 Hi, hey, welcome Linda here back again this week with another live session here for ITTT. How is everybody doing? Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm super excited to talk about today's topic, how to stand out on online teaching platforms. So if you are thinking about teaching online or if you're already teaching online, maybe you want to teach abroad in the future, but right now you're looking for something to do before you leave. Teaching online can be great for that. So that's what we're going to talk about today. If you want to teach online, how do you stand out on online teaching platforms because competition is crazy at the moment. Everybody is teaching online. There's been a huge boom in online teaching in recent years and everybody wants to be on the popular platforms and wants to teach on there and how do you make sure that there's some students left for you? How do you stand out? How do you shine on these platforms? So today I'm going to give you a couple of tips how you can make sure that you start this new career in the best and most effective way possible. So we're going to have a look at today and yeah, before we jump in, could you guys let me know if you can see me and if you can hear me clearly, if the connection is good. And also where you are right now. Where are you watching from today? Let me know. I am based in South Korea. It is 10.30 a.m. Friday morning. So how about you? Where are you? What time is it there? How are you feeling today? Maybe also let me know if you're already teaching online or if you're thinking about it or yeah, any other information about yourself you'd like to share, I would love that. So yeah, let's just do that. And please also don't forget to like and subscribe. We actually go live every week. This is a weekly thing completely free of charge. You don't need to be an ITTT course graduate, but obviously great if you are. We welcome everyone here. This is free information for anyone who's interested, for anyone who wants to listen. We're here and just share a couple of interesting tips. So don't forget to like and subscribe. We are live on YouTube and on Facebook right now. So if you're on Facebook, make sure you have our page liked so that you get notified and equally if you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you are subscribed to the channel so you get notifications and then you can also make sure you go over to the other platforms and also give us a like and a follow there. We're on Facebook, like I said, YouTube. We're also on Twitter. We're on Pinterest. We're on Instagram, of course. So make sure you check us out there and also myself. I actually have my own Instagram handle as well at Linda goes East. If there's anything you want to know, you want to ask me personally without asking here in front of everybody, you can just send me a message over on Instagram and I'll do my best to answer it. So yeah, where are you watching from right now? Where are you at? Let me know. How is your day going? What's happening? Danielle, hi, Danielle. How are you? How are you doing? Good to see you again as well. Awesome. All right. We have Nessman. Can hear me and Nessman is in El Rosario in Mexico. Nice. And he has never done online teaching. Good. So maybe this live session will give you some ideas to start. That's really good. And Juliana is also here. Hi, Juliana, watching from Illinois, 8.33 p.m. And Juliana is currently also already teaching online. So that's awesome. Great. So maybe Juliana or anyone who is already teaching online can also share some tips of their own perhaps. We can add to our list today. That'd be great. We can make a longer list. I'm going to share with you six ideas that I have for how to stand out on online teaching platforms. And then maybe we can add a couple from you guys since you are experienced and that would be really cool. We can grow this list together. That'd be awesome. And maybe you can also share some of your own experiences, how it was for you when you started out, how it currently is while teaching online. And then I think this would be a really cool session and helpful for other people who also want to start teaching online or also go and teach abroad. And teaching online is really a great way to get teaching experience before you go abroad, for example. It can be a good sort of time filler while you're waiting for that perfect moment to go abroad or that perfect teaching position abroad. You can just do online teaching while you're kind of getting everything sorted out. So those are really great things to do because A, you get experience and B, you also get money. So that's a really good thing. All right. Good. Yeah, then also a reminder here. We do have 30% off during this live session off of ITTT's TEFL and TESOL courses. So any TEFL course, any TESOL course that you're interested in from ITTT, you can get a 30% discount. All you need to do is scan this QR code and you can also use the link. I'm going to share the link with you in the comment section. If you can't scan this QR code, you're just free to use the link as well. So this is what it looks like. It ends with Facebook Live minus Linda. You click on this link. You will see the application form and you fill out the application. You choose the course that you like. And it also says congratulations. You receive a 30% off discount or something at the top. So you're sure you can be sure when you see that that is the 30% off link. That is that. We also have a specialized TEFL course for teaching English online, actually, which would be a great base certificate to have for you if you want to teach online. So I do recommend that as well. If you want to get that, that's a good idea. Okay, that is that. And then just quickly about myself. If you're watching for the first time here and you're like, hey, who is this lady here? Who's this girl? My name is Linda. I am a travel writer and content creator under the name Linda goes East. I have my own website at Linda goes East.com. And like I said, I am also all about Instagram. And you can find me there at Linda goes East as well East because I've always been not always, but it kind of started when I was a young teenager. Ever since then, I was interested in Asia. And now I've been living in Korea for over seven years. And before that, I actually lived in China as well. But I'm originally from Germany and the U.S. My mom is German. My dad is American. And yeah, I'm also a Teflon diesel marketing professional. I've been doing this work for ITTT for also quite a long time. In six years, more than six years. And maybe you're asking yourself, what is ITTT? I heard a lot about it. Well, ITTT is or stands for International Teflon and