How to Start a Profitable Online Tutoring Business

Investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

There cannot be another sentence more apt to describe a good education. Education is one of our basic needs and will always be a priority in every person’s life. Based on your initial education is how you are judged and hence there is a tremendous demand for a good tutor, especially in this present generation.

Also, now given that the pandemic has made all academic institutions inevitably switch to online platforms; it is a great time to begin a virtual tutoring program. People now are more into convenience in every work they do. Be it shopping or learning priority goes to the ease with which it is executed or being experienced. Everyone has switched their lifestyle to suit their home environment. This billion dollar industry is currently booming, even more so since it has moved over to a virtual platform.

So, without further ado let us see what are the procedures one should know and follow in order to develop and run a successful e-learning business.

 

How to start a tutoring business?

Starting a business is not rocket science, but requires a lot of time, patience and financial planning. In this article we have deciphered some of the most complex processes required to build your own online tutoring business. Let’s get started!

Given this is your first eLearning business, instead of directly starting your own platform; you can choose to enroll into an already existing e learning business platform and gain some valuable experience. Learning everything on the job is sometimes really risky too. Hence it is always good to give this option a try and then take it from there. Here are two major, positive outlooks you need to consider before you start your own business.

• The established sites will ease the burden of gathering your own student base from scratch. It helps connect tutors with an already existing customer base from where you can work on building the rapport and hence expand your client base.
• Starting to build the technical tools or operation of the whole website without prior experience might be challenging since it will not be clear what the requirements for a virtual e-learning platform are. Hence till you get a hang of what and how the operations and the technology has been used by these websites, it is always good to stick with them initially.

 

However, it also has its own cons too.

• You will have to share a percentage of your income with the established website for providing you their platform
• You will always be under someone else’s rules and regulations

etc.

 

Moving on to the main part of how to start an online tutoring business article,

• Research and planning: This is the first step in any kind of business. You could have gained experience by working on an already existing platform or starting from scratch, without a good and robust business plan, the whole business will collapse. Your business plan should include-
  1. Summary of your business
  2. Market overview
  3. Sales & Marketing plans
  4. Operational strategies
  5. Value proposition of your services
  6. Organization & Management team framework
  7. Financial and Legal aspects

• Finding the right niche: Think through your positives and negatives, strengths and weaknesses and then come up with what you want to choose as your subject matter of expertise. Along with deciding on what you are good at or comfortable with you will also have to consider the opinions of your customer base too.
  1. What is the current trending topic?
  2. What are the customers looking for in online tutorials?
  3. What is the main aim of your course?

and much more.

• Procuring and executing the course plan: Once your business plan is in place, next on the list is to plan the outline and execution of your course. Education is an ocean. You need to take a careful and calculated decision on which course and how you are going to put it across to your student base.

To make this decision you need to consider the below factors-

1. Understanding the required skill set or teach or learn
2. Choosing a suitable niche
3. Researching on your target audience and competition
4. Age of the student community
5. The demand for the chosen niche

Post deciding your niche you need to plan on its execution. There are many ways in which you can decide to implement your course-

1. Synchronous tutoring: A tutoring method that involves the students and the teachers connecting at the same time, live through an online platform is called synchronous tutoring. It requires a live video and audio streamer, a real-time chat window, and a common virtual platform.
2. Asynchronous tutoring: In this method it is not necessary for the students and teachers to be connected virtually at the same time. The tutor can send a mail or upload the tuition material and students can access them whenever they plan to.
3. Combination tutoring: You need not have to follow only one of the above methods you can always combine and add your idea touch to it. This method can reap the combined benefits of synchronous and asynchronous tutoring.

Decide and choose what will suit your tutorials the best.

In order to make your life a bit easier, implement a robust LMS (Learning Management System) which will help you in organizing, scheduling, managing, tracking, reporting, documenting and many more such complex functionalities.

4) Developing your online tutorials: Now that the ground work is completed, it’s time to move to the technical part of your business. To build your own e-learning platform you need not have to have complete knowledge of all the technical know-how. There are other ways in which you can get your own platform built.

They are:

1. Using a turnkey solution
2. Hiring a dedicated tech team to develop your website from scratch

Since this is your first e-learning business platform and you will have a definite budget and time scheduled for this, we would recommend you to go for a turnkey solution where you will get a readymade solution which can be customized to fit your needs and it is also open sourced which will help you to customize any part of the website in the future. Some of the best e-learning solutions in the current market are- edustar, Pinlearn, agriya etc

5) Planning the costing of the tutorials: A very tricky step to be dealing with. Since there is a huge competition in this world as well, you need to be extra careful while composing your revenue plans. The right pricing takes you a long way in generating your good revenue.

Here are a few methods in which you can make good monetary benefits-

1. Charge different fees for one-on-one classes
2. Provide the courses for free but charge for certification and the materials
3. Chargeable membership or subscription fees

 

6) Student Engagement and Promotion of your tutorials: Now that you are all set to take flight, what you need to think about as your next step is to plan how to engage and retain your customer base. This is what will decide how your tutorials will succeed in this competitive environment.

Here are a few tips that you can follow:

1. Conduct periodic assessments
2. Parts of lessons can be animated to make it more artistic and engaging
3. Have a review system after every course module
4. Create room for healthy discussion within the student community
5. Impart group projects and presentations to keep students on their toes
6. Have a guest lecture series so that both students and teachers will have a different experience

and many more.

 

Once your student base is happy and engaged, marketing and promoting your business becomes easier. However, it is not necessary that you need to have your students’ strength in order to promote yourself. Here are a few ways in which you can market your tutorials in order to gain the right SERPs ranking to pull in the right audience-

1. Social Media Marketing
2. Email Marketing
3. Influencer Marketing
4. Share customer testimonies, reviews and ratings
5. Content marketing – newsletters, blogging etc
6. Multimedia marketing etc

 

Hope you now have good insight on what all involves in making a good and successful online tutoring platform. From the outside it may look smooth sailing and simple, but once you get behind the scenes you will come to know how opposite it is. But there is no need to worry, we are always here to lend you a helping hand with any kind of technical or marketing help you need. Do reach out to us and we will guide you to the best we can.