I’ve heard a ton of stuff about Twitter for the past while.  I’m really curious about it.  It’s like a super small scaled-down version of a blog that got thrown in a blender with text messaging.

If you aren’t familiar with Twitter, watch this quick video that explains it perfectly:

I just signed-up this morning after I woke up.  I’m under the user name, skypeteacher.Feel free to become one of my newest “followers.”  Discover my day-to-day inner thoughts, actions, and workings.  Be warned!

And for YOU…I’m really excited about the idea of online English teachers using Twitter to stay in better contact with current and prospective $tudents.

Imagine…here’s a situation on how Twitter might help:

1.  Your student Keiko is at home studying English, and she has a quick question about a vocab word.  So she Twitters you (in only 140 characters or less), you respond right away, and she is now happy.

2.  Other students start “following” you and discover just how great you are by answering Keiko and other students all the time. Remember, it’s like a blog, and all of your “followers” can read whatever you post to each student.

3.  So as a result of you and Keiko knowing each other, one of her friends discovers you, likes you as a teacher, starts “following” you, eventually meets you on Skype, and thus pays you for a lesson.

Here’s another scenario:

1.  You start developing many “followers.”

2.  You Tweet a mini quiz to them every day in 140 characters or less, “Pop quiz: Make a sentence using the words “travel” and “boat” and “crazy.”

3.  Students start responding.

4.  You fix the mistakes.

5.  They love it and tell their friends about you.

6.  New students are excited about you.

7.  They want to meet you on Skype.

8.  You find new paying online ESL students :)

Quick marketing idea:

1.  You Tweet a message, “I’m offering a 50 minute vocab lesson on Skype for the first student who buys it. Only $5.00 (normally $25) http://YourWebsite/vocab”

2.  A first time student clicks on the link.

3.  Student then buys it.

4.  You give a fantastic lesson.

5.  Student soon buys a package deal of 5 lessons for $125.  Done!

It’s hard to say if Twitter will work for online English teahers or not (I’m not psychic).  But I am optimistic and confident!

So today, jut go out and tell all of your students about Twitter, encourage them to “follow” you, and then see what happens.  And try to put some pictures up on your website that links to your Twitter profile page too.

Remember, the more you put into this experiment, the more you’ll get back.  So make a goal to send at least one post a day.  It can only be 140 characters or less, so it’s not a lot!  Half a minute a day :)

You can use Twitter from your cell phone or on the web.  It seems convenient!  And if you’re using FireFox as your browser, here are 8 cool plugins.

Last thought:

I believe it would be kind of cool if all of us online English teachers stayed connected and starting networking with each other.  So if you’re a little reluctant to try out Twitter with your online English students because you’ve never tried Twitter before, let’s all practice it together.

Sound good?  Click here to sign-up at Twitter, and don’t forget to join me at Twitter.com/skypeteacher

Were you born in one those 5 countries?

These countries are widely known across the world as English speaking countries where English is the dominant language.  Sure, there are many other countries that say English is part of their official language, but ESL students would never think of them that way.  Check out Wikipedia for the list of countries where English is an official language.

Anyway, if you were born in one of the Big 5 countries, all you need is your mother tongue to attract online ESL students.  How easy is that?  If you can speak…they will listen…and pay.

I’m not trying to dilute the importance of teaching English by saying anyone with a pulse can do it.  Everyone with a functioning arm can swing a hammer, but many will miss the nail.

Teaching English online can be as simple as offering conversations.  Just conversations.  Only talking about anything and everything.

This might sound like a breeze to some, but if you can’t maintain a conversation, if you can’t think of what to say next, if you’re not a good listener because you’re mind wanders, then this gig probably isn’t for you.

• Have to seem fun
• Need to be quick on your feet
• Should ask interesting questions without missing a beat
• Should acknowledge the students’ feelings and needs
• Must listen for mistakes and correct them (but you don’t necessarily have to give grammatical reasons why they made a slip)

Many ESL students don’t have ANY opportunities to speak with anyone from the Big 5.  Their ultimate goal is to understand these Big 5 countries because it will grow their careers, help in their movie watching experiences, and if they ever meet a tourist in their country they will feel more comfortable to talk.

Students want to feel confident about their English
…want to improve their comprehension
…want to speak faster
…want to learn more vocab and slang
…and they want to have fun with you too!

If you can provide the above, you’ll do great!  So being on online English teacher (like with Skype) will make it possible for the student to speak with the folks they want…like you!

You can be quite successful if you only sell conversations for $20 or $25 per one hour session.  So for this…no experience is necessary.  BTW, if you need over 1,300 questions, 500 quotations, and 200 proverbs for your online ESL students that you teach on Skype, grab’em here.

So now what about offline teachers?  Can they start teaching online ASAP?

For those teachers who already have some offline teaching experience, you’ll do fantastic within the online world.

Think about what you want to specialize in.  Vocab?  Grammar?  Listening?  Slang?

