Clever Apple - How to Start a Tutor Business

Helping People Like You Start a Tutor Business since 2000

Sign up for our FREE Newsletter

Search Results for: getting tutor students

I need your help

By:

Computer-globe

Computer-globe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Winter has returned and we’ve had frost for the last couple of mornings. No frost in March… and now it gets cold in April.

We’ve also tweaked / tuned our website. We’ve added some new programs, made payment plans for some items and hopefully made it easier to use and understand. Here’s a good page that will let you see some of the changes.

http://www.cleverapple.com/comparetutors.html

I need your help –

I like to pride myself in being able to answer questions. I love to teach and being able to answer a question when someone asks is a great feeling. This week I was asked some questions about international tutoring that I didn’t know the answer to. So if you tutor outside of the US I have some questions for you. Or if you have a friend / relative who tutors internationally we would love to hear from them. You can just hit reply to this note or leave a comment on facebook.

  1. What country do you tutor in?
  2. What has been the most profitable way you’ve found of getting business?
  3. If someone were to start a tutor business in your country, what would be one piece of advice you could give them to make things easier.
  4. What do most of your students find difficult?
  5. What is the hardest part of owning your tutor business?

We would love it if you answered those questions and we’ll include it a future issue. Please make sure you send your contact information and we’ll make sure to credit you (and your business) with your comments.

Resources you can use –

How to create a Facebook timeline for your business

http://www.thesocialnetworkingacademy.com/public/How_to_Create_Quick_and_Flexible_Facebook_Timeline_Covers.cfm

Creating  Summer Tutor Program part 2 – Creating a Summer Tutor Program — Part 2 – Setting Prices

To Do List for the Week –

  1. If you haven’t gotten your taxes ready – it’s go time.
  2. If you had a rough time paying your taxes this year… congratulations, that means you’re making money. I try to set aside $x a week into a “tax” fund. I then use this fund to pay my estimated taxes and unexpected expenses. Just remember, you may need to adjust if you have an unexpected increase in business.
  3.  Planning for your summer tutoring sessions should be in high gear… if not get started today.
  4. Take a walk with your family this weekend.

Have a wonderful week!!

Newsletter – How to get web hosting

By:

News –

First we want to welcome all of our new subscribers and our new customers.

Weather here has been pretty crazy. We go from 20 to 60.. seems more like Spring. I have some friends in Washington state that had almost a foot of snow in their backyard (more snow than they’ve had in years). Today we’re going to talk about how to get hosting for a website – so you can build it, and we’ve included some links for older stories.

If you have any ideas of things you would like for us to cover please send us a note – you can reply to this email or if you’re on our blog you can leave a comment below.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Tutor Business Tips – Links to past articles

Keeping Students Longer – Improving your tutoring business

How to get more students for your tutor business

How to grow / improve your Tutor Business

Improving your tutor business – making a client spreadsheet

Improving your Tutor Business – Part 3

 

Continue – Getting Hosting for a Site

There are many different hosting services where you can host your website. A couple of weeks ago we talked about getting domain name. The host is where you will actually put the files for your website. You’ll then have to point your domain name to the host. It sounds pretty complicated but it really isn’t.

We’ve been in this business for over ten years. We’ve had a number of different websites hosted with different hosting companies. Sometimes it can be difficult to have great service and prices that don’t break the bank.

The service we use is dreamhost.

Here is the link – http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?1193070

The cost for a dreamhost shared account (as of this writing) was $8.95 / month.

To get started just click the link on the left – they are currently offering 2 weeks free. Next time we’ll talk about connecting your hosting to your domain name.

Remember with our new tutor program we do all of this work for you. The details can be found here –
http://www.cleverapple.com/onlinetutoringguide2.html

 

Setting up your blog.
Adding things to your blog / making it SEO friendly.
The smart way to post content.

Hope you have a wonderful week.

Do you need to be certified? Saving money on expenses.

By:

Hope you are having a wonderful week. For whatever reason falling back for the time change doesn’t hit me until Midweek. Yesterday at 6pm I honestly thought it was midnight… does

Clipart of bills and coins

Image via Wikipedia

that ever happen to you?

We got a couple of questions from our visitors this week we would like to share.

1. Do I need to be ‘certified’ in order to tutor.

You do not need to be certified in order to tutor. I started tutoring in college to make money to help pay the bills. I started out tutoring as part of a work study program. I tutored mostly nursing students and helped them mainly with Anatomy and Microbiology. Every student I tutored wanted ‘extra’ help, so I started doing that. The reason why they wanted more help was I could explain things well and they passed tests.

In order to be a ‘good’ tutor you need to be able to explain a subject and help students make better grades. Do you need a certificate in order to do that? Of course not.

There are certification programs online and unfortunately the only thing you need to do is pay them a fee. To me that really isn’t a certification anyway.