TESOL training. There's a lot of T's in there. But yeah, so we focus on teacher training, people who want to teach English professionally, abroad or online or also sometimes in their own country. They get a Teflon or a TESOL qualification. You can find us at Tefloncourse.net and also on Instagram at International Teflon Training and on YouTube and on Facebook, where we are live right now. We're also there. And ITTT, like I already said, is a leading Teflon and TESOL course provider worldwide. We have a variety of different courses. We have online courses, in-class courses, combined courses, everything under the sun, all different kinds of specialized Teflon courses. What we're going to talk about in a little bit also. And yeah, that's it about ITTT. I'm sure most of you are aware what ITTT is. And I know that many of you already have taken ITTT courses as well. So that's really awesome. And yeah, that is that. Let's see. Yeah, again, this is what we're going to talk about today. So welcome. I see there are some new people here who have just joined in the last couple of minutes. If you could also do me the favor and let me know where you're watching from today, that would be great in the comments. And we can talk about it. So we have, like I said, Nesmen here in Mexico. We have Juliana from Illinois in the U.S. And I forget where Daniel is watching from. Oh, I can't remember now. Was it Brazil? I remember there was someone from Brazil. Was it Daniel? Oh, no, I feel so bad for forgetting now. Daniel, where are you watching from? All right. Here we have Karima from New Jersey. Awesome. How are you doing, Karima? Great. Yeah, so this is what we're going to talk about today. How to stand out on online teaching platforms, because like I said in the beginning, they're getting more and more competitive, especially the big names out there. Everybody wants to teach on the most popular platforms and, yeah, competition. Competition can get fierce, especially for English, actually. So there are a couple of things that you can do to make sure you stand out from the crowd so that students can book you or they are booking you. They want to book you. They really want to. They want you to be their teacher. So that's what we're going to talk about today. All right. Good. Let me get rid of these like banners here so they're not in the way. Yeah. So let's have a look first. Oh, and I'm going to make myself, oh, Mexico City. Daniel, damn it. I got it wrong. Okay, great. I'm going to remember that now. Mexico City. Daniel is in Mexico. All right. Awesome. Let me make myself smaller so you can all read. I hope it's not too small today, but I'm going to obviously read it out for you as well. So let's have a look at first. What is a tutor marketplace platform? They're actually, when it comes to teaching online, there are two main ways you can teach online pretty much. So one is a online teaching platform, like a general online teaching platform. And the other one is a tutor marketplace platform. So we're kind of going to focus a little bit on that today, even though these tips can be applied to either. And so this type of platform is a website or it can sometimes also be an app that helps students find teachers and vice versa. So a marketplace mediates between supply, which are the teachers and the demand, which is the students, right? So basically the difference between a online teaching platform and a tutor marketplace platform is that on a typically on an online teaching platform, the platform would match you with students. They automatically assign students to you. They also give you the lesson material. They give you the curriculum. They tell you exactly this is what you've got to teach. And yeah, you get students assigned with a tutor marketplace platform. It's a little bit different because it's basically a platform like you have you upload your profile, you fill out your profile on there. And then the students browse all the profiles and will decide which teacher they will choose based on what they see in the profile. So what a good thing about a tutor marketplace is that you can actually set your own rates. You can set your own hours. You also have to get your own teaching material and set up your own lesson structure and lesson planning and all that. So you have a lot of flexibility, a lot of freedom. But you need to do your own marketing. You can set your own rates as well. But you need to make sure that you attract students. That is the difference. I hope that made sense. Hi, we have Byron here from Ecuador. How are you doing? And we have Amitava. How are you? It's 714 in Kolkata, India. Hi, Amitava. Doing very well. How about you? All right. So this is what you got to understand first. So it's incredibly important how you present yourself on the platform and you want to present yourself in the best way possible, obviously, to attract those students. All right. So let's have a look a little bit at how tutor marketplace platforms, how they work. All right. I already talked a little bit about it, but basically the platform connects or provides a platform that connects teachers with students in their target language, right? So it's not only for English. It depends on the platform. Some platforms are for English only. Some platforms are for other languages as well or even other things. There can be, you can take guitar lessons, yoga lessons, cooking classes, whatever. So they're different platforms out there that have different, they offer different things. But obviously we're going to focus on English language today. So yeah, this platform connects teachers with students. So students can browse the profiles and pick a teacher that they like. The platforms, the marketplace platforms, they also take a commission for each lesson you complete via the platform. And this is usually around 20 to 30% of your hourly rate. And typically the longer you are with this platform, the lower this commission rate will be, the better for you. Also depends on, it depends like from platform, the platform, they're certain like milestones you need to complete and then you get a better rate. Also depends on how long you work for them, how many students also reviews, how good are your reviews. And obviously the longer you are with them and then the better, like the more popular you are as a teacher on there. Typically the better your commission rate will be, but that's the thing. So they take out a commission on the upside of freelance as a freelance English teacher, which you are on a platform like this. You'll get to choose your own hours and your rates. Typically you can fill out your available schedule. You can completely do this however you want. There are no minimum