Starting any type of business is never going to be an easy thing to go ahead with, it requires a lot of determination and drive to get to where you want and need to be. If you have been thinking about starting a tutoring business for instance, because you feel like you could contribute to tutoring services and provide something essential to prospective clients, then this article is for you.
Your own tutoring business may sound like a really interesting path for you to go down, but you have to make sure you have everything you need before embarking on this journey. Ensuring that your business structure is solid, as well as keeping apart your personal and business finances to stop from blurring the lines.
In this article, we will go into how to start a tutoring business and how you can hopefully make it a successful business that you are proud of.
Why Should You Start a Tutoring Business?
If you love to teach people and pass on your wealth of knowledge in one specific area (maybe two), then getting into the tutoring market may be the right path for you.
Passion drives us when we want to go into our own business, so if you think that being a private tutor with a face-to-face/online tutoring business fits for you, then it’s time to step forward and make a go of it.
Won’t Cost You Too Much
Because you are going into business yourself, you won’t need a lot of finances to get your small business running.
Things such as office space won’t need to be factored in as you can offer your tutoring service by going to people’s homes, meeting at libraries, or doing it online through Skype or Zoom sessions depending on if you are dealing with a few students, or doing group tutoring.
Pandemic Reaction
The Pandemic at the start of 2020 thurst people into their homes and put them behind a screen, whether that was for educational purposes or for work, because of this, people found ways to reach others online and offer any services they could, e.g. looking into how they could start tutoring businesses to fill gaps.
Even with us now moving back into the physical world, online tutoring is still a big business and it can help college students as well as professional individuals. The client base is vast meaning that many tutors will always be able to find new clients.
What Will You Need Before Starting a Tutoring Business?
Before you become an online tutor/start a tutoring company, there are some things you will need to have so that your new business goes off smoothly and you gain the client base you need.
You need to have a solid education behind you. The education level you have will determine the subjects and areas you can teach during your tutoring sessions with your students.
High School Diploma/GED
With this type of diploma, you are able to teach elementary and middle school students. You could stretch it to high school students, however, before doing so you will need to show that you are able to teach them at the level they need and you have those valuable skills.
Bachelor’s Degree
You can teach all of the above students, plus, college-aged students who are taking classes in your area.
Master’s Degree & Ph.D.
All students are able to be taught by you, and you can also tutor GED students (adults).
Starting a Tutoring Business
Now that you know what educational level you will need for your tutoring business, it is time to get into how you can get started, from choosing your business model to finding the best way to keep your business and personal finances separate for maximum efficiency.
Identifying Who Your Target Client Is
What do you want to teach? If you are great at Maths and you have a diploma/degree in this field, then it would be wise to look at a math tutoring business where you can provide online courses or private tutoring for a variety of students at different levels.
Think about this –
- Would you like to tutor online through one on one sessions?
- Are you happy with people coming to you or are you going to them?
- Are you efficient at doing a group tutoring session or would you prefer dealing with individuals?
What you decide will shape your business model and help you create your company.
Keep Your Knowledge Consistent
No matter your diploma or degree, new educational materials come out a lot, and there are changes to the curriculum for some subjects, you need to make sure that you keep up-to-date and that you are aware of any information that has been scrapped.
- Recognize what your strengths and weaknesses are and work towards building on them where appropriate.
- Stick to the syllabus when teaching, don’t veer off as it can confuse the students you teach. You want your students to achieve good grades through your teaching techniques.
- Learn how to effectively teach by making a consistent effort with your students and creating a tutoring platform that will make more students come back.
Register Your Business
If you are operating as a sole proprietor, then that is fine initially as you are just getting started and you need to make sure that your tutoring business is something you want to carry on with. However, as time goes on, you may be looking at making it a lot more permanent, so you could look at creating a limited liability company (LLC).
You get to choose how you get taxed and will stop your personal finances from being dragged into any issues that have the potential to come about down the road. Think about what name you want your business to have, as you will be linked to that name. If you plan on making a tutoring franchise then you would like it to stand out and be noticed.
Set up Your Space
In case you do not have a place to teach your students, you’d want to ensure that you make arrangements for that. You could purchase a commercial space that you like, and hire commercial interior design experts to create a room that you could use to teach your students. Otherwise, you could avail a rented space and set up a class-like atmosphere. This can show that you’re serious about your venture of offering your tutoring services in a place that is conducive to learning.
Ensure That Your Business and Personal Finances Are Apart
You can risk legal issues if you keep these finances as one, you do not want your business expenses and online payments to be mixed up, so it is important to keep a clear line between both so that you are not making any mistakes that could put you in hot water.
Opening a business checking account as well as getting a separate business credit card will help you separate everything so that you do not accidentally dip into your personal account and take out money that is essential for your upkeep.
Decide on Your Price Point
How much you ask your students to pay is up to you. You need to factor in your credentials, how long you’ve been doing this, what level you are teaching at, and where you are teaching them, also, you may want to think about the materials you use, especially if you are giving them items to learn with.
Steer clear of Tax disputes
When you start your own business, you need to ensure that you steer clear of tax disputes, as they can invite legal consequences, which can eventually damage a business’s reputation. If a business engages in questionable tax practices (think creating shell companies for minimizing tax), it can face criminal charges and penalties. This may result in a negative impact on the perception of the public and the confidence of stakeholders. What’s more? Tax disputes can affect the overall brand image, leading to reduced sales. Therefore, in order to prevent the occurrence of tax disputes for business owners and their companies, it is recommended that they consult financial advisors who specialize in the subject matter.
What is Your Marketing Strategy?
When you create a business plan and add your market research, you need to think about who your core audience is and how you are going to market to them. For instance, have you thought about promoting on social media channels or setting up a referral system, e.g. word of mouth referrals?
Aside from relying on traditional methods of marketing, consider using digital marketing as well. The use of techniques such as SEO could benefit your venture greatly, especially if you use an official website. This is because it could improve your website’s rank in web search results and help you develop quality content to put up on the site as well.
Also, if you want to use social media platforms as a channel for marketing, you should seek the help of an SEO Consultant Manchester (similar locations worldwide) to develop targeted content. This is to ensure that viewers can gauge what you’re selling and understand if the content is relevant to them.
In addition, SEO and keyword help can help you acquire new clients through the web; backlinked text on social media platforms could be used to used redirect users to your site, thereby creating website traffic. As for referral marketing, it could be highly effective on a local scale. You can have clients coming to you because of the information you put out about yourself and the subjects you specialize in.
Apart from utilizing digital marketing methods to further your tutoring business, you could approach agencies that could help you sell courses online on a larger scale. A firm like WorkTraining.com, for instance, can showcase your unique courses on their platform. Since they have a huge audience base, you can significantly benefit from this approach as it could boost your visibility, thereby increasing the number of registrations to your business.
Marketing can help you massively as happy students may provide referral links and redirect information to other students through various media. Your tutoring business will thrive if you are aware of how to best reach these students and what you can do to make them feel happy about using your tutoring services.
Look to The Future
Starting a new business is going to be filled with challenges that are high and low, it is up to you to decide if it is all worth it. Recognize that you will come up against some roadblocks, unhappy customers, or challenging clients that make you want to quit.
Put that out of your mind and think about what you are achieving and how you know that your students are achieving too.
If you plan on building on your own knowledge and taking an extra course, that can open you up to even more students and even more courses that will broaden your horizons and theirs too.
Never stick to just one area, as time goes on you may think of taking your tutoring business in another direction. If it feels right, go for it.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article has been able to help you with how to start a tutoring business and what you need to do to get it going. Remember, it is up to you and what you do. You can influence the future generation as well as the current and past.
