Yes, quite.. it’s pretty much a clone of Do More Poi but it is totally a private access thing. It needed to be private because for one, it’s a good bauble to sell a Poi course with (online learning resources – practice at home) but also because as well as the weekly evening session I ran for over 16′s I was teaching in schools etc. You can’t have kiddy winks heading to Do More Poi for their learning, people swear and talk about drugs and stuff here so that was out of the question.

I guess a link would be appropriate eh? : www.poilessons.com

The other main thing about this resource is the domain name. If you know anything about the net you will know that the domain name a website operates under is about it’s most powerful asset it has with regards to being found by search engines and therefore people. If someone somewhere wants a pink lawn mower, they usually type those exact words into Google. If you own pinklawnmower.com then 9 times outta 10 you are coming first, without even trying.

The idea with this one at first was simply to get some easy hits from people looking for Poi lessons  in my home city of Manchester, England. Then I kinda realised that via subdomains the same could be done for anyone. A subdomain is like a website within a website, it is seen as a separate entity by search engines and performs just like any other website with regards to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). So if you were based in New York and taught Poi then it would make a LOT of sense to advertise your services via the subdomain : newyork.poilessons.com and the same as with anywhere else in the world.

I have mentioned before that I was at one point getting work in schools. This is relatively lucrative work and I highly recommend anyone wanting to teach Poi to others try doing so in schools, especially in the UK.

I did struggle however to bag contracts, this was due to the fact that the competition that was offering courses in basket weaving etc came with a nationally recognised qualification. This made the basket weaving a more attractive option to the school etc as they could justify spending their budget on it more thanks to the bit of paper.

So I put a buttload of effort into getting Poi recognised by the governing body of educational qualifications in the UK. This body is called the AQA. The acronym stands for “Assessment and Qualifications Alliance” they are the largest of the three exam boards, awarding 49% of full course GCSEs and 42% of A-levels nationally. In total, students take over 3.5 million exams with them each year. You can read more about them here. It was a long and arduous process but in the end, it was done and worthwhile.

Here is the actual qualification registered in their database : Nationally Recognised Poi Qualification – AQA

Pretty cool huh? If you are interested in doing this do get in touch, I am a big believer in Poi being taught in schools and am happy to assist others in doing it. To use the online back up will cost a nominal amount but you will find it to be extremely worthwhile as a sales tool. i wouldn’t recommend sending potential learners to Do More Poi though, not if they are under 16 etc.