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How to Create a Back Up Plan for your Business

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Backup Backup Backup - And Test Restores

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All the hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes and other disasters lately got me thinking. Of course yesterday my internet connection went down for most of the day. Do you have a back up plan for your business? I’m not talking about a plan for you and your family (although you should have one of those – more information about that can be found here http://www.fema.gov/plan/index.shtm ). Here are some tips.

1. Keep your business documents and programs safe.

You should have a copy of your business documents in a safe place – outside of your office. This could be in a lock box at the bank, a friend or family members home, or online. If you keep them online you’ll want to have a hard copy as well.

2. A list of your customers and clients.

You need a list of your customer’s phone numbers and email addresses. If you have an emergency you’ll want to contact them and let them know what’s going on. You’ll want to keep them informed and let them know when you’ll be back to business as usual.

3. You’ll want to have a back up plan in case:

a) Your computer dies – do you backup your data regularly? Do you have an extra computer to use?
b) Power / telephone / internet – you’ll want to think about what you would use if these systems didn’t work.
c) Where you tutor is damaged – do you have a backup location you could use if you need to?

Nobody wants to think about bad things happening. If you have a plan it can make things a little easier.

Tomorrow we’ll talk some about time management.

How to get your first tutor client part 2

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Hurricane_off_Florida

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Lots of weather happening this week, from earthquakes to hurricanes on the East Coast… which if you’re tutoring Science (or other subjects) make a great opportunity to teach. I’ve found that teaching kids something about something they can watch happening live around them allows them to retain it much better… how have you used this in your tutoring. You can leave us a comment on the blog / facebook or just hit reply and we’ll include it in our next issue.

We’ve started a series on the blog on 7 days till your first student. We’ve included part 2 below but you can catch part 1 here –

How to get your first tutor client – part 1

 

Even if you’ve already gotten your first student (or have a hundred) you should be able to get some ideas on improving your business.

Notes and Reminders –

1. Here’s our upcoming schedule of what we’ll be talking about… want something different please let us know. (you can just reply to this email)

August – Starting your tutoring business (getting your first student)
Sept / Oct – Tutoring your Students
November / December – Growing your business
Jan / Feb – Online tutoring

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Preparations –

You’ll want to decide a few things, note you’re wanting to get one student for now to prove that tutoring will work for you, so you don’t have to spend a lot of money in order to do this.

1. Decide what you’re going to tutor – decide specifically what you’ll be tutoring. Remember though the broader range you feel comfortable tutoring the more potential customers you have. If you can tutor high school math, it would be better than saying you can tutor Senior calculus. As you build and grow your business you can always narrow it to laser focus on something, but from now keep your options open.

2. Decide a name for your business – this name doesn’t have to be fancy but you’ll want to have something to put on your advertising. You can change it later.

3. Decide what you’re going to charge. We’ve talked quite a bit about what you can charge and you can find those links at the following urls –

How to Get Paid as a Tutor

 

The Psychology of Price

 

Tutor Business – Some different pricing strategies

4. Make sure you have material to tutor your first student. You’ll also need the following items if you want to participate in the things we’ll ask you to do over the next few days.

a. One package of cardstock
b. One package of normal paper
c. Make sure you have enough ink.

5. Roll up your sleeves.

And get ready to work.

This week’s quick tip –

Need to add some money to your bottom line. Offer your current students new options for their tutor program – below we’ve got some ideas to get you thinking.

a) Offer homework help calls. Make sure you give them the exact times you’ll be accepting the calls for homework help (otherwise you’ll be getting calls at 2am).

b) Offer them homework help online – we talk quite a bit about this in our new guide which should be finished soon.

c)Test prep – if a student has got a big testing coming up offer them some extra help a few days before the big test.

How much you want to charge for these added items is up to you. Test your prices.

 

Places to Find Affiliates for your Tutoring Business

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It’s Friday! Today we’re going to talk some more about Affiliate programs. We’re going to give you some ideas for places you can find folks to sell your product for you.

Some of you (thanks) have asked about how my daughter is doing. She had a sinus infection which was kind of weird since she didn’t have the snuffles, cough or any other symptom you would associate with that illness. She started feeling bad on Sunday night and I think the highest fever she had was about 104. We took her to the doctor on Monday and that was the diagnosis. She got some antibiotics but still had a fever around 101 or so for a couple of days. Finally she is fever free and caught up with school which she was stressing over.

If you’ve followed us you know we’re working on an upgrade to our tutoring program. We’re working on an online guide – how to tutor online, the tools you need to use etc. We’ve also worked on producing some physical books for you. We should have that completed by the end of the month but we’re in crunch time so over the next couple of weeks we’ll be reducing the number of posts we have here. We’ll be working on resuming the frequent posts after we finish but that will be a couple of weeks.

I had mentioned before about creating a video for setting up subscriptions for pay pal but we have run out of time this week so we’ll get to it later.

Now on to the show.

Current Customers – one of the best people to approach about getting you some more tutor clients is your current clients. These people know already how awesome you are at tutoring and they can be some of your best sales people. There are many different ways you can approach them but here is what I would do.

