Tutoring is one of the best and most lucrative side hustles. I started my private tutoring business when I was just 19, fresh out of high school, and I was tutoring Mathematics. I was studying engineering at university. But throughout the following 5 years, I was tutoring on the side. I was looking after on average, 28 students per year, making roughly $75,000 a year while still at university. With tutoring, the work gets really rewarding if you like teaching, you get really flexible hours and you can even earn more than your 9-5 job. I want to share with you all of lessons I’ve learned along the way and how you can grow and build your own tutoring business as well.
Marketing Your Tutoring Business
So, to start a tutoring business, first thing we need is students. For that marketing is important.
When you are starting your business, you can start off doing a lot of things that are absolutely for free like, going to your inner circle, your friends and family, and spreading word-of-mouth that you are doing tutoring.
Since tutoring is a service-based industry, it means that being personable and knowing you is really important. So, you would want to leverage that by actually connecting with your friends, families, friends of friends, whoever that can spread word-of-mouth about you.
Because the fact that these people know you means that your chances of actually converting someone to be your student is much higher than, say, posting online on social media where it does take time to nurture somebody who has no idea who you are.
Beyond that, leverage your local community. So think about networking in local libraries and cafes, because localization is something that you can definitely leverage, especially if you’re doing in person tutoring.
People like the fact that they don’t have to travel far and know that if you’re within just a few miles of their place, it’s a lot more convenient for them as well.
Check out the local community Facebook groups. Is it a Facebook group based on that specific subject or topic that you teach?
So, for example, if you’re a tutor who’s helping parents and coaching them to help this child sleep better, then you would want to go onto parenting forums.
All of the tactics I’ve mentioned so far are really cost effective, really low input, low effort ways for you to really quickly get your first few students.
If you are planning to start online tutoring, you can start building a website, build up you social media presence and followers, all things which are a lot more intensive, and therefore take up a lot of your time. So, if there’s a way to get students quicker and easier, then why not do that?
Setting Up the Pricing
Next is your pricing. Some things for you to consider are:
- Am I teaching 1 on 1 or am I teaching to small group or to a class?
- Am I teaching in person or am I doing it online?
- If you’re teaching in-person, are they coming to you or are you traveling to them?
All of these questions help you determine how much time you’re actually putting into the tutoring itself, not just the time of tutoring. You actually need time to travel to places if you’re doing it in person. You need time to prepare for the session. You may provide support outside of the session.
All of these cuts into your own personal time. And so when you think about charging for 1 hour of tutoring, don’t just think of that 1 hour. Encompass it with everything else you’re doing throughout the week to make sure that you’re actually charging a rate that makes sense for you.
Now you can look at the market rate and see how much other tutors with your similar level of experience tutoring your subject or topic are charging. However, market rate is only just a starting point.
You don’t necessarily want to charge what basically everyone else is charging because then that makes it highly competitive. So whenever you can, you actually would want to start increasing your prices. I know when it comes to increasing your prices and charging above market rate may make you more fearful and uncomfortable.
However, tutoring is a serious business and you can only expect success in it if you think about it like a business owner. The idea is to distinguish yourself apart from the existing market and one way to do that is to offer quality teaching at a premium price.
Choosing Your Ideal Students
For your tutoring as a side hustle to be successful, you need to define your ideal student. At some point in your tutoring career, you’re going to have a student who comes to you and signs up, and it’s all very exciting, but it all just goes downhill from there.
They’re either not motivated, so they’re inattentive inside your sessions. They’re not particularly responsive. They’re not engaged and as a result, they probably stop coming to your sessions week after week. They only show up if it’s last minute, and they’re desperate and they have an exam that they need to prepare for.
And so these type of students are not the type of students you want in your business. Why? Because they’re not the type of students who are going to build up your reputation as a brand. They’re not going to sing your business name out to others and share good word-of-mouth about you. And not just that, but they’re actually harder students to teach.
So instead, we want to focus on attracting your ideal student. And an ideal student looks different to everyone.
For me, an ideal student is someone who is engaged. They’re motivated. I know I’m particularly good at helping those who are averaging in Mathematics. They’re not at the very top. They’re also not at the very bottom, but they’ve already established the basics.
These are the students that I am best at helping at. It can help your business in so many ways:
- You’re probably going to produce amazing transformative results for those students.
- They’re going to sing word-of-mouth about your business which will help you get more students for your tutoring business.
- Your first handful of ideal students are going to be crucial in you building that solid foundation in your business
Apart from these you can provide free trial sessions to students to let them judge your teaching style. You have to be absolutely spot on when it comes to your first session. Your first session, even if it’s a trial one can make or break your future prospects. So, always focus on a great first session with your students.
You can go ahead and put these suggestions in practice if you are really interested in becoming a tutor as a side hustle. If you feel this is not for you, you can check on some other side hustles like how to earn reviewing amazon products, or becoming TikTok shop affiliate, or earning money from affiliate marketing on Pinterest.
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