Hope you’re having a wonderful week. We’re going to change things up a bit and talk about affiliate programs today. We got a question from one of our readers and I thought you would enjoy the question and the answer to help build your tutoring business. We’ve also posted a few things this week on our blog.
How to Get Paid as a Tutor
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How to start an Affiliate Program for your Tutoring Business – Creating an Affiliate Agreement
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Friday on the blog we’ll be talking about some different methods you can use to get affiliates to promote your tutor business. You’ll want to stay tuned for that. You can find our blog at the following url.
http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/
If you wish you can also stay updated by following us on facebook –
Save Money Note – Amazon is running some specials on school / office supplies today only. They are doing them similar to their Gold Box daily deals – there will be different specials at different times. The specials start at 6am Pacific time and run throughout the day to 8pm or so. Looks like some good deals from the preview – you can find them at the link below.
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
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Questions and Answers
We got the following question in our inbox last week. If you have a question or comment we welcome them. If you see this in your inbox you can just hit reply or you can leave a comment below.
Question (quoted)
Hi!
I simply love your newsletters!
I have just opened a learning center for teaching mathematics to kids (high-school mostly) six months ago and your tips are very useful to me!
I have two questions and I hope you can help me. I come from a small country of Croatia and I am among first started this business ( around 40% of students are using private lessons with an  unregistered tutor). I have a problem with the slogan - I have lots of ideas but I do not know which one would be best. Maybe you can tell me what is the slogan of  largest learning centar you know has been successful?
Also, I met a sales agent who sells sponges and such things in people’s houses, businesses and schools, she knows a lot of people and I would like her to recommend me for a commission, but I’m not surehow to establish a payment system. I’d given her the code and whenever a client comes with her code, I would pay her a commission. But, how could she know did the client came to me, so that she can be sure that I would pay her commission?
Thank you and I wish you all the best! Sorry for bad english:))
Best regards
Our Answer –
I’m glad you’re enjoying our newsletter. We love to hear comments and questions from our readers.
Slogan – I think slogans are useful especially if they help people to remember the name of your company. Since you already have several ideas in mind I think you should go with one of them. Local language and customs usually have a great deal of influence, so what works here wouldn’t necessarily work there.
Getting folks to sell for you – this is an excellent ideas. One of the things we’ve done is to print up business cards with a small discount coupon on them. It could be something as simple as saving 10% off the first tutor session. You would then give your affiliate (in this case the sales agent) a number. You would add their number onto the cards that you give them to hand out. The people she approaches will use the card, because it has a discount associated with it and you will be able to track her commissions.
Thanks again for the note and we hope you have a wonderful weekend.
We had another email exchange – note she asked again about slogans and I told her I really wasn’t qualified to answer that question. She had another question about her affiliate – I’ve included that note and answer below.
Question – (quoted)
Thank you very much for your replay!
The problem with my affiliate is how can SHE be sure that I am not cheating on her, because I am able to track her commissions, but she can’t be sure that I have payed her for every client she sended to me.
Now you have something new to develope and share in your newsletters:)))
Answer –
You could do an affiliate agreement (either formal or informal) – when she gets the first few sales make sure you call her. One of the first questions you should be asking potential clients is how they found you. For clients that she has referred to you but didn’t tutor, you can call her as well and thank her for the leads.
Again we love answering questions and talking about what you would like to talk about. Just post a comment or reply to this note.
This week’s quick tip –
One of the first things you should do when you get a new student is to have them take an assessment test. The assessment test plus a review of their current grades can give you an excellent idea on what to focus on. Assessment tests are pretty easy to find online, you’ll just need to take a hour or so to find one that will fit your needs. A good way to start is go to google and search for “[your subject” assessment test”. I searched for math assessment test. I found a good link to About.com with links to a variety of different tests that could be useful depending on the grade level I was tutoring. It also had links to some good pre college test that would be useful if I were tutoring seniors in high school that were preparing for college. The link to about can be found at the url below.
http://math.about.com/od/mathtests/Math_Tests_and_Assessment_Samples.htm
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We look forward to seeing you next week.