2. What are the differences between the new tutor program and the old.

We launched our new tutor program a couple of weeks ago and we had a regular viewer who was wondering what the difference is.

The tutoring guide – includes our pdf, videos and the 90 day quick start email series. Cost $97.

The online tutoring program – includes everything in the tutoring guide plus a 9 module course about online tutoring. We take you from setting up a website, getting traffic to your website, and give you some guidance on three different solutions you can use to tutor online. We’re still working on the final videos for the series but we have about 40 videos – most of them 5 – 10 minutes in length. We also have a neat membership site where you can access everything on your computer, iPad or phone. Cost thru November is $149 – (and there is a payment plan). After November I’m not sure what we’ll raise it to, probably $179.

Hopefully that explains things a bit – if you have any further questions let us know.

We are continuing our improve your tutor business series this week. This week it’s all about decreasing your expenses. Here are the links to the past articles in case you missed them.

Advertising is the lifeblood of your business. You have students that will be leaving you, so you need a way to get more students. One of the easiest ways to do this is thru advertising. Unfortunately many people when you ask them have no idea how well  their advertising is working (or not). You should be expanding your advertising dollars on things that are working and removing things that don’t work. So how can you do that?

Track your advertising.

We talk in our guide about tracking your online advertising. Tracking your online advertising is pretty simple.

1. Make sure you have an analytics tool installed on your website.
2. Create a tracking url – and make sure it works. We talk about this in depth in the guide.

Offline advertising is a bit different.

1. Ensure each of your bits of advertising has a unique way to track it. I use tear off flyers. Putting a unique code on the part they tear off with the phone number helps. Make sure in your advertising you include something like “Mention this ad and you’ll get 10% off” or a free session, or a month of tutoring for $x or a months homework help for… you get the idea.

2. When you get a lead (someone calls you) make sure that you ask them how exactly they found you.

As always if you have any questions you can feel free to email us (you can just reply to this email if you subscribe to our newsletter), if you found this on our blog or facebook you can use the comments section.

We’ve completed the limited testing for our online tutor guide – you can now order it if you wish. We’ve made it available to you first. You can find details about it at the link below. We have a payment plan too.

http://www.cleverapple.com/onlinetutoringguide2.html

The 3 P’s, Encouragement, Price

By:

Welcome to our new subscribers. Good Thursday to you hopefully your week is going well.

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

++++++++++++++

I would like to start today’s issue with some words of encouragement. You can do anything you set your mind to. I’ve found it much easier if you prepare, perspire, and persist.

Prepare – you are helping yourself now by learning about tutoring.

Perspire – you will have to work. Tutor clients won’t fall from the sky.

Persist – don’t give up. Review what work and keep doing it. Review what isn’t working and try something different.

August / September is when mot schools start back. Our research has shown that most new clients come after a grading period. Parents realize their child isn’t doing as well as they thought they would be doing. We’ve talked quite a bit about getting the word out about your business. Now is the time to do that. The more people are reminded about your tutoring business, the more likely they will be to call you when they need you.

Pricing –

This week on our blog we’ve talked about pricing. You can check the posts at the links below.

Figuring out what to charge – part 1.

The Psychology of Price

We’ll continue to talk about pricing for the next few days so you’ll want to book mark our blog or you can check us out on Facebook.

As always if you have any questions we would love to help. You can post a comment below.

Happy 4th of July, Learn from our Mistakes

By:

This issue is a little different since everyone is excited about getting the 4th of July holiday started at least I know I am. In most of our newsletters I like to give you things to do and action steps to take to help you grow your business. Since the holiday is coming up, this issue you can just read. We’ll be talking about future things you can look forward to, as well as a sobering message about friends and friendships. Perhaps you can learn from my mistakes.

Reminder – there won’t be an issue next week.

—>> The Future  –

We’ve surveyed folks and asked for opinions on what they would like us to cover. Based on the feedback we’ve gotten here are some things we’ll be covering the next weeks / months. We’ll have some tidbits thrown in of course.

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

—>>  Your Friends and about Us-

Clever Apple is made up of teachers (like Kim) and people who like kids / learning / business like me (Tim). My job is to help get the word out about our product so more people can earn money (without having to spend a fortune). Today I’m going to talk a little about me. It is a little sobering and sad so if you want to save it to read another day, I can definitely understand about that.

My Mom died of breast cancer when I was six years old. The last time I saw her she told me a couple of things 1) You can do anything you set your mind to, 2) Help other people, 3) take care of your Dad.

I’ve always been an entrepreneur, during high school I sold Grit newspapers and a friend and I had a landscaping business (you can charge more when you scape the lawn instead of just cutting it). During highschool was when I met my friend Arvie. Arvie stood about 6’4″ or 5 and weighed in at a little over 300 pounds of solid muscle. Arvie didn’t really have a job, but was an entrepreneur and we became fast friends, although he was about 10 years older than me. During my junior / senior years of high school he gave me construction jobs during the summer and rescued me from several predicaments (including a bad trip to Oklahoma).

