A step-by-step guide to starting online tutoring
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You probably typed “how to tutor online” in your search engine, and now you’re here! You’re ready to pursue your passion, get that extra income, or invest time in developing new skills.
However, there’s one small issue…you don’t exactly know how to do online tutoring.
Don’t worry, you’re in just the right place!
This step-by-step guide will give you the information you need to start tutoring online.
Get your basics right
Find your niche
Successful tutoring requires more than just teaching, it requires marketing. As a tutor, you are the face of your services. You are the marketer, the CEO and the workforce.
First, start with asking yourself what you are good at and what might be your potential “niche.” Do you want to prep students for exams, or are you more interested in teaching kids? Are you best with beginners, or does getting intermediate speakers fluent sound more like your thing? Before you dive in, know where you stand.
Then, do your research. Check out who is the best in tutoring and what they actually do to be the best. To find this information, you can look up tutoring platforms, and see what their top educators look like: what do their profiles say? How do they market themselves? What are their rates? Learn from their approach.
The next step is market research. In simple words, you need to gather information on:
- the market you want to enter (e.g. teaching English online)
- people/brands you are going to compete with
- the audience you want to teach
Having an understanding of how the market works and what your competitors do will help you streamline your preparation and tutoring efforts. As a result of your research, you will be able to identify a gap in the market and see where your skills fit the best.
For example, after researching a few online tutoring platforms and analyzing what subjects are the most popular, you might notice that, for instance, there are only a few tutors that focus on IELTS and TOEFL Examination Preparation or Business English. Try to leverage this opportunity.
Define your audience
Once you identify your opportunity and find your “niche”, the most important thing is to get to know your students.
Who do you want to teach? High school students preparing for exams? Those who have reached the intermediate plateau with their Spanish and are now seeking to move to the next level?
When you define your target audience, take the time to learn about them. What are their challenges? What are their interests? Dedicate as much time as possible to learning about your audience: what they read, what they watch, where they hang out. If you are an online language tutor, our recent article on learning activities Preply users spend the most time on can come in handy for your research.
For example, Gen Z likes interactive media and enjoys brief video content (think TikTok). So, if you’re aiming to successfully tutor Gen Z, you will need to take this into consideration both when advertising and when preparing your lessons. Note those down.
Knowing your client base will result in a better connection with students. It will also improve your lessons, since you’ll understand what your students want to learn and how they stay engaged. As a result, your student satisfaction and retention rates will increase, and so will your experience and income.
Fine-tune your value proposition
Once you’ve done your market research and learned more about your audience, you should have a good understanding of your audience’s pain points. That is to say, you should understand the problems they have and why they’re looking for a tutor.
Think about how you can address those pain points using your unique skills and experience. That’s how you come up with your value proposition. In business speak, a value proposition is a marketing statement that sums up the reason a consumer should buy your product or service instead of someone else’s.
Think…which past experiences will make you stand out as a tutor? Maybe you’re excellent at putting children at ease or your travel experience and cultural awareness help you better understand your students from other countries.
Pro tip: Summarize your value proposition in 2 to 3 sentences and have others give you feedback (friends and family, for example).
Choose your price and set some ground rules
It’s important to set some terms as a tutor to safeguard your time and effort, and share them with your students. For example, you might not want to accept same-day cancellations. If so, you need to set a rule and communicate with your students that cancellations are possible only X hours in advance. If you decide to tutor with an online tutoring platform, most have their own rules in regards to cancellations. On Preply, for example, you cannot cancel a lesson less than 4 hours before it’s scheduled to start.
Next, you will need to set your rates. At this point, you might be wondering: how much do online tutors make?
Rates of payment for online tutors vary based on experience, education level, and subject area. Therefore, there’s no universal price point when it comes to how much you should charge as an online tutor. If you really don’t know what price to charge, try searching on Preply for tutors working in a similar niche to you, and see what they offer.
Find your students
There are two main ways online tutors usually find students:
- Independently
- With the help of an online tutoring platform
Getting started as an independent tutor
Tutoring independently will require more effort than tutoring with an existing online tutoring platform. If you choose to tutor on your own, you’ll need to invest in advertising your services to find students and in building your own workflow. That is to say, you’ll have to figure out a system of answering student emails, adding appointments to your calendar and billing that works for you.
You can give online lessons using a video conferencing tool such as Skype or Zoom. Zoom is the most popular option at the moment, and is great if you want to teach large groups. However, with a free Zoom account, video calls are limited to 40 minutes, which might be annoying if you want to hold 1-hour lessons. Skype, on the other hand, allows users to talk for free for as long as they like.
To find students as an independent tutor, you can sign up to online marketplaces such as Upwork, Fiverr, and Craigslist. Consider building a website or at least a simple landing page where prospective students can learn more about your services. Design several eye-catching visuals for social media and consider boosting the posts on social media to increase your visibility.
Getting started with an existing online tutoring website
To preserve your time and energy, you can start by joining a network that will do the legwork for you. A tutoring service will both connect you to students and provide a high-tech booking solution along with an easy payment method.