hours. Typically you can work whenever you want, how many hours you want. And you can also set your own rates and pretty much also use your own lesson plans and lesson material. So those are the benefits of a tutor marketplace platform. And I hope this is not too small for you guys, but here on the side is sort of like the business model of an online tutor marketplace. If you want to work for something like this, you should understand how their business works, right? If you want to be a part of it. So as you can see, the online tutor marketplace is down here in the middle and then you have two sides. If the student side, you have the tutor side, which will be you. And then you have the middle person here, which is the admin. And this is where they take the commission for this connection for connecting you with the students. That's why they take a commission. That's how this business makes money, right? And typically from a student point of view, the students sign up. Obviously they either post a question on the site. So it depends on how the platform works. Sometimes they could post questions or like lesson requests and then you can answer. Or sometimes they just browse teacher profiles without posting that they're looking for a teacher. But sometimes that can happen as well. And then they basically compare teachers, tutors and the lessons they offer and the prices. And they select a tutor. They make a payment and the payment would first go to the online tutor marketplace, right? Sometimes in some platforms, the students have to buy credits or points. And with those points, they can then book lessons. So the money first goes to the online tutor marketplace. And then later, typically it's once a month depending on the platform. Depends on how the payment schedule is. Typically you as a teacher would then get paid once a month. Or maybe sometimes also every week or every other week, it depends. From a tutor or a teacher point of view similar, you would sign up. You would create a profile. You can also post questions sometimes or you basically advertise. You post what you offer. And you can also browse the students, students offer, students questions. Or depends on the platform. So some platforms do that, but some others don't. Where you can actually browse students questions and you can contact students. And then you would accept students requests. You would schedule your class. You would hold your class after the class. You get your money usually put into your account, like in your online account. And then once a month, the platform will pay you. So usually this is how it works. Good morning. We have come rule. How are you doing? And Daniel is saying I'm looking forward to becoming an English teacher. I think these live sessions have been quite beneficial for us to get informed on how the English teaching marketplace works. Thank you. Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. All right. So this is how it typically works. So once you understand how it works, it will be a lot easier to navigate your way through this scenario. So, hey B, B Huang, how are you doing? All right. Okay. So yeah, this is how it works. And here are examples of some popular tutor marketplace platforms. Some of you, some of you might have heard of a big ones are preply. Italki, Cambly is a big one. Another one would be vi tutors or tutor ocean or schema talk. And ITTT is actually partnered with preply. We have a partnership. So if you're interested in working for preply as an ITTT course graduates, you actually get a couple of additional benefits, which is really, really cool. So if you're interested in that, you can check out our preply page on our website. And you can fill out your application to apply for preply. Let me just share this link with you. Anybody who's interested can do that. Hold on. Okay, here we go. And yeah, you can get started on there. So those are like very popular marketplace platforms. Obviously, there are other online teaching platforms that are not marketplace structure. So this is the preply link. If you're interested in teaching online and you're an ITTT course graduate, I recommend reaching out to preply as we are a partner of theirs. Okay, good. Then let's move on and let's have a look at the individual tips now. Now we got we understand now how the system works. Now let's see you're ready. You've got it. You want to sign up. What can you do to stand out on a teacher marketplace? For a lot of people, I think the problem is because those marketplaces already have, especially for English, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of teachers who are already on the platform. So why would a student, you need to make sure a student really wants to take your lessons? So how can you make sure you do that? How can you stand out from all of those already established teachers on this platform? What can you do? All right, so the first thing you should do, and this is tip number one, you should think like a student or be a student. So before you even set up your profile, you should explore the platform like a student from the perspective of a student and take note of how other tutors present themselves. Okay, that's a very important point. You understand the structure, but now you need to understand how other tutors present themselves and check out all the tutors with the highest ratings, the best ratings, the best reviews, what do they do and why do people pick them, right? Okay, so you would explore the platform like a student. Put yourself in the mindset of a language learner, and I'm sure many of us have been language learners and imagine you're looking for someone to help you perfect this language and have a browse of the tutor search page. You can do this. Usually there would be two ways for sign up. One will be to sign up as a tutor and one will be to sign up as a student. So I recommend just sign up as a student first and browse all the profiles under cover and make some notes. So look for what's the first thing you notice in a tutor profile. Write that down, like a positive thing that you notice about it. The second thing you should write down is what would make you choose one tutor over another. So you compare different profiles and you have a look, oh, why would I choose this one? What about this profile attracts me, right? And you make note of it. And then you pick your favorite. You have a look at who seems like they'd be the best teacher for you and then figure out why. Why do you think, why would you choose this person? You know, based on the profile. And usually all of these profiles also have introduction videos and just watch the videos. We're going to talk about the video also in a little bit but take note of why this