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Learn from your Tutor Successes

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Key to success

Key to success

Most of you tutor or are thinking about starting a tutoring business. At your core is the desire to help someone overcome an obstacle. Today we’re going to talk about one of our success stories and hopefully it will give you some tips for helping you to become a better tutor. It should also help to build and grow your business.

We’ve talked some about our NCLEX tutor business. You can check out the website here – http://www.nclexreviewonline.com/

Nothing fancy but it works. If you want to see some of the inner workings you can find a link for 24 free access here at the bottom of the page – http://www.nclexreviewonline.com/nclex-boot-camp-nclex-review-course/

We tutor students who are preparing to take the NCLEX test, we found as we talked to prospective students, many of them had failed the NCLEX test previously.

Talk to prospective customers – you may think you know what your market is, the only way you can know for sure is to test it and then talk to prospective customers. There are a couple of ways you can talk to them, one of the best ways I found was to create an information form and after a student filled it out, then you have permission to engage with them. One of the best questions you can add to your form is what they expect you to do for them.

Make it easy for someone to get in touch with you.

Someone did this, she had taken the LPN NCLEX test previously and had failed. She asked could we tutor LPNS (the site is setup for RNS). I told her that I would do some research and found the tests are very similar. The first thing we did was a good assessment.

Assess your students – the more you learn their strengths and weaknesses the better you’ll be able to help them. During your assessment you want to find out all you can about your prospective student. This lady has six children and works a full time job. I learned she wanted to be an LPN so she could better provide for her family – that motivated me. If you only tutor for money, you will fail. I know that sounds harsh, but it is true. Tutoring is not easy, but it is very rewarding.

I found out from (we’ll call her B) that she had taken the NCLEX and the test had ended (it can last five hours) and she sent me the results. She had almost passed. We needed to focus on getting her to answer questions quicker. Language was a problem too since she was not a native English speaker. We tutored her for a month. Most of our sessions began at 4 or 5 in the morning. I think I was her wake up call. We focused on her weaknesses and I noticed improvement as we continued.

I also encouraged her as much as I could.

Encourage your students. Even the small accomplishments, tell them they are doing a good job. Every student I’ve ever tutored, loves it when they are complimented.

Also one of the problems she had was she had taken another course that was all about dissecting the questions. We figured out this was why she answered questions so slowly, we retrained her to forget that and just answer the questions.

Our last tutor session was on a Saturday afternoon. This session we spent most of the time encouraging her and giving her some last minute tips and pointers. I asked her if she would like to talk again before the test and she did. Monday afternoon I called her on the way to take the test. I reminded her of all the work we had done (she had answered thousands of practice questions) and told her to relax. She called me when the test was over. She was upset. The test had turned off after only 3 hours. I reminded her this was a good thing. She also mentioned the questions were hard (again a good thing). This was the note I got from her yesterday.

“Pass Pass Thank you God bless you and your wonderful family.”

I did the happy dance.

Evaluate and Adjust – for each student you’re tutoring you should be taking careful notes. Every student is different, but many things are the same. For example, we know a lot about the NCLEX test, we have found that answering good test questions help people to pass the test. We also use assessment tests and if they make a certain score, then they will likely pass the test. One of the other things with any tutor student is figuring out what motivates them and how to help calm them down when they are taking a test.

We love hearing questions from you. Enjoy your day!

Four things you want to do before school starts for your Tutor Business

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Finding Tutor Students

Finding Tutor Students – Back to School

I hope you have enjoyed your summer and had some vacation time. Before you know it school will be back in session and if you tutor students that are going to school, it’s time to get back into gear. Here are some reminders of things you’ll want to make sure to do.

  1. Decide how much you want to tutor this year. If you tutored last year and nothing changed, then you’ll want to tutor that amount of time. Do you want to expand? Now is the time to think about hiring a tutor to help you. Do you need to cut back for some reason, then you’ll want to adjust.

    I decide how many hours I can tutor in a week.

    Example: I can tutor from 4-9pm each day except Friday (20 hours). I can also tutor four hours on Saturday (total 24 hours / week).
    How many hours each student will need. Most of my students need an hour a week. So I can have 24 tutor students.

