Thread: No one showed up for class...

Lol... you guys are great! Thanks for all the advice, tips, kudos, and shenanigans! :)

On the bright side, I'm starting a 6 week intermediate class, and I already have people coming to that! yippie! :)

Originally Posted by saheli

My ideal would be to have a home studio for the reasons you described. But I'd need to own a home for that. I'm an apartment dweller who wishes she had the space for a home studio.

When I purchase a home in the future, I definitely home shop with the purpose of having a home studio in mind.

We bought an abandoned, foreclosed, huge, 1890 house a few yrs ago. It was a wreck, wild cats were living in it.
In the first 20 minutes of seeing the 3rd floor and knowing the potential of DANCE STUDIO, despite the 4 layers of filthy shag rug & who-knows-what on the wood floors; the entire walls & ceiling surfaced with industrial strenth staples with Genesee Cream Ale 12-pak cartons from 1977 - well, you get the picture - we decided to buy it.
I've never regretted it.

Originally Posted by LiesaB.

...the entire walls & ceiling surfaced with industrial strenth staples with Genesee Cream Ale 12-pak cartons from 1977 - well, you get the picture - we decided to buy it.
I've never regretted it.

Irresistible.

Originally Posted by Lesedi

Lol... you guys are great! Thanks for all the advice, tips, kudos, and shenanigans! :)

On the bright side, I'm starting a 6 week intermediate class, and I already have people coming to that! yippie! :)

Would love to have my own house and property. I'd definitely make a studio space.

Well no one showed up for the free class, so me and a buddy worked on a duo choreography we've been wanting to do for a while. I'm going to just use the rest of my studio time this month as good practice time, and then I'm done... no more beginner class for a while.

I am teaching an intermediate class now though, and I've already got a much better response from some dedicated gals in town. That will be enjoyable. :)

Originally Posted by Lesedi

Would love to have my own house and property. I'd definitely make a studio space.

Well no one showed up for the free class, so me and a buddy worked on a duo choreography we've been wanting to do for a while. I'm going to just use the rest of my studio time this month as good practice time, and then I'm done... no more beginner class for a while.

I am teaching an intermediate class now though, and I've already got a much better response from some dedicated gals in town. That will be enjoyable. :)

Like you Lesedi, I have an on going intermediat class. It's doing okay.

I'm giving my Free class tomorrow as part of an open house event the studio is putting on. I'm going to see if I can get by Basics Class kick started.

I'm going with pre-registrations. Drop in classes have worked since 1998. This will be a totally new experience for me. If I don't get enough student (need at least 5), I'm going to hang the basics class up for 2010 and try again in 2011.

Thanks to everyone with all the idea. Again, you all don't know how much it helps to talk to others with the same issues. Fresh ideas help sooooo much!

Originally Posted by Marianna

But I feel like I'm a bad teacher because students are dropping. On the other hand, the students who dropped out were telling me how much they loved it and they wanted to keep coming. I know people have other priorities, and things come up, but it still leaves me feeling inadequate.

You cannot believe how relieved I am to read I'm not alone in this!

I've had a very similar experience with y'all! A few years ago, my beginning classes were full with hardly any advertising and my intermediate classes were smaller. Now I'm advertising up the wazoo and hardly have any beginners and it's the intermediate dancers who are seeking me out! I had a few no show classes starting out and decided to go to the pre-registration format. Thanks for sharing how it's been going everyone!

This past Sunday, I only had 1 student come to my Level 1 class. (It was the 6-year old daughter of one of my Level 3 students!) And although she's a delightful girl, I will have to cancel the class if she's the only one. So, I decided to put up my first-ever Facebook ad. I put a maximum of $5/day and am running the ad for 5 days ($25 maximum). It's been 3 days- I've had over 25,000 impressions and 38 clicks (it's only being shown to women who live within 10 miles of the city the studio is in, and who are within age 20-60.) So we'll see if anyone comes from the ad- if I get 1 student for the session, it will have more than paid for itself, but I need at least a couple more to run the class (I get paid per student at this studio, and have run sessions with as few as 3, simply so that those 3 don't go elsewhere- you can barely throw a rock in the metro and NOT hit a place that teaches belly dance.)

After next Sunday, I'll post again and let you know if I got any students from the FB ad.

We had no results with FB ads in this area. Curious to hear about your experience.

I've tried facebook ads as well.... a couple of clicks, but no leads.

I have one up at the moment as well & think it's going to be the last one...

I feel your pain. I just had my last class cancelled due to low enrollment.

Originally Posted by norma

I feel your pain. I just had my last class cancelled due to low enrollment.

BUMMER.

Man this economy just suck. Our advanced solo class along with the beginner class was scant this session.

