hello everyone and welcome back to a slightly noisy mexico as always if you are a regular
viewer you might notice that i'm in a new place i'm standing up because i've got a wobbly table
and i've got shells in the background i am near the beach so it is rather appropriate
right but never mind any of that because today is another episode of working wednesday if you're new
this is a series on my channel in which i talk about anything relating to working online and or
becoming a digital nomad and traveling full-time which is what i've been doing for the last five
years must be crazy right so if you saw the last three videos you'll know that we talked about
teaching english online mistakes you can check that out by clicking the link up above which will
take you to the teaching online playlist and today we are continuing in the same vein by talking
about teaching online again but more specifically we are talking about a rather business themed
topic which is about how you yes you watching this hello hun can earn more money from teaching
english online by determining your pricing and setting your pricing from day one now just to
clarify this video is very much aimed at those of you who are thinking about using a platform such
as italki which allows you to set your own pricing or maybe you're thinking about setting up your own
website this video isn't applicable to those of you who are maybe employed by a company that's
based in china teaching children because obviously you would receive a set salary anyway there are
two things i want you to keep in mind throughout this video very important number one time is money
you're a business owner yes you're a teacher but you're also a business owner you're not running a
charity you're running a business and one of your primary aims is to make money right am i wrong no
i'm not so stop devaluing yourself and devaluing what you offer by offering your services for free
it's something that is rife in the teaching world where people will offer lessons ebooks leaflets
you name it for nothing what's that about the second point is to remember that as teachers
we're all different that's a good thing because if we were all the same it would be boring right
you might be someone like me who five years ago had never taught anything before i did a tefl
and then i started teaching on the other side of the coin you might be someone who
studied teaching for years and years you might have a degree in phonetics or linguistics
whatever you might have taught in physical environments you might been a university lecturer
whatever my point is that whatever you're doing in relation to your pricing will depend very much
on you and your experience knowledge expertise and so on later on in this video i'm going to
go through a few simple things that i've done over the years to boost my income but first we're going
to talk about some specific things in relation to pricing the first one is penetration pricing
this is probably the biggest greatest issue when it comes to teaching online it's a business term
in relation to pricing when a business sets their prices or rates very low to begin with in order
to build up their client slash customer base in your case student base or whatever you want to
call them to build your reputation to get to a point where those students can see okay they've
been doing it for a while they've got all these reviews on their italki profile and now they put
their price up i think okay it's worth doing because that teacher knows what they're doing
however there is an issue with this and i can understand this completely because i'm kind of
in that position now five years ago i wasn't experienced teachers or as i said those ones
before that i mentioned about you know university lecturers whatever incredibly educated people can
get extremely frustrated and i don't blame them when they see platforms like italki advertising
things like one lesson for one dollar when you know you've gone to university for years to be
a teacher and there are people teaching for one dollar an hour again devaluation completely so i
get it but the reality is and i did this and many teachers i know did this started off low in order
to build up their reputation and student base i thought in the beginning well how am i going to
get students i've never done it before i've got no reviews no experience no one's going to book
with me and yeah i started off at like 10 an hour i think it was immediately my calendar was full
but the problem was i was doing like 10 11 lessons a day for 10 whereas now i'm doing half that for
double the money so i'm actually i'm earning more now than i used to earn back in the day
it's up to you what you do with penetration pricing as i said it's a reality of what it's
like many people do it but there's another way around it you don't have to charge rock bottom
prices and that's what the next point is this point is about a niche so if you do have a niche
you can charge more don't be afraid to charge more when you have an expertise or knowledge in
a certain area mine is business english and job interview preparation i used to be an hr manager
many years ago it's very much a passion of mine which i'll come on to that i use in
my teaching and my lessons and i charge more for it because the planning of those lessons
and execution of them i have an ebook as well which you can check out in the description below
because it's a niche i feel like you know i know more about it you know yeah i can do
general conversation i can do ielts preparation but those aren't my passions they're not my
areas of expertise and when i say passion my advice with choosing your niche is simply
think about what is your passion in life what is the thing that you genuinely get fulfillment
and enjoyment out of teaching if it's not ielts preparation which isn't my favorite to be honest
then that isn't your niche because you're not going to enjoy it as well you have to get
satisfaction out of it as well as well as actual achievement from the students if you know what i
mean so think about your passion make it your niche in terms of raising your prices don't be
scared to do it you might think that well if i put my price up to 20 an hour all my existing
students are going to disappear and yeah they might it's not the end of the world because
there are millions of people in this world wanting to learn english and those people that disappear
will just get replaced and actually what you will find is that many of your existing students will
stay with you and i had people say to me oh well i did think you were charging quite low
okay so i've continued to put them up and i've always remained full up every week in terms of
my schedule so if that happens with me i'm no one special then it can happen with you as well
all right the other point to think about when it comes to setting your pricing is all about cost of
living both yours and your students and also where your target market is so firstly think about where
