Many people assume that the only option for a freelance teacher trainer is to work for bigger organisations such as a publisher, or the British Council, or as a trainer on CELTA/DELTA or the Trinity courses. But there’s plenty of scope for starting your own business as a teacher trainer without competing with the big names. Here’s how to create and sell teacher training courses.
Sandy Millin: A case study of a successful independent teacher trainer
Sandy Millin has been running her popular Take your Time DELTA course for a few years now.
When she started out, there were already plenty of DELTA preparation courses, run by organisations such as the British Council, IH and other huge names. However, Sandy realised that very few places were providing support for the many, many teachers out there who don’t want to do an intensive DELTA course. It’s pretty much impossible if you also have family commitments or a job . The Take your Time DELTA spoke to that need.
So, despite going head to head with the big boys, Sandy has been very successful, both in terms of getting sign ups and in the results she helps teachers to get in the DELTA modules 1 and 3. She offers a very personal supportive experience, which isn’t possible with a typical online course, where there’s just an online group forum.
If you want to learn more about how Sandy did it, watch this interview I did with her on my Youtube channel.
How to successfully sell teacher training courses
Here’s how to do the same thing and turn your idea into sales.
1 Identify a gap in the market
To make a teacher training offer work, look for a niche that isn’t being offered by the big companies. Or find one which is being offered, but in a very different way, like Sandy did.
You might have seen some other people offering training courses for teachers. For example, Nicola Prentis’ course on investing for beginners, Kath Bilsborough’s course (together with John Hughes) on writing language teaching materials, or Ros Wright’s course for teachers wanting to get into teaching medical English.
What do these courses all have in common, which makes them successful? Read on to find out.
(By the way, these are all people I’ve helped to get started through my group programme, Designed to Flourish)
2 Make your offer clear and specific
People are much more likely to buy if they know exactly what you’ll help them achieve. I recently saw a teacher trainer offering a ‘refresher course’ for teachers, ‘with language, methodology and more…’ . This is very unlikely to work long-term, because it’s not clear why anyone should take the course. It’s just too vague and general.
All the courses mentioned above make it very clear just what you’ll get out of doing the programme, wheher that’s passing your DELTA, making more money, becoming a better materials writer or learning how to teach medical English (and create your own materials).
3 Make sure it fills a genuine need not a ‘nice to have’
Your offer also needs to be something that teachers really want, or really need. Teachers are busy, and not particularly cash-rich. So, if it’s just a ‘nice to have’, it’s going to be a much harder sell.
So, why should they take your training course? What difference will it make to them that makes it worth investing in?
4 Ask your target audience what they want to learn
When it comes to designing the programme itself, you may think as a teacher trainer you have a head start.
You’re probably right.
But it’s easy to be blind to what teachers actually feel they need and want. Instead, you can end up focusing too much on what we think they should need or want. So, before you build anything, survey your ideal client and find out what they want training on.
5 Build, or leverage, an audience
Your next challenge is marketing it, and selling the places. Sandy had a big head start here, because her consistent blogging and speaking over the last decade or more has led to her having a big audience already.
If you don’t have an existing audience, building one will be an essential step. And then you can go about creating that know, like, trust with them.
6 Refine your messsaging
Having an audience is not enough in itself, because people can know, like, and trust you and still not buy your offer. If you find people aren’t buying, it’s probably because you haven’t managed to get across exactly how your training is going to help them and why they should invest in it.
7 Learn how to launch
Another missing piece of the puzzle might be how to launch your offer. A launch is usually a series of posts or emails to take people on a journey from not realising they need your thing, to being ready to buy it.
Just posting about it once or twice telling people it exists is not going to do the trick. Or, if it does sometimes, it may not consistently be enough to make sales. Sometimes things do sell first time around because you have enough people who already really rate you to give it a go. But then the second time you launch it’s crickets.
A few examples of teacher trainers I have worked with.
Catherine Stevenson: Went from 300 hours in 10 different schools over 6 months to a developing her own profitable and enjoyable CLIL programme. Read her client story here.
Michelle Worgan: I recently saw her described as ‘one of the leading experts in this field’ (Inquiry based learning) in a blog post about ELT trends for 2025. Check out the course I helped her set up here.
Clare Hayward: Clare has become known as the ‘Canva Queen’ after she used her combination of teacher training skills to set up courses and short trainings around using Canva in the classroom, and for marketing your own small business. Check out an interview I did with her here.
Ana Jereb: Only recently graduated from my course, Ana has already set up her LiveWell TeachWell programme, to take back control over their self-confidence, energy levels, and satisfaction in the classroom and out. Check out her upcoming programme here.
Nicola Harwood: Nicola already had a great programme for teachers, focusing on vocabulary development, but managed to double the number of groups and streamline her workload through the work we did together. Read her client story here.
You can absolutely compete with the ‘big boys’ too.
Big training organisations need (really) big numbers to take their courses to make them viable because they have massive overheads. But a single teacher trainer running an online course has relatively few costs and overheads. So you don’t necessarily need huge numbers of participants to make a good return. Meaning that you can focus on a relatively small niche and make it a financial success.
Thruogh my group programme, Designed to Flourish, I can help you through all the stages from identifying a niche and a need, to creating the course, to developing the best strategy for marketing it in a way that teachers will ‘get’ and buy into.
If that sounds interesting, take a look at the details here, and book in for a chat about it. I’ll tell you if I think there’s potential or not, and if I think I’m the right person to help you fully monetise all the skills and experience you undoubtedly have as a teacher trainer.