News –
First we want to welcome all of our new subscribers and our new customers.
We’ve been busy over the past week or so catching up on some projects. Also I finally am now done with jury duty. It’s kind of funny though I still want to call the number to see if I show up the next day. I guess habits are hard to break.
Thanks to those that filled out our survey. Figuring out what you want us to talk about every week is hard. Hopefully we provide you with information you’re looking for. If you have something you would like for us to cover you can reply to this email or if you’re visiting our blog you can leave us a comment.
Today we’re going to continue talking about getting students, and we’re going to talk about getting started with nothing.
Tutor Business Tips – Finding Leads
Finding students is the lifeblood of any tutor business. Over the next few weeks we’ll be talking about some ways you can get students. We’re starting with ways that have worked best for me.
We talked last time about finding schools that you want to target. We’ll pretend that I’m a junior high Math tutor and my first target school is a school my child attends. If you don’t have a child attending the school then you’ll have to work on tweaking things a bit and we’ll talk about that next week.
You’ll want to become ‘friends’ of the school. The goal of course is to become friends with the staff. Then you’ll bring in the bit you’re tutoring Math. There are many different ways you can do this. The way I’ve found easiest is to volunteer at the school. You’ll usually need to have a background check and will need to fill out some paperwork. You also don’t have to volunteer during the school days… you could volunteer for events in the evening. Remember you’re building long term relationships with people. If you focus just on selling your tutor services, you won’t do very well.
Make sure you attend all of the school functions. Where we live it’s called the PTA – you’ll want to make sure you attend those, sporting events, etc.
As you’re meeting teachers and staff you’ll want to make sure you keep some notes about them. As you do this you’ll begin to figure out whose friendly, who isn’t. You’ll want to cultivate the relationships with those who are friendly. You’ll also want to talk to the children within the school. Knowing where they hang out with their parents can help when thinking about where and how to advertise.
In some cases this process can be time consuming. In other’s you’ll be able to get on a tutor list, speak with a guidance counselor, or you may already know all of the Math teachers. If it looks like it will be time consuming it will be worth it. One thing I’ve also found that works well is to volunteer to tutor kids for the school.
Next time we’ll talk about if you don’t have a child at the school, and some other ways you can get some students quickly.
Starting your tutoring business with nothing.
One of the things we found from our survey is one of the barriers for starting a tutor business is the cost. We created a 7 day email series that will help you do just that… start with nothing.
If you haven’t had a chance to check out our 7 day tutor tips then you’ll want to check them out. This series helps you get your first tutor student for nothing. You can check it out at the following url –
http://www.cleverapple.com/7dayemailseries.html
Next time – building your blog – posting things (it will help people find you).
Now that you have your blog set up. You’ll want to start posting things on your blog. A great place to start is thinking about questions you get from your students or people you’re speaking to.
You’ll want to create a list of these topics. For two months you’ll want to post something every day.
Here is an idea of posts you could do for a week.
Monday – wrap up of schools you’re targeting sports scores for the weekend. Remember we want people to come to your blog for information about things happening at school.
Tuesday – an article from your ideas above.
Weds – school news / happening. Is prom coming up etc.
Thursday – an article
Friday – things to do in your town this weekend.
We’ll talk next time about how to put the blog posts on blog and how to use that content for other things.
Hope you have a wonderful week.