video is good, why you liked the video and what makes it a great video. So take note of those four things, write them down or however you do your research best. And from there, you can then build your own profile, right? So yeah, that is a good way to go about. So go undercover as a student and just do research first, right? Check what's out there. Also, check the prices. How much do these really popular teachers charge? And take note of that or what is the average rate of the teachers on the platform, right? Take note of also what kind of lessons do they offer and maybe also read the reviews. What are the students saying? Why they really liked that particular tutor. So do your research, take note of all of these things and then you can move on to number two, setting up your profile. This I think you really shouldn't rush, really take your time with exploring first and taking note of what you like about a profile. Really understanding what it is you think makes this profile great. A lot of people like, I know I've been there, we get excited, we want to start like as soon as possible. You just quickly fill out your profile and you send it off and you just hope for the best. But the profile is like your key to a student, right? Is your ticket. So it's very, very important and you shouldn't rush this part of the process, right? It takes time and just really take your time with filling out and setting up your profile. And in order to create this profile, which is tip number two, your profile, how to do an attract, how to create an attractive profile. In order to understand that you first need to do number one, tip number one, the research. So really take your time with that. And once you've done that, once you've determined all these factors, what makes this profile great, then you would move on to filling out your own profile. So students, they see a list of teachers profiles. They put in, I want to learn English and then all of the English teachers show up. So and based on that, just seeing your profile, even not their complete profile, it's usually a list. They see your picture. They see your name and they see a brief introduction usually based on only that they choose you or they click on your profile, right? So they pick the one that is most attractive to them based on their wants and also their needs, right? So let's have a look how to create an attractive profile. Number one tip to keep in mind, it's better just to keep it short and simple, right? Keep it short and simple. Don't write paragraphs and paragraphs of introduction, text about yourself. No one's going to read it, right? Keep it short and simple, but still put enough information in it for the students to know what kind of person you are, your experience, put in your qualifications, all the certifications you have, Teffo certificate, teaching license, whatever have you and also include your hobbies and your interests. Usually students, they want to talk with somebody interesting, right? Now, somebody boring who just cares about studying perhaps. So if you share some of your hobbies and your interests, you're likely going to find, you're likely going to appeal to somebody who has the same interests, right? And this brings me here to point number two. If you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. So if you keep your profile as general, as average, as possible, you're not going to appeal to anyone. People are, people, everyone has like a special interest or a special hobby that they're passionate about. And if they see that in your profile, they're just going to be so much more interested in talking with you. So you should always be honest about your interests, how weird or nerdy they might be. There's always other people out there who have the same interests and who really want to talk about those interests with their tutor. So whatever it is, you can put it on there, right? Whether it is, you know, if you're really into literature, like, I don't know, or you're really into, we have a lot of people, you know, they're really into like K-pop because I live in Korea or, you know, if you're really into cooking or something like that, how strange or how unrelated to teaching English it might be, that's how you attract interesting students, right? And you already have a connection. So just remember this, if you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. So make your profile special and stand out by adding interesting hobbies or interests, but also don't forget obviously to add your relevant experience and your certificates and keep it short and simple. And here is a really good profile that I found and I hope this is not too small to see. And yes, this is not for an English teacher, this is actually for a Japanese teacher, but you can apply all of these things to English, English lessons as well. It doesn't matter, but this is a profile I thought looks really interesting and cool and I would definitely book this teacher. So I blurred out their picture and their name, but yeah, from this, you can already see everything you need to know and you can put in like a little title here under your name and I think that's really cool. She said, take your Japanese skills to the next level, speak and write confidently. So you can already tell what her specialty is, she is, she focuses on speaking and writing. So that doesn't appeal to anyone, everyone, but it appeals to a lot of people, certain group who want to focus on speaking and writing Japanese. So this is her specialty. You can also see the languages she speaks here. You can see her video here, her picture here, her lesson rating. We're going to talk more about reviews also in a little bit, her rates and then most importantly here this short paragraph which is really the perfect size. It's short and simple and it says a lot. So she says here, Konichiwa, if you're still struggling with business Japanese, daily conversations, writing, reading, JLPT, listening, even though you've already learned Japanese on your own, this is the right place. If you love Japan but don't know how to learn Japanese from scratch, I'm here to help you. So this is a really good introduction about her even though it doesn't say too much about her personality, it's probably in the read more section but you can already, you have a pretty clear understanding of who she is and what kind of lessons she offers and based on already this small paragraph, you will decide, oh, this is what I'm looking for or this is what I'm not looking for. So this is how your profile should be basically. Tanya says, I could be something like I like telling jokes in English, okay? Sure, yes, why not? Show your personality, definitely. So yeah, this is one way of