  2. You should have some notes from your last tutor sessions from the Spring semester (or hopefully you’ve tutored them a couple of times during the summer). Create a schedule for your week. Contact those on your previous tutor list. Let them know when school is starting, when your tutoring will begin. Also explain to them any changes, fee differences etc. Then ask them what day and time they want. The best way is to offer them a couple of different times – a good way to begin is start with the time you tutored them last semester. Also explain to them any ‘extras’ you have that they may be interested in. Remember it is SUPER EASY to sell something to a customer you already have. If you think you’ll have some slots left open (see 3) ask them for referrals and offer them an incentive to help you find more students.
  3. Figure out how many tutor slots you have left over. We’ll pretend we have 9 slots left over, so we need to find nine students to fill those spots. Even though I know we’ll get a few calls during the first few weeks of school, it would be better if we filled all of the slots before school starts.
  4. Marketing plan – if you browse through our blog you will find a ton of ways to find tutor students. I will list just a couple here – contact the schools you’ll be tutoring at. Find out if they’re going to be having any back to school festivities. Ask if you can sponsor the event – offer to buy school supplies. This gives you some good will for the school and you’ll want to make sure that you’ll get to put up a poster or put out some brochures. Contact the guidance counselors and librarians, and the school teachers that teach your subject. They should already know you so just remind them that you’re still in business.

Do you have any ways that you like to get new students? Let us know in the comments below and we hope you are ready to make this school year the best for your tutor business.

Pokeman Go and your tutor business

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pokeman-goUnless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Pokeman Go.

Here is a link that talks about the game.

http://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-video-games/pokemon-go/

So you get the game, then you go outside and search for characters to add to your game. If you see people wondering around mindlessly bumping into stuff while they are looking down at their cell phone, then that is probably what they are doing.

I think this is an opportunity for businesses since you can ‘buy’ a lure. This lure adds one of the characters to a location that you choose. These lures are in place for 30 minutes. Like any new opportunity that comes along for advertising the cost is currently $10 but I’m pretty sure that it will be going up in the near future.

I’m still doing some research on exactly how it works – do you choose the character, is it random. If you purchase two lures at different times of the day or different days, are they the same character that shows up or is it different. I have a bunch of ideas about how this could work for businesses. What I need to think about is how that it could work to increase traffic and sales for your tutor business. I’m sure I’ll think of one and then I’ll make sure to share it with you.

If you had a normal business – like say a coffee shop then you could buy a lure when you didn’t have much business, then advertise that you bought a lure and that they will be there between this time and that.

Do you guys have any ideas? Let us know in the comments or our Facebook page.

Have you created your content plan for Summer?

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Start An Online Tutor Business

Start An Online Tutor Business

The Summer is a great time to put some good content on your blog. People take vacations during the summer and normally have some extra time to do things that they enjoy (like read). The great thing for you is after you create your content plan, you can begin work on your blog posts, videos, etc. You should be able to do that in a couple of weeks and then you can take some extra time off during the summer.

Start with the end –

When does school start back where you live. If you don’t know, now is the time to find it out. For this articles sake we’ll pretend that it is August 15th. Remember during the first few weeks of school / before school is a great time to get students for your tutor business. We’ll pretend that we tutor math and have a math camp for a couple of weeks in July. Here is a sample for what we would post and you can use to hopefully create your plan.  The plan is to post something M- W – F

June 12 –
M- Success stories – highlight some of your successes from last year.
W- Video highlights
F- Photos from summer – doesn’t have to be business or even subject related – although it can be.

June 19 –

M- Success stories – highlight some of your successes from last year.
W- Create an article series that lasts 4 or 5 weeks. Should focus on a big problem area for your students. ACT / SAT Math tips
F – Photos from summer

June 26

M- Detailed article about Math Camp
W- ACT / SAT Math tips
F – Photos from summer

July 3

M- Math Camp reminder
W- ACT / SAT Math tips
F – Photos from summer

July 10 – Math camp – record a couple of sessions showing you teaching math. We’ll edit these into three hour long videos.

M- First day of Math camp
W- Pictures from Math Camp
F – Video of Math Camp

July 17

M- ACT / SAT Math tips
W- Video Math Camp highlights
F – Photos from summer

July 24

M- Math Camp teach video
W- ACT / SAT Math tips
F – Photos from summer

July 31

M- Math Camp teach video
W- High School Algebra – Things to review before starting this year.
F – Photos from summer

Aug 7

M- Math Camp teach video
W- High School Geometry – Things to review before starting this year.
F – Tutor Specials

Aug 14

M- Math teachers this year
W- Tips for starting school right
F – Photos from summer

What we’ve been up to … never give up!

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nevergiveupI was going to send this out yesterday, but the day passed and I still hadn’t done it. I’ve been working on creating a new program. I’m just like you, I love to tutor. I don’t only enjoy teaching tutors; I also enjoy teaching student’s subjects. You may or may not know, I was a nurse for five years. I loved helping patients, but hated all of the crap that can sometimes come from working in a hospital. When I started my business (the same time I was at the hospital), it was rough, when I started doing well in my business, I decided that I couldn’t do both.