First make them aware that you’re looking for additional clients. You’ll want to figure out how you’re going to pay them. Will you give them a free tutor session (or two or three) or are you going to pay them. My suggestion would be to give them a couple of tutor lessons. You can track their sales using the method we talked about earlier this week – having a business card with a coupon and put an affiliate number on the back. You’ll want to make sure you have a spreadsheet you create to keep track of the affiliate numbers.  The biggest thing for any affiliate is developing trust with them, know that you will pay them and not go back on your word is a bit deal… so be honest!

Friends – let your friends and family know that you need some more tutor clients and you’re willing to pay them if they send you some business. Don’t assume they know you’re tutoring, make sure they know by giving them a call, catch up and then tell them about your business. Let them know who and what you’re tutoring (they may even send you some business for FREE).

Contacts – think about people that are around children, kids, or parents of kids that you want to tutor. Spend some time and think about it. You will probably have a list of 10 or 20 people. Make sure you have enough affiliate cards to pass out and begin contacting them. Like anything some people will want to help you and others won’t.

On the Web – we’ve talked some about paypal. With pay pal you can set up an affiliate program if you have a website that allows you to take online payments. We’ll talk much more about this in the online guide, but you can do it.

One caution is once you get the ball rolling it may be hard to get it to stop. I would recommend you start this process only when you have at least one person tutoring with you (your employee) and methods to expand if you need to expand. You don’t want to have to tell prospective clients you don’t have tutor slots open to tutor their child.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Adding Affiliate Programs to your Tutoring Business – Discounts of Supplies

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Questions and Answers (TV series)

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Hope you’re having a wonderful week. We’re going to change things up a bit and talk about affiliate programs today. We got a question from one of our readers and I thought you would enjoy the question and the answer to help build your tutoring business. We’ve also posted a few things this week on our blog.

How to Get Paid as a Tutor

 

How to start an Affiliate Program for your Tutoring Business – Creating an Affiliate Agreement

 

Friday on the blog we’ll be talking about some different methods you can use to get affiliates to promote your tutor business. You’ll want to stay tuned for that. You can find our blog at the following url.

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/

If you wish you can also stay updated by following us on facebook –

Save Money Note – Amazon is running some specials on school / office supplies today only. They are doing them similar to their Gold Box daily deals – there will be different specials at different times. The specials start at 6am Pacific time and run throughout the day to 8pm or so. Looks like some good deals from the preview – you can find them at the link below.

Click Here

Notes and Reminders –

1. Here’s our upcoming schedule of what we’ll be talking about… want something different please let us know. (you can just reply to this email)

August – Starting your tutoring business (getting your first student)
Sept / Oct – Tutoring your Students
November / December – Growing your business
Jan / Feb – Online tutoring

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Questions and Answers

We got the following question in our inbox last week. If you have a question or comment we welcome them. If you see this in your inbox you can just hit reply or you can leave a comment below.

Question (quoted)

Hi!

I simply love your newsletters!

I have just opened a learning center for teaching mathematics to kids (high-school mostly) six months ago and your tips are very useful to me!
I have two questions and I hope you can help me. I come from a small country of Croatia and I am among first started this business ( around 40% of students are using private lessons with an  unregistered tutor). I have a problem with the slogan - I have lots of ideas but I do not  know which one would be best. Maybe you can tell me what is the slogan of  largest learning centar you know has been successful?
Also, I met a sales agent who sells sponges and such things in people’s houses, businesses and schools, she knows a lot of people and I would like her to recommend me for a commission, but I’m not surehow to establish a payment system. I’d given her the code and whenever a client comes with her code, I would pay her a commission. But, how could she know did the client came to me, so that she can be sure that I would pay her commission?

Thank you and I wish you all the best! Sorry for bad english:))

Best regards

 

Our Answer –

I’m glad you’re enjoying our newsletter. We love to hear comments and questions from our readers.

Slogan – I think slogans are useful especially if they help people to remember the name of your company. Since you already have several ideas in mind I think you should go with one of them. Local language and customs usually have a great deal of influence, so what works here wouldn’t necessarily work there.

Getting folks to sell for you – this is an excellent ideas. One of the things we’ve done is to print up business cards with a small discount coupon on them. It could be something as simple as saving 10% off the first tutor session. You would then give your affiliate (in this case the sales agent) a number. You would add their number onto the cards that you give them to hand out. The people she approaches will use the card, because it has a discount associated with it and you will be able to track her commissions.

Thanks again for the note and we hope you have a wonderful weekend.

We had another email exchange – note she asked again about slogans and I told her I really wasn’t qualified to answer that question. She had another question about her affiliate – I’ve included that note and answer below.

Question – (quoted)

Thank you very much for your replay!

The problem with my affiliate is how can SHE be sure that I am not cheating on her, because I am able to track her commissions, but she can’t be sure that I have payed her for every client she sended to me.

Now you have something new to develope and share in your newsletters:)))

Answer –

You could do an affiliate agreement (either formal or informal) – when she gets the first few sales make sure you call her. One of the first questions you should be asking potential clients is how they found you. For clients that she has referred to you but didn’t tutor, you can call her as well and thank her for the leads.

