How to Teach Online Using a Free Classroom Website

Over the past several years, we’ve seen huge growth in online education. Convenience plays a big part for both students and teachers – but so does cost. Because of this, we expect this trend to continue, opening up more opportunities for people who want to earn a living teaching online.

If you have experience, skills or knowledge in a particular field or area of interest, you can share your expertise with others, and you don’t necessarily need to be a credentialed instructor. In fact, you can teach a class on virtually any topic you want (ie craft making, guitar lessons, computer programming, woodworking, faux painting, book writing, fitness, etc.).

Teaching online can be a great way to take your favorite hobby and turn it into a income-producing business that lets you work from home. You can teach full-time or simply earn extra money in your spare time.

In a previous blog post, we mentioned how teachers can find students online using a service called SkillShare. You can also create a classroom website using a service called Weebly, and you can do it for free.

So how do you set up a classroom website? Well, it depends on the subject you’re teaching and how you want to teach your class. Is the course material best taught using video? audio? text and images?What it really comes down to is: it’s your choice.

A nice feature that Weebly has is that they provide a flexible blogging program, so that teachers can post new content in text, audio or video format and easily communicate back and forth with students. You can also password-protect your sites so that only paying students can access the course material.

Not Sure You Can Find Students?

If you’re just getting your feet wet in the area of teaching, you can start by offering shorter workshops that take less time and commitment. You can charge students less money, encouraging more people to enroll.

Over time, you can grow a loyal following of students who enjoy what you teach and are more willing to invest in longer classes that typically cost more. You can also use a service like SkillShare as mentioned above.

How to Offer Great Courses

It’s important to get feedback from your students as to what they liked and disliked about your classes. This helps you improve your programs, become a better teacher and generate more business.

An easy and free way to do this is to conduct a short survey at the end of your courses asking students for suggestions on how to improve the course. Using the Weebly classroom website program, you can set up a form on your website that students can complete in a few minutes, making it painless to get the information you need.

For more small business ideas, visit The New Business Idea. You can also get start-up instructions for 200+ businesses and download the Home Business Start-Up Checklist free from HomeBusinesscenter.com.