Over the last couple of years, the enrollments in my CHL classes have varied quite a bit, but what I now consider a ‘small’ class is what I would have considered a really large class 6 years ago. Back then, I was happy to get more than 3 students in a class. Business got a lot better when I located a facility that could accommodate up to about 30 students, with a range and fingerprinting service on the premises. The convenience of having a one-stop class that took care of everything made a lot of difference, and I started averaging 10-15 students in each class.
About 2 years ago, my courses started consistently selling out. Back then, I capped my courses at 16 students (two sets in an 8-lane range), but the demand was much greater than that, so I worked out ways to handle larger classes. It’s a lot more work, but I can now handle classes with up to 32 students — with the help of another instructor. My brother Tom now co-teaches with me whenever I know in advance that I will have more than 16 students. I also have standing arrangements with some other instructors to help with range testing if I need it.
I have noticed that recently, the demand for CHL classes has eased up a bit. For instance, tomorrow’s class only has eleven students, which is a comfortable size that is fairly easy to handle, even if a few of them have little or no handgun experience. With less than 15 minutes of one-on-one coaching, I can get almost anybody shooting well enough to pass the ridiculously easy Texas CHL range qualification. Of course, I make more money with more students, but I have not yet found the magic marketing trick that will predictably fill my classes.
Something happened today that might change that. Actually, a couple of things. One, I have been studying search-engine-optimization (SEO), and I have discovered a number of things that I have been doing wrong. And I will be correcting those problems over the next few weeks. But the Big Thing that happened today is that I got a very nice mention in Martin Avis’ email newsletter, ‘Kickstart’. I don’t recall how big his list is, but I think it is in the hundreds of thousands. When I saw that, I went and bumped up the bandwidth limit on my site by a factor of four — and I hope that is enough to handle the traffic surge.
If you are interested in Martin’s newsletter, you can sign up for it here. (Opens in a new window)
So, if you are here as a result of Martin’s email, welcome, and I hope you find something here interesting enough to come back. I also hope that the increased traffic leads to more students.
