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 did you develop in work that you feel strongly about and can speak about to anyone asking?
• What is your hobby interest? Do you have a nerd interest?
• Perhaps you have an appreciation for all things culinary.
• You may have learned a lot about a craft skill during 2020 and 2021.

USE any of these niche interests or specializations to set yourself apart. Offer your language lessons with a focus on this knowledge. You may not have perceived it as knowledge but someone else doesn’t know what you do. Don’t forget that there are potentially 100.000 users on the platform that you are treaching on. That means that there are more students than you have time for. This is also a reminder that the term ‘abundance mindset’ is valuable. Don’t let your self-doubt or ‘finite opportunities mindset’ ruin your financial future.

Now you have your new multi-layered teaching offer.

What you are now able to offer is a multi layer learning experience, one in which your student chooses you based on their interest that overlaps with yours. Your student will benefit from your knowledge as well as your ability to share this with them in the students target language (English in this example, but if you teach any other language then this also applies.).

As for some people’s preconceptions about names and language ability. There isn’t a lot you can do about people’s initial stereotypes. But you can work on offering what nobody else does. Don’t compete on being the same. Compete on being different. Don’t focus on what you can’t change when you have so much ability to control what you can change.

Don’t forget to work on presenting yourself professionally on your social media profiles. Complete your FB about section. Introduce yourself as an “English teacher specializing in … xyz” Include who you teach:

Add “I teach English to women who love food.” or whatever else your specialism will be to your FB and other social media profiles.

Edit your FB location to something that makes sense and looks respectable for a tutor. It’s not cute nor professional to say that you live in your local branch of Burger King. You may be surprised what people think is appropriate as a public profile address. Potential students and people referring you to potential students should feel reassured.

If you don’t show yourself and what you do publicly then you are like an inert steam engine without fuel. Your public persona and easy to see information will help to get this train moving.

• Add your English teaching Bio to your FB about section.
• Create sample videos introducing your lessons and upload them to youtube. They don’t need to be perfect but sit facing your window so that the videos are well lit.
• Place your video recording device on a tripod or stack of books so that there won’t be any camera shake. This is how people can see you speak and get a feeling for your personality and energy.
• Making yourself visible increases trust.

Don’t worry about the people who will judge you for having a lisp (insert any doubt or imperfection that you have). As a Language tutor with a niche your lisp (imperfection) may not be the issue that you feel it is.

Share these videos on YT, FB and any other social media that you want to use for your professional career building.

Your public facebook profile may look nice. But if you want to focus on teaching I recommend that once in a while you share a video introducing a language concept (if you want to teach grammar) or cover vocabulary for your chosen specialism.

You can also consider the following (but don’t let it be an obstacle, this is something that you develop as you go, it doesn’t need to be ready before you begin.): What cooking vocabulary is suitable for A1 and which for A2 & B1 language learners? The cooking theme is what I originally did my first TESOL certificate project on before moving to career development.

Maybe you are a huge gaming nerd, create a list of expressions and terms useful to gamers. Or are you amazing with makeup — then make it English Language lessons for beauty lovers / beauticians / beauty sales personnel.

Also, I should have asked sooner: WHOM would you like to teach? Children or adults? Do you prefer exclusively women as students? Do you want to focus on university students or people in finance?Then make sure you target your key audience. Don’t offer lessons for everyone. It’s exhausting AND doesn’t market well and will affect your income potential, too.

I hope that was useful.

Ignore anyone who type casts you for not being called ‘John or Helen’. Focus on what will make you super unique. In the future (after you get enough reviews and a little experience) you can then set your rates higher than many ‘Johns and Helens’.

If you have any questions please put them into the comments below. If I have anything useful to say I will reply. Also, if you see someone else’s questions let’s be a team: reply to the person seeking help. Here and anywhere. It makes the world a better, kinder, more prosperous place.

Good luck! Let me know if this was useful for you.
Birgit.