What are the requirements one needs to start a language school online? How do you choose a language to teach in the school you set up?
Online language schools have become increasingly essential with the rapid adoption of technologies and the increasing desire for self-education. If you’re looking to start one, you’re at the right place.
The cost and rigorous process of starting a language school are enough to demoralize anyone passionate about educating people. Even more, the limitations of traditional language schools, especially on income generation, make them less appealing compared to the inherent opportunities in an online language school.
Starting your own online language school can be an exciting and lucrative venture you’ll learn to cherish. The world is becoming increasingly globalized as the adoption of the internet and its numerous benefits continue to rise. The demand for online learning is also soaring, with the global online learning market projected to exceed $848.12 billion by 2030.
If you’re passionate about teaching a particular language(s), here are the steps and requirements to open an online language school.
Steps on How to Start Your Online Language School
Table of Contents
Though not as complex as starting a traditional language school, starting an online language school can be tedious and rigorous. Without the proper guidance, you’d make many mistakes that might make your business fail without getting started. Here are some simple steps to follow to start a successful online language school:
1. Determine Your Niche and Target Market
It’s possible to know a bit of several languages, but what makes you successful in the online language learning industry is your expertise in one. Determine the most fluent language you can easily teach and establish it.
It’s also great to choose your target market here. Who do you intend to teach: beginners, intermediates, or advanced learners? Do you intend to focus on teaching tourists or business professionals the basics they need to get along with native speakers, or do you prefer teaching intending immigrants who want to achieve mastery?
Choose your niche and target market, and work towards gathering the necessary materials you need to teach the language.
2. Develop a Curriculum and Course Materials
No matter how fluent you are in a language, once you’ve set out to teach it to someone else, you’ll realize how difficult it is to impart the knowledge. That’s why developing a structured curriculum with clear learning objectives, lesson plans, and activities is essential.
To do this, you can research existing materials in that language, such as textbooks, videos, and online courses, and even seek guidance from renowned experts in that niche. Alternatively, you can draft your materials from scratch and structure them how you’d want your classes to go.
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3. Choose an Online Learning Platform
The online platform you choose to conduct your classes on determines, to a large extent, the success of your online language school. Before choosing a platform, you must understand what your target customers need and which platform will resonate more with them.
Whether you choose to use a learning management system like LearnDash or TutorLMS or online video sharing or conferencing platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, or Skype, ensure that you select a platform that makes video sharing, conferencing, and recording easy. That way, you can easily illustrate your point to your students by sharing your screens and explaining every bit of the information you’re sharing.
4. Set Up a Website for Your School
Since you’re building a language school and not just a course, it’s ideal that you set up a website for your school. A properly designed website representing your brand will attract more students to your online language school. It also ensures most of the leads you channel to your online language school easily convert.
Learn how to create an online school website that showcases your courses, pricing, and schedule to prospective students. This website makes promoting your online language school easy through blogs, testimonials, and social media.
Check: 7 Reasons Why Your E-Commerce Website Should Have a Blog
5. Price Your Courses
Once you’ve set up a website for your online language school, the next thing is to price your courses and display them on your website. Determine your pricing strategy based on factors such as the level of expertise you provide, the course duration, and the number of students per class. This enables you to accurately evaluate the worth of your class to ensure you’re not selling your value for less.
At the beginning stage, while outlining your course contents and their values, offering incentives that make them even more valuable to your audience is essential. Incentives like discounts, free introductory classes, or other promotions can attract students to your online language school.
6. Promote Your Online Language School
Marketing is an essential ingredient for the success of any business. No matter how exceptional your online language school is, no one will hear about it if you don’t promote it to your target market.
You can effectively promote your online language school at affordable rates through many channels. Using marketing systems like social media marketing, email marketing, and online web ads will help you tailor your ads to attract the right students.
You can also use industry influencers on various platforms to preach the gospel of your online language school to your target audience. Also, networking with other language teachers can lead to referrals from them, as some of their students might be interested in learning the language(s) you teach.
Another aspect of online language school promotion that most school owners neglect is offering incentives. Everyone loves to be on the right side of a deal, and your prospective students aren’t an exception. Therefore, offering incentives like discounts, two courses for the price of one, and other mouthwatering offers can see you gain more students than you imagined.
Check: 10 Best Ways to Get More Quality Traffic to Your Business Website
What Are the Most Popular Languages to Learn Online?
If you want to make the most of your language school then you must be focused on teaching any of the most popular languages. To know the most profitable language to teach online, you may need to check out what the best language schools across the globe are teaching.
From our findings, here are the most popular languages to teach online:
- Spanish
- French
- German
- Mandarin Chinese
- English
- Japanese
Ready to Start Your Online Language School?
Starting your language school online requires hard work, dedication, and commitment. Though not as much as when setting up a traditional language school, you’ll also invest money and other resources when starting your online language school.
As detailed in this article, you need the right approach to build a language school to help your students achieve their language learning goals.