During college I roomed with George, Arvie’s brother and again worked with him during the Summer. I entered the Army because I had two part time jobs and a full time job and going to school full time. I was burning the candle at both ends and my school work started to suffer. I joined with Uncle Sam for their college program.

When I got back from Germany after 4 years of service Arvie gave me a job. As I was going to college he continued to let me work and gave my wife Lisa work to do as well. The definition of a true friend.

I graduated college (as an RN) started work and my business. Contact with Arvie became scarce. I was too busy. Last month I found out he has brain cancer. It doesn’t look good but I’ve been spending much more time with him. The lesson I learned was I should have been spending more time with him all along. True friends are hard to find. As you’re preparing for this weekend’s fun, take some time and call or contact some of your true friends. Thank people that you need to thank. Like is always throwing us curve balls. Tell people that you care about, you care about them.

—>>  Help us out

Join us on facebook and get more free stuff and discounts on future products.

Here’s our facebook url – – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tutoring-Business-Help/186004714761452?sk=wall

We look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks.

How to teach test taking skills, figuring our your competition

By:

Chalk board

Image by quinn.anya via Flickr

Hope you and yours are having a wonderful week. This past week was my Birthday and I promised you a surprise. If you order our tutor program before June 15th we’ll include a guide we should have finished by August at no additional charge. This is limited to 10 folks. This guide will teach you (step by step) how to build an online segment to your tutoring business. We are excited about this because you will be able to tutor not only folks in your town, but from around the country and the world.

If you’ve already ordered, you’ll get this at no additional charge. Remember any new updates or things we add to the program, folks that have already ordered will get them free. We haven’t updated the site yet with this news, we wanted to give you the chance first. We will be adding it to the site next Thursday.

You can order our guide at the following url –

http://www.cleverapple.com/howtostartatutoringservice.html

—>> Tutor Tips – More things you can teach during the Summer – another thing you can teach during the Summer are test taking skills.

Learning good test taking skills will help the student during grade school, high school and even college.

One of the best things to do I’ve learned is to practice taking tests, in a setting when the results don’t count. You could have a few summer sessions having students take tests.

Places you can find tests –

A good place for high school practice tests (including the ACT / SAT) –
http://www.4tests.com/exams/exams.asp?cid=2

Various grade levels and subjects –

http://education.jlab.org/solquiz/

From Ohio – again multiple grade levels –

http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?page=3&TopicRelationID=240&ContentID=4348&Content=86707

You can search for practice tests for the state you’re in and you should be able to find quite a few.

Once the students have taken the tests, the next step is to grade them and go over them. Do you notice any trends. If you do make sure to note these and that will give you something to work on.

We’ll talk more about test taking in our next issue.

—>>  Business Help –

Deciding the type of web presence you’ll need – we’ll be talking about researching your competition and where you live. This information will help you to decide what type of web presence you’ll be needing.

So why would you want to do this?

You’ll be able to find out things like: how much they charge, who they tutor, what type of tutoring they’re doing, specials they are running etc.

How do you do it?

1. You’ll want to be able to track your research. You can create an excel document. You can use headers like – Name, address, contact info, who do they tutor, price, website, facebook, Google places etc.

2. Places to find them online.

Search Google first for – tutor [city name] – so an example would be tutor lexington. If you search for tutor lexington . Usually the first listings will be dominated by Google Places. Don’t worry in the weeks ahead we’ll be talking about Google Places and getting a listing.

In our test search there were about 7 Google Places listings on the first page. Make sure you also click the link that says ‘ more results near ‘.

You’ll want to review each of the listings – find out if they have a website. You can click on the business name.  After you’ve listed the Google Places, make sure that you review the other search results listings.

You’ll also want to search facebook, you can use the same search terms.

3. Places to find them offline.

Search your yellow pages. If they have a listing in the yellow pages, check to see if they have a website listed.  Watch your newspaper, and other local media for any advertising. Again if they have an ad running they will usually have a website as well.

That should give you plenty to do until next week.

Next time we’ll talk about Building a Simple Word Press Site.

—>> Off the Hook

If you like Ipad and I phone games, you’ll want to check out Deal News. Almost every day the offers change so you should find something you enjoy every  now and then.

http://dealnews.com/

You’ll need to scroll down a bit (or just search for app and you’ll find them).

—>>  Resources

A pretty cool site for signing up volunteers / participants for a project. http://www.helpersignup.com/

—>>  Help us out

If you like what you’ve read we would love to hear from you. If you think you have a friend that would benefit forward this newsletter to them. Like us on facebook – and share your thoughts about us in the comments box below.

Here’s our facebook url – – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tutoring-Business-Help/186004714761452?sk=wall

We look forward to seeing you next week.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta