Programming is quite popular today. So if you have your own business idea on how to start teaching children this interesting craft, you can make it a reality with a few of our recommendations.
Planning phase
This is the first step that every entrepreneur who is going to open their own programming school for children must go through. First of all, you need to assess the scale of the business, study demand in your city or town, and calculate the budget based on expected costs.
How relevant is this business idea at all? The demand for this profession is growing. This is due to the fact that programming is now found in almost every industry. In addition, all companies strive to introduce themselves on the Internet to further scale their business. Of course, they cannot do without programmers.
Many parents strive to keep up with the times and let their children learn how to develop. Despite the fact that programming in the past has many advantages, including the development of concentration, logic, and creative thinking, many parents send their child to such courses with a view to the future. This means that courses will be in demand in any case.
By the way, if you do not expect a lot of demand in your village, you should not give up on the idea. Courses can be opened online. This is a fairly popular destination today.
Budget calculation
As part of the planning phase, it is necessary to calculate the costs of opening and operating a school. We immediately note that you should not expect a quick payback. Your school will be able to make a profit within the first two to three years if it operates steadily. What should you pay attention to when calculating costs? Here is the main list of costs that you will have to face at the initial stage:
- Preparation and processing of documents.
- Room rental.
- Purchase of equipment and furniture.
- Marketing campaign.
- Hiring costs
In addition, you will have to face the following expenses every month:
- Room rental fee (+ utilities).
- Employee salaries.
- Marketing campaign.
As part of this article, it is quite difficult to calculate how much you will spend on average to open and maintain a school, since it all depends on the region and the planned size of the school. But we can say that the minimum amount will vary from 1 to 1.5 million rubles.
By discovering online courses, you will spend much less, as you can exclude the purchase of equipment and furniture for classrooms from the items of expenditure. However, even with this format, you will likely need to rent a physical office. Therefore, expenses should be budgeted, albeit on a smaller scale.
Premises for rent
This is a very important issue that is being addressed at the initial stage. It is important to pay attention to three main points here:
- School location.
- Spaciousness.
- Layout
The first point is very important in terms of accessibility for parents. If the school is located in an area with poor transport links or simply in a disadvantaged location, it is likely that you will not be able to attract a large number of customers. On the other hand, organizing programming courses for children in residential areas, for example, has its advantages. Children from nearby homes can go to classes by themselves.
As for capacity, it is very important to first determine how many classrooms you plan to open. For example, this may be one classroom and the work will be done in a classroom manner. So some children have finished their studies, others have come. However, as the school develops, one classroom may not be enough and you may have to find new premises.
Staff search
Teachers are the main characters of any school. The selection of teaching staff for programming courses for children requires a special approach. If a practicing programmer is enough for adults to explain all the nuances, children need a special approach.
All children's education takes place in a playful way. That is, the teacher must have a specific method of work designed for the youngest. There should be an approach to children and the ability to explain complex things in a simple and accessible way, and speak children's language.
Otherwise, the teacher will not be interesting and this will lead to a decrease in the number of students. Parents will not pay money just for their child to attend classes without practical benefit.
In addition to teachers, programming school for kids needs administration and maintenance personnel. This should also not be forgotten when calculating opening costs.
Marketing campaign
So, everything is almost ready and all that remains is to wait for customers. In today's world, putting your heart and soul into your project is not enough. Even if you do everything at a high level, your customer base will grow very slowly due to the fact that few people know that you have opened a programming school for kids. Therefore, we need a competent marketing campaign.
It can be done both online and offline. Let's consider both options. The offline marketing campaign includes preparing paper ads, conducting free lessons at nearby schools, flyers, and commercials on radio and TV. Sometimes representatives of children's schools and circles attend parent meetings on September 1 in order to reach as many audiences as possible. Here you can summarize the program and hand out flyers.
An online marketing campaign consists primarily of creating your own website that will tell visitors about all the benefits of the school, as well as provide detailed information about the forms and formats of education, training programs, and teachers.
A large website is not needed to advertise the school. A business card site is often enough. After creating your own page on the Internet, you need to think about how to promote it. And there are two options here — SEO and buying search engine ads. Moreover, both approaches do not contradict each other, that is, you can simultaneously promote the site in search engines and buy advertising space on Yandex and Google.
A regular business card is not enough for SEO promotion of a website. You'll need to write content for specific user requests so they can learn about your site and school. Therefore, you can additionally create a blog where you can post useful and interesting materials about children's programming.
And one more important point — SEO is unlikely to give quick results (unless there is low competition for all user queries in your region). Therefore, it is recommended to combine advertising and search engine promotion at least for the first time, until the blog becomes popular.
Social networks also play an important role today. The school must be represented in places where the target audience could potentially be located. For example, this is Instagram, Facebook or YouTube. Social media management is an important part of a marketing campaign. To do this, they often hire an SMM specialist who will promote a profile or channel on YouTube to reach a larger audience.
findings
In this article, we reviewed the main stages of preparing and opening a programming school for children. As a mono option, view ready-made options that are sold in your city. If they don't exist, start a business from scratch.
