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How to Setup a Groupon Deal for your tutoring business.

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Today we’re going to explain to you how to set up a Groupon deal for  your tutor business.

Step 1 – Go to https://www.groupon.com/ Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Run a Groupon deal.

Step 2 – click the local image and fill out the form. Groupon will contact you with details about how to set up your campaign.

That is pretty simple. Before I go on, there are horror stories about using Groupon and there are some people that tell you that doing it can be bad for business. Here is one good explanation of that – http://mywifequitherjob.com/should-you-use-groupon-for-your-small-business/

So why would I say that you should test out a Groupon. So lets pretend for a minute.

Just to make the numbers easier we’ll pretend that you’re going to sell ten $10 tutor sessions for $5. So basically this is letting the groupon folks try it for free.

So you sell 10 for $5 and give Groupon half of it. So you’ve made $2.50 x 10 or $25.

Let’s say that out of those 10 new one session customers that you sell 2 of them your normal tutoring sessions.

$10 x 2 (number of customers) x 4 (months in the semester) x 8 sessions a month = $640.00 money for the semester. If you retain the customer for more than a semester then you’ve made more money.

A few things to remember –

  1. Make sure to check out the costs of doing your offer first.
  2. Don’t say you can fulfill more than you can. If you can add ten new tutor slots for a week or a month or whatever then do that. Don’t say you’ll sell 20 and then have to scramble to get the tutors.
  3. Test it and let us know how you did. I’m trying to figure out a way to do it for my businesses. If you offer something that is sold and no one ever uses again, then I can definitely see how you could lose money. Tutors generally have long term relationships with their customers. This could also be a good idea for people that sell complimentary things – like say pillows and sheets. You could Groupon the pillows, then try to sell them sheets.

Enjoy your week.

A Better Tutor Business

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Our goal this year is to help you grow your business. We plan on sending a newsletter out every couple of weeks – we also plan on posting the off weeks on our blog (on Thursday) – the blog is here.

http://cleverapple.com/our-blog/

Targeting the right people is super important to getting new students no matter if you tutor high school math or how to crochet. This week we’re going to begin an exercise in doing just that. We’ll continue to use our NCLEX site as the guinea pig, that way when we give you suggestions and things to do, we’ll do those as well and share our results.

First get a sheet of paper (or a notebook you’ll use just for this). First list all of the subjects you tutor, then list all of the different types of students that you tutor. So if you tutored high school Math you would list all of the different types of Math you tutor (Algebra, Geometry, etc), then students would be Freshmen, preparing for the ACT etc. Next I want you to think this week about what you like tutoring the most or the segment you serve. Think about your tutoring services or products and then I want you to choose your favorite. For me I like to tutor students that have failed their NCLEX, helping them to pass it makes me so happy. Today’s task isn’t super hard but it is really important, so spend some time and then choose one.

 

Getting Students –

Review your goals. How many new students do you need to reach that goal, now break it down to contacts. How many contacts does it take you to get a new student. So if it takes you 20 contacts to get a student and your goal is 2 new students each month, you’ll want to contact 40 people. Now break those down into days – how many do you need to contact?

 

Business Tip –

Need a spreadsheet for your mileage – here is a free one – https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/mileage-tracking.html

Mile IQ is a great app you can get – https://www.mileiq.com/

Reminders –

It is the beginning of the semester, a great time to do some advertising in your schools about your tutor program. Need some ideas – here are more than a couple – http://cleverapple.com/?s=getting+tutor+students

Enjoy your week!

Some Tutor Business Tax Tips

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tutor-business-taxes

No one likes to pay taxes, but I don’t like the alternative either (if you don’t make any money in your business then you don’t owe any money). Since the last quarterly payment is due this weekend and filing your taxes is around the corner, I thought we would give you a few tips.

Note: I am not an accountant – so please seek the advice of your accountant when filing your taxes. It is impossible for me to know all the regulations that might pertain to you.

