The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Niches: Step-by-Step Practical Advice for Freelance Teachers; How to Stand Out in a Crowded Teaching Market and Find A Steady Stream of Students

By Janine Bray-Mueller

Freelance pedagogical businesses face these challenges daily:


* How can I gain visibility on the global teaching market to attract a steady stream of new students?


* How do I secure an adequate income from my work as a freelance teacher?


* How do I avoid capitulating to the three-year death cycle and lose my freelance teaching career?


What you don't need are theoretical discussions about niches and specialising. These require you to locate your 'ideal client profile' or requires you to find 'the sweet spot' between what you love (your passion) and the price people are prepared to pay. These approaches are too vague for busy freelancers.


What you need instead, is a practical hands-on system that works. The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Niches lays out a precise system showing what all freelance teachers, trainers, and coaches need to do to define a teaching niche that helps them to confidently stand out in a crowded teaching marketplace.


* It clarifies what information is essential, how it attracts new students, and how it enables freelancers to monetise their teaching experience.


* It provides you with the skill to write up the text for your teaching niche that will catch the interest of new students searching for private instructors.



All lists, tables and questions are available in both Adobe PDF and MS Word formats. Contact links to Janine are in the back of the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Aug 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9783752847895

Janine Bray-Mueller

Janine Bray-Mueller, a freelance teacher with 30 years of teaching and marketing experience, has served on committees such as a two-term voluntary member of IATEFL's Marketing Committee, Editor of HELTA (Hamburg) and an Editor of ETM (English Teaching Magazine), which was popular in Germany for many years. In addition, she has given presentations at the TESOL France annual colloquiums and has also been published in several language teaching magazines. Meanwhile, Janine has decided to share her marketing knowledge by writing a series of books giving practical advice to teaching freelancers. These books help colleagues in their teaching careers find students and earn enough to live from their work.

Book preview

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY AND/OR LEGAL NOTICES:

The information presented in this book represents the view of the author alone as of the date of publication and should not be taken as expert instruction or commands. It is strictly for informational and educational purposes. Because of the rate with which information changes, the author reserves the right to alter and update her opinion based on new data. This guide does not give any promises about getting results or earning any money with my ideas stated in this publication.

While the author has made her best effort to verify the information provided in this publication, the author accepts no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, or omissions. This publication is for informational purposes only, and she makes no representations or warranties concerning the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this document. Any slights of people, institutions, or organisations are unintentional. When advice concerning legal or related matters is required, the service of a fully qualified professional should be sought. You should be aware of any laws that govern business transactions or other business practices in your country. Any financial numbers or statistics referred to here or on any of my websites are estimates or projections, and should not be considered exact, actual, or a promise of potential earnings. All numbers are illustrative only. The author expressly disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, promoters, or written sales materials. The author shall not be made responsible for or liable for any loss of monies or any damages including commercial profits but not limited to personal or other incidental or consequential damages.

Because of the rate at which information changes on the Internet, individual links and website information contained in this publication may have changed. The author makes no representations about the accuracy of the web information shared.

Parts of this book have already been published on the www.ft-training.com website, in the digital EFL magazine, or in the EFTT newsletter.

THANK YOU

Writing this book has been an incredible journey—but it could never have happened without the moral support of my family:

This book is dedicated to my Hubby.

My hero and partner for life.

And to my four wonderful children.

How can I thank you all?

Richard, my IT knight on a white steed, who never failed to help when the computer tried to get the better of me (which it did often enough).

Elyssa with her sunny disposition, always cheerful, always ready to lend a helping hand.

Herbert with his unshakeable sense of justice and his moral support on nights I couldn’t sleep.

Jessica with her unwavering support, her caring, and her strong sense of family and family moral commitment.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Cara Leopold of www.leo-listening.com, teacher colleague in France for beta reading and test driving this publication.

My thanks to Sean D’Souza of Psychotactics.com. His marketing insights and the many lively discussions in his membership site—the CAVE—triggered my enthusiasm to write this book for freelance teachers.

Latin: nanos gigantum humeris insidentes…

‘Discovering truth by building on previous discoveries’

This concept has been traced back to the 12th century and is attributed to Bernard of Chartres.

Contents

Preface and Introduction

A Concept to ‘Think Like A Fish’

The Preferred Student Concept

1: HOW TO FIND STUDENTS SUCCESSFULLY

Two Important Truths Freelancers Need to Know

The Teaching World on the Internet

Why Freelancers Don’t Find Students

Do potential students know you exist?