Imagine this: you’re driving down a country road.  You’re sitting shotgun, and your friend driving suddenly slams on the breaks and points at a cow.  She screams, “Wow!  It’s a cow!  How interesting!”

You might look at the cow, see that it’s just a cow, look at your friend, look back at the cow, and them back again at your friend and say, “So what?  It’s just a cow.”

Cows are pretty ordinary.  They are not remarkable.  No one every stops the car to remark on a cow we’ve seen a million times.

But what if the cow were purple?

“Wow!  It’s a purple cow!  How interesting!”

My point is that you need to become the purple cow.  Be remarkable.  Be different.  Put a new and creative spin on whatever it is your offering to sell.

How can you stand out?  Try to make your vocab, grammar, listening and slang lessons unique.  Flip on the purple neon sign and grab their attention so they will buy big $500 package deals from you.

Teach what you know, but do it with a NEW style.

Check out this YouTube video.  Seth Godin is a marketing god.  If you like the video, consider his book.  He talks about YOU becoming the purple cow.

	E-books are easy to write!  You can do it…

Hey everyone!

I’ve talked before in previous posts about giving something away for free to your online ESL students.

This is a good way to add more value to whatever it is you’re selling.

So in your case, an online English teacher, you’re selling English lessons to be conducted on Skype or Yahoo Messenger, or MSN Messenger or even Google Talk.

So now one great thing to give away for free so as to incentivize your first-time students to buy from you…

…is an e-book.

If you have something to teach them, you can write an e-book.  It doesn’t have to be very long.  It can be just a few pages to however big you want it to get.

You could write on one topic or a whole bunch of ‘em.

Or it could even be organized like a workbook too.

I use OpenOffice Writer to write all of my documents (it’s like MS Word but it’s free).  And it has a way to convert files into into a .PDF (thus your e-book is born).

In my case, I made one called, Learn American Slang that teaches all the “bad” words and expressions.  It’s 33 fun-filled pages of high-octane profanity and obscene thoughts.

It’s a lot of fun to use for Skype slang lessons with cool students.

Some of my most popular package deals were either conversation, or vocab or American slang.  So I know lots of people are interested in learning more of these crazy words and idioms.  It’s great to get paid to cuss people out!

Anyway…

Another idea for you is to offer the e-book to students who sign-up and take one of your free 15 minute conversations.  So you could say something like the following:

“Sign-up now for a free one-time 15 minute lesson on Skype.  If you sign-up before this Friday, you’ll also get my e-book for free.  Once our free 15 minute lesson is over, I’ll send you the e-book for free.”

Use you imagination and see what you can come up with.  If you want to bounce some ideas off of me on Skype, you know where to find me.

BTW, if you want to check out my e-book page on EnglishKitty.com, click here.  If you buy it, feel free to give it away to your students for free as motivation to buy from you.  I have no problem letting you do this…please just don’t sell it or change it.  Thanks!  And if you don’t want to give it away, you can use it for your Skype lessons.

BTW, if you make your own e-book, tell me about it!  Keep in touch!

Watch my YouTube video here, and if you have time, please read the following post.  Click play:

Here are 3 websites you might consider signing-up for (assuming you don’t want to create a real marketing strategy):

CafeTalk.jp
BuddySchool.com
LingWorld.com

I’ve used the first one, but I only found 2 students, and that was when the site was just starting out and didn’t have a lot of English teachers yet.

So my answer to the previous questions is…NO.

Don’t be passive!

The reason these sites are attractive to teachers is that it’s all so easy: “Wow!  I can create a profile and students will come to me, ask me for a lesson, pay me, and then we conduct an English lesson on Skype.  Hot dog!”

It’s so easy!

WRONG!  THIS IS NOT A GOOD MARKETING STRATEGY!

Sorry…I didn’t mean to raise my voice…but…UGGG…these sites erk me.

Any way, these sites just don’t work well enough.  It’s time to take matters in your own hands.  Proactive.  That’s the way to go my friends!  Be creative!  Don’t let others create if for you.

Besides, do you really want the first impression to students being dictated by how other sites present you to them?

What if you want to include more information?
What if you don’t want to include something?
What if you don’t like the color scheme of the site?
What if…

Wouldn’t you rather have full control?  Having 100% control on how students first “see” you is all important.  First impressions matter!

So here’s my two cents:

If you want to work hard and make some serious money online by teaching English online to ESL  (English as a Second Language) students, don’t sign up for these sites.  You need to control your image and your online English school’s image 100%, and the only way to do that is to create 100% of your school/biz yourself.

I was able to successfully create my own online presence and marketing strategy that attracted ESL students from countries like Japan, Korea, and many places within Europe as well.  It works…and I’ve helped many English teachers find out how to start this at-home business/school and how to get paying online English students.

It took me a long time to figure out the subtleties and nuances, but I did it because I was proactive, creative, and persistent.

Let me save you truck loads of time (and frustration).