How to start a tutoring business
Starting a tutoring business costs little to nothing to start up.
Tutoring business is a good business idea for those who have broad knowledge of a subject. I believe that anybody who has gone through the four walls of either secondary or tertiary institution should be good at a particular subject.
Do you know that the subject you consider too simple is someone’s headache? For instance, in my own case, I don’t have problem with calculations. I remember I always scored above ninety per cent in subjects like Mathematics and Accounting during my school days. But when it comes to verbal subjects, I was just an average student. Back then, I leveraged on my expertise to make some good money for myself during holiday periods. We usually organised coaching classes for students preparing for their college final examinations. In fact, it was fun and very rewarding. So, if you are good at a subject, you might have been wasting your asset away without knowing. Do you know that you can actually start a tutoring business? When I mention tutoring business, you may not need to establish a school or an institution to start tutoring business. But it is good I call it a business so that you can give it a business approach.
Why tutoring business?
- You can start tutoring business with almost nothing.
- It can be operated at any scale.
- Tutoring business can be operated from home.
- There is a growing demand for tutoring.
- Colleges are getting more competitive.
- There are increased expectations placed on students.
- No adequate attention for students in public schools.
You can start tutoring business with almost nothing: The beauty of this business idea is that it can be started with no or little capital. One of the factors that usually stops some aspiring entrepreneurs from actualizing their dream is lack of funds. But this is not the case with tutoring business. What you need most here is the knowledge of your subject. So. If you are out of job, instead of remaining idle in the name of lack of job, you can create a job for yourself through this business idea.
It can be operated at any scale: Is tutoring a good side job? Yes! You can even start tutoring business on the side while you keep your normal job. You may have a very big dream but you need to understand that Rome is not built in a day. This means that you can start with just one student. As your students keep increasing, you can then decide to quit your job and concentrate on your business. At this time, you are sure that the income from the side business can comfortable take care of your expenses.
Tutoring business can be operated from home: You may not need a tuition centre to start this business. You can work as a tutor working from home. When you work from home, your expenses are less, You don’t need to be paying for transportation everyday. Also, you can prepare your meal at home instead of buying food from restaurant. So, even if your income is not high, you are able to cut your expenses. This can make even the little income to be more than sufficient.
There is a growing demand for tutoring: Are tutors in demand? Can you make a living as a private tutor? Of course, yes. The truth is that, private tutors are making a killing. Tutoring is a business idea that you can be sure that will always enjoy patronage. The important thing is that, you should know what you are doing. Before you know what is happening, your students or their parents will help advertise you.
Colleges are getting more competitive: If any student aspires to enrol in a good school, then such student should be prepared to perform excellently or at worst to be above average. In order to achieve this, some of them turn to private tutorial centres to gain more knowledge about specific subjects.
There are increased expectations placed on students: There was a time I was checking through my son’s homework. I realized that some of the things they ware being taught at Primary schools were those things I was taught when I was in secondary. In some cases, they would need to ask me questions in order to have a better understanding of their homework. But what happens to students who are not privileged to have well educated parents? Some of these parents resort to engaging private tutors for their children in order to bridge the gap.
No adequate attention for students in public schools: Some people has a misconception that some pupils attend public schools because their parents cannot afford to send them to private school. That is not always true. Some parents decided to send their children to public school for logistic reasons. But unfortunately, the quality of education in some of the public schools are nothing to write home about. Private tutoring will definitely thrive in such an environment.
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Key Success Factors
To succeed in tutoring business, below are the key success factors:
- Good understanding of your subjects: You can’t give what you don’t have. If you don’t understand a subject that you want to teach, it will be a case of a blind man leading another blind man. Before you can work effectively as a tutor, you should have a good understanding of your subject. If you identify a knowledge gap, it is important that you first address the issue before venturing out as a tutor.
- Good qualifications: There is no way you can convince anyone that you are a good tutor when you don’t possess relevant qualification. You cannot be a primary school certificate holder and want to teach a secondary school student. This is not a matter of age.
- Understanding of the educational system and curriculum: You should be able to align your teachings with the educational system and curriculum applicable to your students. Don’t just teach a topic just because you have interest in the subject. Your interest in a particular topic is not useful to your students if it is not in line with their educational system and curriculum.
