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Permalink Reply by Christian Stapfer on February 20, 2010 at 10:48pm

Hi,
I am surprised to learn that you want to offer online tutoring but, at the same time, apparently want to stay rather local (Cyprus only) when it comes to acquiring customers. - Why? - Once you are offering your tutoring online, your potential customers might be located anywhere on the planet!
Also: Why, if you plan to have your site published in Greek only, do you still want to have an English sounding domain name for it? Since you are getting your math degree in the UK I assume that you are a fluent speaker of English and, therefore, would be able to tutor English speaking students as well. So why don't you throw a wider net than addressing students from Cyprus only, or even Greek speaking students only? - For example, you could address English speaking and Greek speaking students at the same time. Because one thing seems certain to me: the smaller your market the more unlikely it is for you to get a sufficient number of customers. Also, since you are both a fluent speaker of English and Greek, you have a strategic advantage when it comes to tutoring native Greek speakers who, nevertheless, want to be tutored in English (maybe they want to go on to get their university degree in the UK as well): since if they can't quite manage to get their meaning across in English they can always fall back on their native tongue...

If I were you I would not try to microcode all the information about my website into its domain name. You can much more easily add such details on the first page of your website (which has the added advantage of allowing you to fine-tune those details over time). Instead, I'd rather advise you to pick a short and suggestive name for your site. And, certainly, WebOnlineTutoring looks like a redundant way of saying either WebTutoring or OnlineTutoring. - So, make your choice: either use WebTutoring or OnlineTutoring but don't try to throw all desirable catch-words that you can think of into the domain name of your site.

As to the whiteboard: I wonder why you think it necessary to embed the whiteboard in your own site. At best, doing so does not serve any useful purpose, and at worst it unnecessarily reduces the overall size of that whiteboard on the student's screen.
As regards scriblink, it does not seem to be too bad. But on my computer (a dual core machine running Vista) I have a problem with it: As soon as I insert an image into the scriblink-whiteboard one of the two processors of my machine gets 100% busy, and accordingly rather noisy. - Not a good sign at all! - And I expect the whole thing to crash anytime. - However, that may only be a problem with how Java is set up on my machine, who knows.
Regards,
Christian

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Permalink Reply by LOUIZA on February 21, 2010 at 4:34pm

Hello

At first i would like to thank you for the fast response to my message.

Yes , i would like to offer online tutor anywhere, not only in Cyprus. This was my
initial thought, but then i was not enough sure if is good idea to have the page in
both languages. For example to put a flag that will link to each language. I changed
my mind once that i've begun to creating the webpage, and i faced some problems, but i
may put it in both languages.

If i do not put the whiteboard in my own site, what other way can i use to link it?Also i
needs some information about how can i put a login place for my clients in the webpage,
I have no idea how to do this. In the case that i will not sort out the problems that i have
creating my webpage, is there any good webpage that creates webpages in good
prices?

At last i would like to ask you about the payments. Is paypal the only safe way that my clients
can use? Is it bad idea to let my clients use direct their credit cards?

Many thanks

Louiza

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Permalink Reply by Christian Stapfer on February 23, 2010 at 5:10am

I use a combination of Skype (for audio) and a separate whiteboard of my own.
I have not met a student who could not manage to get audio with Skype working. Maybe setting up audio with Skype has been a problem in the past, but it does not seem to be much of a problem anymore.

To collaborate with a web-based whiteboard (like skriblink, dimdim, or wiziq), you can send the student the appropriate link through either mail or through the chat of your Voice-over-IP program (e.g. Skype).

I cannot advise you as regards payment, since my own tutoring service is free (as in free beer), but judging from what I have read here and on http://tutors.ning.com/ it seems that organizing payment through PayPal works well for many.

Regards,
Christian

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Permalink Reply by Scott Palat on February 22, 2010 at 8:23pm

I would go with something even simpler like onlinetutoringincyprus.com. Pricing for your online tutoring service should be based on monthly billing for each client. It's best to have a few different packages based on hours and a discounted price for more hours each month.

I explain this in detail inside my online tutoring report.

For online tutoring classrooms, they are all pretty much the same at this point in time. Tech support is an important feature you should look for. If your student has a bad first impression for voice set up, it could affect your chances of signing them up for a monthly account. I do review many different online tutoring classrooms in my free report too.

You won't need extra space on your webpage, because most online tutoring classrooms are web based and not hosted on your server directly.

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