Top 3 Ways To Make Up For Lost Holiday Income

Are you getting ready to shop for all of those big, holiday sales? Let's face it, the holidays are an exciting time of the year. ❄️ It's exciting to be a teacher! We can do all of those fun, holiday activities, and our kids are off the charts happy. But, there's one little problem with all of this. Are you finding that you have a lot more time to do things than, say, last month? 🤔

Most of you are going to experience a loss of income during this time of year because our kids are going to take some time off. At the same time, we're rushing about getting ready for our special guests and the ones that we love and spending more money. This can impact us significantly during the month of December and have us playing catch-up. So, this week I'm sharing three tips to help you implement a strategy to make up the cost of that money you're going to miss.

Extra Holiday Income Tip #1

My first tip to bring in extra income is to offer baseline assessments. This is one of my favorite ways to boost income no matter the time of the year. Many parents are receiving information from schools during conferences about what level their child is on or how they scored on a test. But, as we know, it does not measure the foundational skills of a child.

Some easy tests to implement are to provide a parent with an assessment on phonological awareness using the PAST by David Kilpatrick, reading real words, nonsense words, and high frequency words, and decodable sentences or passages. You also want to include tests for encoding or spelling of high frequency words, real words, and decodable sentences. An easy test for this is to administer the Wade - Wilson assessment of decoding and encoding.

Extra Holiday Income Tip #2

My second strategy to bring in extra income during the holidays is to offer a parent support class. There are so many parents that need a little extra support to understand how to teach their kids how to read, especially at the early levels. The great thing about parents is that they are available at different times than the usual 3 - 7 time frame you usually do with your students. You can meet with parents during the evening via Zoom, and you can also teach many of them at the same time.

You have the information that will help them. Remember, you are the expert! 😍 Whether you do this in person or online, this is a great way to boost your income that you might lose during the holidays. If you don't have time to do it before or you feel parents are too busy, no worries, you can make up your class during Christmas break when you have time. Then, you can promote it after the holiday season. It's the middle of the year, and many parents will be looking for answers and support as they get feedback from the school.

Extra Holiday Income Tip #3

A third way to boost your income is to take on another student. Here's a little tip on how to find another student; offer your current client a discount for a certain number of months if they find you a client before the holidays. This incentive is great because everybody loves a deal! Money off their payments is a good incentive and will have them search for somebody for you.

As a special thank you for being a member of the Read to Rewire community, HERE is a free Thanksgiving game for you to play with your students. Also, keep an eye out for a special Black Friday sale. Keep up with strategies, products, resources, and sales by following me on Instagram HERE.

As an extra thank you for your support, I have reduced the price of the one-on-one coaching for this week by $20. Check it out HERE.

I've also reduced the document camera training video to $12 this week! Grab yours HERE!

I hope this helps you bring in a little extra cash this holiday season. Do you have ways you make extra income during the holidays that you'd love to share? Let us know in the comments!