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What Ball-and-Chain Fetters Most Freelance Teachers?

The chains that hold you (and many Freelance Teachers, too). Freelance teachers do not earn well. The cause is invariably focused in the wrong place – on its symptoms — rather than focusing on the cause itself.

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Free Articles | Freelance Business | FreeLevel | Marketing and Sales | Start Up

Are you doing your students a disservice by avoiding marketing?

Most teachers believe marketing is advertising or selling yourself – something that is pushy and where you are imposing yourself on others. This is because marketing is often understood to only mean “advertising” and “selling yourself”. You struggle with the ethical idea of combining teaching and running a business – especially when that word “marketing” rears its head. But are you doing your students and customers a disservice by not marketing simply because you feel an ethical problem with marketing?

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Free Articles | FreeLevel | Managing Students and Customers | Marketing and Sales | Professional image

Do Freelance Teachers Need Business Cards?

How To Avoid The Fate Of Most Business Cards

The business of doing business with business cards

An electrician told me how one of his elderly customers keeps a cork noticeboard hanging above her telephone, filled with neat rows of business cards (her doctor, her dentist, the plumber, and several other business cards) – including his own. All her most important telephone numbers were easily available when she needed them.

Aha! Business cards pinned to a noticeboard in neat rows. These cards did not share the same fate most business cards do – that of being discarded and thrown away once the information has been stored into an electronic data bank. However, it does raise the question whether business cards are really necessary? People in business know that a company’s life and blood lies in its data and its customer list. But what about freelance teachers? Continue reading »

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Freelance Teachers: 10 Tips For Cold Calling

Cold Calling Fears

Actors and actresses suffer from it. Professional speakers suffer from it. What is it? Stage fright.

Stage fright is when you stand in front of a task and think everything – but absolutely everything – will go wrong and you will fail and you will be sooooo embarrassed by it all. Generally, the very opposite happens…

Any freelance teacher trying to find new business will think about the values of cold calling. Should I? Should I not? And of course, will the time, effort and cost be worth my while in the long run? Here are 10 tips to help keep you on track when cold calling.

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ELT English Teacher | Free Articles | FreeLevel | Marketing and Sales | Professional image | Specialisation

To Specialise or Not To Specialise, That Is The Question

How to decide if you should specialise in one of the four ELT skills

Steve Martin has to learn the “terrible American accent” in “The Pink Panther” and engages “Sophie, the best pronunciation teacher in the world” to help. A hilarious 1.52 minutes where Sophie almost gives up teaching him “I would like to buy a hamburger“.

Sophie has specialised in pronunciation; her reputation has reached the shores of France. There are many sectors in the English language linguistics to cover making it difficult to decide – have you thought whether you want to concentrate on one of the four ELT skills? After all, your students usually spend a great portion of their lesson learning time in focusing on how to communicate in the one or the other of these four communication skills. Continue reading »