How to Start a Tutoring Business in 8 Steps
December 30th, 2024
Do you have a passion for teaching and expertise in a particular subject? Starting a tutoring business can be a way to share your knowledge, help others succeed, and generate a reliable income.
Learn the essential steps to launch a successful tutoring business, from assessing your skills and understanding your audience to marketing your services effectively. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your approach, this guide will equip you with the insights needed to turn your expertise into a thriving tutoring business.
8 Steps to Start a Tutoring Business
Starting any business is never easy. However, starting a tutoring business might be less complicated than most other types of businesses. You don’t have to worry about inventory management, for example. Also, tutoring offers the flexibility to create a business model that works for you—online, at home, or even on the go.
Here is an 8-step guide on how to start a tutoring business that generates decent income for you and leaves your students delighted with the outcome.
1. Assess Your Skill Level
Before you start building your tutoring business, you must first assess your skill level and ability to be a tutor. This requires honest introspection to ensure you enter a field where you can thrive.
Therefore, start by identifying the specific subjects or topics you’re good at. It also helps to be as specific as possible here. For example, instead of just saying coding or a web developer, identify the specific area within the field. It could be a specific language like Javascript or Python or an area like front-end or back-end development.
It’s not enough to identify your skill set, though. You must test yourself. This is especially crucial if you’re targeting potential students in evolving fields. So you’ll need to do some test exams to see whether your skill level meets modern standards. You should be able to access most of these tests online. You could also contact a peer or professional within the field and ask them to assess your skills.
The last step here is to test your tutoring skills. You might be an expert in a particular field, but are you good at explaining complex concepts in a way that your client base can understand? Get a few individuals and conduct a few lessons with them. Then, ask for their feedback on your tutoring style.
2. Research Your Target Market and Competition
The next step is conducting market and competitor research to determine your target audience or ideal customers. Get both demographic and psychographic information on your ideal students. What are their pain points or interests? And how much are they willing to spend to resolve their pain points or achieve their goals?
You can get all these insights from your students by conducting surveys. Create a detailed survey to collect the data you need and share it with your target audience. You can share survey emails with your existing audience, or even on Facebook (or other platforms where your ideal students hang out) with this survey.
But what about competitor research? How is that useful? Competitor research tells you how to position your tutoring business to ensure you stand out. Identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses that you can exploit. Then, create a business capability map to see what your tutoring business can do differently to deliver maximum value to its students.
3. Create a Business Model
It’s now time to determine your business model. You’ll have three main options here:
- Virtual tutoring — This is the cheapest business model. You’ll basically invest in a good online tutoring platform. Use Thinkific or Teachable to create and sell your course through a website. You’ll conduct your classes online through video conferencing tools.
- Home-based tutoring — This is another cost-effective option. You’ll still need a tutoring website to market your business. However, the classes will be conducted in person at your home. Depending on your target audience, some students may even pay extra to have you go teach them at their places, which brings us to the last model.
- Traveling tutoring—This option requires some traveling, but you can use those business expenses as tax deductibles. The idea here is that you’ll travel to different locations to teach your students either at their place or in a designated classroom. It’s a great option for anyone not comfortable using their home as a tutoring location.
4. Register Your Business
We cannot talk about how to start a tutoring business without discussing sole proprietorship vs LLC.
Now, if you’re just getting started (or running this business as a side hassle), a sole proprietorship business structure might appear like the better option because it’s straightforward, and you’re just a small business.
While this is partly true, you’re better off with an LLC because it reduces your liability. This is particularly crucial as your tutoring business grows. Plus, it helps your business appear more professional.
You’ll need to register your business to turn it into a limited liability company. Do a business name search to give your business a unique name. Next, open a separate business checking account and apply for a dedicated business credit card. That helps separate personal and business finances.
5. Develop a Curriculum
With your business model and registration sorted, it’s now time to create a curriculum. Start by identifying the objective of each class or course. What do you want the students to achieve at the end of the class or course?
Next, break down your course into smaller units or modules. Make sure the topics build upon each other to make it easier for the students to follow along. Even major online course platforms like Codecademy use this approach.
While doing that, you’ll need to think about the length of each lesson. The best practice is to do short tutoring sessions of around 10-20 minutes. This should keep the students engaged throughout.
Speaking of engagement, we recommend combining different content formats. So, include visuals, audio, and text in each lesson. This is especially vital if you’re doing online tutoring. Similarly, include interactive elements like quizzes and challenges to keep your students engaged.
Lastly, create assessments at the end of each module and a final assessment at the end of the course. This will help you see how well your students have mastered the subject.
6. Price Your Courses Right
How much should you charge for your tutoring services? First, determine how much your ideal students are willing to spend. Next, look at the competition. What pricing model have they adopted (hourly rates vs. packaged pricing), and how much are they charging?
You may also want to consider your location. This is particularly useful if you’re tutoring students on standardized tests like the SATs. Some school districts are willing to pay private tutors more than others.
These data points should help you come up with a good range for your pricing. You should also consider any unique offerings you have. These could allow you to charge higher than the competition.
7. Create a Website
Create a professional website for your tutoring business to succeed. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing online, home-based, or traveling tutoring. The website is a powerful tool for your marketing campaigns. This is where you’ll explain your services, publish student success stories, showcase your accreditations, and enroll new students into your classes.
The good news is that you can easily set up a website using no-code site-building tools like Webnode. The platform has an AI website builder that can help you create a professional website even faster.
On your website, clearly state the value proposition and share testimonials of past students. Also, share any certifications you may have.
You can share details on what is covered in the course. You can even go as far as giving potential clients a sneak peek at the course by offering one free lesson.
8. Market Your Business
Finally, it’s time to spread the word about your tutoring business through online marketing.
Create social media profiles on social channels your ideal students love. Use these profiles to promote the course. Post insights into the industry and share student success stories to capture the interest of potential customers.
Consider sharing engaging social media posts to further engage your audience and drive interest in your courses. That’s what Eureka Learning does on IG, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Paid ads also work really well on social media. Create optimized ads and use the targeting features on social media ad platforms to reach the specific users likely to benefit from your course.
SEO is another great marketing strategy. Optimize your website for search engines by creating optimized landing pages and building a blog. Use your blog to target keywords your students are searching for.
Conclusion
Start a tutoring business by first assessing your subject matter expertise and tutoring skills. Next, do audience and competitor research and then come up with a suitable business model.
From there, register your business, create a curriculum, and start marketing your business through social media, professional websites, SEO, and email marketing.
A tutoring business is an excellent way to monetize your expertise. However, make sure to deliver a personalized learning experience for each student. This guarantees the success of your students and business.
Author’s Bio:
Baidhurya Mani is the founder of Sell Courses Online. He regularly shares tips, tools, and strategies to help creators and entrepreneurs build a successful online course business.
