Job Discussion Forums

[El Gallo]

MELEE, thanks for your reply. Both brothers are about 11 and they are in basic. The mother is taking class with them but she seems to ignore his hyperactivity.

[Aabra]

Couple suggestions:

#1 Get a *nice* apartment in a central location. Not 10 floors up anywhere either.... it needs to be nice for suggestion #2.

#2 Teach at home. This will make your life so much nicer. Spending hours on buses going all over the city every day is miserable. If you live in a nice apartment in a central location the students won't mind it. You'll make more money and be more flexible. Plus when students cancel at the last minute (and they will) it won't be a big deal as you'll be at home.

#3 Get the money in advance. I can't stress this enough. Make all your students pay for 1 month's worth of classes in advance. If they've already paid for the classes then they will cancel less. It's very easy to skip a class that you don't have to pay for.

[MELEE]

[geaaronson]

I had a similar situation with a class in which the husband was highly English conversant whereas the wife had above average language skills. The wife was an a secondaria English teacher, the husband an electronics repairman. The husband overshadowed the wife and I tried everything I could to bolster her self confidence,short of taking the husband aside and telling him to be quiet.

There were times when the husband could not make it to class as he would be out of town on business, and I pled with the wife for her to come to class alone, to no avail.

[MO39]

After having just turned down a second business class given at the ungodly hour of 7 a.m., I've decided to put all my efforts into looking for serious private students. The suggestions I've just reread in this thread have been very helpful. I'm lucky to have a nice (if small) apartment in Mexico City in a central location and have decided to only accept students who are willing and able to pre-pay each month's classes. Now I have to start my advertising campaign! If anyone's successfully done this in Mexico City, I'd really appreciate hearing from you!

[geaaronson]

I did it in Merida, Yucatan. I put two sets of ads in the better daily paper there, the first was for 4 days, the second for three days. I lined up 3 students for the first ad. One student stayed with me for 3 months, the other two for only a single month. The second ad gained me one student for 7 months. They all paid me 100 pesos per hour and it was mostly conversational English with lists from Dave`s phrasal verbs thrown in.
Classes were once a week. As they were all professionals working busy lives, they had an abstention rate of about 20%.
I would suggest getting one months pay upfront, no cancellations allowed even if you have to underprice. That gives them more incentive not to cancel. I wish I had done that and will initiate that change in policy for the future.

[Phil_K]

My situation is different, as I'm looking for whole companies, not individuals, but my method also generates a lot of enquiries from individuals too, as I'm not targeting the right person. What I do is:

I buy Sunday's "El Universal", which has tons of job ads. Then I laboriously write all the email addresses into an Excel sheet. (Useful for second campaigns). I write a standard email in Outlook Express and save it. All I have to do later is open the mailing list and email and paste (30 at a time works best) the adresses into the BCC field (so no one knows it is bulk mail) and send. This doesn't work well with free webmail, as it tends to go to the spam folder.

...and if you get enquiries from companies wanting classes for 20+ students, well, you know where you can send them!

[Guy Courchesne]

[Gary Denness]

Just my own view on this -

I wouldn't turn down business classes, even at 7am. I do prefer evening classes, but I have to earn a living to.

I have picked up most of my classes from word of mouth, and although I have a couple of classes at $180p/h (I've been teaching them for a long time and it seems harsh to raise prices too dramatically!) I charge $250p/h minimum. $300 if the company is paying. I can't see a reason for charging less than $200p/h unless you really need the work.

Students have to pay me fortnightly, after having the lessons - not only does it introduce a new word to their vocab, but it helps me keep track. One week everyone pays me, the next week no one pays me. No confusion that way. I allow 2 cancellations per calendar month, which is pretty standard - they have to pay for any other cancellations beyond that.

I've don't really have any problems. Sometimes they pay a lesson late, but not often enough to be a problem. I won't work for a school, sending me out on business classes, again though. Last one took several months to pay, and by the time I gave up chasing them they still owed me $1,500. Such is life.

I use the Inside Out books where I can too - very good. If only I could get hold of the damn cassettes or CD's! Why do so many book shops not have them in stock?!

[Phil_K]

[Guy Courchesne]

I had some luck with it years ago...just takes one and then word of mouth kicks in. Take that HSBC tower near the Angel for example...get one student there and you're planted, ready to pick up dozens more. Torre Mayor is good too, as well as La Bolsa Mexicana.

Nice thing with flyers - and it is a lot of work - is that you get immediate face time with people.

[Phil_K]

[Gary Denness]

[MELEE]

[Guy Courchesne]