Your privates

At some point in time, every English teacher will need to consider getting private students. These are students you have found yourself and teach without the taxmans knowledge ;)

Most privates will be found through word of mouth and so I can't stress strongly enough the importance of having professional business cards on you at all time, it helps get the most from 'oh my friend/brother/child/dog wants English lessons' scenarios. The next way to get yourself some privates is internet advertising on relevant local websites and leaflets stuck up around town.


So what do you need to take into consideration?

The effort- From my experience I estimate 1999 people ignore my adverts online or around town for every 1 person who takes interest and calls me up. Laws of probability say you need to have lots of adverts both around town and online. Libraries are a good place to put up an advert and so are community notice boards. Beware though, because the adverts you have placed in high footfall areas will need to be checked upon every 48 hours in case of vandalism or just being covered up by another ad. It requires constant effort to maintain your presence both locally and online.

The money- It costs a lot to produce decent adverts, on funny coloured paper. but you'll need to do this if you want to stand out from the torrents of others advertising various services and wares. But as they say, you need to spend money to make money.

Where will you teach them? Your grotty little flat? you may have to as people can be weary of bringing strangers into their home. So this mens keeping up with household chores, making sure you have good workspace (A desk, proper chairs, lighting!) is essential. All this takes more time and commitment.

No show rate- 20% of people that say they will turn up to lessons don't. Perhaps they are spending money on something more interesting. 5% of your students every month will disappear off the face of the earth. Seriously! this means even when you have enough private students you need to continue the effort to maintain your presence

Your charge rate – Will you undercut or overcut the market average? Well it's up to you but I would suggest finding out what the market average is first! If you have good facilities, central location and show up to lessons sober, as a native speaker I would charge 5% over the rate of the local teachers.

If you get good at finding privates you may even decide to go it alone, leave your language school and work as a free agent.... but thats the content of a future post...

Care to share your experiences on freelancing work of anykind?