I’m still unemployed after negotiations for me to edit a Japan-based site broke down (mainly) over money. The owner was probably right in what he could make from the site and the content that was needed to make it a success, but that would have meant me making considerably less than the lowest paid teaching job in Japan (and I already do as much TEFL writing as I possibly can in my free time, as you might have noticed). So, it all would have ended in tears and lucky it ended when it did really…
I’ve also had quite a few other online and offline conversations (yes, I also have offline conversations) in which site owners have cast doubts on their ability to make any money at all out of formerly successful sites. Then there are the more public money worries of EFL Classroom 2.0 and of Breaking News English, the owners of TESall.com selling out to the thoroughly disreputable owners of ESLarticles.com, etc etc. In fact, even the big publishers seem desperate to get free content and advertising.
So, is that business model completely dead, even as a way of supplementing or cutting down on teaching, or is there life in it as long as you try one of these?
– Aim mainly at students
– Sell e-books and other products
– Allow advertising by dodgy TEFL courses etc
– Go SEO crazy
– Go job ads crazy
And if so, is it worth it?
TEFLtastic 
I don’t do any of the above, Alex (with the possible exception of the odd burst of SEO craziness whenever there is a full moon ;-) however, I do think there is still a bit of life left in the free independent TEFL site model, yet…
What I would say is that you do have to put a lot of hard graft in to make it work and focus on giving your visitors what they want, as opposed to what ever it is you feel like creating as and when the muse strikes you.
My tips (FWIW) for any materials writers brave enough to give it a go, are as follows:
1) Set up your own site and design it yourself; don’t sub-contract to other people who will take their cut before you see yours. There are plenty of free .html editors and templates out there that you can use to put together a site if you aren’t a techie.
2) Make your site user friendly, attractive and easy to navigate.
3) Seek out a reliable web host and have a mirror site for back-up when your site experiences downtime (which it will – trust me on this!)
4) Don’t even think about using ad landing pages or pop-up windows (ever!) They piss visitors off and there are lots of people (myself included) who won’t link to sites that use them, or tweet links to them.
5) Like exchanges are a waste of time; don’t bother with them. Link to quality sites that will be appreciated by your visitors instead. By doing this, you’ll enhance your reputation, and the chances are that it will result in some quality links back.
6) Content is king. You should be designing with the aim of maximising your visitor experience and offering quality materials; not thinking in terms of maximising advertising revenue.
Spammy looking pages full of “in your face” ads are a real turn-off. You may get the odd visitor clicking on an ad on the way out, but the chances are they won’t be back.
Same goes for attempting to cunningly disguise ads by hiding them amongst links to internal pages or external sites. Don’t do it. Ever.
Filter out any categories of ads that your target audience might find offensive (such as sexual content, etc). Monitor your pages regularly and block any undesireable ads that sneak past the filters.
7) And finally (and perhaps, most importantly) move with the times.
Back in the days of web 1.0, a pedagogically weak, ugly looking “made for Adsense” site would probably have done decent business, because there was very little out there for teachers to latch onto… those kind of sites can’t hope to compete with the interactive games brigade and shiny web 2.0 tools available now. Unless you can offer good quality materials that are relevant, up to date, and pedagogically sound, then you are probably better off channeling your energies into something else…
As you point out, even some of the quality sites are feeling the pinch, though it’s possible that could be at least partly down to the recession.
Not a great time to strike out on your own perhaps, but then you’ll never know unless you try it…
Sue
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Hi Alex
A good question. I might be wrong, but I think there has been a growth in free independent TEFL sites, of varying quality. Web 2.0 and the ease of using multi-media online has seen many fantastic sites emerge.
I have 8 sites now, with over 3,000 lessons of up to 20 pages each. They make me, to echo your words, “considerably less than the lowest paid teaching job in Japan”. My eBook barely covers the yearly hosting costs for my sites. They are a real labour of love. Started the first one thinking it’d make me rich. Six years later, well… I still have (and need) my day job. Perhaps the competition from so many sites means there’s less potential to make your site(s) lucrative and free.
Everything Sue has said is superb advice for anyone considering creating their own site – especially keeping 100% control of your site and ensuring your content is something people will keep coming back for.
