It may feel like you’re taking a huge risk if you’re about to venture into online teaching. You could be leaving a stable job behind, you could be about to teach for the first time, you could feel like the market is incredibly saturated.

Trust me when I say people will want you.

Step one is finding your niche. Read on, my friend.

Finding your niche when you teach online is easier said than done though. How do you get started? What does it even mean? Why is it important? Argh!

Panic over.

Why is it important to find your niche?

We’ve already mentioned how it probably feels like you’re about to dive head first into a swimming pool when you can’t swim when you start teaching online. Without armbands. Eek.

So this feeling alone outlines the importance of finding your niche.

You have to stand out.

You have to feel confident and comfortable.

You have to be the best at what you do.

How do you find your niche?

Write down three things you love to teach.

Now write down three things you hate to teach.

When I say “things”, that could be as specific as future continuous tense or as broad as children or beginners.

Next up write down three things you love, are good at, and can talk about until the cows come home aside from teaching.

Is there some obvious common ground?

If you’re lucky there’ll be some cross-over at this point à la diagram below.

See the bit in the middle? You have to find that sweet spot. As weird as it may seem, the more specific you are (aka the more niche you are) the more you will appeal to potential students.

You don’t want to throw yourself out there and say “yeah I teach everyone every language!”

If you teach children through immersive language, if you teach French through film, or if you specialise in intermediate adult pronunciation, embrace it.

Of course, if you still teach beginner Spanish, for example, but it’s an aspect of your lessons rather than the focus. What do you do that’s different from Teacher A and Teacher B who also teach beginner Spanish online? Whatever the answer to that question is, then that’s your niche.

That is what makes you special. That is what makes you stand out and get students.

Related: 3 Big Ways to Promote Your Online Language Teaching Business

What do you do once you’ve found it?

Students won’t just magically appear once you find your niche. You have to find them.

Before you spend a gazillion hours (and maybe dollars. Heck no. Not yet) marketing yourself as an online language tutor, consider these questions:

 

Who are you appealing to?

 

The good news is that your niche will help you with this. For example, if you are teaching Spanish with a specialism in photography then chances are your potential students will be hanging out over on Instagram more so than LinkedIn.

Create a profile for your ideal student. Who are they? Their name, age, hometown? Their hobbies, habits, pet hates? Be specific.

Because as soon as you’ve figured out exactly who you’re trying to reach rather than just “people learning English”, every. single. piece of content you create – from a lengthy blog post to a Tweet, needs to appeal to that person.

One of the biggest lessons you will learn from marketing yourself online is that you can’t please everyone.

You just can’t. On some level, it feels like that sucks and you’re being completely normal if you are trying to appeal to everyone.

However, this is actually a good thing. Having that profile of exactly who you do want to appeal to will help you to focus.

This is super important so I’m going to repeat it one more time: you can’t please everyone.

So why try? Hone in on what makes you special and hone in on that person that loves what makes you special. Do everything you do with them in mind.

 

What’s your style?

 

Because these questions need to be considered side by side. When you’re creating that student profile for your one target student, where do you fit into this?

Are you more suited to professionals learning French for business or young students learning French for fun?

There’s an easy way to figure this out if the answer isn’t coming right now.

Create a set of resources for teaching one thing. Don’t think too hard about the style. Don’t think too hard about who the content appeals to as you’re creating the resources. Just do.

When you’re done, take a step back and look at what you’ve made. What kind of student would enjoy this content? Is the answer what you expected?

If so, then yay! You’re on the right track!

If not, then no worries. Maybe you need to adjust your niche based on what you’ve created and who you think it appeals to.

Remember that you matter. You want to enjoy this as much as your students because if you don’t, it will reflect in your teaching.

 

Do students want what you have to offer?

 

One of the worst things you could do is spend weeks, months, heck, maybe even years, creating content and promoting yourself as an online tutor if students don’t want what you have to offer.

Before we go any further, hey, let’s get this clear. You are YOU. And that makes you unique as an online tutor. Got it? Awesome. Let’s carry on. (Tough love!)

It would be immoral of me to say that once you’ve found your niche you’re all set and students will come flocking because, “Hey! You’ve found your niche!”

Nuh uh. You’ve only just begun. Now it’s survey time.

It may seem like there’s no students out there at first so what do you do? You have to find them, of course.

If you already have some, then great! Ask your current students to take part in a short survey asking about your teaching niche and see how interested they are.

Of course, the broader the spread of people taking the survey, the better. Do you have any tutor friends you could ask to take the survey? Any Facebook groups you could join with tutors or language learners where you might be able to post your survey? Remember here though – don’t be spammy, annoying or too self-promo-ee. That’s honestly a real word.

But also use your noggin. I mentioned the example of specialising in teaching Spanish with an interest in photography and heading over to Instagram to reach your dream students over something like LinkedIn. This is just one example.

The key point here is that your profile student may not really exist (because, you know, you created them), but the truth is someone who fits your student profile pretty snuggly is out there. The next step is reaching them.

Related: How to Teach on Skype: 12 Top Tips for Online Language Teachers