Hope you had a wonderful weekend. My daughters not feeling well so that makes her Dad feel bad as well.
Last week we talked about thinking about what to charge for your tutoring services. Today (and probably another post – probably Friday) we’ll be talking about how to actually get paid. Tuesday and Weds. we’re going to talk a bit about affiliate programs. After that we’re going to focus on getting our Online Tutoring Guide finished up, then we’ll resume these. If these articles help we would love to hear from you… hearing from you is like adding gas to our fuel tank. If we don’t hear from you it’s kind of like when you’re teaching and all you see from your students is blank stares… not fun.
You’ve decided what to charge, the next step is figuring out how you’re going to accept money. No matter what method you use to accept payments you’ll want to make sure that you give the parents an invoice after you bill them. You create two of them and give one to them and keep one for your records. You should do this when they pay you or shortly after they pay you.
If you’re just starting out and getting your first student you want to keep your expenses to a bare minimum. Once you get started and have your first client you’ll want to get a business bank account. You don’t have to have one but it will make things much easier when it’s time to work on your taxes. After you get the business account I would recommend getting a paypal account. Getting a Paypal account allows you to accept credit card payments but more importantly it allows you to create a subscription which bills the parents at set intervals for a specific amount. The subscriptions help you save a ton of time, since you do it once and automatically every month / week or however you set it up, you get paid.
You can get other merchant accounts that will allow you to do the same thing, but paypal is free. As you grow I would recommend having several different accounts (like paypal and a merchant account). Friday (if my daughters feeling better) I should have some videos for you on how to set up the subscriptions. See you tomorrow and hope you have a wonderful day!