There are about a zillion places teaching Chinese here in Shanghai (and similarly in Beijing). Has Skritter considered hiring a sales rep for these cities?

The University I'm attending (East China Normal University) has a big program with lots of students (many coming for a few weeks, others like me staying for a long time). None of the students (pretty much) have heard of the software which is a shame - having a rep. go to the various schools and demo the software could lead to many a subscription and labour over here is pretty cheap.

Relocation companies are another group you might want to focus on. This software is unique and very helpful for learning the language yet the high-priced Chinese tutor my wife's company hired for me (via a relocation firm) had not heard of the software. She took a look and liked it - it also allows me to focus the tutoring time on things other than writing correctly (mechanics - we still do sentence construction, etc.) Getting to my point, these companies would easily pay for the subscription if they thought it would be useful for their relocatees and there are a fair number of people sent to China on assignment and fairly few relocation companies (Prudential/Pricoa is the one my wife's company used). Might be a good avenue to consider.

And I'm sure you guys are already hitting up the university circuit too, I was just about to shoot off an e-mail to my college's Chinese and Japanese professors, they're always on the lookout for new tools for the students.

Hey 2Shanghai, this is actually something we hadn't considered at all, which is great. You're probably right that we could hire somebody to rep us without breaking the bank, and as you say, we have very little name recognition or awareness in China, which isn't good.

I've actually never even heard of relocation companies, I just checked out Pricoa, and it's an entire world I hadn't checked into. Since you seem to know a little more about how they work, do you think calling or emailing would be more effective? And perhaps more importantly, are there specific educational departments inside the larger corporation? Huh, I'll have to do a little more reading about this one!

Regarding the Universities hobofat, we are making our way around the US University and College circuit, however, since we're so new to the space and haven't had time to figure out what conferences are worthwhile, if you or your 老师 have conference suggestions, we'd be very appreciative. Currently we're only settled on attending the ACTFL in November (out in San Diego) and potentially the NAIS conference next spring.

Thanks a lot for the personal recommendation by the way hobofat. We really appreciate both of your help making Skritter more ubiquitous and your suggestions are great. Feel free to keep the suggestions coming!