For Asia — May 2026

A matura prep course for 12th grade. Your niche, your moment.

This document explains what we're planning to build, how it works in practice, what it costs, and what the realistic numbers look like. Not a pitch — just a plan.

The idea in one paragraph

You record video lessons preparing 12th grade students for the bilingual English matura. Students buy access once — for the whole school year — on your own website. No subscriptions, no auto-renewals: one payment, access until 31 May. No publisher, no intermediary, no algorithm dependency. You own the audience.

Around 6,000 students sit this exam every year — and they only need preparation in 12th grade. Zero dedicated courses led by a CKE examiner exist for this niche. You are the only person in Poland who is simultaneously a CKE examiner, a Macmillan author, and an IB teacher. That combination is not replicable. The content you record this year sells to next year's cohort, and the one after that.

Curriculum: September to May

A structured 8-month programme following the 12th grade school calendar. Students see exactly what they'll cover before the exam.

Block 1–2 · Sept–Nov

Argumentative essay + oral presentation. Model answers with examiner commentary, common mistakes, scoring breakdown.

Block 3–4 · Dec–Jan

Reading comprehension + listening. CKE task types, reading strategies, exam traps.

Block 5 · Feb–Mar

Past CKE papers — analysis. Past exam walkthroughs, most common errors, how points are actually awarded.

Block 6 · Apr–May

Final revision. Intensive practice, live Q&A sessions before the exam, exam-day strategies.

Each episode: 15–25 min video + PDF exercises. Students who join in January get the full September–December archive immediately.

What your week looks like

Once set up, your recurring workload per episode:

Record in Descript — screen + mic, or face + mic. ~30–45 min.
Edit by deleting words in the transcript, not on a timeline. No video editing skills needed.
Export MP4 + MP3 in one click.
Upload video to Bunny.net (drag & drop in the browser).
Create a post on your Ghost site: title, short description, embed the video, attach the MP3.
Set access level: public (free) or members-only (premium). Hit publish.
Ghost automatically sends the newsletter and updates your podcast RSS feed for Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Realistic time per episode: Option A — 2–4 hours (30–45 min episode, mostly recording and light editing, publishing under 10 min). Option B — 1–2 hours per episode (15–20 min episode, faster to record and edit) plus ~30–60 min to prepare the PDF supplement. More episodes per week, but each one is a smaller lift.

Platform — what it is and what it costs

Four tools, total cost around 75–90 PLN/month:

Tool	What it does	Cost
Ghost (self-hosted)	Your website, subscriptions, newsletter, podcast RSS	free
Oracle Cloud	Server hosting Ghost — Always Free tier, no time limit	free
Descript	Recording and editing tool	~50 PLN/mo.
Bunny.net	Video CDN (streams your MP4s fast)	~25–40 PLN/mo.
Stripe	Handles payments and subscriptions	~1.4% + 0.25 PLN / transaction

Stripe is registered on Maciej's JDG — you don't need your own business entity to start. We can revisit this structure once the income is significant enough to justify it.

Pricing and access model

Free preview

2–3 episodes publicly available. Available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Short clips on Instagram / TikTok.

Purpose: building trust before the September launch.

Matura access

All video lessons, PDFs, monthly live Q&A webinar, full archive. Access expires 31 May — no auto-renewal.

399 PLN one-time · or 59 PLN/month (max 8 months)

Cohort 1 early price: first 50 students pay 349 PLN.

Two sales windows per year: September (main launch, ~80% of revenue) and January (last call, ~20%). Revenue is not a steady monthly stream — it arrives in two annual spikes.

Realistic projections

Market: ~6,000 12th grade students per year. The content you record in year 1 sells again in year 2 and 3 without re-recording — margin grows each cohort. Numbers below assume ~70% one-time (399 PLN) / 30% monthly (59 PLN/month), after platform costs (~90 PLN/month) and Stripe fees (~1.4%).

Milestone	Students / year	Annual revenue	Monthly avg.	When
Validation	30–50	~10,500–18,000 PLN	~900–1,500 PLN	Cohort 1 (Sept 2026)
Side income	~270	~108,000 PLN	~8,900 PLN	Cohort 2–3
Replace salary	~380	~152,000 PLN	~12,700 PLN	Cohort 3–4
Ceiling (5% of 12th grade)	~300+	~120,000+ PLN	~10,000+ PLN	Year 3+

    The decision point for leaving your job is around cohort 3 (~270 students, ~108,000 PLN/year). That's roughly 8,900 PLN/month on average — comparable to a teacher's salary, with full schedule flexibility. In practice most of that arrives in September and January, so plan cash flow accordingly.
  

How you don't start from zero every September

The cohort model has one structural risk: every year you need to re-acquire students. Two mechanisms prevent this from being a problem:

Teacher network

You already know teachers from other bilingual schools through CKE and Macmillan. Each teacher who recommends the course to their senior class does it again the next year — without reminding. Target: 20 active ambassador teachers by cohort 2.

One relationship → multiple years of referrals. Cost: one free course access per teacher.

11th-grade waitlist

11th-grade students sign up to hear about next year's course. Asia ends May with a warm list instead of starting August from zero. Early-bird email in August converts at ~30–40%.

→ Waitlist sign-up page

    Revised decision point for leaving teaching: not "200 students" (subscription logic) but three pillars simultaneously: (1) 3 consecutive cohorts ≥ previous year, (2) ≥ 20 active teacher ambassadors, (3) ≥ 200 waitlist sign-ups by 1 August. All three = foundation, not hope.
  

Content protection

Two layers are built into the platform:

Bunny.net Token Authentication — video and audio URLs expire and are tied to the viewer's session. A copied link doesn't work for anyone else.
Audio watermarking — an inaudible identifier is embedded in every MP3 file. If a subscriber shares a file publicly, we can identify exactly who leaked it.

What Maciej handles (technical setup)

You shouldn't need to think about any of this. The one-time setup:

Server provisioning on Oracle Cloud
Ghost installation, domain sobierska.paczesny.pl, SSL certificate
Stripe integration with Ghost subscriptions
Bunny.net video library and embed setup
Podcast RSS registration on Spotify and Apple Podcasts
Automated daily backups

Ongoing maintenance: software updates a few times a year, maybe 30 minutes each. That's it.

What needs to happen before launch

You record 2–3 free preview episodes — live before September so visitors can evaluate your style.
Maciej sets up the technical side (platform, payments, access expiry on 31 May).
We go through the site together — you adjust wording, add your photo and bio, confirm the curriculum structure.
You tell colleagues from other bilingual schools. That's the first audience.
September: main launch. January: last-call window for late starters.

Open questions

Domain: Using sobierska.paczesny.pl as a subdomain for now. Easy to move to a standalone domain later.
Monthly webinar: Not for month one. Add it once you have a cohort that makes it worthwhile.
Company structure: Stripe on Maciej's JDG for now. When cohort 3 is visible on the horizon (~200 students), talk to an accountant about setting up a proper LLC.
Content reuse: Year 2 you re-sell the same recordings to a new 12th grade cohort. Add only fresh CKE papers and update anything that changed. Marginal effort, full revenue.