The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced schools to close down abruptly, prompting students to stay inside their houses in the meantime. Now that everything’s slowly going back to normal, students are presented with the option to attend online classes instead of learning the traditional way.
This proves to be an excellent opportunity for online tutors to generate a steady income. After all, while it’s still unsafe to conduct physical lessons, conducting lessons online has proven itself to be quite effective.
But, as you go about providing online tutoring services, should you also create a website for that?
Options in Tutoring Business
There are several approaches to a tutoring business. You can make a traditional one, or you can focus on a few aspects that you are capable of marketing. Here are the most common options you have when starting a tutoring business:
Start An Online Business
There are tutoring companies such as VIPkid and Teach Away. They can provide you additional income, but somehow, it feels like you still have an employer. You may start freelancing since that is the easiest and most accessible way to kickstart your tutoring business.
Sell Lesson Plans
Your experiences in making lesson plans and activities will not go to waste. You can publish them on digital platforms, granted that there will be no copyright issues. It may be tough at first, but later on, with enough momentum, you can start raking in the profits.
Make an Educational Blog
Blogging or vlogging has become a reliable source for education. Why? It is because of the use of graphics and conversation or informal pacing. With educational blogs or vlogs, not only can you educate, but you can also incorporate many facets of entertainment.
Of course, you will need to set up a proper blog for your tutoring business. Having an unsecured website will undoubtedly affect the trust of your audience to visit your site in the long term.
Why Do You Need a Website for Your Tutoring Business?
Back to the question. Do you really need to create a website? If you want to have a strong following and want to build a reputation, then having a website is a better option. This will allow your intended audience to reach you, but you can also filter those who are seriously interested.
Transactions can also be more direct, and middlemen services might be eliminated. If you’re still not convinced, here are some statistics that just might:
- 93 percent of online activities start with a search engine.
- 97 percent of people can learn about a company more online than anywhere else.
- 70 percent of shopping-related searches happen on search engines.
- In the year 2040, an estimated 95 percent of purchases will be made online.
- 61 percent of users do some research online prior to purchasing.
To summarize, most of the common things done on a computer are searching through the internet. Having a website will give you exposure and an opportunity to be visited and recognized by plenty of individuals in hopes that among them will become your clients.
An Alternative: Sign Up on a Tutoring Platform
Making a website from scratch to establish your tutor business is a huge undertaking. It can even be more challenging if you do not have the right skill-sets for building a website. On top of that, you even have to do the marketing of your services from scratch.
In this case, there is a more convenient alternative for you; sign up on a tutoring platform.
A tutoring platform such as SmileTutor acts as a middleman that connects tutors with parents and students. The following are the advantages of choosing this option over having your own website:
Streamlined Tutoring
One of the most important aspects of online tutoring is to provide students with an excellent educational experience. One way of ensuring that this is achieved is by having a convenient, streamlined process that online tutoring platforms can provide.
These platforms already have pre-set systems that enable students to find the best teachers for them. These platforms also take care of booking sessions and scheduling convenient classes for the students and for you as a teacher.
No-Hassle Marketing
The major benefit of signing up on tutoring platforms is that you don’t have to deal with marketing yourself to find students. These platforms will take care of that for you. They will simply ask you to set up a profile about yourself, and they can suggest you to potential students.
Of course, this does not mean that you will automatically have a steady stream of students, but it does help increase your chances of achieving this.
Access to Resources and Materials
Most online tutoring platforms have a particular standard that they want their tutor to have. Due to this, many of them provide tutors with access to resources and materials that will help them improve their tutoring skills. In some cases, platforms can also recommend web seminars and trainings for free.
What’s even better is that some platforms will provide you with the materials to be used while conducting a tutoring session. This means that you don’t have to deal with preparing lesson plans and activities ahead of time.
Technical Support
Most tutoring platforms can recommend video conferencing software and materials for tutoring. In case you encounter technical difficulties or have any questions, you can simply get in touch with the technical support team for some assistance.
This is something that you will not have if you opt to be a solo freelance tutor on your website because you have to deal with all of the logistics on your own.
Conclusion
Making your own website can significantly help increase your online presence and the potential of attracting new students. However, it’s a difficult and huge task. Instead, you might want to consider joining tutoring platforms. Although it might feel like you still have a boss managing you, you get a lot of benefits as a trade-off.
Whether you choose to build your own website or join a reputable tutoring platform, the demand for online tutors is rapidly increasing due to the pandemic. This is why you need to strike while the iron is hot and put yourself out there.
Just make sure to package your credentials in the best way possible and provide excellent sessions each time to gain more students.
If you’re fairly new to online tutoring, here are some resources to help you out:
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