Language Teachers, finding private work

You are a language teacher, perhaps working for a state school, perhaps working for a private language school, or perhaps just not working at all. If you work for a school, your income is often not directly related to the quantity or quality of your work. If you work for a language school you’re being paid only a small percentage of what the student was willing to pay for their lessons.

How can you start to earn more money and gain more independence? As a teacher, what is your answer to that question?

Many people answer by saying they rely on word of mouth, and it’s true that referrals often generate the best quality leads. However, very few people are fortunate enough to be able to rely solely on word of mouth. For this, you need to be an established teacher who already has a lot of students.

Free adverts on bulletin boards and classified advertising sites is quite a popular option, but here you are competing with thousands of other people, most of whom resort to “selling” themselves by offering the lowest possible price. It isn’t a form of advertising that enhances your professional image.

Get a website, or a blog

This is perhaps the most effective solution. It adds strength to word of mouth referrals, allowing potential students to see what their friends are recommending before they speak to you, and provides you with a permanent advertising platform.

But do you need a blog or a website?

Very few newcomers to the internet ask the right questions before they take the plunge. The questions you need to ask are “What do I want to achieve?”, “What do I want my site to do?” and “How much time can I dedicate to my site each day/week?”.

‘Brochure Websites’

Traditional websites, whether you call them ‘html websites’, ‘brochure websites’ or ‘static websites’ are perhaps easily compared with advertising brochures, sales brochures. They are intended to transmit a message, an image. They require almost no maintenance, are very rarely targetted by hackers, are exceptionally stable and aren’t particularly expensive. In standard form, they do not allow visitors to interact, only read and observe. They tell a visitor what you are offering and invite them to contact you.

Obviously, you can add a huge range of functionality to a so-called static site including games, quizzes, video, audio and so on. You can even add a blog to a static site if you subsequently decide you want to.

Standard websites are not subject to the changing whims of designers. Once a site has been created it almost never needs revising – though of course you can update or edit it to your heart’s content. Unlike a blog which the visual interface of a software program under constant development, you won’t wake up one morning to discover that parts of your site are no longer working because something has been upgraded. You won’t receive emergency emails advising you that you absolutely must upgrade to the latest software version to plug security gaps which allow hacker access to various parts of your site. HTML sites are as stable as .... well, rock.

For examples of teacher websites, visit ildocente.it (English and Italian) and insegnanti-inglese.com (only Italian). Insegnanti-inglese.com has a large quiz section with over 40 interactive language quizzes, plus a full online level test.

Blogs

Blogs, on the other hand, are better compared to chat rooms. They have the facility to display static content, the same as a static site, but are generally much less flexible. Wordpress, the most popular blogging platform, is in a state of constant development, but to gain the most from it you either need a professionally created site or a lot of knowledge. It’s true that an absolute learner can create a wordpress site quickly, but it will very rarely look professional.

Blogs also appear to be the hacker’s destination of choice. Sites that are not knowledgeably maintained are frequently hijacked by hackers and if your site is hacked it isn’t always so easy to repair or restore it to its previous state.

Blogs eat your time. What is the sense in having a site which allows users to post comments if you don’t check them daily for spam, respond where appropriate and also post new articles for users to comment on? How much time do you imagine this absorbs? Infinite amounts, can be the answer.

Wordpress is under constant development. Almost every new version comes with advice that it plugs security weaknesses that you didn’t know existed in the version you are using. With each update comes the risk that sections of your site will cease to function. The comments pages on the wordpress site are full of complaints along these lines.

Get a proper website!

Teachers, if you want to attract private students, to generate income without surrendering your free time, get a proper html/static/brochure website. A simple 5-6 page site can express everything you want to say, advertise everything you have to offer, and generate leads for you to follow.

I am a designer working for beendesigned, a website design group established by a team of 4 ex-teachers. We specialise in designing websites for teachers, especially for those who want to generate business. We have English, Spanish and Italian designers, plus access to Russian, German and French mothertongue teachers, so multi-language sites are easily arranged.

If you’d like to see what we can do to help you, or just to read about website design and functionality, visit our website at www.beendesigned.org