Love to Teach? Here's How to Start a Tutoring Business Online

Learn how to start a tutoring business online using these seven simple steps.  

The COVID-19 crisis changed many things in the world. Some of which included our daily routines. Suddenly, families had to adjust to working from home, organizing childcare, and adapting to distance learning. Statista shared the number of learners impacted by school closures due to COVID-19:

Source: We Forum

Educators also had to adjust to an incredibly different way of teaching. Being in a classroom for years allowed teachers to recognize students by their body language. More so, learners were attentive and not distracted easily. With online learning, those goals were challenging for some. 

As a result, many tutors looked to online teaching platforms to help live stream classes and teach students from a distance. Many educators and creators wonder how to start a tutoring business. The truth is, it isn’t as difficult as it may sound. 

Today, many passionate tutors see online learning as a blessing – it provides them with recurring revenue from the comfort of their homes. Online tutoring may be an excellent investment opportunity if you’re passionate about an educational topic you have expertise in.

In this post, we’ll take a look at how to start an online tutoring business in seven simple but effective steps.  

Is Starting a Tutoring Business Worth it?

If you enjoy working with people and teaching others a topic you’re an expert in, online tutoring may be your next step. With online teaching tools, you can create a business that is not only well-organized and attractive but also scalable. The bottom line is, if you have a passion for empowering others and teaching them with patience and drive, why not get paid for it?

Tutoring online also doesn’t require a massive number of dollars upfront. For a reasonable monthly fee, you can invest in a high-quality online tutoring platform that will manage all the aspects of your business from one space. 

If you’re unsure about how effective online teaching platforms can be, take a look at these indicators:

• The global eLearning market is expected to be worth $325 billion by 2025. 
• Online learning can help learners retain between 25% and 60% more material than in-person. 
• 60% of online students said that online learning assisted them with improving soft skills.  

It’s plain to see that the online education market is here to stay. Tutoring online can help you build credibility within your network of people and help you bolster your resumé. You also get to meet many people from around the world and learn from each and every student you teach. If you’d like to scale your business even further, you can meet with educational professionals and connect with them as your mentor. This can help you broaden your skill set and learn new teaching tactics from other experts in the industry.  

Let’s look at what steps you need to take to start a tutoring business successfully from day one. 

How to Start a Tutoring Business in Seven Simple Steps

1. Do market research

When starting an online tutoring business, the first step is to understand your teaching market, educational niche, and how your competitors manage the playing field.  No matter which educational topic you choose to teach, it’s important to remember that you’re sure to have competitors.

Market research is the first step because it helps you:

• Understand similar products and services that others are offering. 
• Identify what messaging is resonating with those target students. 
• Discover how your competitors are aiming to stand out from the crowd. 

But how do you conduct market research? There are a few ways to tackle it: 

• Join online community forums related to your educational topic to learn about what people are interested in within your industry. 
• Look for specialized educational topics being taught and research how teachers tackle these niche topics. 
• Read about what prospective students are interested in learning via Facebook groups or LinkedIn articles. 

In addition to this, you can do competitor research where you can study their offerings, prices (if available), reviews by students, and their unique selling point (USP). 

It’s important to note that market and competitor research must be done initially as well as periodically once your tutoring business is running. This helps you stay relevant, understand how the market is shifting, analyze your competitors’ behavior, and identify new desires from prospective students.  

2. Create a business plan

Robust businesses begin with well-thought-out business plans. This may seem a bit too formal and corporate-like, but business plans don’t’ have to be long and drawn out. Instead, make a plan relevant to you, your goals, and your passion for tutoring. 

A business plan in its simplest form is a written description of your vision for the business and how you plan on achieving that vision. You can achieve your vision and business goals by using marketing strategies and operating plans. 

There are mounds of information online about how to write a business plan. But here’s a typical business plan outline for you to begin with: 

• Company Description:
  • Purpose and vision
  • Founder information
  • Current status of the business
• Products and Services:
  • Definition of your core offering 
  • Different types of products and services offered  
  • Any upsell or cross-sell opportunities 
• Marketing Plan:
  • Market, competitor, and target audience research 
  • Marketing channels
  • Marketing budget
• Operational Plan: 
  • Technology required 
  • Equipment required 
  • Logistics or facilities required 
• Financial Plan:
  • Revenue streams
  • Revenue management 
  • Income and expenses 

As you can see, there are many points which can be added to a business plan. You may not need to fill in all sections, but once you have a thorough plan in order, you can use this as your go-to document whenever you want to add a service, competitor, revenue stream, etc. 

3. Identify your target audience

Once your business plan is complete, you will derive insights from your findings. Based on these insights, you can determine two things; what type of learners you would like to serve, and who is looking for a tutor like yourself? 

Tutoring can be targeted to various students of various ages, genders, and locations. But your target audience will always have a similar interest – and that interest will be aligned with your tutoring service.

The key to identifying your audience is to analyze a few points, such as:

• Who would be interested in your teaching topic?
• How long will they want to be engaged in a course or online tuition with you?
• How are your competitors engaging in them currently?
• What are this audience’s desires and needs?
• Will you need to be certified to fulfill your services to your audience? 
• How likely are they to come back to you for future courses? 

