Drum roll please!

In the article before last, I wrote about the importance of offering a free one-time trial lesson and how you should make it obvious on your website that you’re giving these away.

Check this out:

Here are the top 10 most important things you need to remember whenever you conduct your free trial lesson on Skype with a prospective ESL student:

1)  Be confident and use your web camera (they don’t need to use their web camera though).

2)  Smile non-stop.  Don’t ever let your facial expressions become too slack.

3)  Let the student do most of the talking (thus don’t you be too pushy or overly excited).

4)  Ask them questions in which you know the answers will be YES.  You’ll want them in a mindset of saying, “Yes!”

5)  Have a structured mini lesson ready.  You should have it on a Word or an Excel document so all you have to do is copy and paste the various things into the Skype chat box.

6)  Tell them the details about your great package deals and how they are better than the competition’s.  Practice what you’re going to say, and keep it as short as possible.

7)  Offer them a better deal if they say NO or just seem unsure.  For example, offer 2 free lessons when they buy 5 (normally it’s only 1 free lesson with this package of 5).

8)  Make sure to get their email address because you can send them personal lessons via email (you don’t want them to ever forget about you)

9)  Make them laugh and smile and feel relaxed.

10)  Sell them the benefits.  Talk about how they will feel more confident after practicing their English with you.  Talk about how their vocab and listening skills will increase which will help their job, their TV or movie watching experiences, or even help their personal life with native English speakers.

There you go!

These are the top 10 things you should remember every time you conduct a free trial lesson with a student on Skype.  Remember that you are also wearing the hat of a sales person, so stay positive that the student will buy a single lesson or a package deal.

You must be a salesperson more so than a teacher during your free trial lesson with a student.

If you would like to practice your free 15 minute trial lessons with me…no problem.  You can call me on Skype, and I can pretend to be a prospective student.  After your presentation, we’ll talk about the pros and cons.  You’ll get a nice critique about your free trial lesson.

Another reason you should practice with me is that it will make you more confident when you’re meeting a new prospective student.  You won’t want to be nervous with the students!

Enjoy your day!

On the spine of your online marketing strategy, you’ll find many vertebrae.

In regard to the body, the Atlas Vertebrae is the most important vertebrae.  According to ConnollyChiropractic.com, “The brain is the light and the atlas is the dimmer switch.  Do you know what happens when a dimmer switch is low, the brightness of the light decreases. When the atlas is out of position the messages from the brain are not transmitted properly to every cell in your body.”

For your online English school, your Atlas Vertebrae is the free trial lesson you should offer first-time students.  You need to give these lessons away if you want to shine the light on your message, your teaching ability.

I can’t stress it enough: you need to make it obvious that the student can meet you for a one-time trial lesson on Skype.  Make this offer known on every single page of your website or blog.

Here’s what you can say:

“Get your FREE one-time trial lesson with me on Skype for 15 minutes.”

“Do you want to talk with me for 15 minutes on Skype with your microphone?  You can do this one time…and it’s FREE.”

“FREE trial lesson!  Only 15 minutes!  FREE VIDEOCHAT with an English teacher!  One time only!”

Obviously since you’re students aren’t perfect at English, they might get confused and think your volunteering your time to teach for free…every time.

I try to make it obvious that I’m not a 100% free teacher (yet some still think I’m always free anytime).

So to help clarify what you’re about, put pictures of credit cards and PayPal logos on all of your pages.  Make statements like, “Get a free trial lesson and then decide to buy some of my cheap lessons.”

Giving away a free trial lesson is so important.  It’s the #1 reason why students will contact you!

If you’re making them pay you in order to meet you for the first time, they will be highly reluctant.  There are too many Internet scams out there, so by meeting them on Skype for free (with your web camera) will increase your sales exponentially.

Always use your web camera and smile a lot!  Smile non-stop!  Laugh and have fun too!

If you want to practice your free trial lesson with me on Skype by using a microphone and a web camera, let’s meet.

Practice makes perfect.  We’ll role play.  I’m be the student with intermediate skills, and you’ll be the teachers/sales person.  After 15 minutes, we’ll stop and discuss what’s working and what needs to be tweaked.

I’ll offer you a free 15 minute meeting so you can see I’m a real person too, and if you so desire, we can meet for longer to practice your free trial lesson/sales pitch (for a fee).

I’ll charge you about the same prices that you’ll charge your students.

Of course, like you, I’ll only give so much away for free since I need to eat and travel (my two favorite things besides my fiancée, Yuka).

Click here to check out the prices.  If you’re on a fixed income or have a strict budget, I’m happy to work out a fair deal.

I like to stay flexible.  And so remember, I’m always just an email or Skype chat away :)

Here are some links to pictures you can right click and then save to your computer.  I have no idea if the following are copyright protected or not.  If Google can have them on their site without prior permission, why not you too?  Check’em out:

Credit card pictures
PayPal pictures
Skype pictures

If you’re not familiar with this section of Google, make sure to play around with the different sizes.  You can adjust the sizes with the drop down menu at the top.

