I'll explain what we need to do next and how we can work together.
As you read, think about whether you want to and can work for us (as an employee).
We do not work with the end client. We work with agencies and language schools to get our jobs and our money.
The students do not speak German well enough. Nevertheless, we can find almost every student an employment contract. But it's exhausting and frustrating to test so many students. It's embarrassing to introduce these students to German employers.
The low language level of the students is perhaps due to the fact that there are too few teachers who know German. Or there are too few teachers who can teach well. What's more, classroom teaching is used all over the world. And parents cannot afford language courses. A language level costs around 300 euros. Perhaps students who come to Germany come from good homes and are spoiled? Have they not learned how to learn?
Do Vietnamese students have a particularly hard time? (Compare school reports from the Abitur with the language tests)
Perhaps the interviews are too stressful for the students and they can't concentrate, even though they would be better.
At the moment, the agencies and schools offer us all their students. The students are offered and so are other agents. We have more and more pupils from the agents. They then pass them on. Some students are offered to us by three different agents in one day.
That's okay, but the students who are passed on are often not so good.
There are now said to be several hundred language schools in Hanoi. Every year, 10 to 40 students take the B1 exam there.
As German helpers, we are cheaper than our German competitors. That's why we hope to get the best student from each language school.
100 times the best is better than 10 times the worst. It's the same with money, because the need in Germany is high. Almost all of them can be placed.
It could be that we don't get better pupils, just more pupils, because there are no good teachers.
Should we go to other countries? Countries where an Indo-European language is spoken at school?
Should we look for German teachers in other countries first?
We are developing a language learning app. Should we search directly for "end customers"?
We can now tackle these problems in many different ways. It's a marketing problem. I am sure that we will be successful quickly, no matter which way we go. We will get more students and earn more money.
Because it's a marketing problem, I'll explain it in more detail here. We need to know what we want to achieve. More pupils, better pupils, schools with good teachers?
We are now discussing collaboration with freelancers that we find via Upwork.
What do we need?
We need email addresses of schools and agents in Vietnam. These addresses are also good if we only get the websites of language schools or agents.
What do we want to achieve?
I want to see what Facebook advertising can achieve first. That's why we're doing that first. That will get us there faster.
What would you like to achieve?
One-off payment or long-term collaboration with a fixed income? How much money do you need if you work for us for 3 hours a day? If you know that we will increase this number of hours and pay the hourly rate and overtime retroactively. If you're joining the team permanently, we need to know what type of person you are.
The best students can use free language programs and often get tested on job applications. If the students have good grades and good English grades, they can also start from scratch.
Teachers are also allowed to use these tools. Good teachers have good students and easy job placement.
We need to find out how good the teachers are and whether they want to improve.
We have to select carefully first.
-> Vietnam
-> German language school
If that doesn't work, it can also be language schools with other specialties (English, Korean, Spanish, French, etc.).
I currently have three offers from Vietnamese social media managers. We have several Facebook pages:
- Lifelearning.now
- Lam-Viec-Tai-Duc.now
- learnlive.today
These domains probably don't all redirect to https://www.lebenlernen.jetzt yet.
Every freelancer can create a Facebook page and choose a major city. You can spend 500 euros for the first attempt. Or smaller amounts and then gradually more?
This way you can see who is familiar with the project.
How can you work together and earn money? I would first like to know how much the first 500 euros cost and how much it costs to set up the Facebook page.
After that, I can think of various options. But it depends on how successful the campaign is.
I like to work with fixed weekly hours. That's how I work with three Upwork programmers. I know what they have to do and that it will be successful in the long term. I can also assess how well they work.
In marketing, the differences between cultures are huge. That's why I would reject many proposals because I don't like them. What matters is not my taste, but that the goal is achieved. That's why I want to focus on different cities, each freelancer on a big city.
There are different people. If one of the freelancers was an entrepreneur type, we could open an online language school in Vietnam together.