One thing you didn’t mention above is the freemium model. OK, it means people have to pay for the premium service, but the bulk of the site is still free. Kirsten Winkler wrote an excellent post on something similar, with a very interesting video from Gary Vaynerchuck – http://www.kirstenwinkler.com/the-new-culture-of-paying/
My six years have been worth it.
You need to be in for the long haul.
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Sounds like the best approach is just to forget any income at all and do it all on WordPress to cut out the costs and time
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The web is dead–everyone hangs out at facebook now. I find the blog format a great way to distribute content and reach people, but I don’t expect to make any money from it. Might I suggest e-books that give people a more highly edited content in concentrated form? The www is too distracting to most.
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There seem to be more and more independent TEFL sites; whether they make much money is another thing. I would love to go job ads crazy – at least on some of my pages. That’s one of the reasons I’ve used many TEFL sites in the past. E-books work in some fields. I’m not sure how well they would sell to English teachers.
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Cheers for the kind words Sean, and I agree with what you have to say about the freemium model.
Not sure I follow that line of reasoning to be honest, Alex, as I’ve hosted blogs on WordPress in the past for the benefit of my students and they took up an equivalent amount of my time and effort as esolcourses did before I made it a public resource… all depends what you want to do with a site, I suppose.
As Sean says, it’s a long haul and you can’t expect instant results; you need to build traffic to your site before you see any return on your time.
Even then of course there are no guarantees, but my personal view is there’s nothing to lose by giving it a go.
Sue
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What Sue says is sound advice about building a good free ESL website, but it doesn’t follow that money will flow in. I believe that I am one of the formerly successful site owners who have been bending Alex’s ear. We have a few million visitors a month, and while that does generate revenue from advertising, I am not heading off to the shops because I am down to my last three Ferraris.
As a rather chilling, if unscientific, statistic, I deleted nearly 500 dead and broken links from our database of ESL and related sites this year. As I clean it out once a year or so, it does mean a lot of sites are closing down. Times are tough, and monetizing a site is far from easy- there is plenty of life in free ESL websites, but there may not always be a pot of gold in them.
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Just in case anyone thinks that I am thinking of setting my own website up, I most certainly am not. For one thing, I need other people to nag me to put things into a decent condition to go online – my attitude with the stuff on TEFLtastic is just to throw it up just like it is and let people make of it what they will.
And as for the labour of love, TEFLtastic is more of a labour of love and hate. I love writing the posts, and only go through the tedium of putting worksheets and links up because that is what seems to help people more. For sheer enjoyment, I’d just finish that book on the history of Mitsui which has been gathering dust on the tatami for a month…
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Alex,
Just do it! (finish that book).
What you say rings out a lot of truth. It isn’t easy to make a buck online however I think the report of the free and independent sites demise is grossly exaggerated.
I think there is a big opportunity if a person finds the right niche. That can take some time and figuring out and maybe just won’t ever happen. However I will say that I do love it that sites AREN”T making money off the backs of hard working teachers (though I think businesses should pay). Thank god for teachers like yourself that keep stirring the pot and providing resources for teachers. Remember what it was like pre internet? I do but I don’t want to remember!
Not really “money woes” on EFL Classroom . I will gladly pay to keep flagging my belief in an open educational market and a free pass for education in regards to the use and availability of materials. It isn’t rocket science. That said, I do think that after awhile others have to step up. Some have on EFL Classroom but not enough. I used to have a “donate” button but that doesn’t work. I’ve got asked often about ads but I refuse. My own principle – don’t want a site where there are ads. I don’t want them in our schools nor should they be on an educational site – but that’s just my set of beliefs.
However, I can say with surety that I’ll be walling some content for a small membership fee in the new year. (what is called the Freemium model). That will also mean opening the community. Right now it doesn’t get searched by google and I’m surprised that people find us at all…. That will increase the monthly hits and I need to do that to pay for the site through the freeium model.
I’m also coming out with a TEFL training course that I hope you will endorse. If I remember correctly, you’ve always held to that fundamental truth of a course only being as good as the trainer behind it. I think I will offer teachers great quality and also unique knowledge in the materials creation and delivery using technology. I’ll also be asking others to offer courses on my School of TEFL. Took me this long to realize that this is actually what I can offer for “money” and payment.
Sue – so true, all that you say. I have my regrets about the creation of EFL Classroom regarding the use of the Ning platform and should have taken your advice back at the start. Now so many new members daily – can’t really leave the Ning platform.