There you go!  I hope this article helps.  Have a great day!

	What a feeling to be an online English teacher!

1.  WORKING ANYPLACE YOU WANT IS SOOOO LIBERATING!

True freedom is when you can get up and travel without having to worry about your job.  Becoming a self-employed online English teacher will allow you to go, go, go anyplace you want and still have the ability to work.

We live in exciting times.  Internet is KING!

You can literally teach from a Starbucks.  Teach from a relative’s home if it has a decent connection.  Teach from the beach if you know how to use your cell phone to give your laptop an Internet connection.  Imagine the possible places you can teach English.

What freedom!

2.  MEETING INTERESTING PEOPLE FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Even before I started teaching English online, I loved to travel the world and meet new people.  It’s so amazing how people are so different yet so similar from one country to the next.  The world is huge, but it’s “small” at the same time.

Do you know what I mean?

Teaching online with Skype really allowed me to meet people from countries I’ve never stepped foot on.  I was able to form new, exciting relationships with people from Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, and Russia to name a few.

Thank you everyone!

3.  A GOOD CHALLENGE IS EXCITING AND ENHANCES PERSONAL GROWTH

I’ll be honest, it wasn’t easy for me to start my own online English school.  Check out how I felt when I first started out.  But this challenge only made me stronger.

What doesn’t kill us only makes us grow if we allow it to.

I thrive on solving problems.  Being creative is one of my defining characteristics.  I love applying logic, intuition, skill, luck, and optimism toward a mystery that needs a fixin’.

You will honestly feel like a bigger, stronger person once you make your fist sale…and that leads us to the next one:

4.  MAKING MONTHLY SALES AGAIN AND AGAIN FEELS SA-WEET

With any product or service, the first sale is always the hardest, but it’s the sweetest.  My first sale was to a student in Korea, and I will never forget her.

The feeling of her saying, yes and then getting that email from PayPal stating, “Payment received” was great.  I did it!

And soon thereafter more and more students starting saying…YES.

Getting over the initial hurdle took some time, but it got a lot easier after that.  Using momentum is a great thing…never forget that!

5.  HELPING FOLKS IMPROVE THEIR ALREADY LEARNED ENGLISH IS REWARDING

The reason I like teaching is because it’s like giving people little nuggets of gold.  They are always so excited to get something new and shiny.  It puts a smile on their face to learn, and in-turn it does the same for me.

One of the secrets to happiness that I’ve learned is to make others happy because it’s reciprocal.

I love this truth.

6.  DEVELOPING PERSONAL CONNECTIONS WITH STUDENTS IS NICE

Spending week after week with a student is interesting.  You’re bound to discover new bits of their history.  It’s nice to share similarities and differences.

Ask your students lots of questions, and you’ll not only discover things about them, but yourself as well.  A good conversation is a process of discovery that benefits both parties.

7.  LEARNING ABOUT DIFFERENT CULTURES OPENS THE MIND EVEN MORE

The only way the world will end prejudice and craziness is to know how others are different and accept it as normal.

“Normal” is relative though.  Nothing is really distinct.  Embrace people who are “other” than you.

I like being different…yet the same!

8.  SPENDING MORE TIME WITH LOVED ONES IS PERFECT

Being able to work at home gives me more time with loved ones.  Whether I’m working in the same room as my fiancée or in the next room, just being “near by” is enough to make me feel more comfortable.

And since I can travel and visit family and work at the same time, it’s a perfect situation to be with everyone and not lose out on making money.

Doing all of this at the same time is ideal!  Who wants to spend half of their waking life away from the ones who matter?

9.  NOT RELYING ON A CORPORATION TO FEED US IS ESSENTIAL

When I worked in Japan, I thought I had job security because I was working for the largest English conversation school in the country.  But in the end, the ship sank, and I didn’t get paid.  I missed out on around $5,000 worth of earned wages.

And in this new world economy, working for a corporation is no guarantee of lifelong job security.  CEO’s are only concerned with increasing profits for the next quarter, and if that means that have to outsource and lay people off, they will do it.

They will do whatever it takes to make the shareholders happy…NOT the employees who got them there (just look at Wal-Mart).

So it’s best to work for yourself.  If you can trust yourself to work hard and put you as #1 then you’ll do fine.  And if you can figure out other ways to diversify your income, you’ll be even more secure.

Teaching online can free you up to find other online gigs or other business opportunities to find in your community to make money.  Throw enough stuff up on the wall and eventually something will stick!

10.  FEELING SIGNIFICANT TO THE WORLD COMMUNITY ROCKS

Feeling wanted and important is essential  to our well-being.  When students come to you and ask for help feels great when we can give them what they want.

You have English as your mother-tongue.  This is a gift to the world.  We are lucky.  Let’s not waste it.  Share what you know.  Teach.  Get respect.  Help others grow and you will grow too.

You are significant.  We all are when we work together.

Thank you Internet!

Thank you Skype!

Thank you World!