- Enthusiasm and a positive attitude: You may be good at a subject but that is not sufficient to impact your students. The way you relate with your students will determine whether they will understand the subject. You need to be enthusiastic enough that your students will be happy to have you around.
- Good time management skills: As a tutor, the earlier you learn how to manage your time effectively. the better for you. The way you manage your time will influence how much income you will make.
Steps to follow to start a tutoring business
Decide on the subject
You need to decide on the subject you want to teach your students. The subject should be related to your expertise. You can decide to hire other people to broaden your area of expertise. This will increase your client opportunities. Researching your competitors will help you know the subjects they offer and what they don’t offer. If you can add the subjects they don’t offer to your offering, it is possible for you to attract more people to your tutoring business. Essential subjects such as English language and Mathematics are always on high demand.
Decide on the age group
You need to choose the age group that will meet your goals. For instance, it may be easier to teach elementary class than college students but the fee you will charge students in elementary class will be lower than what you will charge older children in colleges.
Decide on location
I mentioned that you can start tutoring business at any scale. If you have a free space at home, you can run your tutoring business right from your home. You can also choose to go to your student’s house. But if you are to go to your student’s house, you need to consider the distance so that you don’t spent chunk of your money on transport. If you are working with multiple students, it is better you have them come to you. As your students keep growing, you can rent a space such as school classrooms.
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Obtain permits
Do you need a license to start a tutoring business? Well, it depends on the scale of your operations. If you are starting tutoring business that will require the gathering of students, you need to obtain permits so that your business will not be seen as illegal. The few bucks you will spend to obtain permits can save you from embarrassment from government task force.
Acquire the right materials
Getting the right curriculum will help you tailor your tutoring to meet your students’ needs. Having access to and solving past and likely questions with your students will increase their chances of success in their examinations.
Determine fee
You need to decide on how to charge your students. You can either base your fee on hourly rate of fixed amount per subject. Whatever pricing method you adopt, you should ensure that your costs are adequately covered. Your costs may likely include cost of materials, transportation and fee to other tutors (if any). Charging reasonable amount compared to your competitors will win customers to you.
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Establish policies and procedures
There should be policies and procedures guiding your tutorial business.
You need to set your rates, payment terms, cancellation policy and lecture schedules. This should be documented and communicated to your students.
For people that want to set up tutorial center, you may need to take additional steps. This steps are highlighted below:
Register Your Business
You should register your business in order to give it a legal status. You need to determine the legal structure of your tutoring business. It can be a sole proprietorship, partnership or a limited liability company. Each of these has its pros and cons. For instance, if you register the business as a sole proprietorship, you will have the full control of the business. It is the easiest and cheapest way of structuring a business. However, at the same time, you will bear the whole risk of the business. If you don’t want to do it alone, you might consider partnership. Partners in a partnership are collectively responsible for all business debts and profits, and also have full control of the business. For a limited liability company, the company is seen as an artificial body that is separated from the owners; it can sue and can be sued. Unlike sole proprietorship and partnership, owners are not personally responsible for business debts and liabilities of the limited liability company.
Read Also: Choosing A Legal Structure of A Business
Register With Tax Authority
It is important that you register your business with relevant tax authorities both at state and federal levels. As an entity, there are certain taxes your business should pay. Also, if you hire staff working for you, you need to deduct tax from their salary which you are expected to remit to the state tax authority. Doing otherwise will be seen as tax evasion. Of course, this has its own legal implications.
Open a Bank Account
It is important that you have a bank account for your business. Even though you have a personal bank account, you still need to open a separate account for your business where you can lodge all the supermarket revenues. Also, you should make all the expenses relating to the business from the company. This makes you more accountable. At the same time, it will be easier for you to source loans from the bank when needed. Furthermore, having a bank account makes it easy for your accountant to prepare the financial statements of the supermarket.
Hire Staff
If you want to expand your operations, there is no way you will not engage the services of other tutors. While recruiting, it is important that you engage the services of individuals who are good at respective subjects. But if you want to hire and retain good hands, you should be able to pay them well. In case you don’t have enough money to hire the competent hands, that should not mean that you should hire those who don’t know what they are doing. You may decide to make them stakeholders. In this way, you will be willing to share your profit with them.