doing it and then there's also a video always in most platforms and sometimes it is required, sometimes it is not required and when it is not required, I still would recommend you always record a video and we're gonna talk about a video, the video next, I believe or maybe it will come later but we're gonna talk about the video as well. So yeah, those are tips for a good teacher profile. Okay, now we're gonna talk about the video right away. So this is tip number three, the intro video. An introduction video is a great way to show off your personality and make students feel at ease. Yeah, just show off your personality, what kind of person you are obviously and also a very important how you speak English or the language that you wanna teach and just if they feel comfortable or interested in talking with you. So intro video, record and edit a good intro video, how to do that. Don't just set up your phone and press record and you just talk, plan this, plan this. The intro video is a very important video and again, you shouldn't rush things, okay? Make sure first you write a script, right? If you've ever recorded anything yourself, you might notice like you have a clear idea of what you wanna say but then you press record and then you're sitting there not really knowing what to say and it gets all scrambled and you lose your train of thought and yeah, we just wanna avoid that. So first, write a script. Also, you don't want this to be too long, a minute, a minute and a half, I think is a good length for a video. You can also obviously, while you're doing your tip number one research, already watch a couple of videos and you can save the ones that you liked and then just do the same but obviously with your own twist to it. So write a script and the script should basically talk about why you love teaching, why you decided to teach and what your students will gain from your classes. So what can you give them? What's the benefit of them choosing you and also remember to tell them something about yourself. Again, the hobbies, the interests, maybe even about your family or yeah, your passions to make it interesting to stand out and next, once you've done that you wanna find a clean, a quiet and a well-lit place to shoot your video. This could be, maybe you have like a little teaching set up with props in the background. Some people have that. They create this little teaching like board, white board behind themselves. This could be really cute. Or you can just do it. I am always sitting in front of a window which is natural light, which is the best. Make sure it's quiet. There are no other people in the room that might distract you or like talk or anything. Also make sure you wear something nice and cute. And for the script, there's actually a couple of apps that you can use. I always use them because I write scripts but then like I can never obviously remember that by heart, very difficult. So there's teleprompter apps actually. Like people on the news, they can see the text on the screen. So they actually have apps for that. You can use, you can just Google like teleprompter app or whatever and you'll find that. So you can actually copy paste your script text in there and then you can read it like a teleprompter while you're recording yourself. So this is a really great way. And it looks like as if you're looking in the camera. So I always do that because I don't have time or energy to memorize the script. Just quicker if you just use this app and it looks great. So I recommend doing that. Finally, still practice, practice a couple of times. It's also sometimes your jaw gets hard and like you wanna make sure it's like comfortable, it's loose and you're comfortable and loose and then you practice a couple of times what you wanna say and then you'll record it. After recording, you might wanna edit it depending on how your editing skills are but there are also so many apps nowadays out there. But yeah, editing your video can make it much more attractive. You can add some pictures maybe of yourself while you're doing your hobbies or while you're traveling or something that could be really cool. But depending on your skill level maybe you might need some help or again you can download some apps and also one thing I would really recommend editing in subtitles. So English subtitles. Just because you're obviously trying to attract English learners. So maybe they're not perfect. They can't understand everything you say. So when you have subtitles, it just also helps them and it just looks good on the video. So those are my own personal tips. The teleprompter app to use for the script and then adding subtitles to your video maybe adding in some pictures of yourself while you're out and about. Show some personality. That's always a really good idea. And then you have a really good video. So yeah. Usually then this video would be uploaded either directly to the platform or sometimes you have to actually upload it to like YouTube and you can keep it unlisted. So only people who have the link can find the video and it won't show up in any other YouTube search results if you don't want that. That's what I do. So only people who have this link can watch the video and yeah, stuff like that. So all right. Good. Let's have a look at tip number four. This is all about trials and reviews. So which those are especially important for new online teachers. And this is also something that I have definitely learned about, learned a lesson or two about when I started out teaching online. Yeah. Basically what to keep in mind is that trials are a great way to make students feel comfortable around you. So you give them like a trial lesson. Sometimes this would be like a, I have a meet and greet session that is really cheap. Sometimes some platforms, they also have a free first lesson, for example. So those are just really great ways to show your student what you can do and if it's a good fit and then most of the time any trial or like meet and greet session that I had resulted in another booking afterwards. So those are just really great ways and people like free things and they feel like you're giving them something so it makes them feel good too. And then the other thing is reviews. So that's unfortunately how most of these platforms work. The more reviews, the better the reviews you have, the higher you will be in a ranking and you'll show up to more students. And obviously, I mean, reviews have become just such an important part of our lives in general. Anything we buy, we pretty much, at least me, I read reviews before I buy anything. So it's just become part of life. And unfortunately also on those platforms, so they will review you, right? And you wanna make sure the reviews