Why Students Choose by Price or Location

The psychology of price

Forewarned is forearmed—the WIIFM factor

What Do Students Want?

How will students know if you don’t tell them?

Rewiring a thinking habit to avoid a common advertising mistake

2: SIGNPOSTS IN THE INFORMATION SEQUENCE

The Information Sequence

HOW example: The Hollywood sequence

An Inefficient HOW Example

The Joshua Bell Concept for Success

The parallel between Joshua Bell and freelance teachers

Comparison between Joshua Bell and freelance teachers

Only certain kinds of information will involve students

The Specificity of WHAT (goes in your Teaching Niche)

Find out what makes your student tick

Is there a logical or scientific formula to define a price?

The importance of deriving the perceived worth of a ‘want factor’

The WHAT ‘Want Factor’

How to uncover hidden want factors

Freelance Thinking Caps and Magic Pills for Students

Why Not Solutions?

Why Problems Instead?

3: CONCEPT OF A PREFERRED STUDENT PROFILE

Freelancers Don’t Need One but Two Student Documents

Student Needs Analysis vs Preferred Student Profile Analysis

The Purpose of a Preferred Student Profile Document

How does your teaching service solve your student’s problems?

Three examples of WIIFMs and want factors

When a Miss Is As Good As… Having No Students

Do you target the right student market?

4: THE TEACHING NICHE

What Is a Teaching Niche?

Will your teaching niche work?

When you cannot see your teaching niche for the wood…

Does a niche exclude teaching all other areas in a language?

The Creditability of a Teaching Niche

Can a niche increase your (passive) income?

Does a teaching niche work?

Does a teaching niche cause freelancers to lose students?

SUMMARY: SECTIONS 1 – 4

5: THE PREFERRED STUDENT INTERVIEW

An Interview Must Be… But What’s Your Aim?

What are you trying to reveal from the interview?

What else does the interview accomplish for you?

Tips for a Preferred Student Profile Interview

The Preferred Student Profile Interview: Strategy Checklist

Things That Most Assuredly Will Go Awry

Finding the Gems in the Recorded Interview

The Preferred Student Interview: Feedback List

Suggested Interview Questions

Adult Students

Parents of Schoolchildren and Students

Seminars and Workshops

Future Teaching Service Improvements and Products

6: WRITING UP YOUR TEACHING NICHE TEXT

Ensuring the HOW in Writing Your Advertising Text

Adding the WHAT in Writing Your Advertising Text

The WHAT issues facing freelance teachers

What is authentic sounding text?

Putting the HOW and WHAT Together

Writing up your text and the order of priority

Example: The Written Text for English Lessons

Getting Feedback from Your Preferred Student

Why feedback is critical after the preferred student interview

7: FREQUENT QUESTIONS

The Impostor Syndrome Problem

Do you need a preferred student?

How do you decide whom to interview?

Can you choose the wrong preferred student?

Can you misinterpret the student profile information?

Should you send an e-mail with questions first?

Do you send the interview questions in advance?

How do you tease out a student’s biggest problem?

Can you interview anybody?

Cold calling problems

Competing against other freelance teachers

Setting up websites for multiple profiles

When there are two different audiences

The preferred student profile interview (sequentially)

BOOK SUMMARY

LAST THOUGHT

About the Author

The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Niches

HOW TO STAND OUT IN A CROWDED TEACHING MARKET AND FIND A STEADY STREAM OF STUDENTS

Step-by-Step Practical Advice for Freelance Teachers

Janine Bray-Mueller

NOTES BEFORE YOU READ

To avoid the ‘he or she’ issue, the plural is used wherever possible.

To avoid long, drawn-out explanative descriptions, the word student is used to encompass a student, a company, a customer, a school, or any educational institutions, who are taught or have received courses given by the freelance teacher.

Customer will be used in general situations and implies a student, or company, or school, not yet enrolled as students of the freelance teacher.

A course encompasses all forms of tuition, classes, lessons, workshops, seminars, etc.

The word problem is used to cover all types of student learning issues and learning aims.

Preface

and Introduction

You cannot induce a career revolution if you don’t know why a revolution in your career is necessary;

If you don’t know why a revolution is necessary in your career, why should you change?

Let me tell you about a Nobel Prize Award, Eric Kandel, and a sea slug.