Joining an existing online tutoring platform is as simple as completing a profile (although your profile will need to be reviewed), and it’s by far the most efficient and easy way to start tutoring online. The process is also hassle-free, guaranteeing a better student experience.
There are plenty of options out there, from simple video platforms with whiteboard options to services that take care of everything from booking to payment processing for you. It’s good to choose a tool that has both video and screen sharing capabilities.
If you’re looking to create online courses, Udemy, Skillshare and Edx are some of the most popular platforms out there.
If you’re looking to tutor online rather than create courses (such as 1-on-1 sessions in language conversation, helping with homework, test preparation, etc.), these platforms might be better options for you:
- Brainfuse offers a lot of tutoring jobs that are targeted at college students and their specific needs. This platform is also a good choice if you’re camera-shy since tutoring can be done via a virtual whiteboard.
- Preply is the place to go for language tutoring. To tutor with Preply, you need no prior teaching experience or certification, and you have the freedom to set your own rates.
- Studypool is good if you want to test the waters with online tutoring by offering one-off help. In addition to having one-on-one tutoring or “class” sessions, tutors can work with students on individual questions or assignments.
- TutorWorld comes up with a personalized work plan for each student, records all of its sessions for review, and also holds regular check-ins with parents. It’s great for offering a more structured curriculum and tutoring school students.
- Revolution Prep is a great choice if you want to dive into tutoring as a full-time job. All of their staff are full-time employees who receive training and development.
- SpecialEdTutoring.com is the place to go if you have a degree in special education and want to work with students with special needs.
- Skooli allows you to get booked both in advance and at the moment when you’re online.
Create an engaging curriculum
With so many resources out there teaching you how to teach online, what’s really important can get blurred.
So, when designing your curriculum or lesson plans, it helps to remember that it’s not about creating something that you’ll follow to a T. Instead, it’s about meeting the needs of your students in a way that ensures they understand the material, stay engaged and are able to apply their knowledge outside of your class.
Many online tutoring platforms offer materials for their tutors to use during their lessons. For example, Preply has curricula that cover popular English topics such as self study exercises (vocabulary words and a fill-in-the-blank paragraph), live lesson materials (for example, Weekend activities or Preparing for an interview), etc. It saves a lot of your resources on preparing materials and allows you to spend more time on making connections with students.
If you decide to use your own curriculum, here are some tips to help you create an engaging one:
Define the objectives and outcomes
When creating the learning objectives for your classes or courses, you must concentrate on these key components: what your students want to know, what they need to know, and what they’ll be able to do with it.
If you’re doing 1-on-1 tutoring, take some time to check in with your student beforehand and understand what their learning goals are, and then adjust the learning flow and pace accordingly.
If you’re developing an entire course, pay extra attention to what students will achieve by taking the course.
Determine the timeline and the tools
This pertains to both your preparation timeline and the actual length of the tutoring program (whether it’s 60 minutes or 6 months). Create separate outlines or schedules that highlight important milestones for your student(s).
If you sign up with a tutoring platform, then all of your workflow is kept and contained in your workspace on the platform. For example, on Preply, all of your appointments are clearly visible and synchronize with your calendars. You can easily set your time off, as well as mark your availability and organize your lessons by tags.
If you want to tutor on your own, consider using a tool like Asana or Trello to manage your students, classes, and tasks.
Use hands-on tools for content creation
To successfully tutor online and help your students reach their learning objectives, it helps to have engaging materials.
You don’t need to be a Photoshop expert to create interactive or engaging visual materials. There are plenty of free or affordable, hands-on tools for content creation out there.
For example, you can use Canva for simple graphic design, Quizlet.com to create keyword flashcards online, and Powtoon to create professional and fully customized videos.
Advertise your tutoring services
If you sign up for tutoring with a platform, students will be able to find you through the tutors listing pages. That means your tutor profile will be your main advertisement, so it’s essential to write a tutor profile that attracts students.
If you’ll be tutoring on your own, you’ll need to develop a marketing strategy of your own. Think about what would interest your audience (go back to Step 1) and choose several activities that you think would grab their attention. Maybe it’s an Instagram ad or a flyer at the local health food store. You might start a YouTube channel or a blog.
When you’re starting out, especially online, you’re competing against a greater number of online tutoring jobs, so you might have to start with a lower rate to be competitive.
Pro tip: If you want more detailed tips, check out our article on how to advertise yourself as a tutor.
Ready to start tutoring online today?
There are many benefits to tutoring online: you can teach what you like, when you like, for however long you like. If you remember to follow these 4 essential steps, you’ll set yourself up for success in online tutoring:
- Find your niche. Build a solid foundation by finding your niche, understanding your audience, refining your unique value proposition, and clarifying your limitations.
- Define your audience. Find your students by either signing up for an online tutoring platform, creating your own online tutoring service, or tutoring via a video conferencing tool.
- Create an engaging curriculum. Set clear student learning objectives and a timeline, and use engaging learning/content tools.
- Advertise your online tutoring services. Spread the word about your work!
In 2020, we spent more time online than ever. From virtual meetings to online parties, our participation in online activities soared – including learning online and working online. If you’re considering becoming an online tutor, now is a brilliant time to do it!
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