I do think things are going to work out for the better, despite the hard times of recent. A lot of the old flashy, business driven sites will fade as it is easier for teachers to offer their own wares and for others to find them.
Charles / Mark. Jan. 1st I ‘ll have an ebook . Lots of link selection for each lesson and its just “materials light” , print and teach. Based on my SCC – student created content methodology. I’ll see if that sells but I’m a little sceptical though like you – I believe teachers will pay for quality, aggregated content – like EFL Classroom , like the ebook.
Like Sean – I can say my efforts have been worth it. No regrets (except those damn spammers!)
David
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I know absolutely nothing about the technical side, but I’m surprised by what Sue says about the ease of setting up esolcourses. If a teacher had ten worksheets and wanted to set up their own blog/ site to share them, they could have them all up in WordPress (meaning, also hosted by WordPress) in 20 minutes for free (but with no income possible). Can it really be that easy other ways?
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There are TEFL websites which make quite a lot of money [Dave’s ESL Cafe, TEFL.com] so it’s possible, and with recessions in North America, the UK and Ireland, I think more people will consider teaching English and they will need information about their options teaching English abroad.
David, how are you planning to sell your e-book? On your website? Alex, why not finish that book, if it’s fun to do?
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I meant read books, something I never find enough time for. Don’t know why anyone would think I am capable of writing a book on the history of Mitsui…
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Alex – LOL!
Was talking about the ease of setting up a site in more general terms, rather than esolcourses… there’s a lot of tech wizardry that goes under the hood on our site which is unlikely to register with the average visitor – although when I initially set it up, then yes, it was as simple as designing a dozen or so interlinked pages and uploading them via the tools provided by the ISP we were with at the time.
To approach the example you give from another angle Alex… if a teacher has developed some lesson materials and wants to set up a simple site to share them, they could create a blog with Blogger (hosted by Blogger) which, unlike WordPress, allows people to put ads on the pages.
As Richard points out, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the money will flow in, but the chances are that putting Adsense on a blog will generate at least some income… as might putting Amazon Affiliate links on a blog.
I accept David’s point about advertising and I appreciate that there are those who do dislike ads – although as even some publishers have started incorporating Adsense into their sites these days I do think they are becoming pretty ubiquitous and would say that they have lost a lot of the stigma that used to be attached to them a decade or two ago, due to widespread bad practice.
The reason I chose to go down the advertising route myself was that I wanted my site to be accessible to learners who couldn’t afford to pay to study English – which, in the UK at least, is becoming more and more the case these days, sadly. Funding for public sector ESOL has been cut drastically in recent years and courses have become progressively scarcer and much more expensive.
There is no obligation for anyone to click on the ads, and the people who do click on them help subsidise the cost of running the site and keep it free for everybody else… I don’t see that as being such a bad deal, personally.
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I think the ‘monetization’ or commercialization path targets largely anglophone markets of teachers or ESL and EFL STUDENTS, not teachers. The thing about advertising is , well, at least two things: one, you need heavy traffic and two, your advertising really has to click with your audience, so to speak. I remember the issue came up with trying to help get a web-based publication that covered university ‘news’ globally. The problem was there really was no global advertising market for such content. US-based sites (there are a few) cover the US universities, so advertisers there know they are reaching people and administrators at US universities. But who takes out an English-language ad for a new clips on something happening in Bulgaria? Also, outside of some science specialities and the Anglophone university ‘job market’ there is very little global market in academic positions, so this potentially profitable niche never panned out either.
I think it’s largely the same for trying to make money off publications related to ELT/TEFL. There is no unified global market, only the illusion of it because so much of our perceptions is filtered through CUP or OUP or Pearson. That is largely an illusion about the global TEFL market.
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That first sentence misfired. What I meant was, such commercialization largely misses the huge numbers of EFL teachers who are not in the anglophone world. Which brings up the issue of ‘localization’. The problem with localizing a site on, for example, language teaching in Japan, is that if it is in English, it will largely go unread in the local market (i.e., most EFL teachers in Japan read only in Japanese).
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Alex – you can do a lot if you don’t know you can’t! I’m sure you could write a “personal” history of Mitsui. but yeah, finish the reading first.
