Job Discussion Forums

[John Hall]

For those of you who teach just a few or even a lot of private classes, how do you promote yourself? How do you get the word out that you are available to teach English classes?

In a country where you do not know many of the local people and you do not speak the local language well, word-of-mouth advertising is not going to work well. Over the years, I have seen a lot of telephone poles plastered with announcements for classes from native speakers of English. Classified Ads in local English-language newspapers or magazines may work. What has worked for you?

I am presently trying a very novel approach to getting privates: I appear once or twice a week on a local UHF-TV program that teaches English. I am not paid to appear on the show, but I am starting to get people coming up to me and saying that they saw me on TV... So I am getting the word out that I teach English, and I will be trying soon to get some of the viewers of the show to take lessons from me. We'll see how it goes!

[MO39]

Here in Mexico City, I've had some success through putting ads on-line at a number of free websites, in particular, segundamano.com. Don't know if it's available where you are. I've found that after a while your best source of new students come from referrals and recommendations from present and past students.

[Mike_2007]

It's mostly word-of-mouth here in Romania too. I've got about 30 students per week and as native speakers are still relatively rare here I get a lot of recommendations. I haven't advertised for several years as a result.

In Turkey I used the internet. The trick is to put yourself in the place of a local and try to thing what he/she would type into a search engine to find a private teacher (in the local language). Google a few options and make a list of the top results for the free yellow pages type sites on the net. Put them in your favourites, sign up to them, add your adverts and make sure you return once a month or so to renew it and put it back up near the top of the listings. In a few months you should have a pretty full schedule.

Mike

[Kootvela]

In Lithuania I 'spam' all Internet advertising boards I can find. That helps to google my adds up when somebody is searching for private tutors. I also have a website for my services.

[John Hall]