Though tutors have their tutoring sessions when children after school hours, they also have their vacations or ‘slow seasons’. As a tutor, your holidays start when the children’s holidays start. If they have to travel for a vacation, you automatically take a vacation yourself. Sometimes your students will cancel tutoring sessions for one reason or the other when school is out, and you will be without a job when that happens. These slow tutoring periods can cost you and lose you some business. Due to the unstable nature of tutoring, you cannot really afford to have slow business.
How Do You Stay Afloat When The Slow Tutoring Season Comes Around?
1. Upgrade Your Skills
Tutoring demands that you constantly improve and develop your skills. When the slow seasons come around, take that opportunity to do some self-improvement. Upgrading your sills puts you in a better position to get more clients. To start, you need to check yourself.
What subjects are you must comfortable with tutoring? Your clients need tutors who are experts and good tutors in the subjects they feel their children are lacking in. Be honest with yourself in selecting those extra subjects you can tutor in. Telling your client that you are proficient in a certain area will come back to bite you once they see no improvement in their children’s performance. Just because tutors are in high demand for subjects like Math doesn’t mean you should fake Math skills that you do not have.
Next, figure out how you can improve yourself in those skills. Visit the library, study courses online. Acquire the reading lists for schools to prepare yourself ahead of time. This study and research will polish your skills and help you become more proficient in the skills you want to add.
Being skilled in a number of subjects puts you in high demand. It will also get you to keep up with the competition.
2. Focus On Something New And Unique To Offer
Tutoring is a really competitive field. You need to do all you can to gain traction and stay ahead. Even when you are doing your best, you may feel like everyone else is doing what you are doing. Insecurities creep in; making you feel like your business is being overshadowed by other, more successful tutors. Instead of wallowing in mediocrity, shake things up a bit.
Change how you teach what you teach. Study the most recent best educational methods and offer exclusive services to your clients. These services can be teaching and learning methods that are different from the traditional way of teaching and learning. These include learning based on problem-solving, setting up innovation tasks for your students to participate in, teaching your students’ attentiveness and listening skills amongst others. These tutoring practices will make you stand out, making your sessions one-of-a-kind and highly enjoyable.
During the slow seasons when you still have students to tutor, you can employ these methods to catch and hold your students’ interest. It is usually difficult to keep the attention of students during this period because all their mates are out enjoying their holidays.
By creating innovative ways of tutoring, you can keep their minds from wandering and focused on their lessons. However, always make sure that you discuss these offers with your clients. Some of them may show concern and would prefer the more traditional way of tutoring. If so, don’t go against their wishes. Just make sure that your clients know you have more in your repertoire to offer them.
3. Step Up Your Marketing Game
No matter how good a tutor you are, you won’t get any business if nobody knows about you. These slow tutoring seasons are the best times to take advantage of this lack of visibility and make yourself very visible. Just because business is slow doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be busy.
Actually, you should be working just as much as you would when business is good. Register an account with a recognized tutoring site online. This is so that searchers can find you when they search for tutors online. Go to sites like Google and Bing and add your business to them.
Create a website or blog and ask your current and/or past clients to write reviews for you. Positive reviews will encourage other people to contact you for a tutoring job. Have your own business card, which should include your website and other contact details for people to reach you. On your site, people should know that you are an education professional who is committed to doing your best for your clients. Let them know your stance on proper teaching and learning. They will like you even more and your pool of clients will increase.
Don’t ignore your offline customers! There are many people who look at newspapers and magazines, searching for tutors. Take out an ad in the papers. Advertise your services at event programs and local community centres. Your chances of getting clients this way are just as high as getting them online.
4. Network Around Your Students
Networking is important for the growth of your tutoring business. You can ask your students to refer you to their friends and schoolmates. Meet with other tutors and form connections with them. These acquaintances are strategic and very helpful. You can trade ideas and tutoring methods, and you can refer them to a client requiring their particular skill set. They will also refer you to their clients if they can’t continue with them, or to other people who need your skillset. Check out online tutoring classes, where you can even tutor on an international level. Slow Tutoring seasons are only so if you limit yourself to your neighbourhood.
Conclusion
A lull in the tutoring season typically means that students are on holiday. That doesn’t mean that you should sit down and wait for the holidays to be over. There are still children who need tutoring during the holidays. The problem is they don’t know you or what you have to offer. Create an online and offline presence for yourself. Upgrade your skills and add unique services to your resume. Network around your students. Slow tutoring seasons should not cause you to panic: you can use them to succeed.
Need more tips on how to bring in more tuition assignments?
5 Ways to Get More Tuition Assignments as a Home Tutor
10 Practical Ways to Find Tuition Jobs
Facebook