Teaching a language is a noble cause and at the same time, it can be profitable. If you’re proficient in a language and want to earn a decent income by sharing your knowledge with students, read on.
In this post, we’ll give you several handy tips to help you start your very own language teaching business.
1. Identify your target audience
The most important thing to do before actually getting your language teaching business off the ground is to research your target audience. This will help you in multiple ways – from developing and designing your course to marketing it and beyond. For instance, if you want to teach children, you’ll have to keep things simple.
You could also choose to teach working professionals, but for teaching them, your courses need to be streamlined so they can extract as much value as possible within a short time span.
2. Research your competition
After you’ve identified your target audience, the next step is to research your competitors, i.e. the businesses already offering courses in the language you plan to teach. This can be a time-consuming task, but it’s well worth it, as this research will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the competition.
Additionally, it will help you identify opportunities, i.e. types of courses that your competitors aren’t offering. The trick is to learn from their strengths, avoid their weaknesses, and find a way to offer something unique.
3. Invest in an abundance of teaching supplies
If you’re planning on teaching students in a real-world location, you need to have an ample supply of teaching aids. Some of the teaching aids you should invest in include textbooks, markers, whiteboards, and projectors. The quantities, of course, depend on how many students you start your business off with.
If the number of students initially is low, you don’t need to make a major investment in supplies. However, if it’s high, you need to have sufficient quantities on hand. The last thing you’d want is to run out of supplies in the middle of a lesson.
4. Find a suitable location for your business
Another important aspect of setting up a language teaching business is to decide on a location. You can go about choosing a location in one of two ways. You could either opt for an area where your competitors are located or you could choose a place with a dearth of language teaching businesses.
There are pros and cons to both options. If you go for a place that’s already congested with many language teaching businesses, you’ll have to compete fiercely. However, such a location will allow your business to be seen by numerous students. On the other hand, a low-competition area will be harder to attract students to, but you’ll have to shell out less money to rent a place.
5. Take to social media to market your business
Once your location is ready and you’ve stocked up on all necessary teaching supplies, it’s time to promote your business. The most cost-effective way of doing this is to make the most of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Of course, you can go for paid advertising if your budget is on the higher side. However, if you want to promote your business without spending money, you can easily do it by designing digital posters and branding elements and then marketing them.
6. Consider offering digital lessons
If you want, you can skip the real-world physical location altogether and go digital. These days, more and more students are opting for digital courses that they can consume from the comfort of their homes. If your target audience is somewhat similar, there’s no reason why a digital-only language teaching business can’t be successful.
However, if you do consider offering digital lessons and courses, you’ll have to invest further money. You’ll need a high-quality webcam for starters and if you want high-quality audio as well, you’ll also need an audio interface and a microphone. A good noise-canceling pair of headphones is recommended too, as that will help you to listen clearly to your students.
So, these were the 6 tips to get your language teaching business going. To conclude this post, we’d like to wish you all the best in your teaching endeavors.
