How to get started in freelance technical training
October 3, 2013 8:34 AM   Subscribe

My day job involves teaching a particular subject to people working in a particular field at a large university. How can I get started doing the same thing on a freelance basis?

Over the past few years I've gained a lot of experience and skill in a very specific type of technical training: namely, teaching programming to scientists (or aspiring scientists) working in a particular field. I've written a book and built an online course to help people in this field learn programming, and there is definitely a large (and increasing) need for them to do so. My current day job is as a university lecturer and a large part of my job involves teaching programming.

Recently I was approached by a local research institution asking if I would run a short course in programming for a bunch of their researchers who wanted to learn. I replied with a quote at the very low end of what I could find online for similar courses, and they seem to be happy with the arrangement. I would very much like to run such courses again, on a freelance basis.

What should I be doing in order to make this happen? If you were in a position of having to arrange instructor-led training for a group of people at your workplace or organization, how would you go about finding an instructor, and what would convince you to hire them? I suspect that the answer may lie in networking and word-of-mouth recommendations - so should I concentrate more on attending/speaking at conferences etc. than in developing my website? In particular, I'm interested in advice on how I might make the leap from delivering training to businesses as well as educational/research institutions.

Thanks for any advice you can give.
posted by anonymous to Work & Money (1 answer total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
There's a group I've hired to do training for my team at work - AcademyX. The instructor was a contractor.

They're based in San Francisco, but they send trainers all over the country.

I think there are a lot of technical training schools that hire independent instructors.
posted by colin_l at 9:03 AM on October 3, 2013


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