The 2000 Nobel Award in Physiology or Medicine was granted to Eric Kandel for his research on changes in neurons associated with memory storage when he produced visual proof (with the California sea slug; Aplysia californica) of how people were able to learn. The sea slug is the largest single-cell creature living in the world, and although its simple nervous system doesn’t allow complex social behaviour, it is still capable of a variety of associative and non-associative learning tasks. This capability gave the first breakthrough to identifying how memory worked and led to the first step to understanding the cause of Alzheimer’s disease.

However, it nearly didn’t happen. The laboratory assistant was on the verge of abandoning the task. In fact, he had already decided to give up after ‘just one more experiment’ because he’d lost hope.

The laboratory assistant remained focused on completing his task and that last experiment became the long-looked-for breakthrough in the pharmaceutical industry for Alzheimer treatment. His ability to focus on the task—and not give up—had paid out.

A sea slug analogy for freelance teaching revolutions

As freelance teachers, we are involved in how our students learn. We give them tips on how to remember and use their new learning. Now the time has come to practise our own knowledge in learning to help ourselves succeed in developing our own freelancing careers into a viable teaching service business.

Like the laboratory assistant, freelancers need patience and the ability to keep going even when the future looks grim. Perseverance starts by focusing on one small step at a time. You won’t win a Nobel Award for a lifetime effort similar to Eric Kandel, who in his early career was not even interested in science, but you can start your freelancing journey by imitating the simple nervous system of a sea slug and take one small, simple step at a time. Who knows? You may even discover that you enjoy watching how your teaching business develops—like Eric Kandel when he began neuroscience research instead of becoming a historian.

The Nobel Prize and Eric Kandel

It’s understandable to want to know what the future brings, but the enormity of giving our careers and our teaching business a direction can be overwhelming. Focusing on completing one task after another will eliminate this frightening distraction.

As teachers, we know our trade but to succeed in our freelancing business, we have to take each step one at a time and direct our teaching skills on:

Learning what we need for our teaching business to attain a successful, a fulfilling, but also a sustainable teaching service business

Understanding the necessity of acquiring new skills to achieve this aim for our own freelancing business

Having the stamina to avoid all kinds of distraction destined to corrupt our efforts to be successful (e.g., procrastination, fear of failure, confronting naysayers)

Panic attacks and the worries about survival is because the fear of the unknown lies in not being able to envisage the big picture—our own financial future and our teaching careers. Take heart, because successful freelancers rarely manage to see the overall picture. However, they do know where they want to go and what they want to achieve. To understand what I mean, think of yourself driving a car. You know two certainties about your trip: (1) your starting point and (2) your destination. What happens in between is no more than a list of possibilities that will influence how your journey proceeds or deteriorates. The bit ‘in between’ is what causes teachers to feel panic as they go about establishing their freelancing careers. In his book titled, The Book of Survival, Anthony Greenback writes:

To live through an impossible situation, you don’t need to have the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, the mind of an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do.

‘You simply need to know what to do’

This book is about motivating your confidence to create your teaching niche and give you the skill to write the text describing your teaching service, quickly, simply, and without fluff. The whole centres around one student, which I call the preferred student. As you read the book, it’s natural to question whether you’re going to make the right choices. For example, you might wonder whether your first idea for a teaching niche is right. Here is my answer: Don’t worry. A teaching niche is not carved in stone. Why not consider the first niche as a stepping stone—a tool to get you started?

Indeed, discussions with other freelance teachers have shown that when they dive into a freelance business without deliberately choosing a teaching niche, they get frustrated and begin to wonder whether all their hard work is worthwhile. This is when I hear the quiet click of the three-year death cycle of a teaching career closing yet another freelancer’s door. Teachers give up instead of enjoying the satisfaction of knowing they were responsible for their students’ successes.

The ideas and lists presented in this book are designed to be uncomplicated and easily repeated. Should you decide the first teaching niche doesn’t suit, choose the next issue from your preferred student’s list of problems and carry on. You will find the bulk of your work will have already been done. Remind yourself of what would not have happened if Eric Kandel’s laboratory assistant had given up one experiment earlier.

The truth is that freelancers will never get to see all the little events, all the small parts happening along the way. We cannot expect to see what

Reviews for The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Niches

[andrejkrivec · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is splendid. It's exactly what I need for targetting my teaching niche. Clearly guided and thoroughly prepared it gives one a remarkable edge. For anyone who is into teaching niche this book is a must.