Again we love answering questions and talking about what you would like to talk about. Just post a comment or reply to this note.

This week’s quick tip –

One of the first things you should do when you get a new student is to have them take an assessment test. The assessment test plus a review of their current grades can give you an excellent idea on what to focus on. Assessment tests are pretty easy to find online, you’ll just need to take a hour or so to find one that will fit your needs. A good way to start is go to google and search for “[your subject” assessment test”. I searched for math assessment test. I found a good link to About.com with links to a variety of different tests that could be useful depending on the grade level I was tutoring. It also had links to some good pre college test that would be useful if I were tutoring seniors in high school that were preparing for college. The link to about can be found at the url below.

http://math.about.com/od/mathtests/Math_Tests_and_Assessment_Samples.htm

A reminder you signed up for the newsletter here:

www.cleverapple.com

We look forward to seeing you next week.

How to start an Affiliate Program for your Tutoring Business – Creating an Affiliate Agreement

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Hope your week is going well. Tomorrow we’ll be consulting all day with a client so we won’t post. Thursdays issue of our newsletter will feature questions and answers. If you have a question you can feel free to leave a comment and we’ll work on answering them.

Affiliate programs are a great way to get extra business for you. Affiliate programs have been around a long time (even before they were called affiliate programs), people have been selling on commission for decades. Before you start an affiliate program you’ll want to work on an agreement. We’ll list some things you’ll want to make sure you include in your agreement but we aren’t a lawyer and you’ll want to check with one first to make sure your T’s are crossed and your I’s are dotted.

1. You’ll want to detail the amount of commission you pay them for a sale. We’ll detail the types of commission structure you can use later.

2. You’ll want to explain when they’ll get paid. You’ll want to pay them after you’ve been paid. You also want to make sure it’s after any refund period, otherwise you will paying them with your money, instead of your clients money. An example – sales in August you would pay on Oct. 15th. Make sure that you pay them when you tell them you’ll pay them.

3. List any ways they can’t advertise. I really don’t have a problem if they want to spend their money advertising but many folks do. (Example – they won’t allow facebook advertising or Google Adwords advertising) You’ll need to decide.

4. Ensure there is a specific contract length.

This should give you some ideas. If you search for affiliate agreement template you’ll find some more ideas. Enjoy your day!

Tutor Business – Some different pricing strategies

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Software Testing Lessons Learned 4

Image by LonelyBob via Flickr

There are many different ways you can bill your clients. We’ve listed a few examples below, but the list is by no means an exhaustive list. The best system for you may not be the best system for me. This is a great reason why you should be testing things. Once you’ve found something that works refine and tweak it. Whatever system you choose make sure you have an agreement in place. We have a sample of one of those in our tutoring guide.

1. Bill your clients by the tutoring session. For our example we’ll say we charge $25/ hour for our tutoring. If you bill by the tutor session then you would get $25 after each session. I really don’t recommend this method.

2. Monthly billing. You bill your client in advance for x number of tutoring sessions during the month. So if you’re tutoring someone twice a week for four weeks their bill would be $200.00.

3. Hourly bill – in advance. You bill them for x number of hours in advance. I like this method because you can tweak it so you’re customers save money and everyone loves to save money.  Here are some examples. Buy 5 sessions for the normal price. 10 sessions they save 5%. 20 sessions they can save 10%. So using our example sessions would be $125, $237.50, $450.00. Again you can change the number of sessions or the percentages. Choose what would work for your tutoring business.

Again these are some ideas. Monday we’ll be talking about some ad ons to help you increase your income. Tuesday we’ll talk about how to setup your paypal account so you can take subscriptions easily. We hope you have a wonderful weekend.

 

Tutoring – Figuring out what to charge – Part 1

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One of the things you’ll need to figure out as you start your tutoring business is what to charge your clients. Over the next several days we’ll be talking about pricing and some things you will need to know. These tips should help you if you’re starting your tutoring business or already have one.

Today we’re going to talk about surveying your competition. This will give you a general idea of what others are charging in your area. We’ll then use these as guidelines for what we’ll be charging.

1. Create a spreadsheet or use a sheet of paper and write the following columns across the top.
Business – the name of the company
Url – the url of the website
Contact information – email addresses / phone number / physical address
Amount – the amount they charge
Features – we’ll put features of the company here (like online tutoring, pick up / drop off etc.).

2. Next you’ll want to search for tutor businesses in your area. For this we’ll pretend that I’m a Math tutor in Lexington Ky. I would go to Google and search for lexington ky +math tutor. You would search using [city state +subject tutor]. If you get just a few results then you’ll want to expand your results by searching for [city state +tutor]. The plus just tells Google to search for the city state and to include sites with tutor in the results. I have a big list, so I would start working on the list noting  the information I need. Some sites will include that information and others won’t, but they should give you enough contact information to find out.

3. Work on contacting those from your search that didn’t give prices. This should give you a good general idea of what people are charging for tutoring in your city.

Tomorrow we’ll be talking about the Psychology of pricing.