are good so that other students also book you again or try out your classes. All right, so what you can do is offer free trial classes to get student reviews, especially in the beginning. So offer trial lessons on tutor marketplaces. Students like to meet you before buying your classes. Typically that's just how it works. Reviews, reviews show potential students that you're an experienced teacher who can keep students happy, which is very important. And you can also actively ask your students, right? If there is a review feature, which more than likely there will be on the platform, just ask your students, hey, after this class, could you leave a review for me? Usually you can also direct message them through the platform. You could send them a link to the review section and just ask them, oh, like I'm a new teacher, I've really appreciate your review. This will help me on the platform or whatever. Usually we'll leave reviews. And also many platforms have teacher awards or rankings. So there'll be like, I know on the platform that I teach, there are awards or they're also rankings, like the best teacher for English, the best teacher for German, whatever. And the more reviews you have, the more happy students you have, you will appear in those rankings. And those rankings will help you get new students as well. There's a lot of students who browse these rankings because they wanna be taught by the best teacher is possible. So they will go there and then they will also book you. Yeah, so those are really good ways. The reviews and the trials. And also, no, this is something we talk about later. I'm getting ahead of myself. But yeah, just keep in mind, offering free trials and student reviews. And this is also something you can take a note of while you're doing your tip number one research of the profiles. Just note how other teachers are offering their trials. And then you can just duplicate that and check out the reviews. What do they like about this particular teacher? And then you can also do the same thing. Okay, tip number five is your niche. So tutor marketplaces, they allow prospective students to filter through teachers by their specializations most of the time. On my platform also, you can put in, for example, if you're looking for an IELTS test prep teacher, specifically, or you want someone to help you specifically with your speaking skills. So you can actually filter the results by these specific areas of language teaching. So the tip here is to specialize and to find your niche, right? So find your niche. What type of lessons do you want to specialize in? You can again, browse other tutor profiles to get some ideas and also maybe base this on your own personal interests. What interests you? If you're like reading, you could do like a book club, book club lesson or something like that or music. You could do a lesson where you take popular song lyrics and you teach English through song lyrics, for example, something like that, just your niche. So when you start teaching niche lessons, what happens is that your profile, they will show up in a smaller group, right? When students filter and you have a niche, you don't have to compete against thousands of teachers. You now have to compete against a smaller group of teachers who have the same niche. So that's better compared to when you just offer general English classes. Usually people want something very specific on these platforms because they get general English classes in their school or like in their other, they already have that. So they're looking for something specific most of the time. And not only does specializing in a niche help your profile show up for students, but it also allows you to charge more for your classes. Obviously general English classes are gonna cost less compared to like a niche class, right? If you are one of the few tutors on this platform who teach this certain niche, you can charge more, which is also good. So let's have a look at some examples of niche English lessons. And obviously this is an endless list. This could be anything, but perhaps you wanna do business English. Perhaps you wanna teach some literature classes. You wanna go over Shakespeare. Who knows? Or perhaps you wanna do a reading class. You wanna read novels with your students. You wanna do test prep. IELTS, Cambridge, Tefl, if that's your kind of thing, very popular. Maybe you wanna focus on pronunciation or maybe you wanna focus specifically on grammar. Maybe you wanna do writing. There's also something very popular and usually that's also something I do. So people can actually send me a text. I will correct the text. And then if they want, they can also book a follow-up class where we discuss these mistakes and errors live during class. So it's also an option. Speech contests kinds of things are very popular among younger students. Or maybe you're interested in history and you wanna kind of combine those two. Maybe you wanna specialize specifically onto young learners, very young children. And you kind of know how to teach them with games or something or maybe tourism. You wanna teach English for traveling specifically. He's very niche, right? Or maybe job interview preparation, English job interview preparation. Just things like that. So very niche things, just some examples. Again, this list is endless. Depends on what your interests are, what you're passionate about. You can teach anything. You can make anything a niche and a specialization. And yeah, those work typically very well. They attract attention and students will book those. What would be a niche that you wanted to teach? Let me know in the comments, that'd be cool. Daniel, what kind of niche would you wanna teach? Telling jokes is, oh, that's great to take into consideration, we can go creative. And yes, you can get incredibly creative here, right? Literally anything, you could teach anything. You could also do like idioms, a class all about idioms and every class you would teach a new idiom or something or proverbs or whatever it is, whatever you're interested, you could make a specialized niche lesson out of that. Karima says cultural context. Yes, it's absolutely, that's awesome. That's a really great class, that's a good idea. Yeah, so anything really, anything goes. And then you put this up and if no one's booking it, you can just change it. You can update your profile constantly. I've been trying out different things. I put up different things, no one was booking it. Then I just got rid of it. I replaced it with a new idea and then this idea worked. So you can also just try it out, try a few things out. If they stick, they stick. If they don't, you just replace it. That's the beauty about these profiles. You