With the rise of online teaching, a lot of educators find themselves wanting to teach, coach, or tutor online but struggle with finding students, an advantage that schools normally provide. If you’re wondering how and where to find students for your classes, here are 4 tips that can help you increase your visibility, audience, and income.

1- Define your target

Ask yourself: What type of students do I want to attract?

By trying to reach everyone, you won’t attract the right students for your class.

Let your target be well-defined and clear to you. Ask yourself target defining questions:

Who are your students? Are they young learners or adults? Beginners or advanced?

Before you can attract them, you must understand them. What are their interests? What changes do they want in their lives? Where do they want to be in 5 years?

By finding the answers to these questions, you can create a profile of the students you’re targeting. Knowing who you’re talking to will allow you to create specified content and find ways to advertise it that will answer these students’ needs and interests.

2- Market yourself

Ask yourself: How can I convey my unique teaching style and personality?

Sometimes it is not always about finding students but rather marketing yourself to attract the right students to your online classroom.

Gain credibility by marketing yourself and your expertise, before even marketing your course and content. Your followers and future students must be involved in your personal educational process. How you got to where you are today and what you’ve learned is a great start.

Prioritize which platforms to be present on based on where potential students are active and plan your content in a way to capture their interest, like creating short videos and using relevant hashtags. Provide teasers from your courses to attract more participants. Involve feedback, engagement with participants, and informative shots!

Every platform requires a different approach or presence, so make sure to tackle different channels relevantly.

3- Provide value

Ask yourself: What makes taking a class with me special?

Getting information is the first step, but using it to your advantage is critical action! What type of material suits them best? How will you personally do something different to help them?

Provide your followers with real value and they’ll quickly be asking for more.

Start small. Focus on teaching a few students really well and before long, your profile and online presence will grow.

Choose quality over quantity by providing the students you already have with quality classes instead of trying to get as many students as possible.

To create quality classes, you should:

• Provide engaging content.
• Use different types of resources such as presentations, videos and social media content, podcasts, and documents to support your students’ learning journeys.
• Create a safe and comfortable learning environment.
• Adapt to your students’ needs as you go. Don’t be afraid to be flexible and change your lessons depending on your students’ pace and capabilities.
• Listen to your students and make them feel heard. Answer their questions, be involved and accessible by providing them with your time and input.

All in all, finding students may be a challenge for most online educators. These tips are here to help you increase your online reach, but the most important thing is to be confident in your class, skills and content, and to be available for your students. Be invested in what you do,  don’t be scared to try new things to find the sweet spot that sets your classes apart from everyone else’s.