Finding students

Fred

New Member
<font color="blue"> </font> Hi everyone
Just got my CFI-A & CFII
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I have the flight school lined up, they are happy to have me, but we don't have a ton of students pouring in, and technically, the CFI's are on their own to get students. I guess we are considered independent. My question is:anyone have suggestions on how to get students? For those of us who are independent, can we advertise in some form? Would appreciate any ideas.

Freddy, CFII
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Just curious what airport you fly out of? There are many things you can do print up business cards and start to hand them out, Have flyers printed up and put them on the bulletin boards at grocery stores, churches, hospitals, etc.. just use your imagination.
 
I'd run an ad in a newspaper if I were you, or post something on a visible website on the internet. Try and think of where you'd go to find a service. For example: If you needed a professinal service to mow your lawn, where would you look? Me personally, I'm not going to wait until somebody hands me a flyer... I want someone to mow my lawn now! So... I'm most likely to check the internet, check the yellow pages (take a look in your local yellow pages for flight schools... I'll bet you'll be amazed at small number of flight schools that advertise--- it's way too expensive for most schools), or in the newspaper. My advice to you: think of a hobby that you're interested in, something like playing the guitar or learning a language. Once you figure out what you want to 'learn', go ahead and start finding people who you'd most likely call to get those lessons. Wherever it is that those people are advertising is a good place to start... if it was effective enough for you to find somebody to teach you Italian (or whatever your language or hobby of choice), chances are it'll also be a good place for you to start advertising.
 
I get 90% of my students from my website. I use Frontpage to create and maintain the site, and it costs me $9.95 per month for a server. The real trick is getting the website to rank well in the search engines. I get a steady stream of calls and e-mails from all over the southeast.
 
The book "The Savvy Flight Instructor" by Greg Brown is a great resource for marketing yourself.
 
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