Did you ever read a book or an article that inspired you to create something and then found success, even if just on a small scale?
Back in ca. 2017, I happened to stumble on an article about VIPKid, an app that provides English lessons with native speakers to Chinese kids. At that time, I had no idea that this was such a big business. I did a quick Google search and found a blog post about online English teaching. The remarkable thing about this post was the comment section. There were literally hundreds of people looking for advise and even some posting school reviews.
Suddenly, I had this idea. How about starting a Facebook group specifically for online English teachers? First, I checked if there were any existing groups. While there were some, they seemed mostly spammy and not very well moderated. So, I decided to go ahead and create my own.
I literally had no single friend to invite, so what I did was to collect a list of schools that offered online English teaching jobs. I pasted them into a Google spreadsheet and then shared the link to the spreadsheet in various expat groups. In the post, I would introduce people to the concept of online English teaching (as it was still not so widely known back then) and shared my spreadsheet. At the bottom, I also invited them to join my group.
Somehow, this worked pretty well. To my surprise, I was able to grow the group to over 1k members in about one month.
Unfortunately, the success ended there. Although I was looking to monetize the group somehow, I wasn't able to come up with anything. In the end, I just gave the group away to someone who was willing to take it over. Still, it was an interesting experience. Unfortunately, it would be much more difficult to achieve this today, as group mods are much stricter now when it comes to promoting other groups. I wish I had found this forum earlier. I might have found ways to make money off the group.
Back in ca. 2017, I happened to stumble on an article about VIPKid, an app that provides English lessons with native speakers to Chinese kids. At that time, I had no idea that this was such a big business. I did a quick Google search and found a blog post about online English teaching. The remarkable thing about this post was the comment section. There were literally hundreds of people looking for advise and even some posting school reviews.
Suddenly, I had this idea. How about starting a Facebook group specifically for online English teachers? First, I checked if there were any existing groups. While there were some, they seemed mostly spammy and not very well moderated. So, I decided to go ahead and create my own.
I literally had no single friend to invite, so what I did was to collect a list of schools that offered online English teaching jobs. I pasted them into a Google spreadsheet and then shared the link to the spreadsheet in various expat groups. In the post, I would introduce people to the concept of online English teaching (as it was still not so widely known back then) and shared my spreadsheet. At the bottom, I also invited them to join my group.
Somehow, this worked pretty well. To my surprise, I was able to grow the group to over 1k members in about one month.
Unfortunately, the success ended there. Although I was looking to monetize the group somehow, I wasn't able to come up with anything. In the end, I just gave the group away to someone who was willing to take it over. Still, it was an interesting experience. Unfortunately, it would be much more difficult to achieve this today, as group mods are much stricter now when it comes to promoting other groups. I wish I had found this forum earlier. I might have found ways to make money off the group.