Mark – going to use my own paypal but also with a lot of social media attached (widgets so a site can embed and sell and get a commission) plus Amazon and epub. Not hard to do but takes some leg work. There are A LOT of purchasing options available these days to the average Joe and this really isn’t a barrier anymore. See the tinypal.me link above.
Charles – bang bang on imho about the “illusion” of the industry. There is a large/huge chunk of the teaching world that is not hooked into the grid and the normal sites/commerce etc…
David
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What about self publishing on services like http://www.lulu.com
You can even buy regular ISBN numbers for your book and hence get listed on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles etc.
But yes, you need to have a tribe / traffic on your web estate and then start to convert.
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I agree with charles, the web is dead or at least on its way out due to facebook. Although advertising your tefl site on facebook is a big +.
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The facebook crowd, many of them, have forgot how to search the web or blogdom or never developed the skill, so adverts might be the single best way to reach them. You could also do a facebook page, but promoting it on facebook presents largely the same issues–getting it noticed. Also, you have to decide which type of facebook page to open, and I’m not really sure about the advantages or not of each type.
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David said that he believed teachers would pay for quality, aggregated content like his ebook, which has now been on sale for a few months. He says the book will go ‘open source’ once it has sold enough to pay him at the rate of two dollars an hour for the time it took him to create it, which is well under a third of the minimum hourly rate in those states in the US that have a minimum wage. The discussion group set up for it has been inactive for a month, and has only had one comment from someone using the book, and this should be the peak period for sales, and there’s a mailing list who have been informed about the book every month.
I wish I were wrong, but this only confirms the difficulty of monetizing ESL sites to me.
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Richard,
Everything you say is true except for the monetary figure. It is $20/hour.
I’m satisfied. I get a few sales every day and now have sold 67 books. It’s paid for my costs and when it gets up to 250 books, I’ll release it. that’s about 50 books for the graphic design costs and 200 books for my time (about 100 hours).
But yes it is difficult. I’m not in it for the money though. I get to communicate with teachers about the book, see it develop and be used. That’s satisfying. But it is even harder for a site. Especially when you do give so much away free. If you really want to monetize a site / a book – I think the only way is to keep it behind bars. But that’s not my style, different strokes for different folks.
I will say about the book – I’ve got others thinking about possibilities and opened this door wider than its been. That’s something.
David
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I am sorry for that- my bad.
I am all in favour of the possibilities offered in terms of professional and personal satisfaction. However, as sites grow, the investment of time and money can become considerable. I honestly think that the freemium model is going to turn out to be a non-event in ESL- many people will take the free stuff and head off elsewhere for more free stuff. There will be a few people who do it successfully, but not many.
Small hobby sites are fine as they cost next-to-nothing and big sites can cover costs with advertising, but I worry about the medium-sized sites, where people are stuck with costs and struggling for revenues. What happens to the teacher in a recession when their site costs them a couple of hundred dollars a month and doesn’t produce much of a return?
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David, Why do you want to give the book away after it’s sold 250 books? I’m just curious. Surely you deserve something for the time you’ve put into it.
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You need to create great free content that is informative, accessible, independent and interesting, and then rely on Google Ads for revenue.
If your site is interesting and clearly not commercial, the quality of the site itself will bring links, visits, clicks and revenue.
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Billy
Do you have any evidence for that at all? Even outside TEFL, people are complaining that it is no longer possible to make a living from Google Ads. Sean Banville’s Breaking News English is one of the best sites out there, and he still teaches full time.
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David, Why do you want to give the book away after it’s sold 250 books? I’m just curious. Surely you deserve something for the time you’ve put into it. — Mark
Mark – that’s just what I figure I put in as “labor”. The time to make the book, write, communicate etc… About 100 hours. I know I’m being generous but I do think that along with the idea of allowing teachers to edit the book itself, the idea of profiting only for ones labor are core to what I’m trying to demonstrate with the POD, open source book. I really don’t think authors deserve to own “knowledge” and “ideas” which is what they are doing when they ask for more $$ than the book itself took to put together.
Here’s a nice post about open source books in education, if interested.
http://davidwees.com/content/why-textbooks-should-be-open-source
I know I’m “different” in my approach. And I’ve come slowly to realize and not expect everyone to be cut of the same cloth as myself. That’s what age does or should :)
David
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