freelance online tutoring

How to Grow an Online Tutoring Business to 40K students as a Freelance Tutor: 10 Top Tips that you can use and do today!

Freelance tutors transform their own knowledge into a viable service and product. Selling these on their own website is the key to maximizing their tutoring income and growing their tutoring business.

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If you are a Freelance tutor, want to get into tutoring freelance or  want to grow your tutoring business then this article is going to help you.  Discover 5 FREE amazing marketing tools that you can use straight away in your tutoring business today, along with five more key factors to set-up your freelance tutoring business to maximize business growth from the start.

How to grow a tutoring business depends on five main factors and they are:

  1. A successful tutoring Business model.
  2. Methods to obtain students for freelance tutoring.
  3. Automated Digital Systems.
  4. How well you have researched your market.
  5. The products and services that you sell.
  6. Social Media Marketing for Freelance Tutors.

Unfortunately, often when tutors go freelance they often make three fundamental mistakes which more than often results in the downfall of their tutoring business from the start, but they find this out months or even years later after a lot of time and sometimes money has been invested.

The first mistake is that tutors often try to do it for free or near as and fail to invest in their own education to learn the skills required to create, manage and grow a tutoring business successfully. The education industry is competitive. To compete and be successful in that, you need to learn key marketing skills and learn how to embed those into everything you do.

The second mistake, I have seen often and still do is the tutor mindset. Tutors are often used to working for a school or platform. These sorts of business structures operate very differently to a freelance tutoring business. For example, how  a tutor markets themselves to get more classes on a Chinese ESL platform is all about over the top smiles pinned all the time, absurd TPR that defeats the purpose of actual TPR and prop use that turn the tutor into a paid performing clown most of the time. However as that is what some tutors are used to, that is the same mindset and methods they often bring to their  own tutoring business at the start. Whilst it ‘may’ work for a Chinese platform ( although I have heard many times from Chinese parents that they actually don’t like this, which is why they seek private tutors outside of China) it won’t work for a private tutoring freelance business. The decline of these platforms was always hugely evident and you can read more about that here.

On the flip side, most school teachers are great at writing lesson plans but don’t have much, if any marketing knowledge in digital course  creation and content creation skills.

 

 

esl content vault

The Third mistake is in the lack of tech used itself. A slow, poor loading website, with no option to book and pay or buy and enrol now are the first things that make visitors to a tutoring website, leave. I have had many tutors send me their websites to look over for improvements. Sadly, tutors beam with pride in what they have built for free. But doing something for free is not an  achievement in business.  Creating something that converts to solid income is. Don’t make the mistake also in thinking that WordPress is the cheapest option for a freelance tutoring business. You will need a lot of paid, third plugins which will only cost you money and slow your site down. I compared the costs of WordPress and other options here.

Know that, a buying consumer doesn’t care about how long a tutor took to create a website. They don’t care how many qualifications you have and if you have a TEFL, a DELTA or a degree really.

 Students only care about their own results and if you can help them achieve them. As a professional, freelance tutor who wants to become a Teacherpreneur  business owner, it is in your best intentions to hone in on that key aspect as it will be the base of your marketing strategy.

 

When I started my own tutoring business twelve years ago, I spent years learning the skills required to compete against global platforms and successfully so. Four years ago, I created a second one that grew from 0-over 40K students very fast and I am already planning the third one.  If you want to avoid taking years to learn what I had to learn to succeed, take my 30 day Teacherpreneurs Challenge course found here. Believe me, the small cost is nothing for what you will learn in 30 days. And if I could have found the same when I started twelve years ago, I would have paid ten times or more what I am charging because it would have saved me thousands and many  lost years of trial and error learning. 

A Successful Tutoring Business model

Relies on you really researching your industry and being able to adapt to what your research is telling you when changes are reflected within that industry. To do that you need to take off the tutor hat and put on the Teacherpreneur hat. 