your students are for me i don't know how this happened but most of them are in russia or poland
i think to myself okay what's the cost of living in russia what's the situation with the currency
the ruble is a very fluctuating one anyone that has students in russia will know this
so i have to ask myself the question you know can a student in russia you know an average
person doing a blue collar job can they afford to pay 35 40 an hour maybe not so
i have to consider that but also i have software developers they have a lot of money
they can probably afford that the other point is thinking about where you are you know if you are
in a static location for example you might be living in the uk or the us australia or whatever
obviously your cost of living will be high in those countries so you will need to charge higher
as a result you may then attract students that earn more for example people that work
in banking in switzerland i've had a lot of them people in hong kong singapore whatever
but also if you're traveling as a digital nomad i've lived in countries like mexico right now
colombia belarus serbia you name it where the cost of living is lower i have to ask myself
the question do i need to be earning 50 an hour to get by there's the issue of sort of greed versus
comfortability and i would prefer to go along the comfortability part is that even a word
whatever yeah i don't need to be earning 50 dollars an hour in order to live comfortably
in serbia mexico whatever so i don't charge ridiculous amounts however if i was living in
london where i come from absolutely i wouldn't be charging 20 an hour because it wouldn't provide me
with a living wage i hope those points have helped i'm going to go now on to the simple things i've
done over the years which have been instrumental in me becoming more independent financially secure
you name it and some of these are quite simple when you think about it actually the first one
is about long-term discounts and discount codes firstly long-term discounts if you have students
that have been with you for more than 10 lessons why not offer a long-term student discount or
students before x date if you know what i mean can book a more affordable package or lesson
it then results in retention so those students stay with you and they're more likely to
continue to book with you going forward when it comes to discount codes this has been great
with squarespace i'm going to do a video about squarespace in the future which is what i use
to sell my website acuity scheduling allows you to set up discount codes so i have many on there so i
do like one every other month i think it is like at the moment i've got like summer 15 15 of your
next package booking i have ones for new students like package 20 like 20 of your first package i
even have one called refer 20 which is brilliant because you might ask the question about where do
i get students from a lot of them come from word of mouth and a result of this refer 20 discount
code so they might have a friend husband wife colleague whatever mother i've got a few mothers
that then book lessons and the original person uses that referrer 20 to get 20 off their next
package so think about discount codes use your marketing expertise and think about what you would
do as a student and the things that would attract you to book another package regarding packages
and this is very much a personal thing this might be different for you i don't offer courses i offer
packages because a 10 lesson course for example on business english doesn't necessarily result
in student retention it doesn't make that person a long-term student because you get to less than 10
what happens next the course is done that person disappears into the ether or whatever you call it
and you never see them again and you've got to start all over again from scratch getting a new
student but if you offer a package instead someone might book a 10 lesson package but they don't have
an intention of having this planned lesson plan you work together as i've said before
to build a plan you get lesson number 10 and they book another one and you just continue my business
english ebook has 60 lesson plans in it so that's six packages worth and even after that's all done
we still continue if you have that relationship between the two of you and you understand how each
other work and that that student wants regular practice then a course isn't appropriate a package
allows you to have continuous bookings again and again and again which provides you with additional
income as you go along and the last point is more of a finance one so if you do choose to
set up a website for example using squarespace and acuity scheduling i would advise using a
platform such as stripe it's really good so the problem with italki when someone books a package
you don't receive that money for the 10 lessons immediately you have to actually do all of those
lessons and you receive the money as you go but when you get a package booking on a website you
get all of that money immediately into your bank account it depends on where you're from so i think
you have to have a us bank account in order to get it immediately i have to wait like seven days
because i have a uk bank account that's okay but i don't have the issue of you know someone books
a package and then it's valid for six months and then you don't see them for months and months then
eventually you might get that money or they might choose to extend the package and then you have to
wait another three months using something like stripe for your website means that you can get
that money immediately and you see much more of a an influx in income if you know what i mean
and it just feels like you're earning more but the thing you do have to worry about is the fact that
some months you might have really great month where someone books a 10 lesson package that
10 lesson package might last for the two months and obviously they're not going to book anything
in the second month so it depends on you know how you are with managing your finances are you like a
month-to-month person or can you cope with that whole two-month thing it depends all right so i
hope you found this video useful on pricing if you do have any comments or questions let me know down
in the comments below are you an experienced teacher who has that issue with the whole rock
bottom race to the bottom i think people call it and the one dollar devaluing offering things for
free or do you think that you should be offering things for free i'd be interested to hear your
comments or are you someone who's just starting out with teaching and he would like some advice
what has your experience been i'd love to know don't forget to subscribe
and you can check out the end screens over there that will take you to what's up there that will
be the teaching online playlist down there will probably be the next video once i filmed it so
thanks for watching make some money and i'll see you soon catch you later