Some Final Advice

Now that you’re in “wait and see” mode, here’s some final advice.

1. Be patient. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get clients right away. Some times of the school year are much busier than others.

2. Don’t quit your day job! Tutoring is great supplemental income, but it is not lucrative enough to be a sole source of income if you keep an honest business model (not upselling your clients.) The most I’ve seen people get away with is working part time days somewhere and offering more tutoring hours in the afternoon. Like I said in an earlier post, tutoring is a feast or famine business. Most of your clients will realize that there will be some topics they’ll understand just fine and won’t need to see you on a consistent basis. I can’t tell you how many tutors are viewed as smarmy and charlatans because they try and get their clients to agree to a monthly account (Tutor centers like Score! are notorious for this.) Also, the timing of the school year needs to be taken into consideration. When the school year is busy, I have made $1000-$2000/month. During the summer, I’ve made $300-$600/month. Do not listen to people who claim you can tutor and become wealthy. You can’t. The people saying so are usually selling you their books and other marketing services to supplement their tutoring income. If they were making so much money tutoring, they wouldn’t resort to that. It reminds me of companies that claim you can get rich selling real estate. What makes more money, selling the real estate or the selling of the real estate system?

3. Set limits. It won’t take you long to decide what kinds of students you are and aren’t willing to tutor, what areas you are and aren’t willing to travel to, and what your availability is. Once you make those decisions, stick by them.

And that’s it. Happy tutoring! The rest of this blog will deal with the pangs of the business (how to deal with no call no shows, etc) and evolving as a tutor.

Advertising Your Services

OK, you’ve decided on what to tutor, tested your market, set your prices, and set up your contact info and (possibly) website. Now, you’re ready to advertise your services. Only question is where and how? The answer depends on your market. 

College Students
As mentioned before, college students don’t have much money to spend on tutoring (despite needing it in tougher subjects), so you don’t want to spend much money advertising to them, and with Craigslist, you don’t have to. Most college students shop for tutors on Craigslist, and, because it’s free, it’s an ideal place to advertise your services.  A word of caution with Craigslist. Only advertise locally. There is a high volume of scammers using Craigslist, but you can avoid most of them by only dealing in your local area. You can read more about Craigslist scams and how to avoid them here. 

Another excellent place for advertising your services is Yahoo! local. You can make a basic listing for free.

Flyers are another way to advertise. Most college have public posting boards with a three day time limit. Also, if the school allows it, you may post your flyer on department boards. One of the chemistry professors allowed me to post my flyer on the same board he posted the answers to his tests. Again, get permission before doing that.

High School and Younger Students 
The high school market is more lucrative than the college one, but the advertising approach is different. It can also be more expensive. The reason for this is because you’re advertising to parents and not the students directly. There are some ways to reach parents without spending a lot or any money.

1. Referrals from Schools. This is a brilliant way to get a lot of business if you’re smart about it. Find out who the guidance counselors are the the school and send them a polite (and humble) email or letter explaining who you are and your tutoring services. It helps if you have your website up and running so you can refer to it in the correspondence. Nine times out of ten you will get a response informing you what the school’s tutor referral policy is. Some schools I have contacted have a private tutor page on their website that they have added me to. Other schools have invited me to come in for an interview before referring me to parents. Some of the relationships I have developed with the schools have been so positive, that I am allowed to tutor the student on campus during “Saturday School.” However you choose to make initial contact make sure it’s to the guidance counselor. Do not contact the teachers. Remember you are dealing with minors, so there are liability issues involved that most teachers are not comfortable with. Also, chances are high you will insult the teacher. A lot of teachers are threatened by tutors because there’s a perception that something is wrong with their teaching. Guidance counselors are there to make sure the student succeeds and are “bad” teacher watchdogs. Do not take offense if you receive no response or even a negative response. With some schools, the liability concerns are across the board, and, therefore, don’t refer outside tutors at all. Don’t take it personal 🙂

2. Listing in Search Engines: When you get your website up and running, spend the money to have in listed in the popular web portals. The top three are Google, MSN and Yahoo. Your hosting company will usually list you in one of them. You’ll have to pay a company like Submitnet to get a listing in the other two. It shouldn’t cost more than $50/quarter, and most have a 90 day free trial. Making sure search engine spiders can find your website is crucial for advertising to this market, so it is money well spent. 

