How profitable is online tutoring?

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Permalink Reply by Christian Stapfer on October 3, 2009 at 9:40am

"The Tutoring Business" surely must be at least as profitable as TutorVista. So, what do you think, based on your experience with TutorVista?

Suppose TutorVista is profitable: What makes you think you can compete with them? (They probably have acquired a customer base. Also they can offer tutoring 24/7 because they have so many tutors that work for them. They already have an automated website and their own tools for online tutoring as well.)

Or suppose TutorVista is not profitable (I doubt it, but who knows): What makes you think you can do a better job than they can at present?

Or maybe you just want to work as an independent online tutor (that is: not actually found a company that competes with TutorVista). If so, I doubt that you can even earn a living by online tutoring alone. (I might be mistaken in this because your cost of living may be much lower than mine.)

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Permalink Reply by Manish on October 5, 2009 at 5:29am

Now many questions arise.....like what will be the first step in this regard?...how much capital is required ?....how do I find tutors?....how to advertise and make customer base?

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Permalink Reply by Scott Palat on October 5, 2009 at 4:13pm

Sign up for my free report to get all of your questions answered. Then, when you have questions, ask them here.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Palat on October 5, 2009 at 9:34am

I think Manish was asking about his online tutoring job pay rate vs his own online tutoring business and the possibilities with that.

Anyone can earn a living by tutoring online assuming they are dedicated to their own success. I interviewed one of my TutorFi clients last month and I was stunned to learn that she earns over $10,000 a month ($120,000 per year) by tutoring students online from home.

During our interview, I found out she was charging over $100 per hour and the parents and students who she tutored loved her service so much that instinctively told other parents about her.

Needless to say, I am impressed and very proud to know that I helped her achieve such a high level of success.

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Permalink Reply by Manish on October 5, 2009 at 6:50am

I am interested in this business. But before getting started, I want all my doubts clarified.... can any one tell me is it possible to charge student around 50$ an hour??

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Permalink Reply by Scott Palat on October 5, 2009 at 4:13pm

Certainly!

I recommend offering packages based on how many hours they commit to per month.

10 hours = $50 an hour
6 hours = $60 an hour
3 hours = $70 an hour

That's just a guide, but you see how the discount works when your clients commit to more hours.

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Permalink Reply by Christian Stapfer on October 5, 2009 at 9:15pm

I suppose much depends on what your reasonably competent and well placed competition is asking to get paid: www.tutor.com, for example, asks to get paid $35 an hour, while www.tutorvista.com asks to get paid $34.99 for an entire week of K12 tutoring.
Asking twice that amount for tutoring at the same level might conceivably draw snickers from the audience...

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Permalink Reply by Scott Palat on October 6, 2009 at 9:20am

Oh contrar Christian!

Parents will pay almost any amount if the tutor takes the time to care by consulting with the parent (via phone) and building a good academic relationship with the student. This is a fact that has been proven in my TutorFi business and as shocking as it might seem, some parents will pay over $100 per hour for this type of personal service.

Just to note:

Other online tutoring companies don't take the time to care and rarely consult the parent via phone. If they don't consult the parent, it's not the actual tutor who does the consulting. Most of the time, online tutoring companies don't even match the student with the same tutor twice.

This is where the opportunity is! Parents get burned out real quick with online tutoring companies and for any tutor who can over deliver and consult with the parent on an ongoing basis, assuming they can keep up with the student academically, a tutor can conceivably hold onto a client for months and even years.

We once had a client who stayed with owlonlinetutoring.com for 23 months. We actually gave that client away to one of our TutorFi members, because we changed our business model after seeing where the true opportunities are. We now focus soly on helping tutors start their own online tutoring businesses. This has created a true win/win/win situation for the tutors the parents and the students.

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Permalink Reply by Christian Stapfer on October 6, 2009 at 12:05pm

Hi Scott,
I am sorry for always sounding negative. It surely is a somewhat unpleasant character trait of mine. (A character trait that is not so untypical for people trained for and working in technical fields: because you constantly have to think about what could go wrong...)
But I mean no harm. I just write what I believe to be the case. Anyone is free to contradict me. Also, I suppose a discussion forum would not be much use if everybody were of the exact same opinion.
As regards parents to be willing to pay $100 per hour: Sure, all parents would be willing to help their children as well as they can. But not all of them are even able to afford to pay so high a rate.
As to the tutor wanting to "hold on to the client": I don't know whether the client would like to hear that from the tutor, because it sounds as if the tutor were plotting to keep the client (and the tutee) in a relationship of dependence.
Note that TutorVista allows both: having a tutoring session 24/7 or scheduling tutoring sessions always with the same tutor. Tutor.com does not seem to offer scheduled sessions, which, as you write, seems to imply that the tutor will usually be different every time the student gets tutored. However, the fact that Tutor.com does not offer scheduled sessions of this kind may mean that they have figured that having them is not important. (I make it a rule for my own thinking not to assume that my competitors are fools, except after extensive proof to the contrary. I have currently no reason to believe that the people at Tutor.com are unaware of this problem as regards the tutor-tutee relationship. I guess they have made a trade-off. Maybe they just want to help as many students as they can, especially students that are not well off? Also, they may feel that if the tutor-tutee relationship were much closer, a kind of dependence behavior on the part of the tutee might develop, undermining the tutee's development into an independent learner.)

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Permalink Reply by Scott Palat on October 8, 2009 at 8:25am

Don't think that I don't appreciate your comments Christian! I am thankful to have you posting inside our forum even if I disagree at times.

With all the different online tutoring programs out there, some parents do want the cheapest service and others want a more personal approach. With my TutorFi business, we believe that a more personal approach is better for the parent, student and the tutor.

Some parents might disagree and say to themselves that the bottom line is money and helping their child get better grades. If this means using an online tutoring company from India for $10 an hour, so be it. Some parents will choose that option based on price and the fact that their child can get homework help whenever they want.

To note: We launched ehomeworkhelp.com back in 2003. You can view a newspaper article on this site showing me and my old partner by the way.

We offered unlimited homework help for $99 a month from 3pm - midnight. Many parents signed up for our program and we had tutors on call and ready to tutor during those hours.

Most parents quit after the first month and after interviewing many of them, we found that they wanted a more personal approach and price was not enough reason to keep them on as ongoing clients.

In a nut shell, that approach was a disaster, but we learned a lot from it. That experience pushed us in the direction of personal online tutoring.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Palat on October 5, 2009 at 9:05am

The hardest part is getting started. Once you get started, your own online tutoring business will be much more profitable than an online tutoring job.

I recommend downloading my free report on the right side.

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Permalink Reply by Manish on October 6, 2009 at 5:43am

It's good to know that parents are spending such a huge amount of money for tutoring. and I know that I can satisfy students' tutoring need to the fullest.but the thing is how much will be the initial investment?

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