I have mentioned before that as a tutor you need to create a standalone product. As one person, you only have so many hours a day that you can tutor. When you have a product, it can teach subjects for you and make you a bit of money in the process.

I decided a year or so ago that I wanted to tutor something related to nursing and the NCLEX test. I knew there was a market for it, I also knew that people needed it (and would pay for it) and that I could help fill that need. I tried a couple of different tactics, which didn’t work. When you create a new product, you don’t have to have the whole project completed before you do some testing. I did a math program, a video flash card, and an NCLEX tutoring program (one on one) – each of these programs taught me several different things from customers that I talked to. They helped me come up with another idea (the fourth one).

Here is the process I use –

  1. Have an idea.
  2. Research to see if it has an audience, do a little research on pricing.
  3. Gather some information about questions that customers want answers to and check out current products.
  4. Create an outline. Normally I like 4 or 6 modules / months of content. This product was going to be an NCLEX product and students normally take the test within a couple of months after school, so it needed to be compact – so I decided on a four-week program. I like to drip the content – this means customers get access to a segment of content (a week or a month) – then 7 days or 30 days, they get access to the next bit of content.
  5. Create the first segment of content. Build a sales page.
  6. Do a soft launch – advertise a little bit and get some customers (hopefully) – if not set the project aside. Go back to #1.

I am always a bit nervous when I start the advertising. For this project I got five sales in 2 days. Each of the weeks of content had seven days of content. Each of those days had videos etc. that I needed to create, so that’s what I’ve been up to. This morning I finished recording week 4 Saturday and Sunday, next week I’ll work on the ‘Bonus week” and setup an affiliate program. So we have been busy. The great thing is now I can tweak, tune, refine the content, but it will always be there. I spent a couple of hundred hours creating it, so far the return on that time investment is only a couple of bucks an hour, but we’ll share with you what it is at the end of the summer.

Next time I’ll share with you how we set up things. Why don’t you share what you’ve been up to, just shoot us a comment on our Facebook page?

Tutoring in the Summer and a Big discount.

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DiscountI hope your May is going well. May is my birthday month and we’re having a sale on all of our products.

We’re celebrating all month with discounts for ALL of our programs. Just use the code BIRTHDAY as a coupon code. You’ll save 40%. This discount is the best we’ll offer this month, but it only lasts thru May 8th.

http://cleverapple.com/how-to-start-a-tutor-business/

So instead of paying $79, you’ll pay $47.40

http://cleverapple.com/online-tutoring-guide/

So instead of paying $129 for the online guide you’ll pay $77.40. The Gold package will be $77.40 a month and the Silver for $41.40. Monthly discounts continue for as long as you continue the program. Questions please don’t hesitate to email us info@cleverapple.com.

We not only train tutors, but we tutor as well. We’re currently putting the finishing touches on a program to help nurses pass the NCLEX test – I’ll include some links when we’re finished. So we’ve been super busy. We have written quite a bit in the past about tutoring during the Summer – below we’ve included some of our favorite articles.

http://cleverapple.com/summer-tutoring-programs-how-to-switch-from-students-home-to-your-home-for-tutoring/

http://cleverapple.com/getting-ready-for-tutoring-this-summer/

A three part series on creating a Summer tutoring program.

Part 1 – http://cleverapple.com/tutor-tips-creating-a-summer-tutor-program/

Part 2 – http://cleverapple.com/creating-a-summer-tutor-program-part-2/

Part 3 – http://cleverapple.com/creating-a-summer-tutor-program-getting-the-word-out/

Enjoy your day!

Preparing your students for Final Exams

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Like it or not we’re getting close to the end of the ‘normal’ school year. A time when most students (and teachers, tutors) have been anticipating with joy and dreading at the same time. By now you know your students, you should know their strengths and weaknesses. Today we’re going to talk about some things that will help them do a little better on their finals.

  1. Find out now when the final(s) will be. Schools do finals differently. Colleges, some anyway allow students to choose when they are going to take their final. When you have the date, make a plan on how you’re going to study for it. As the tutor you’ll have a limited amount of time with them before, so you want to make sure the days they aren’t tutoring with you, they’re still studying for the test.
  2. Learn what will be on the test. You can usually get this information from the student. If you tutor students every year that have the same teacher and subject, you will have a good idea of what will be on the final exam.
  3. You have already been helping your student make better scores on their tests. During the few weeks before the test date – focus on things they are still having trouble with, the test questions / types of questions they have been missing on exams.
  4. Help them relax.

Now is also a good time to remind them that pretty soon they’ll have a whole summer to enjoy with having to worry about homework or tests.

Income highlights:

Some ideas for extra income.

