How To Successfully Start An Online English Teaching Business?
When you become your own boss as a freelance online English teacher, you can set up your own online teaching English service successfully. Needless to say, how COVID-19 has forced people to look at how they can take their teaching skills online. Thus, if you decided to take the path of running your own teaching business, then here is a list to build a fruitful online English teaching business online.
Before sharing the details, first, you have to understand your teaching style. What is your teaching expertise and how can you use that? How can you use that to attract potential ESL learners? What type of students do you want to attract? These aspects are really important to start your enterprise.
Starting An Online English Teaching Business
Start thinking and identifying these 10 following vital areas -
- Identify your audience
- Pick your keystone content
- Plan your ESL lessons
- Class Scheduling
- Ways to communicate with students
- Online teaching equipment
- Payment procedure
- Terms And Contracts
- Cancellation Policy
- Website creation
First thing first, distinguish your target learners to distribute an excellent English language learning experience. Recognize what kind of English curriculum is crucial by defining what type of student group you will be concentrating and specialized with. Determine are you going to deal with the Adult and Business professional or College entrance exam preparation services or you want to teach kids. Also, you need to get an English teaching certificate like TEFL or TESOL to teach learners English as their foreign language.
The popular 3 profitable business models to create your online English school are –
- The “night school” model where learners pay a one-time fee to access a precise course
- The “academy” model where students pay a recurring fee for access to a wide range of courses
- The “combined” model in which learners pay a recurring fee for access to your online institute and have the option to pay for supplementary courses on top
Ways To Create Online ESL Lessons
There are ‘n’ number of ESL resources that help teachers like you to make your lesson plans, curriculum, and strategies for their apprentices. Various sites like - Best Teacher, ESL Gold, SpeechPeek, Prezi, WizIQ, etc. are helpful in this matter. Also, nowadays, there are ample social media groups that are extremely resourceful.
Next, you need to use a specific calendar to plan your lessons professionally. You may use Google Calendar or iCal. Moreover, if you want, you may check Appointy, SimplyBook.me, Acuity Scheduling, Calendly, and so on.
Communicating with Students
The fact is, nowadays there are several tools which you can easily use to communicate with learners. Numerous schools and institutes also have their own exclusive communication platforms. Some of the topmost video and audio conference tools are – Zoom, Skype, Appear.in, Google classroom, and so on.
Along with this, it is also necessary to understand the perfect Internet speed for video calling or screen sharing which is 10+ MB/s to upload and download from a dependable source. For any reason, if that cannot be done then a minimal 5 MB/s is a must.
When we talk about internet speed, online teaching equipment also comes automatically in our mind, isn’t it? So, here’s a checklist of kinds of equipment that you will need to start teaching online:
- Computer/Laptop
- Webcam
- Microphone
- Good lighting
- Distraction-free environment
- Headset
- Good Internet speed
Props are also super important as a freelance English teacher, particularly if your niche market is teaching children. Picking up the right online teaching equipment is very much essential for your business. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet are the most popular teaching apps of high-quality of most online English educators.
Assess Your Learners
To demonstrate your students’ progress, assess them. Create assessments that measure how much they have learned at any specific point. When you deliver your learners the amusing and involving experience of education, they will share the positive experience they had gained from you. Ultimately, this leads to more business for you down the road through word-of-mouth recommendations.
Advertising and Expanding
Now as you have noted all the initial requirements, you will need to find out the various and effective ways to market your enterprise. Advertise your business in applicable places so that the number of learners you have cultivates. Also, be sure to point out to them that you use the up-to-date online learning approaches to make their experience engaging. Tell them that they’ll be able to share their screen with you and also you with them. Moreover, you can watch videos together on the platform to further add dimension and enlightenment to lessons.
Make sure you have written your bio well and post things on relevant things a social media page to attract students to book your classes. Try to make your ESL classes perceived and heard to find more apprentices! You can do it by joining several online groups as well. Take to social media, YouTube, or your mailing list and spread the word! You may also use advanced features such as discount coupons for promotions and make one-time or recurring subscriptions with time limitations to upsurge your sales.
Don’t forget to set an hourly rate for your online ESL classes. If you’re teaching general English classes but also doing specialized classes within a particular forte, you can fix a separate or maybe a higher rate for your classes. You can also offer special class packages or promotions, which always attracts more learners.
Next, you need to choose a payment platform like PayPal, TransferWise, Gumroad, SamCartor Payoneer, etc.
Creating Terms And Contracts
It is important to have a contract that your learners are aware of. At the very minimum, it is suggested to take the time to create an FAQ-style document to send to new apprentices. Sending your students, a prewritten copy to ease their concerns is a good idea because they will have a lot of questions when they sign up for your course. You need to cover areas like Pricing and Payment Terms and the Cancellation Policy.
Well, if you want to create your own website then you have to become tech-savvy while building a site. This whole process will include creating a sales funnel, setting up e-commerce as well as other functions. However, you may also hire someone to do these things for you.
Needless to say, launching an online English teaching business is categorically doable, especially because it doesn’t have to require abrupt startup costs. Also, there has never been an improved time to start an online English teaching school with professional online teaching courses certifications. The blend of COVID-19 and the constant growth of self-paced online education has formed the perfect break.