can constantly update them. You don't have to stick to just one thing forever, right? You can just play around with it. And that's I think also what new teachers need to do. You don't know the platform yet. You don't know maybe also what you're good at, what you would enjoy and you could just play around with it. So yeah, just go for it. All right. Tip number six is about your rate. All right, very important. Let's talk about the money. So you wanna offer a competitive rate that will help you get students, especially in the beginning, but you also want enough to live on. Ooh, and let's just go back real quick to those niches cause Daniel said, I would like to try pronunciation and healthy lifestyle. That's very nice. Yes. See, very niche and I like that. Yeah. Awesome idea. Okay. So back to talking about money. So you wanna offer a competitive rate that will help you get students in the beginning to get reviews, to get established, but you also want enough obviously to live on. You don't wanna work her free, right? So set the right rate. Tip number one here is to start your rate low and then ask your students to leave a review for you. Once you have gained a good number of reviews and a good number, good amount of lessons and repeat students, you should raise your rate from them. So start low. Again, number one in your research, while you're browsing all the other profiles, take note of how much they're charging for the same kind of lesson that you wanna teach and then go a little bit lower than that, right? And then once you have established yourself after a while, I think I did that after six months, I raised my rate. So it takes time too. So standing out on English teaching platforms isn't something that happens overnight. Keep that in mind. It takes time and effort. So like I said, for me, it was probably about four months, five months until I had a good amount of repeat students, regular students, and then after six months of working on the platform, I raised my rate. So keep that in mind. It doesn't happen overnight. It's not like, oh, this week I'm gonna offer cheap classes and the next week I'm gonna raise the price. So it really takes some time. Obviously this will be different for everyone, also probably different on the platform. But for me, it was probably five, six months and then I raised my price. So yeah, it just takes time. All right, let's recap all of these ideas again. We talked about six tips. Number one was to think from the student perspective and to do your own undercover research. This is probably the most important thing and that's really the first thing you should do, right? Number one, non-negotiable, you need to do that. From there, you take your ideas and you put this into creating an attractive profile. Again, add a little bit of your personality, share your interests, what makes you special, et cetera. Then don't forget about the intro video. Now some platforms, you must have an intro video on other platforms, it is optional. Always have a video, even if it's optional. Record and edit a good intro video. Make sure it isn't a good space. You speak clearly, use a teleprompter app with your text. Add subtitles, smile, look friendly, show your personality and you're good. The third tip was, oh, the fourth tip was to offer free trial classes and get student reviews, right? This can be done, I still do this regularly. I have cheap meet and greet lessons that students can use only once and those are pretty cheap. Those are like get to know, getting to know you kinds of classes, you get to know the students. Cause probably you will be at a point where, or hopefully you will be at a point where you get so many students that you have to say no to some students, you can't teach everyone. And so these meet and greet sessions are not only for the students to decide if you are the right teacher, but also for you to decide if this is the kind of student you wanna teach. Yeah, so this would come in handy later once you're established and people are booking you, you can later then also use these meet and greet sessions to scope out the student and check if they are the kind of students that you wanna teach. Anyway, and get reviews, ask your students to leave reviews, you can definitely do that and gather as many reviews as you can to be high in the rankings and to be popular on the platform and to get new students. And then also think about specializing or finding your niche, right? And we talked about the niches, there's so many different things you can do, you can really be creative. Again, during your initial undercover research, you can take note of different specialized classes that other people offer and you're like, oh, actually that sounds cool, I wanna do that too. Or you get inspired by some of these niches and you can do your own. And then lastly, set the right rate. When you're just starting out, you wanna go a little bit lower than all the other teachers, so you get students. And then after a while, once you've established yourself, you have a regular pool of students, you can then raise your rate. And yeah, that's typically it. Those are my tips here for you. I hope they were useful, you learned something new and maybe if somebody wants to share, their own tip for teaching online on how to stand out on these platforms, now is your opportunity, we can kind of grow this list. If there's some tip that I didn't mention that you think is super important and should be on this list, let me know right now, that'd be awesome, let me know. If there's anything I missed that should be on this list that's super important, let me know and we'll add it on here. Meanwhile, here's how to reach ITTT. Just wanna put this in there real quick before we go into Q&A session. You can request a call back on our website, teflacourse.net in the top. You could actually have us call you. Best way probably to reach out is courses at tso-teflacourse.com email. And also our website again is teflacourse.net. You can fill out a contact form on there. You also find a very vast FAQ section on there. So I highly recommend checking that out. And then yeah, again, we have 30% off your teflacourse. I'm also gonna share the link one more time while we're waiting and you guys can let me know what tip we should add for standing out on the platform. So yeah, this is the link again, 30% off your teflacourse. Showcasing your teflacourse on your online teaching platform is essential. It just shows students that you are a real teacher, that you're serious about teaching, you're not just doing this for fun. It just looks good if you have some kind of certification, obviously. Think about if you were looking for a teacher and you would also want somebody who has some kind of certificate, some kind of training, right? So that is definitely important. And this is a great way to start. 