  1. If your student needs extra sessions – offer them. Sometimes it is easy to offer these for free, but you’re running a business so don’t do it.
  2. Speak with your students, if there are many people in the class your tutoring that might need help, think about scheduling a weekend class.
  3. Now is also the time to start thinking about if you’ll be tutoring your current students next year (or not).

Enjoy your week.

How to sell your new product

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You’ve created your new product; now how do you make money for it. There are several different ways you can do this.

  1. Simple – the easiest way is to create a buy now button on Paypal. You will need to do the backend things manually – just make sure that you let people know on your sales page that you deliver it manually to them.
  2. Simple Plus – Paypal does allow you to ‘auto’ deliver the product, you can do that by following instructions that are on this page. https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/How-to-use-PayPal-Archive/I-want-to-send-automatic-products-downloads-or-PDF-after-payment/td-p/47692
  3. Third Party – if you use a 3rd party to deliver your product you will have to pay for that option. You can find a list of options here – http://www.vandelaydesign.com/selling-digital-products/

I have used E-junkie and ClickBank and have been paid by them and they have worked well. ClickBank does hold your funds for a while, but that is just so they can verify that you have a real company.

You can make things more complicated, but this is a good place to start. If you have videos – or a ton of videos a good way to start distributing them is by using Clickbank. After folks buy you direct them to a page – on that page you can have links to your videos. Just upload them to You Tube, make sure that you make it a private video (so someone won’t accidently find them in a search) then you can put the link or you can embed it on the webpage.

Enjoy and I hope this has added a bit to your bottom line in your tutor business.

Thursday we’ll take some about marketing your new business.

Creating your tutor product – Compiling the information

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Last time we talked about coming up with a good idea for a new product. You can find that post here –

Creating a Product for your Tutor Business – Part 1

Today we’re going to talk about how you can compile the information.

You have a topic. Now you want to create an outline for how you’re going to present the information. We’ll use the example of the Math teacher. Five tips for making above a 30 on the math portion of the ACT. Not a very good title but you’ll bet the idea. Now we need to break that down.

Intro – Introduce the subject – tell them what you’ll be talking about. Explain to the student the best way to get the most out of your product.
Tip 1 – The broad view for the tip – then dig down into actually showing them the how to. We’ll say our first topic is word problems. We’ll explain to them about word problems, how many they will find on the test and the best way to go about doing them. Even if this isn’t going to be a video product, showing them (using screen capture) how you do it could be very beneficial.
Tip 2 – Tip 2 – 5 continue with the same format.
Tip 3 –
Tip 4 –
Tip 5 –
Wrap up and conclusion – Give them something extra here, an unannounced additional tip or something else that they could use. Also you want to thank them, ask them to share your product with other people that may benefit and then sell yourself. Tell them about your tutoring. I have sold so many new clients using this technique. Offer them a discount since they already purchased something from you.

How to present the product.

Write – A pdf is probably the easiest thing to create and sell. If you have Word or any of the other word processors, you can save a file you’re writing as a pdf. It doesn’t have to be a novel. Twenty or thirty pages are fine (or even less). Include pictures / diagrams etc. Make a very rough draft, then read it, then get a couple of other people to read it. Then read it again.

Record a video – this works great, especially if you’re trying to teach someone how to do a skill. You can use screen capture though and walk someone through almost anything.

Combination – use video and a pdf.

Live chats – again you can teach your course live.

I hope this gives you some ideas, next time we’ll talk about how you will sell the product.

Creating a Product for your Tutor Business – Part 1

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If you rrp_6889663293_922cba0685_n.jpgun a tutor business for any length of time, you’ll soon come to realize there is a limit to the amount of money you can make. There are only 24 hours in a day, and most people need some of that to sleep. Probably the max amount you can tutor during the day would be ten hours or so. We’ve talked some before about hiring employees – which is a good idea. The next few articles we’ll be talking about another way that you can make some money by creating a product.

The wonderful thing about creating a product for your tutor business is that while the creation part can be difficult, once you’ve finished it and started selling it, the product will continue to make money for you forever.

We’ll be talking about what your product can teach someone today, next time we’ll talk about the different methods you can use to compile / sell the product, and finally we’ll talk about marketing the product.

Selling a product is a bit different than selling your tutoring services. With a product, I like to explore something that people would need or use as a reference.

Examples usually work better –

High school math tutor – How to score a 30 on your ACT Math.

College English teacher – Five easy steps for the A research paper.

Guitar teacher – How to create an audition recording.

Each of those have something very specific. Start thinking about what you teach that would be valuable and that you could create a booklet or even a book about it. Once you get some ideas, do a search in Google. If you find a few hundred thousand results that usually means, there is a market.

If you have any ideas, but aren’t sure about them, please send us a note – just click on the contact us link and we’ll be happy to help you out.