  1. Keep records – it is VERY important for you to keep good mileage records, if you use your car to travel to your student’s home. When I did this I kept a mileage log every day, with notes in it when it was a trip to someone’s home. This will be used to determine the percentage you use the vehicle for business and will help you figure out your deductions. If you haven’t been keeping records, then start keeping them now.
  2. I recommend buying a computer for just business use, that way there is no concern if you used it strictly for business (or not).
  3. Make sure your home office is just for business – otherwise you won’t be able to take the deduction. I have a room in my house that is dedicated to that, but you can start with just a corner of the living room.
  4. It may come as a surprise that you owe money. It caught me off guard the first year I was in business. After that I was more prepared. For your quarterly payments (although they really aren’t quarterly) I would set aside a certain amount of money each month, that way when payment time comes around you’ll be prepared. You can take a big hit around April 15th because you’ll have to pay any additional taxes you owe and you’ll also have to make payment one for the 2017 tax year. Now would be a great time to get a general idea of what you owe, so you can start saving for that payment.
  5. Don’t wait till the last minute to try and get all your deductions together. I make it a point to do it every week, so when tax time comes around I just have to print it and take it to the accountant. If you get a burst of business during the year, you’ll also want to speak with them because you might have to adjust your estimated payments, the same goes for if your business takes a down turn, you may be able to pay less – just ask them about it.

I hope 2017 is the best year you’ve ever had for your tutor business!

Goals for your tutor business

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goals

I hope you had a wonderful holiday with your family. This year I want to start a series that will help you grow your tutor business. Each week we’ll highlight something that will help you build your business. I am a firm believer in building a business that will last for you until you decide to sell it or retire, so while there are some shortcuts out there, we will be focusing on building your tutor business for the long haul.

We’ve talked about goals before – you’ll want to review it before you continue.

http://cleverapple.com/goals-for-your-business/

The great thing about owning a tutor business is you have recurring income. You sign up a student and the will be your student for at least a semester. The bad thing is all tutor students have a limited amount of time you can tutor them. This makes getting new students one of the most important activities that you can engage in.

The beginning of a semester is a great time to get new students. Use techniques that worked for you at the beginning of the year. One big objection during this time of the year is money, many times families spend more than they mean to for presents, so that can be a powerful objection. A great way to get around this objection is to offer them a discount for January.

Next time we’ll talk about Taxes – till then share some of your favorite strategies for getting new students in the comments below.

How to Advertise your Tutor Offer

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We talked some last week about offering discounts. You can find that article here –

http://cleverapple.com/some-discount-ideas-for-your-tutor-business/

Today we’re going to talk a little about how to get the word out. Remember as a tutor you have a finite amount of resources. You know how many more students you can have both now and for next year. The first thing you should do is to make sure those numbers are correct. Speak to your students (or parents) and ask them about their plans for next year.

It is also good to check out your tax situation – I know that probably sounds kind of crazy but it is something to think about. You can decide whether you would like to make the money this year or next.

I like offering current clients and new clients something. Offer the existing clients something first, you don’t have to spend a dime to do that, just let them know about the discount. Make sure that you give them a firm deadline of when they need to respond to you. When you get those numbers then you’ll know more about how many new students you can get.

While you’re speaking to your current students you can ask them if they know anyone that may need your services.  After you’ve done that you want to do the following.

  1. Create a blog post that explains your discounts.
  2. Announce the discounts to your Facebook friends.
  3. Contact people on you mailing lists.

How did you get your current customers? You should be tracking how you get each and every one. Use your best method for a couple of days, then move to the next best method. Continue that process until you have accomplished your goal.

We’re going to offer some discounts next week (Thursday) – they’ll be limited in number. If you would like us to contact, you first (probably Tuesday of next week) – then you can send us a note at info@cleverapple.com – make sure “I Want the discount” – is in the subject.

Some discount ideas for your tutor business

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rp_2003452102_30aeb442ea_m.jpgI hope your November is going well. It still feels like summer here in Kentucky. We have had so many 70 and 80 degree days I think we’re getting spoiled. Today we’re going to talk about discounts. Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season will be here before you know it. Your customers will love getting a discount from you.

  1. What kind of discount are you going to offer.
    Think for a moment about your business and where you are now. How many customers do you have, how many additional customers can you handle for the spring. Or do you need more customers now? Do you want it to be a deal for one of your current programs or something new that you’re going to develop?

    We’ll pretend that we’re booked pretty solid for the fall, we’ve talked to our current students and know that in the spring we’ll have two or three slots open. We want to get some concrete numbers so we decide to offer a couple of different discounts. One for new students and one for current students.

  2. How much are you going to discount / creating the offer.

    By now you should know how much a new student brings in with your current prices. We’ll say for our example that a new student brings in $150 / week or averages about $450 for a semester. We normally keep the students for 3 semesters so the life time value of our customer is $450 x 3 = $1350.00

    We decide we’re going to offer three different discounts – this will help us learn more about our customers and help us test out some things for the future. We want to learn what kind of discount works best.