Marketing
If you want to ensure that your tutoring business is profitable, you must ensure you have enough students. Unfortunately, students may not come on their own. You need to market your services. Where can you advertise tutoring services? You can achieve this by adopting different methods. You can visit nearby schools and libraries to create awareness. It is good that you develop relationship with career counselors and teachers in the elementary, middle and high schools in your area. You can print and distribute flyers so that people will know the subjects you teach and your location. You can also engage the words of mouth by telling friends, colleagues, relations and other acquaintances.
Also, you need to be active on social media. Social media is a good platform to spread the news. you can also upload your fliers onto your FaceBook page. Tell your friends and followers to help you share the information. Lastly, you can invest in website. Website is no longer expensive unlike when it first started. Having an online presence will lend credence to your tutoring business. When people are searching for tutorial centres near me, they can easily find you.
SWOT Analysis of Tutoring Business
Before you decide on starting a tutorial centre, let’s analyze the business further by using the tool called SWOT Analysis. Essentially, SWOT Analysis helps you look determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. If you can identify your strengths, you will want to maximize them so that you can use them to your advantages. Your strengths are usually internal to you, therefore, you have control over them. On the other hands, your weaknesses are your weak points. They are also internal. That means you can take deliberate steps to overcome them. Opportunities are external factors that can be beneficial to your tutoring business if you choose to explore them. Threats are those external factors which can mitigate the success of your mini supermarket. You don’t have control over them. Therefore, you need to develop a strategy that can help your business succeed with them.
So, what are the possible strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of tutoring business? Let’s look at them below:
Strengths
The possible strengths are highlighted below:
Low Capital: Tutoring do not require much capital to start. This means that you can start small. However, the business is scalable. There is beauty in starting small. You can learn from any initial mistakes you might make without the mistakes having much impacts on the business.
Self-funding: Since you may not require large capital, you may be able to fund the business yourself. This puts less pressure on you to return profitability immediately.
Less Overheads: You can start tutoring business from home. This makes the costs to be minima.
High Margin: Most of what you will be doing is rendering of services. Margin on services are very high unlike some products which only return low margin.
Experience: If you have a good knowledge of your subject, students will keep coming to you. Also, you will enjoy referrals.
Good Location: If you are very close to schools or library, you will find it easier to attract students than another tutorial centre without such around.
Weaknesses
Less Knowledge: Whatever the business you want to invest in, you need to have adequate knowledge. Nevertheless, in case you don’t have enough knowledge, the weakness can be overcome by investing in training.
Lack of Space: If you don’t have enough space for your students, this will put a limit to the number of your intake. This will limit your income as well.
Opportunities
As mentioned, these are external factors that can influence the growth and success of your tutorial business. And these include the following:
Collapse in the Quality of Education: If you notice general poor performance on the part of students, it is a big opportunity for tutorial centres to thrive.
Growing Population: If you have more people coming to your area, your tutorial centre may likely experience sharp growth. For instance, if there are new estates springing up very close to your tutorial centre, you may need to prepare for surge in student enrolment.
Threats
Other Tutorial Centres: If other tutorial centres are springing up very close to you and they offer better services than you do, you may soon lose your students to them. Also, online tutoring is becoming a big threat to brick and mortal type of tutoring.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I start my own tutoring business from home?
You can do this either by going to your student home or by having your students coming to you. As the number of students begins to increase, you may rent a location if you don’t have enough space that can contain them. You can read the above article for step by step guide to take.
What qualifications do you need to become a tutor?
No standard qualifications are required of you to become a tutor. But it is expected that a tutor should possess relevant knowledge, qualifications and experience in the chosen subject.
Can I tutor without a degree?
You don’t need to have a degree to become a tutor especially if you want to tutor elementary grade students. But if you want to teach higher grades, having a degree will enhance may be necessary.
How much do you charge for tutoring?
As a tutor, you can charge within the range of $25 and $75 per hour. However, you cannot just charge arbitrarily, you need to consider the grade of the student, the complexity of the subject, your qualifications/experience, your overhead costs and what other tutors are charging. You should know how to balance these factors. If you charge a low rate, you may be losing some income. On the other hand, if your charges are two high, you may lose students to competitors. But you should bear in mind that you will charge higher rate for private tutoring than what you will charge for group tutoring.
How long does tutoring sessions be?
There is no standard duration for tutoring sessions. It depends on some factors such as the grade of the students, the frequency of the tutoring and student expectations. Nevertheless, tutoring sessions can last between thirty minutes and two hours.