Keep your chin up. I love the fact that you danced anyway even if you didn't hav any students that first night! Bless you! :-)

Originally Posted by maurazebra

We had no results with FB ads in this area. Curious to hear about your experience.

In the 5 days that the ad ran, I got over 50,000 impressions and over 70 clicks. For those not familiar with the terminology, that means that my ad was shown over 50,000 times in the ad part of people's FB pages and 73 people clicked on the ad-which took them to the studio's website. (Only people who met my criteria, which was women between the ages of 20-60 who live within 10 miles of the city the studio is in.) I'll find out tomorrow if it brings anyone in!

We had many impressions and clicks, but no direct results. Looking forward to hearing about your experiment.

Have any of you guys tried posting on Craigslist? My Culver City enrollment is up this time around (10 in each class, usually I'm struggling to meet the minimum of 7), and it's the first time I posted on Craigslist. Short of asking the students I have no way of knowing if that's what brought them in, but it's free and worth a shot if you have an active CL community.

update: ad ran for 6 days. Over 50,000 impressions and over 70 clicks. Not a single student from it. Got another student in the class and might get 3-5 more next week, but it's all word of mouth, nothing from the FB ad. We'll see what happens.

I did try Craigslist a few times, and the only thing I got was a few guys who wanted to come and watch. But I may try it again. It is free, after all.

It's slow here too. We are starting to advertise because obviously people aren't just falling into the studio, will see what happens.

Yesterday I ran into a friend outside my class. She said she was depressed, everybody she knows is depressed, there has just been so much trouble recently - it isn't just the economy - it seems to be a time of great stress and change for people.

Therefore even if they can afford it people are reluctant even to go outside and if they are the least bit afraid of their futures they don't want to spend dime one. That's part of our problem right there - even if people still have jobs they are afraid to part with money AND I think there's an emotional component to our socio-economic situation, ie it is depressing.

One of my students works for a large bank that swallowed a smaller local bank. Part of her job is dealing with low morale in her department.

Naturally I suggested a belly dance class in her office. ..cr.:

here's another to tell you you're not alone. i had one person show up to my drills class on monday, part way through the review we both understood that she should be in the beginner class. i went home and put the class as canceled on my site. She paid me for the drill class and the full session of wednesday beginner classes, but since i had changed gears for her-bring the only one there- and taught her the first class's material on monday she was going to start coming to wednesdays the second week.
i just edited my site for wednesday classes, which i had zero show up to. also canceled. so i'll have to refund her. this was going to be my only income for the semester so it's a good thing i live at home and don't need to pay rent.

canceled my beginning class- down to drills, intermediate & special topics- new session in 2 weeks, if it doesn't pick up, it'll just be drill & intermediate back to back with the same people in both. Sigh.

exploring options for putting on a couple local shows- I don't really want to be at the mercy of restaurant owners & haven't had a private gig in a while- we'll see how this all pans out, but I hope we pull out of this soon! Weird thing is, Alaska hasn't been hit too hard economically, but everyone is scared anyway.

My experience with Facebook advertising is that it brings in the curious, but it takes a while to convert them to sales. They just aren't looking to sign up for a class right away when they click on the ad.

But I think they WILL sign up for a newsletter, and eventually convert to students. I've just set up my tracking to see how many of them sign up for the newsletter instead of for classes. When I have info to report, I'll update.

I've been getting inquiries; we'll see if anybody new actually shows up for class (whispers prayer to the Class Goddess..l;,)

Don't get me wrong, but I laughed till I cried at this thread. I thought I was the only one this had ever happened to! How wrong I was and the tears of relief flowed! OMG this was awsome.
Disheartening - no s#$t! I still cringe when my boyfriend mentions how disillusioned I was in the beginning. Wasn't sure if it was the rural area I live in or my personality! I chalked it up to a all sorts of variables that were usually my imagined flaws. People always had interest but never committed=must be my fault!
This still happens on occasion such as in the hottest heat of summer or near xmas but usually one or two diehard students show up and we work on choreography. The first year I would be lucky to have two students, more often none. I had to ditch the big halls/ gyms I was renting. It has taken three years for consistency and I feel now due to the economy that it is starting to slide downhill again and have thought of taking a break. Thank you all for sharing and Lesedi for being brave and starting this thread.

new strategy (since I have to pay for 16 hours a month that I signed a contract for, but my studio owner is being flexible with booking new time slots- yay!) I'm doing a couple special events- a 2 hour workout session, a special topic workshop, a family day (bring kids/gran/auntie, etc)- still doing regular drills & advanced technique for the faithful few.

will keep you all posted on what actually works, but I'd love updates on how you all are coping at this point too!

My two other business partners decided to post on Craig's List and we immediately started getting spam business offers :)