30% off your course. And then you can add that to your online teacher profile and you're already a step closer to attracting students. All right, good. And Giuliani here has a comment. Let me read that. I did those steps at the beginning of my teaching journey. Thank you for sharing this detailed information with us. By the way, I still love your slide design. It's so helpful for me. Thank you again. Yeah, I made a new one again, the slides, but I think I like the other ones better. But yeah, they're not bad. Thank you, Giuliani. Okay, yeah. And then we are in Q&A now. So we still have a couple of minutes. If there are any questions about this topic today or any other thing related to Tefal, T-Salt teaching, now is your opportunity to ask. We still have a couple of minutes that I'm here before I sign off. So if there's anything you're curious about, I always say there are no stupid questions. So please feel free to ask and I'll do my best in answering them. So let me know. Or if you wanna add a tip to today's list, feel free to do so. Maybe there's something I missed a very important point. That's the good thing about these live sessions because we learn from each other, right? I'm not perfect. I don't know everything. There's so many experienced people watching who have taught abroad, who have taught online and who also have a lot of great ideas. So I want us to work together here and create something useful for everyone. Okay, Daniel said, I totally agree. I thought everything was clear and neatly presented as usual. Awesome, thank you. That's great to hear, Daniel. Awesome. All right, good. That makes me happy too. If everything made sense. Yeah. Let's see. Did I miss any comments? I don't think so. Let me know if you made a comment and I missed it. Feel free to say that again. But yeah, looks like I didn't miss a comment, I don't think. Yeah. Then I'm just gonna wait a couple more seconds. There's always like a delay between me speaking and then you guys seeing it might be up to like 20, 30 seconds of a delay. So I don't wanna leave too soon. I wanna give everybody the opportunity to be able to ask a question. I'm just gonna finish my coffee while I'm waiting. And also if you have any topic suggestions, ideas for upcoming live sessions, I'm always all ear for that. It's really not easy to find a new interesting topic every week. So if you could help me out, I would really appreciate you. I would love it. All right. Well, then maybe we are at the end. If no one has any questions, if everybody feels satisfied with the information they have received, I'm happy about that too. That means I did a good job. And then I guess I will see you all again, I hope next week I'll be here same day, same time, same place. Make sure you got subscribed so you don't miss any of our upcoming live sessions. And we always also, especially on our Facebook page, actually we share a lot of useful content for teachers, teaching materials, job offers as well. So you don't wanna miss that. And yeah, that's I think all. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Have a wonderful weekend then. I take it there, no more questions. So I'm just gonna say my goodbye spiel and then we're out of here. Thank you so much for staying with me until the end today. Oh, there is a quick question. Okay, let me get that from Daniel. Quick question. Do you usually have teammate meetings every now and then or are teachers on their own once they are hired? Oh, on the platforms? So again, this depends, varies from platform to platform. The platform that I work for, they actually have something, what is it called? They have like a room you can book with an advisor. I think every day you could like set a time if you wanted to talk with an advisor, but they also give you so many tips and so much information for teachers, tips on how to improve your profile, tips for literally anything. So they're really good about that typically because they also want their teachers to succeed. So you're not really left alone and there are opportunities to speak with people. So yeah, I think that's really great about the platform that I work for. I really like that. And it's also the case on many other platforms. So what you can also do if there's a platform that you're interested in, there are actually a lot of bloggers who write about what it's like teaching on those platforms like teachers who have a blog and they can share some insights. So do your research about that too. And also I mentioned this before in a previous live session but you are not married to this platform. You are allowed to work for multiple platforms. So if you're not sure which one to choose you could apply to multiple and work on multiple platforms and then just see which one, maybe you like all of them, you can stay on all of them or if there's one you don't like you just delete your profile and you're out of there. So very flexible, you can check out all of the platforms and then pick the one that you think, oh, actually I really like working on this one. Obviously you need to make sure you don't have any overlapping classes if you get bookings from many different platforms. Stay organized so you don't have students, multiple students booking you at the same time. But other than that, you are free to work for as many platforms as you like and see how their support is, how they support their teachers. Yep, but usually I had really good experience with the support I received. So yep, very good. All right, good. That was a really good question. Thank you, Daniel. That was good. All right, then I think if there are no more questions I think I'm gonna say goodbye then. All right, Amitava says thanks a lot for your great variety of information of advice and suggestions. Have a nice weekend. Thank you, Amitava. Have a great weekend as well. Everybody else too, have a great weekend. Thank you so much for staying with me here, taking some time out of your day to spend it with me. You don't know how much that means to me and how much I appreciate that. So thank you guys so much for being here. And I hope to all see you again next week. I'll be here. I hope you guys too. Thank you, Juliana. Have a great weekend, Juliana. And also Daniel, thank you for your questions today. That was really, really great. And thank you for being here. And I hope to see you again next time as well. Everybody have a great weekend. And yeah, I'll see you again next week. Thank you, Yifeng Huang. Thank you. See you again next weekend. Next week, not weekend, Friday. See you next week. Thank you guys. All right, I'm out. Bye.