Announcement: eduFire 3G iPhone Contest Starts Tomorrow!

What do you get when you put together the hottest language learning site on the Internet and the hottest consumer electronics gadget of the year?

The eduFire 3G iPhone Contest!

The brand new 3G iPhone hits stores on July 11th. One tutor on eduFire is going to get a free one! Here’s how it works. The tutor who teaches the most sessions on eduFire between now and July 11th wins the prize (technically a $200 gift certificate to the iPhone). Pretty simple huh?

So what can you do if you want to win? Here are seven things that will give you the best shot at being the envy of all your friends. :)

1 – Complete your eduFire profile. By doing simple things like adding a photo or video to your profile, getting some of your previous students to write testimonials for you and making sure you’ve filled out your credentials you’ll maximize the likelihood of showing up on the first page for the languages you teach. We’ll be embarking on some major marketing efforts in the next 30 days and this will help you score new students!

2 – Stay logged on to eduFire whenever you’re on your computer. When you’re logged on to eduFire (and have your status set to “Ready to Teach”) you’re more likely to be contacted by a student for an instant session. And the best part is that you don’t need to keep checking the site. You’ll hear a chime sound when a student contacts you for a lesson.

3 – Invite your current face-to-face students to take eduFire classes with you. You know that student you have who lives like 25 miles away from you and drains your (ever more expensive) gas tank to drive to? Have them learn from you on eduFire instead. It’ll be more convenient for both of you and get you closer to a new iPhone.

4 – Market your eduFire URL on blogs and social networking sites. In your profile you can set up an eduFire URL (e.g., mine is http://www.edufire.com/jon). You can then use that URL to promote yourself on your favorite websites. Make sure that you include your URL anywhere you have a presence online.

5 – Be very visible here on eduFire. Often students tell us they found their tutor through something the tutor added to the site (e.g., a forum post, a video or a flashcard set). Take a few minutes to make sure new students coming to eduFire can see you by posting messages here on eduFire, adding language videos from YouTube to our videos section or creating a new flashcard set.

6 – Show off on YouTube! In addition to adding a YouTube video and having it embedded in your profile you can also add additional lesson videos to YouTube to promote the fact that you teach on eduFire. Just include your eduFire URL in the description and, if you have killer video skills, put a text overlay on the video with that same URL.

7 – Last but not least…craiglist. craigslist might be the single most effective way to find new students. You can post an ad for yourself in the Tutoring & Lessons category of any craigslist city around the world. If you’d like feel free to use the craigslist posting tool that we’ve created here at eduFire (located on your My eduFire page). Posting to craigslist often with your eduFire URL usually results in many new students!

Whew…that was a lot. If you have other suggestions feel to post them here (or if you’re ultra-competitive post them here after the contest is over!). We’re looking forward to having a lot of phone with this one. Let the games begin!

(P.S. We’ll be announcing this contest early next week to all of our tutors via email. You have a great opportunity to get a jump on everyone else by hearing about it early!)

Wow that is awesome!!! Go tutors! You can do it! And won’t it be so worth it to bulk up your wallets for paid sessions and then also have that cool, sleek, modern phone!

How exciting!!!

Fabulous idea! :)

Great idea. Also, it gives us students a cool way to “vote” for our favorite tutors by just booking and completing an extra lesson or two.

That’s a great point Susan. :)

Yah, I hear ya Liz…me too :)

I’ve just started a new thread re. tutor marketing ideas! Check it out and let’s discuss and brainstorm ideas! :) Click here

Great! I think I’m going to become a tutor now. lol just kidding

We’re going to “go public” with the contest in just a few days. In the meantime it’s still anyone’s contest to win at this point. :) The more I hear about the new iPhone the more I want one and so I’m excited that we’ll be giving away one to one of our teachers. There’s a ton that can be done to build your business online including reaching out to people on other blogs, forums, social networks that might be interested in languages, posting ads to craigslist using our posting tool, posting sample video lessons to YouTube (make sure to add them to our videos section here too and include a link from YouTube to your tutor profile).

It’s all very exciting because I think of all of our tutors as “educational entrepreneurs”. You’re setting your hours, setting your prices and teaching how and what you want to teach. So in my book you’re definitely entrepreneurs. :) We’ll be continuing to work hard to build the eduFire brand and drive new students in but what we’ve seen from other online marketplaces that have succeeded, the people who are the most successful are those who take creative approaches to marketing themselves as well.

Just let us know how we can support you in building your business on eduFire! :)

That’s a great idea!!!!

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So who won?

First of all, shame on me for not announcing here that we extended our contest until the end of July. I put that in the newsletter but forgot to update this thread.

We have a week left in the contest and it’s still anyone’s game at this point. If you’ve been salivating over the thought of putting one of those new iPhones in your pocket you have a week left to make it happen!

If you’re looking for any marketing ideas, suggestions to find more students, etc. just let us know. We’re here to help!

And shame on me for not reading it in the newsletter.

Good luck tutors!

Yahoo, you can do it! Go get that iPHONE!