template here. The following are some checks for Google’s Pagespeed. My template gets 100% on all of these.

The template will score 100% on speed checks, however if there is an image on the page that will slow it down a bit.

  • Reduce server response time
  • Leverage browser caching
  • Avoid landing page redirects
  • Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
  • Enable compression
  • Minify CSS
  • Minify HTML
  • Minify JavaScript
  • Optimize images
  • Prioritize visible content

How does it compare to other “fast” Joomla sites?

There are a few sites out there that say they are fast. And some of them may be compared to others, but the ones I have tested are still not that fast.

Test out the high speed Joomla template here.

Bonuses included in the template:

  • How to load Youtube videos faster on your own site
  • Joomla SEO tips

30 days eating no animal products

For the last 30+ days or so I have been eating a vegan diet basically. I basically cut out eggs and A2 dairy like goats milk cheese and occasional turkey or fish.

It wasn’t that hard because I was at one point a vegetarian for 10+ years.

I had read some bad things about eggs and decided to test it out.

Well, it really depends on what you read, because there is a lot of different information out there. To some eggs are a super food and to others not.

How do I feel?

I don’t really feel any different, not stronger or weaker. I didn’t really gain or lose weight. Instead of eating 4-6 eggs a day and a little bit of cheese I ate more nuts, seeds and carbohydrates from mostly sweet potatoes.

I have tried the ketogenic diet, vegetarian diet, the plant paradox diet, intermittent fasting and now a vegan diet which wasn’t so different from the diet that I was already on.

I’d say my diet is rough combination of all those diets with fasting one day a week and occasional longer bouts.

I have been making these really yummy pancake like thingies with:

  • sweet potatoes
  • nut/seed flours from: almonds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds or chia seeds
  • tapioca flour
  • coconut powder
  • and a little stevia

I used to add eggs to them too, but I found the addition of tapioca flour to work great at holding everything together while giving it a crispy outer and chewy center.

I’d say for the nut flours that almond and pumpkin seed are the best. I bought a coffee grinder to grind all the seeds up which is great for making flour.

You could sprinkle that flour/meal on all kinds of things.

I think grinding them also makes them more digestible, easier on your teeth and according to some grinding may reduce the phytic acid. I also started to soak them too for the same reason.

I am pretty content being a mostly vegetarian. I am not planning on becoming a militant vegan or anything. I just wanted to test it out.

My experience with another 3 day fast

Fasting makes you really appreciate food. I think this was my second or third 3 day fast.

This time I drank ginger and astragalus tea in the morning, water and a little plain mineral water. So for some it’s not that strict of a fast, but it was pretty good for me.

Anyways…

The first day was like normal. I stopped eating at 4:30 on Saturday which is not that unusual. Usually I will stop on Sat. somewhere between 6-8pm and then not eat until 6-7pm on Sunday. But this time I decided I’d go longer.

The first day was a bit harder than the second day. I felt pretty good on the second day. So good that I even went to Jiujitsu and by then I hadn’t eaten anything in like 50 hours.

I kinda wanted to see how I would do. I did surprisingly well. In fact I felt rather euphoric and happy. I had plenty of energy and I didn’t pass out or anything. I might have been slightly weaker, but it wasn’t too noticeable to me.

I even felt great after class. I was wide awake, but.

The problem came when I stayed online writing past 11pm which is like the magic time to get off for me. If I stay on longer than that then it’s pretty likely I am going to mess my sleep up.

I was right.

I hardly slept.

I kept thinking that if I ate something I would fall asleep. I slept like maybe 1-2 hours. So I woke up not feeling so good. I couldn’t sleep so around 4-5am I just got up and started working online.

I took a short nap in the afternoon and just wasn’t feeling so good. It was then when I decided what is the point of all this????

So I ate a little.

I was hoping for 5 days, but…

Fasting is good for autophagy. Something like when your body starts eating itself, but not muscle or anything I think it’s like dead cells.

  • Fasting is supposed to help healing.
  • Fasting for 3-5 days is supposed to stimulate stem cell growth when you start eating again.
  • It’s good for your immune system.
  • Fasting is supposed to help increase growth hormone.

Some people do some intermittent fasting before working out.

Your body can burn fat for energy.

It’s pretty cool. I feel good. Thumbs up for fasting ;-).

I fasted for 2 plus days and this is what happened…

Chinatown’s Grant Ave. Is Going Out Of Business


Things in Chinatown are looking a little grim. A lot of shops on Grant Ave. have closed their doors. In fact a lot of them have had closed doors for quite some time. These are not stores on the side streets of Grant, but stores directly on Grant.

Recently a few stores closed.

918 Grant Ave.

There is a 918A the big one and a little downstairs one 918B. Both have been closed for a while and maybe 918B has been closed for a year or more. Not sure.

900 Grant Ave.

This one just closed in December. I think several stores have been in that one since I have been here. The last one sold like massage chairs.

808 Grant Ave.

This weird pink guy has been hanging around 808 Grant since they closed 6 months or a year or so ago.

801 Grant Ave.

This just closed in December.

730 Grant Ave.

This just closed in December.

729 Grant Ave.

I was surprised to see this one closing. They just closed at the end of December.

716 Grant Ave.

This one closed maybe a month ago or so.

708 Grant Ave.

Kan’s has been closed for a long time like maybe 1-2 years.

700 Grant Ave.

Floating Sushi Boat closed maybe a month or so ago.

615 Grant Ave.

Not sure when this one closed, but it’s been quite a few months.

601 Grant Ave.

This one has been closed for a long time. It used to be Food Court and then that closed and it looks like someone started to move in, but didn’t make it.

528 Grant Ave.

Not sure about this one, but it’s at least been many months.

Why are there so many closed and empty businesses on Grant Avenue?

I don’t know, but I wonder if fewer tourists are going to Chinatown than ever before???

Since I have been here in San Francisco (for 4+ years) I don’t think I have ever seen so many stores closed at once. Aside from summer, the weekends and holidays it’s often dead in Chinatown.

I don’t think it got any busier for me either.

I have seen some other stores around Chinatown with signs saying that they are going to retire or go out of business. Actually I used to think that those signs were just like “sale signs”, but some actually went out of business or closed.