3. Yahoo! local. See above. Parents of school aged children use it too.

I don’t recommend using Craigslist for advertising to the school-aged market. A lot of parents do shop Craigslist for tutors, but they are not looking to pay more than $20/hour, and the market rate for tutoring to elementary and high school students is twice that amount, especially if you tutor in physical sciences or foreign languages. 

If you tutor a subject that is marketable in both college and high school, keep your advertising separate. Avoid advertising lower prices for college students on your website, as this will turn many parents of high school students off. Make it very clear in your ad that your services are for college students only. Don’t mention your website (college students aren’t as impressed by them) in your listing, and use a different email address just in case a parent of a high school student responds. Craigslist gives you the option to make your contact info anonymous. Use it! (This also helps control spam.)

Setting Up Your Contact Info, Etc

People who want to hire you will need a way to contact you. When you’re just starting out, all you need is an email address devoted to tutoring and a cheap planner to write client information. I used Yahoo! mail when I first started. I knew quick response times would be important for getting business, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to check my email frequently enough at my day job. I wasn’t comfortable giving out my personal cel phone number, and I couldn’t afford a separate line. With Yahoo! mail, I could set my cel phone up to get text alerts whenever I got a new email. It worked like a charm, took the guess work out of when to check my email, and kept me from revealing my personal information. As your business grows, you will need to invest in a separate cel phone line. It makes you look more professional, and it’s a more convenient place to store your client’s information. A handheld device is even better, as you can store data, email, text, and call from them. I now use a Sidekick 3.

If you have a little more money to spend up front, invest in two things: a website and business cards. This can be done later for those that don’t have the cash, but eventually, all tutors should have both. It adds to your professionalism and it gives your client tangable information about your tutoring services. Yahoo! has very affordable webhosting (my site is hosted on Yahoo!, ~$11/month), and provides valuable webtools to build it. Choose a domain name that is relavent to tutoring. For example, if you tutor accounting, your URL could be theaccountingtutor.com. Avoid using your name as a URL. It’s unprofessional because it gives the impression your website is a personal or a social one. It also doesn’t refer to tutoring, which will make it difficult for clients to remember it. Some tutors think having voice and video on their website goes a long way in attracting business. It’s a nicety, I suppose, but definitely not necessary. A website that spells out the who you are, what you tutor, where you tutor, how much you charge, and how to contact you is all you need. Keep it simple and to the point.  

Business cards. It is a good idea to have them for the extra professionalism. Lots of places make them for an affordable price. Try the UPS store, Fedex Kinkos, or google search a company that will make them. If you have skills (and a mac), you can make some lovely business cards with iWork, even Appleworks can do it, if you still have it installed.

How Much To Charge

This topic is where a substantial amount of the misleading information on tutoring exists. Some tutors swear by creating a price structure based on the degree they have (bachelors or masters). Some tutors insist on charging more for tutoring higher level courses (more for organic chemistry then for general chemistry.) I feel it is best to develop a price structure primarily based on your target market, the people who have a use for what you tutor.  I can’t stress that enough.  Let’s go back to that organic chemistry/general chemistry example. Organic chemistry is a sophomore-junior year college course. It is much more extensive and difficult than general chemistry, and it takes a lot more skill to be able to tutor it. Seems justifiable to charge $40-$50/hour, right? Wrong. Only cash-strapped college students take organic chemistry. Even though it’s a tougher course and worth more for the skill level, the only people in the market for an o-chem tutor can’t afford to pay more than $20-$25/hour. General chemistry, on the other hand, is less dificult, but it also has a different market. A lot of general chemistry students are still in high school and their parents can better afford $40-$50/hour.