The answers to these questions will help you create a persona for your target audience and allow you to see the potential for engaging conversations and experiences with these prospects. The best path is for you to have a target audience actively seeking your service and will likely refer you to friends and family. You want them to advocate for your service and brand – that’s where the true golden nugget of marketing lies.

4. Invest in an online tutoring platform 

When you start teaching online, you could use a few different types of software to get the job done. But the easier way is to use an all-in-one online course platform. These types of platforms were created for people just like you – people wanting to empower others and teach them a specific hobby, interest, or educational topic. 

These platforms were initially quite basic and allowed you to upload and manage content on the platform. Today, some video experience platforms are tremendously useful because you can run live and on-demand classes on them. But you can also run your entire tutoring business’s operations through the software.

That’s right – online teaching platforms help you manage your customers, payments, content, and schedule in one place. Gone are the days of having to manage a website, email, payment processing software, and emailing software separately. Now you can have it all consolidated and ready to be accessed at the click of a button. 

Let’s take ours as an example to give you an idea of what these types of platforms are capable of doing. Mastera’s features include: 

• Unlimited video hosting
• Unlimited customers and content
• Website 
• Calendar bookings 
• Customer messaging 
• Selling of merchandise 
• Integration with Zoom for live streaming 
• Subscriptions and auto-pay 
• Integration with Stripe, PayPal, and Razor Pay for payments
• Email and text marketing 
• Reporting 

5. Create online tutoring content

Once you have your online tutoring platform set up, it’s time to start planning your course content! You have a range of options to choose from, and the best part is that this is your educational material, so you can structure it in any way you see fit.

Tutors often create their content in a course program or live class format. Content that is available on-demand is mostly done in video format. However, there are some intelligent additional learning materials that you can add to the mix:

• Create a lesson plan: Help students see the outline of each lesson using a lesson plan. Each plan should include the lesson number, topic, focus points, learning objectives, structure, and materials needed.  
• Create additional guides complimenting your course: These can be used to help students learn specific terminology, or review diagrams and charts. 
• Create additional reading lists: Over and above the learning material from your course, create a list of books to read and resources for students to use as supporting material. 

All your content can be uploaded to your online tutoring platform and shared with students across one or several learning programs you create.

6. Set your pricing 

Now that you have the platform, the target audience, and content ready, it’s time to plan your pricing. Your pricing is a crucial step as it will ultimately keep your target audience enticed and make them either sign up for your tutoring service or drive them away. 

The key here is not to price your products and services too low. As a new entrepreneur, it can be tempting to do, but don’t set the bar too low. You have a target market to aim for, and part of your market analysis should show how much people are willing to pay for online tutoring in your industry. Use this as a basis and work with you to find your price point.

A clever way to determine your pricing is by researching your competitors’ charges. More so, look at what they’re offering for that price. Do their students get any free courses or discounted merchandise? These little extras may set them apart from the rest, so it’s essential to research what they’re doing. 

Another way in which you can plan your pricing is by the type of product or service you want to offer. For example, if you’re offering an online tutoring course, you can structure your content to be a 12-week course that consists of twelve 1-hour weekly sessions. This can be charged as a once-off fee for the 12-week course.

Alternatively, you can charge students a monthly subscription fee, giving them access to your live and on-demand classes. This is a favored option for many tutors as it provides them with monthly recurring revenue.  

It’s vital to remain competitive but still cover your costs. This should always be top of mind when planning your pricing.  

7. Market your business

This is the final step! You’re ready to begin marketing and selling your online tutoring business. Your marketing methods may vary, and you may have to manage several campaigns simultaneously. But as you run campaigns over time, you’ll be able to determine which ones work best for you and which bring conversions to your website.

You can choose from a variety of marketing tactics, but here are a few we find to be quite effective: 

• Google AdWords: Target your prospects using keywords that people type into Google every day. A keyword could be “online math tutoring” or “live yoga classes.” It’s a good idea to research what terms people are searching for and bid on those words using pay-per-click advertising. 
• Facebook Ads: People scroll through Facebook every day. It’s worth setting up a business account and running social ads via the platform. You can also coordinate Instagram ads within your Facebook Business Account, which is always useful and time-saving. 
• Online communities: There are already tutoring communities out there; all you have to do is become an active member of them. Offer advice, learn from others, and converse with people. You never know who may be interested in your product or service here.  

Mastera: Here to Guide You on How to Start a Tutoring Business  

So many tutors have transitioned to a digital educational world and see its reward. Tutoring is one of the most rewarding jobs in the world. It allows you to empower others with knowledge and skills that you’re already equipped with. Knowledge is power, and students of every age and background yearn for it. 

With minimal setup costs, an online tutoring business can be highly profitable for you. So, how does tutoring from the comfort of your home sound? If you’re interested, speak to our team at Mastera to schedule a demo and learn more about how our video experience platform can help you run your business efficiently and affordably.  

It’s time – go out there and do what you’re great at – start your online tutoring business!