HOW TO STAND OUT IN A CROWDED TEACHING MARKET AND FIND A STEADY STREAM OF STUDENTS
Preface and Introduction 1
A Concept to ‘Think Like A Fish’ 7
The Preferred Student Concept 9
1: HOW TO FIND STUDENTS SUCCESSFULLY 13
Two Important Truths Freelancers Need to Know 15
The Teaching World on the Internet 19
Why Freelancers Don’t Find Students 25
Do potential students know you exist? 25
Why Students Choose by Price or Location 33
The psychology of price 36
Forewarned is forearmed—the WIIFM factor 39
What Do Students Want? 41
How will students know if you don’t tell them? 42
Rewiring a thinking habit to avoid a common advertising mistake 43
2: SIGNPOSTS IN THE INFORMATION SEQUENCE 49
The Information Sequence 51
HOW example: The Hollywood sequence 52
An Inefficient HOW Example 55
The Joshua Bell Concept for Success 59
The parallel between Joshua Bell and freelance teachers 60
Comparison between Joshua Bell and freelance teachers 63
Only certain kinds of information will involve students 65
The Specificity of WHAT (goes in your Teaching Niche) 67
Find out what makes your student tick 67
Is there a logical or scientific formula to define a price? 68
The importance of deriving the perceived worth of a ‘want factor’ 70
The WHAT ‘Want Factor’ 75
How to uncover hidden want factors 76
Freelance Thinking Caps and Magic Pills for Students 79
Why Not Solutions? 81
Why Problems Instead? 81
3: CONCEPT OF A PREFERRED STUDENT PROFILE 89
Freelancers Don’t Need One but Two Student Documents 91
Student Needs Analysis vs Preferred Student Profile Analysis 91
The Purpose of a Preferred Student Profile Document 97
How does your teaching service solve your student’s problems? 99
Three examples of WIIFMs and want factors 101
When a Miss Is As Good As… Having No Students 105
Do you target the right student market? 106
4: THE TEACHING NICHE 113
What Is a Teaching Niche? 115
Will your teaching niche work? 121
When you cannot see your teaching niche for the wood… 123
Does a niche exclude teaching all other areas in a language? 125
The Creditability of a Teaching Niche 129
Can a niche increase your (passive) income? 132
Does a teaching niche work? 134
Does a teaching niche cause freelancers to lose students? 134
SUMMARY: SECTIONS 1 – 4 137
5: THE PREFERRED STUDENT INTERVIEW 141
An Interview Must Be… But What’s Your Aim? 143
What are you trying to reveal from the interview? 143
What else does the interview accomplish for you? 147
Tips for a Preferred Student Profile Interview 149
The Preferred Student Profile Interview: Strategy Checklist 156
Things That Most Assuredly Will Go Awry 158
Finding the Gems in the Recorded Interview 163
The Preferred Student Interview: Feedback List 168
Suggested Interview Questions 171
Adult Students 173
Parents of Schoolchildren and Students 184
Seminars and Workshops 191
Future Teaching Service Improvements and Products 203
6: WRITING UP YOUR TEACHING NICHE TEXT 207
Ensuring the HOW in Writing Your Advertising Text 209
Adding the WHAT in Writing Your Advertising Text 215
The WHAT issues facing freelance teachers 216
What is authentic sounding text? 216
Putting the HOW and WHAT Together 221
Writing up your text and the order of priority 223
Example: The Written Text for English Lessons 232
Getting Feedback from Your Preferred Student 235
Why feedback is critical after the preferred student interview 235
7: FREQUENT QUESTIONS 239
The Impostor Syndrome Problem 239
Do you need a preferred student? 243
How do you decide whom to interview? 245
Can you choose the wrong preferred student? 247
Can you misinterpret the student profile information? 250
Should you send an e-mail with questions first? 252
Do you send the interview questions in advance? 253
How do you tease out a student’s biggest problem? 254
Can you interview anybody? 255
Cold calling problems 257
Competing against other freelance teachers 258
Setting up websites for multiple profiles 259
When there are two different audiences 261
The preferred student profile interview (sequentially) 264
BOOK SUMMARY 267
LAST THOUGHT 271
About the Author 273