How to get more English students and raise your rates?
Are you not getting booked enough? Free advice for struggling online teachers of all subjects.
Is this you?: You signed up to an online teaching platform but aren’t getting any students. Now you are trying everything to get bookings but getting nowhere. You are stuck without students.
Here are just some of my thoughts and suggestions:
Online teaching platforms for EFL, teaching English as a foreign language, TEFL (etc) are going to be biased against people with names that don’t sound traditionally English.
You obviously can’t do anything about your name. Although you could consider ‘adopting an English’ name for the purpose of online teaching. A name that satisfies the preconceptions about your abilities as a teacher. John, David, Dianne and Helen spring to mind. Personally I wouldn’t do it. But I am mentioning it to you because there is nothing to stop you from changing your appearance if you think it is holding you back. After all: You need to make a living and you don’t have to allow people’s bias to reduce your livelihood potential
Aside from that, my main suggestion for you is to create a competitive advantage by specializing. How can you do this?
“I am not a specialist in anything.”
Stop right there. Let me ask you: Do you know more about how to write an essay than a 12 year old? Then you teach essay writing practice IN ENGLISH to this 12 year old.” Are you really interested in Victorian TV dramas? Then use them as your hook for your lessons: Structure ALL of your lessons around these TV dramas. Create vocabulary guides and plot summaries relevant to your potential students' age group and/or language level.”
The likelihood is that neither of these two examples fit you. That’s why you now need to ask yourself:
“What did Ido before I started English tutoring?”
You are comparatively knowledgeable in something that someone else would like to be able to converse in English language in.
Make a list of things you have knowledge in:
- What did you study at university?
- What did you do in past jobs? Maybe you have a whole career behind you.
- What soft skills…
