A video about decreasing expenses for your tutor business we hope you enjoy it.
Have a wonderful Day!!
Clever Apple - How to Start a Tutor Business
Helping People Like You Start a Tutor Business since 2000
By: The-Apple
A video about decreasing expenses for your tutor business we hope you enjoy it.
Have a wonderful Day!!
By: The-Apple
Fixed expenses are those things that are fixed. These are costs that don’t normally go up no matter how many new students you get to tutor (or how few you have to tutor – they don’t go down).
I good example of that would be health insurance (unless you include new employees in your plan). I wrote an article about saving money on health insurance you should check out.
You can negotiate with all the folks you have fixed expenses with. Some things will be easier to get for less (like insurance) other things you’ll have a more difficult time doing it (like rent). Here are some ideas for doing a bit of negotiating.
1. Do some price research – saying you can get something cheaper, isn’t as powerful as saying I have a quote from XYZ and they have offered me the same package for less.
2. Don’t be afraid to ask. The only thing they can tell you is no.
3. Do you really need the service or product. Do you really need the level of the product. Example would be your cell phone plan. Do you really need the ‘big’ plan or could you get by with the smaller one.
4. Invest your new savings in something that will bring you in more business – like advertising.
Got some ideas for saving money – we would love if you shared them with us using the comments below – or you can facebook us here.
Enjoy your day!
By: The-Apple
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
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.
By: The-Apple
Hope you voted yesterday. Today we’ll be continuing our series on improving your tutoring businesses. This week we’re talking about expenses and today we’ll be talking about things you don’t want to cut back on.
Some things you don’t want to cut back on. One of the things you don’t want to skimp on is your employees.
If you’re just starting you won’t have any employees, but hopefully your goal will be to hire someone someday. Tutoring is a very person oriented business. If you hire someone then they will be doing the actual work. They will be tutoring and tutoring isn’t easy.
Businesses we’ve worked with start new tutors off at 50% of the tutor session. So if the tutor session is $25 then the employee gets $12.50. When the employee has been on board for 3 months they get 60% and then after a year 70%. This was for tutors that tutor from their home / online. They provide their computer / internet access etc.
I think we may do a whole series on hiring folks – if you would be interested in that please let us know in the comments.
You also shouldn’t cut back on the tools you use to tutor. Your computer / website / Ipads etc. You should buy the best computer that you can afford. The upcoming holidays are a great time to find some good deals. If you have a lot of students you’ll want to make sure you have plenty of hard drive space.
By: The-Apple
Setting the rates you tutor can be a hard decision. I always recommend testing the rates you charge. Let’s pretend we have a tutor business. We have 10 students we tutor 20 sessions a month. So we have 200 sessions a month.
If we charge $20 / session we make $4,000 / month.
If we charge $25 we make $5k
If we charge $30 we make $6k
In this scenario for a $5 increase – we make an additional $1k / month.
You do not have to have the lowest prices. I’ve talked a few times about pricing on the blog. Review your competitors pricing and start in the middle.
I wouldn’t recommend increasing pricing for students you already have. Let them have the current price for the school year. Increasing the prices for new students is ok, and you can increase prices during the Summer.
By: The-Apple
We are continuing our improve your tutor business series this week. This week it’s all about increasing your revenue. Here are the links to the past articles in case you missed them.
Remember – even if you’re just starting a tutor business, these tips will help.
It is the nature of the business that you will lose some students. It’s just how things work. If you tutor Jr. High they graduate to High School. You tutor High School Math and they graduate to College. This isn’t about those types of situations. This is about a student that you get, that has a couple of years with you. We’ve provided you with some tips below so you can keep them.
1. Communicate. From your first tutor session you should be communicating with the parents. This helps you figure out what you’re doing right and what you need to work on. Ask them what you can do better.
2. The Student – sometimes it is a difficult task to get the student to not dread coming to the tutor sessions. I’m not saying that all of your sessions have to be fun, but if they moan, groan and complain before every tutor session, pretty soon there Mom isn’t going to want to hear it anymore. It’s hard to teach this because I think it is an art. My advice would be to figure what makes the child tick, what they like, and try to work your tutoring around that. I had a student once who loved Magic the Gathering. A card game. I used this as incentives for him. If he made 90% or greater on quizzes during our sessions I would give him new cards. His Mom asked why her child was begging to come and learn and why he was asking when was the next session. Consequently he went on to win the Math award in his class. I like to start each session with a bit of conversation with the child. What they did the past week etc., and end the session this way.
3. Cancellations – when someone decides to cancel, you need to meet with them to figure out what happened. One note is you cannot please everyone… don’t try or you will be miserable. Just find out why they cancelled and ask yourself could you have stopped it from happening. If not… then don’t worry about it and move on.
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.
By: The-Apple
How to get more students for your tutor business  - Adding more clients
You should have a goal for how many new clients you want to get every month. Even if you’re small and currently have only one student you should have a goal. Getting one new client every semester, even if you’re small you should be able to handle that.
When working on adding new students, you’ll want to keep an eye on the spreadsheets we made last week. How many of your students do you predict will be gone at the end of the year. Let’s say I have a small business with two helpers. Let’s also say in the list I made we have ten students that will be leaving. Then I want to get at least 10, plus I want to grow a bit. So we’ll say the goal I set is for 15 new students. In order to hit this new goal I’ll want to add 2 new students – for 8 months. Before you continue – make sure you have figured out your goal. Take a piece of paper and write it down. “I will get 2 new students every month”.
