Thank you all for such thorough and informative responses! I'm going to address them in more detail when I get home later, but for now I just wanted to respond to those comments which were aimed at me personally. First of all, I should specify that I'm a Community Tutor rather than a Professional Teacher.
rdearman wrote:Do you use the same alias on iTalki?
No, I use my real name.
Christi wrote:languist wrote:I've been teaching for 9 days and already have had 180 lessons booked, 73 of which have been completed.
I've been reading this whole topic with major interest as I've also been thinking about teaching through this platform.
You seem to have got quite a lot of lessons booked in such a short amount of time! Would you mind sharing how you managed to do this? As an outsider it's always seemed mightily difficult to start out as a new online teacher.
Do you offer something that other teachers don't or do you just have a lot of experience elswhere?
Now I've reached 10 days teaching, with 85 lessons completed (in reality, it's more, but it was because some students had to split their lessons in half), with 73 upcoming and another lot wrapped up in 10 active packages. It's crazy!
First of all, I'll say that I had a major advantage in that I'm a native speaker of a language which is globally in high demand (English). My schedule is also very flexible at the moment, so I was able to mark a lot of hours on italki available for teaching.
Also, I had a tactical approach to this. I do not have a lot of teaching experience elsewhere, not at all. I decided to start my prices out low, in order to gain experience and a 'reputation', although they are far from the lowest on the site, and are in a bracket with many other native Community Tutors. But it was important to me that these were accessible prices, so that for the first while, people would have the attitude of "what is there to lose by trying it out?" rather than feeling nervous about parting with too much cash. I'm going to raise my prices, but I'm doing so by a timeline/milestone-hitting approach which I designed before starting. To be honest, I didn't think I would be anywhere near as popular as I have been, so quickly.
I would say that the video/profile is extremely important. I've had many students mention to me directly (and unprompted) that they were very intrigued by my profile or video, and one even messaged that "I felt inspired to learn English again after watching your video". I'm not saying this as some kind of weird flex, but just to say that this is really what the majority of students focus on. I recorded my video in maybe 20 minutes, then spent a day editing it. It was the first time I ever appeared on camera or edited a video, so I couldn't call it professional, but it's maybe "amateur+" haha. Your profile should be something like a CV, in the sense that you should list your experience, skills, and big yourself up without being dishonest. But ultimately, it should be student-focussed. Explain your experience and approach in terms of how that will benefit your students. To be honest, I do this much more in my video than my profile. Perhaps that's the best way to do it.
There are another few things I do which I believe directly contribute to these numbers, but they're quite time-consuming. I reply to
every message. Even people looking for language exchanges (which I'm not doing at the moment), or the dreaded "hello". I send a succinct but friendly message letting them know I'm an English teacher and asking if they are interested in booking a lesson. Of course, the majority of these people do not turn into paying customers, but a few of my regular students were 'sold' in this manner. I message new students when they book a lesson with me to thank them, explain my approach, and ask if they want us to focus on anything in particular. I always follow up with material if they've asked me to send them some, and I also message to thank them for booking another lesson. I've already had 50-60 students and 30-40 of them have already re-booked, and the rest said they will but less frequently, like once or twice a month. Some of them I've already seen 5 times!
Another tip is to stay
online. I'm 100% certain that the italki algorithm favours teacher profiles which are online. I do get messages when I'm offline, but probably twice as much when online. I advise you to have your italki profile open in another tab and just refresh it every so often to increase your visibility to prospective students.
Be honest with your students. If someone is looking for an intensive regime to bring them from C1 to C2, I advise them to seek out a Professional Teacher. Or at least pay me Professional Teacher rates. But I prefer to help people gain confidence in speaking, do targeted expansion of their vocabulary, prepare them for IELTS/interviews/real life situations, etc. Be confident in your abilities and willing to take on challenges outside of your current experience, but also don't stretch yourself (especially for a low price) to meet a student's needs if they differ greatly from the type of lesson you would like to be teaching. There are many teachers and many students on italki. I believe there's a great match out there for everyone, and there's no point in either the student or teacher settling for an awkward fit.
And finally - teach well! Communicate well with your student to understand what they want and expect to get out of these lessons, and make sure you deliver that, or advise them to look for another teacher. If you're a Community Tutor, I really believe personality is half the battle. Be friendly, warm, interesting -
be interested - know how to make a conversation flow, and how to push your students to improve in the area in which they would like to improve. It's tiring but so rewarding! I recommend you try it out, at least for a little bit of extra cash.
hagestolz wrote:OP - correcting texts is a good way to get yourself noticed by potential students, although that doesn't seem to be a problem at the moment!
Good luck in your teaching!
Thank you! Yes, I had a detailed 'plan of attack' in order to turn this italki malarkey into my full-time job, which included a kind of notebook correction campaign - but at the moment, I have the unexpected problem of having too many students!
Axon wrote:Good heavens, nine lessons a day??? I do IELTS prep online part-time and a day with four lessons is a bit of a slog.
Other than the first two days on the site, and Monday, when I either don't teach or only do a few lessons, it works out at 10-12 lessons a day. Yesterday, it was 14! This is because I offer 30, 45, and 60 minute lessons. I usually teach for 9 hours a day - non-stop. But from this week onwards, I'm allowing myself some 30 minute breaks and I'm just going to teach for 8 hours, because let's just say... it wasn't incredibly practical. Although I tend to enjoy the work itself, I'm finding myself extremely exhausted by the end of the day, with burning dry eyes and maybe a headache, as a result of staring at a screen all day. I'm trying to find some solution to this inconvenience! One issue I have with the italki set-up is that the lessons are 60 minutes rather than 50 or 55, as in other professions which use similar systems - for example, therapy or consultation sessions. Italki are currently working on some unattractive beta site, so I got in touch to ask about the inclusion of this feature, allowing teachers to choose whether to offer 60 or 55 minute lessons.
Axon wrote:Anyway I've grown very partial to the types of questions that IELTS asks and I would love to practice and learn how to answer that type of thing in the languages I'm learning. How should I indicate that? Would it be presumptuous to send the tutor a list of sample questions?
No, I think this is extremely helpful! Personally, I message every single student when they book a lesson, even if they haven't contacted me prior to (or after) booking, to thank them, explain the general approach of my lessons (in case they haven't read my profile and are expecting something quite different), and ask them if there is anything in particular we should be focussing on. Knowing exactly what a student wants
before the lesson is helpful for both parties, to prepare, and feel confident that the content of the lesson will be valuable.