    We will offer –
    -20% off for current tutor students that sign up and pay for their tutoring in advance for the remainder of this semester and next.
    -Buy one month get the next month of tutoring free if someone signs up to be tutored for all next semester.
    For January and Feb – buy two sessions, get one free.

  3. Implementing the discount

    Create a web page on your blog for each of the discounts. Each of the discount codes need to be different. If you get most of your business over the phone, make sure that everyone that works for you needs to ask if they have a discount code. An easy way to keep track is by using a spreadsheet.

  4. Covering all of the bases

    Limit the number of people that can take the discount and keep to those discounts. You’ll want to note this in your advertising and you’ll want to make sure to mention that on the web pages you create. Explain in detail how the discount works – don’t leave anything to their imagination.

    Example:
    20% off. Five current tutor students of Clever Apple will get 20% off for the rest of this semester and next semesters tutoring (Up to 25 sessions). Payment for these sessions must be made in advance. See below for pricing options – it includes the 20% off. Make sure to use 20off when you’re ordering.
    List the prices.

I hope this will help you get some more customers.

Next time we’ll talk some about some ways that you can get the word out.

Teaching your Tutor Students – Memorization Techniques – Flashcards

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rp_300px-Post-it.jpgWe’re going to be reviewing in the weeks ahead some methods to help your students study. This week we’ll be reviewing memorization techniques. Today we’re going to be talking about one of my favorite memorization techniques – flashcards.

There are many different ways you can help your student study by using flashcards, just like any of the methods we talk about you’ll want to try them all and then chose the one that works best for the student.

Flashcards you create yourself

When I was in nursing schools I used flashcards to help me pass my classes and then my NCLEX test. I did this using the old fashioned technique of figuring out the content that I needed to learn and then writing the questions / topic on one side of an index card and the answer on the other. This worked well, I think it helped almost as much to write everything down. We had a study session every weekend with four or five other students and we would use those flashcards between major topics that we were studying.

Things to remember: With flashcards you create, make sure to check and double check the information you put on them is correct. If the information is wrong then you’ll be learning something that won’t help you pass a test.

Online Flash Cards –

There are several different services online that offer free flashcards for almost any topic imaginable. An example is this service.

https://quizlet.com/help/2444092/how-do-i-study-with-flashcard-mode

The flashcards are made by different people – if you’re using this with your student then MAKE SURE the flash cards you use are correct. I’ve found the best way to use this method is to prepare the flash cards together with your student.

Purchasing them online –

You can purchase flash cards from Amazon. If you’re doing this make sure to check out the reviews from people that purchased the product. If there are a whole lot of one star reviews then the product probably doesn’t do a very good job.

Long-term learning.

I was in the Army for awhile during the time when there was an East and West Germany, and my duty was to guard the border between the two countries. We used flash cards with normal playing card numbers on the front. This helped us learn the things we were supposed to learn (we needed to know what the silohette (or shadow) of all of the enemies vehicles looked like. In the first Desert storm we were also issued playing card / flash cards that showed faces of the enemy and customs. You can create your own cards for these especially for long term study products (like the NCLEX, Law exam, etc.).

Do you have any ideas for using flash cards? Let us know in the comments.

Your tutor student failed a test – Four ways to help them pass the next one.

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You tutor high-school math. You have a tutor student, Jill who you’ve been tutoring for a couple of weeks. Things seem to be going well, she takes the first Geometry test and makes a 62%, the passing grade is 70%, what do you do?

If you’ve been tutoring for very long, you’ve already ran into this situation, if you haven’t yet, just give it some time. So what are some steps you can do to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

  1. Assess –

You should be doing this with every test that one of your students take or paper that they submit, if possible get a copy of the test (all of them), if the teacher doesn’t give copies of the test back, you’ll want to call them. Explain to them you tutor the student and you want to help them to study effectively. Normally they will be more than happy to give you some idea of what the student missed. When I’ve done this I would say that half the time I get the test back, the other times I get a good run down of what kind of problems the student has missed. When you get the test back, review the results and find out what Jill is having trouble with. In the example we gave, was it the math, was it formulas, reading problems, etc. Finding what the problem is the first step of helping them.

If there isn’t one thing that stands out, then it could be a case of test anxiety. One thing I love doing is giving a review test, before the actual test and watch the student as they take the test. This can be really easy if you tutor online, just have the student use a whiteboard program (that shows there work on the screen) or get a camera set up.