We talked about advertising last time (we spend a whole module on this in our online tutoring guide). We want to track our advertising and continually tweak it. We want to use what is working, and ditch what isn’t working.
There are hundreds of ways to do it – I’ll list five – from things that have been most effective for me. Please feel free to share methods that have worked for you.
1. Client Referrals – without a doubt the easiest new students to ‘sell’ your program on are people that have talked to your current clients. Â Think about it for a minute. They have students in your current market… the students you tutor are in the same grade as students you want to tutor. They also know how well you tutor.
Here’s how to get the conversation started. During one of your post tutor reviews, ask them if they know anyone in ‘Sam’s’ class that could use some math tutoring. Explain to them that you have a few openings in your schedule. They may say they’ll think about it or something similar to them. In a few weeks ask them again. Ask ALL of your clients at least once a month if they know someone that needs tutoring. This also puts you in their mind. So if they hear someone talking about their child having a hard time in school… who will they think about… you.
2. Free Classes / Seminars – we’ve talked about giving Seminars before. If you need some guidance in finding it let me know. You create a hour presentation about a subject that your prospective students would be interested in. Examples would include things like: how to study, how to take a test, how to prepare for the ACT / SAT etc. During the presentation you give everyone a handout with some notes about your presentation. You include your contact information and a coupon for a discount if they call you within 2 weeks.
3. Ads in a local paper – these work great and can be short. Something like – “Stink at Math – we can help. We have spots open in our High School Math Tutor Program. Call xxx-xxxx mention this ad and get the first lesson free.
Again we ask them to mention the ad so they’ll let you know where you found it. Test your ad copy, test the days the ads come out etc. Track everything. Keep running the ads that are working well – rework those that don’t work.
4. Facebook – we’ve talked about facebook. Make sure you especially let your current students know about your fan page. Share a facebook only discount with your fans. Again use your imagination.
5. Online site / blog – you want your website to provide them with information that is useful for them. If you tutor high schoolers – writing about how to make friends in the third grade won’t help very much. Write something every day – it doesn’t have to be something you write but a resource you highlight, an article you found or tips for doing something (quicker / faster / easier).
To Do List –
1. Make it a point to ask your clients if they know anyone that needs a tutor (and keep doing it).
2. Start advertising in your local paper.
3. Work on putting daily content on your blog / facebook – if you don’t have one then you’ll want to work on creating one.
By: The-Apple
This week we’re going to be talking about making more money for your tutor business. When it comes down to it there are really only three ways to make more money for your business.
1. Adding More Students.
2. Keeping Students Longer.
3. Charging more for your tutoring.
There are some additional ways you can make more, but these are the 3 main ways. We’ll be talking about each of these in depth this week. For now you will want to make sure that every new tutor client you get, you find out exactly how you got them. This should be one of the first questions new ask new students. How did they find you.
They may say at first they don’t remember exactly how they found you, but you’ll want to press them a bit. List for them the various ways they could have found you. Did they find you on facebook, your website, blog, did they see an ad in the paper, online. Maybe the found a pulltab sheet at the grocery store. Once you figure out how they found you, then you want to find out exactly where the found you. Which ad, in which paper, what store etc.
Some people will know exactly how they found you and others won’t the more specific they can be the better. You’ll then want to make note of this on your client tracker.
With any advertising you want to make more than you spend… this should be a no brainer. We’ll talk about some ways you can do this tomorrow.
By: The-Apple
We explain in a video how to use the client spreadsheet. If you missed the spreadsheet you can find it here –
By: The-Apple
Your current tutor clients
Today we’re going to be making a spreadsheet which lists the current clients we have. We’re going to be making some projections with this data as well. It’s not hard, it just takes a little time to do. We’ll be having a video that should be up tomorrow. If you want to wait on that for a full explanation you can.
There are two links below – the first link – client’s list – the second link – a sample list.
You can download both of those. Below we’ve explained how to fill them out.
The Client List Spreadsheet
The Client List Spreadsheet – ExampleÂ
Client / Student – You can fill out the student’s or the parent’s name.
Grade – student’s grade
Subjects Tutored (if you tutor various subjects) – if you only tutor one subject you can leave this out.
Tutor Sessions / year (or month or six months)
Cost per session
Type of session
Extras – here you want to put any extra services the student may use. Examples could include homework hotline, Summer camp etc. If you have extra services you’ll put those down later in the spreadsheet. You’ll want to create an abbreviation for those and you’ll want to put the abbreviations here.
Extras Cost – put the total cost of extras.
Total revenue – this is automatically created using a formula. It totals the tutor and extras revenue.
Future Earnings –
These columns will help you gauge what your future income will be.
An estimate of  the chance they will enroll again. If 100 percent put 1. If 50 percent put 0.5. Do you think they’ll be your student next year. If you teach high school and they are a senior then you would want to put 0 here. I always guess low here.
Extras – this is the $ value of extras you expect them to purchase during the next year.
A line for totals – below the students. We have ten lines in place, if you have more it should work (the formulas should work).
Below this we have a description of our current extras program.
Extras program – Â List the extras program.
Cost – list the cost of the program
Abbreviation – the abbreviation used for the program
New programs – any new programs you’re planning to use.
** We’ve also included an example spreadsheet and tomorrow we’ll put up a video that will explain how to do it.
Questions / Comments – please let us know using the comments section.