You need to have a home, a place you can refer people to when they are searching for your services.
And every home is better than just a profile on no matter what platform. Referring someone to your profile is like inviting a client to your dorm room in college. Not appropriate if you plan to really sign a deal.
Your home on the internet can either be a website or a blog. The difference is that a website is static and you won’t change it all the time. Once it is done it will most likely stay as it is for a longer time. A blog is the opposite, it needs to be updated on a regular basis because your visitors will expect this, of course.
Whatever you choose, your home will be the center of your overall strategy. From here you will refer people to your different profiles on the teaching platforms, upload and embed your created content, give information on how to connect with you via email, Skype etc and sell your lessons directly to potential customers.
Why is this important? Well, imagine if the platform you are working on closes from one day to the other. Not possible you say? Take a look at eduFire. From one day to the other the management changed and you cannot be sure that the new owner will leave everything as it is. Time will tell. Even if there is no change in the ownership, what happens if the platform decides to change the rules of the game and you cannot / don’t want to offer your service there anymore?
All the work you did with backlinking to your profile is useless. You have to start all over again. If you link to your own home and then link further from there you won’t need to worry about that. People will always find you and you can say “Well, I am not working on xyz anymore, you still find me on abc.”
Second reason: your home is your castle and hence you have total control on what you want to put on there and what not. Profiles are most often very limited depending on the platform and your own website / blog gives you much more options to display your testimonials, certifications, videos, podcasts, …
Third reason: a profile is one amongst many. If you find one of those rare students (or the student found you) who are willing to pay for your lessons why would you want to throw him / her on the market again? The chances that he / she gets distracted by other profiles before even talking to you are pretty high. So sign the deal first, then refer to a platform, if you like to teach there.
Fourth reason: setting all up is easy and you can start for free. In general, I would suggest that you immediately get your own domain name and webhosting as it will save you work in the long run but if you just want to give it a try you have several great options that let you set up a website or blog in minutes.
Website Builders:
Blogging Platforms:
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