The student’s parents are also probably disappointed, after all they are paying you so that Jill won’t fail the test and so that eventually she be able to pass the ACT and go to whatever college that she chooses. Now is a great time to talk about the score and what you’re planning on doing to help their child pass the next one. If a parent isn’t involved, then just explain things to the student.

  1. Plan –

    Now that you’ve figured out what is wrong it is time to create a plan. Find out how long it is till their next exam or paper. List the content they’ll need to know for the next test. Is that content similar to what was on the last project. Is it new material? In our example, we found out that Jill didn’t know the formulas she needed to on the test.

    Figure out how many tutor sessions you have between now and the next test. Each tutor session you’ll want to focus on something to ensure they pass it next time.

  2. Implement the plan.
  3. Review – how did it go? The longer you tutor a specific student, the more you’ll learn about them and figure out what they have trouble with.

Good luck. Questions, comments, or have a case you would like some help with just let us know in the comments below.

Facebook Advertising for your Tutor Business

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Hope everyone is doing great and has plans for a wonderful holiday weekend. I wanted to share with you some results from a Facebook ad campaign we worked on the past couple of weeks.

cleverfb-1

Some highlights:

  • The campaign lasted from August 22nd till Sept. 1st 2016.
  • We were highlighting a new program for our NCLEX site – we were offering a coupon.
  • Almost 1800 people visited our website (1799).
  • We spent $189.08 for the campaign.
  • Cost per click or visit 11 cents.

 

The campaign generated 6 new signups (sales) for the monthly program we were highlighting.

3 – $9 / month plans.
2 – $19 / month plans
1 – $29 / month
===================

Total – $94.00 / month.

This is a new program so we don’t have solid numbers for how long these subscribers will stay with us. We’ll guess an average of 5 months.

Total – $$470.00

It generated a couple of other signups to.

1 @ $97
1 @ $149
==========

$246

Grand total – $716

Ad cost – $189.08

Profit – $526.92

 

So are we pleased. Yes we are. Next week we’ll go over some of the backend things we did with the ad. Probably in the middle of Sept. we’ll be tweaking the ad a little and running it again to see how folks respond. The greatest thing was the 11 cents / click. We do Google advertising quite a bit, the lowest I can get a click thru for if everything is working perfectly is $1 to $1.25 a click.

Enjoy your day and if you have any question let us know.

Your first tutor session – How to Make a Good Impression Part 1

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Today we’re going to talk about first impressions and some things you want to make sure you do during the first tutor session. Today we’ll talk about online tutoring, next week we’ll talk about off line tutoring.

After you sell a tutor session or package, you need to make sure to do the following.

1. Learn about your new client.

The best way I’ve found to do this is with a form. Google forms makes it easy to create a form. Within the form you should include their contact information, days and times they would like to be tutored, what they expect to get out of the tutor sessions. Ask them for any information that will help you assess them and begin to figure out what you need to work with them on.

2. Send them information on how to access your platform. Email or send them to a video or webpage that explains to them in detail how to set up so you can tutor them. Every platform is different and setting things up is a bit different. I have found the easiest way to do this is to explain to someone that you’re sitting with exactly how to set things up and take notes while you do it. Compile these notes into a check list and then take it to someone different and watch them set things up. They should be able to hear you, see what you want them to see on the screen and you should be able to hear them and watch them (their screen) or both. If you’re tutoring a child in elementary school you’ll want to explain to them they need to be with the child to help them start the first session (at least).

3. Schedule a time. Use the information they gave you from the contact form and give them some time options. I normally like to send them three or four choices for the first session. During the first tutor session you’ll set up the ‘regular’ days and times for tutoring the.

4. Practice online tutoring with someone. Do this with a friend or family member. Do this with someone you haven’t seen in a while. Make sure they have the tools, send them your instructions and then start an online session with them. Find out any problems they might have and correct them before you have a real student.

During the First Session

1. Work out the kinks. Make sure the student can hear you and you can hear them. Explain to them how to ask / answer questions. Also how you’ll send them work to do and if you need to see them do the work (like Math).

2. Do an initial assessment. Finding out where they are will help you implement a plan that will work in helping them. It will also make you look good.

3. Ask if they have any friends. Probably 3/4’s of my new clients came from referrals from someone else. The students you have now is the best form of advertising. Offering them an incentive to bring you new clients will help them remember you when someone they know needs help in the subject you’re tutoring. Test your incentives, they can be different for each student.

Next time we’ll talk about off line tutoring. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to send us a note.