After you’ve identified your target market, shop your competition, and set your price competitive to that. Use any of the top three search engines (google.com, msn.com, yahoo.com), to search for tutors in your area. Tutors also advertise on Craigslist and Kudzu. Tutor directories are also an ideal place to shop the competition. Two popular tutor directories are Directory of Tutors and Tutors Teach. Once you’ve determined the going rate for tutoring your subject, THEN you can tweak it based on your education level, service you’re willing to provide, rarity of tutors in your subject, etc. Even then, do not get too cocky with your pricing. Tutoring is a feast or famine business. It is better to charge moderate prices (relative to your area) and have a more consistent work flow then to be expensive and only work once in awhile.

Once you decide what to charge, consider setting up package deals that are paid for upfront. For example, my by the hour rate is $50/hour, which is a competitive rate in my area. I offer two package deals. One is 4 hours for $190 (which breaks down to $47.5/hr) and 8 hours for $360 (which breaks down into $45/hr.) Package deals are nice because one, clients feel like they’re getting more for their money, and, two, they help ensure you get paid even if the student doesn’t show up for a session. Missed sessions are a problem with tutoring, and I will cover it in more detail in a future post.

Choosing Where To Tutor

Libraries and coffee shops are ideal places for tutoring. They’re open to the public, neutral, comfortable, and located just about everywhere. Tons of people study there. A lot of people also tutor there. College libraries are good for students who attend the college. Avoid tutoring in people’s homes. Never tutor a college student at their place of residence. This goes triple if you are a female tutor and your student is male. If the male student insists on being tutored at his home, deny the job. This is for obvious safety reasons. If you’re planning on tutoring high school students, be prepared for some of their parents to want you to tutor them at home. It’s fair to say it’s less of a safety hazard than it is with college students, but there are still some things to consider.  One, the neutrality is gone. Going into someone’s home makes you vulnerable as it is easier to be falsely accused of inappropriate behavior or actions. Also lots of people have pets. If you have allergies or don’t like them (I don’t like dogs), this will be a problem. Don’t worry. There are lots of high school student’s parents who aren’t comfortable letting a tutor come to their home, and have no problem taking their child to a nearby coffee shop. These are the people you’ll want to concentrate on.

Choosing What To Tutor

Only choose subjects you know very well, like something you do for a living. I’m a chemist, so I tutor chemistry. An accountant could tutor accounting. Someone fluent in foreign languages could tutor them. Tutoring something in your profession goes a long way with potential clients. They know you’re seasoned at what you do. Choosing a subject just because you took a class in it recently and got an A should be avoided. Chances are you do not know the material well enough to tutor it. I’ve gotten a lot of clients who have told me they just fired a tutor like this. Also, stick to one or two core subjects. You’ll be taken a lot more seriously than someone who presents himself as someone who can tutor several subjects (jack of all trades tutors.) The only exception to that is an elementary school teacher. They are trained to teach more than one subject, so they probably could tutor more than one. Otherwise, stick to one or two subjects you know very well.

Once you’ve chosen your subject, gather your prep materials. Your textbooks from college will work to start, but if it’s been more than 10 years since you graduated from college (I graduated in 1994), it’s a good idea to get some more recent textbooks. Internet supplements have become an integral part of textbooks today, and you’ll be a better tutor if you familiarize yourself with the style today’s books are written in. I picked up some more recent chemistry books from amazon.com. I just bought used copies of the latest edition or one edition prior. If you shop around, you can spend as little as $20 per book. Books at a college bookstore will be far more expensive. 

So You Want To Be a Tutor?

Good for you. It’s a great way to make extra money and pays a lot more than getting a second job somewhere. You also don’t need to spend any money to get started, (you will later as you gain momentum.) There are some things you need to understand about the business. There’s a lot of information out there about having your own tutoring business that’s misleading and coming from people with questionable motives (selling their own products.) I’m going to use this blog to put some better information on the subject out there. I have no products to sell, and I’m not affiliated with any company I’ll mention in this blog. I welcome your comments, but one the following condition: you cannot pitch your own products, tutoring services, or products you get a kickback for promoting. Your comment will be edited if I see any personal plugs.