The education industry is worth millions, the e-learning industry is worth trillions and that is because it creates trillions upon trillions of dollars of revenue each year. That there is a vital clue in how you should be structuring your tutoring business model if you want to be able to grow and even expand your freelance tutoring business.

 

expand your tutoring business
Online tutoring trends. Source: Google Trends

There is an upward trend for online tutoring that is showing no signs of slowing down so the first element of your freelance tutoring business model needs to be the realization of online tutoring and how to create an online tutoring business, to plan it comprehensively at the start. The Teacherpreneurs Business Plan below is a great place to start.

 You can do face-to-face tutoring in person if you wish but you will never pass the breakeven ceiling point like this alone and one of those reasons is in student acquisition.

How you obtain students for Freelance tutoring

Having an online freelance tutoring business makes student acquisition so much easier, quicker, and cheaper than a face-to-face tutoring business.
 
This is where digital marketing and automated systems come into play. There is a learning curve involved in learning how to use digital marketing to obtain students, but believe me, it is worth its weight in gold, literally. I deep dive into this further on in this post.

Automated Digitial Systems

Are automatic stress relievers and ultimate money makers. Every single one of my brands / online businesses uses one system and one simple system alone to automate 100% of my processes. You can try it here for  and see for yourself.

The only active part in my online business currently, is content creation. But if your brand is not built around you in the same way that one of mine is, you could even outsource this. I know I will when my brand get to the height I want to.

In its simplest terms, obtaining ‘paying’ students for a freelance tutoring business works as per the infographic below.

Automated Digital Sales System

This method of digital marketing, which is how sales funneling works is common in many different industries. It is fully automated which means once you set it up and people click on your link in bio, your button on a website, your link in an email or your ad, they enter into this process. 

It sounds simple but it isn’t as simple as it sounds at all. What you put inside of each stage here, makes the difference and this is where I see digital marketers fail. Often digital marketers will use the ‘one script to sell to all’ industries, all niches. But Online tutoring is quite specific and the one script that suits all doesn’t work. What you should do is way too detailed and specific for a blog post but I do teach this in the Teacherpreneurs Challenge.

Avoid calling yourself a ‘niche’ teacher or selling high-ticket programs like I have seen certain digital marketers convince new freelance tutors to do. You are going to bore your visitors and not get consistent sales. A new business cannot grow if sales are inconsistent, unless it has a reserve of money to bridge the gaps and those gaps  can widen into deep money pits.

 Any subject of whatever it is you teach or coach others in, is a niche in itself, that’s simple logic and students, AKA new customers like simple logic. 

Think about it, are you more likely to buy from someone who is offering an honest product or service sold to you in a simple way or not? I know I do and it is for this one reason.

When you think about buying something, you want to avoid doubt. If you are doubtful about part of that selling process, in anyway at all, you are likely to park it and not buy at that time, right? 

This is where your competitors who are better at selling can steal the sell.

Avoid overcomplicating the offer, overdressing your skills and trying to be clever with a paying consumer. Believe me, honesty and transparency build trust and confidence and that will convert a lot more into a sale or paid enrolment than trying to slip into someones Dm’s on  Linkedin with a sales script. And this brings me directly onto the next point.

Solo tutoring

How well you have researched your market

To create and grow a successful tutoring business you need to know what your audience wants. If you do, you can create a product or service around what your audience wants or needs. That then makes the first part of the selling process, which is gaining the interest of your audience, easy. 

If you have what your audience wants or if you can give them what they need or help them achieve what they need then your only issue then is in the conversion process which is why a good sales funnel is key. 

So the first question you should be asking yourself is how can I successfully research my market?

And the second one is how can I keep researching the audience within my market so I know of any changes or trends, if and when they appear.

The best way to do this is with a pixel. A digital pixel collects information about the people that engage with your content and that is massively important. Because you can then use the data on that pixel in your marketing. 

Every Social Media platform has a pixel but Facebook® was the initial creator of this. With a pixel you can grow your audience by targeting that other related/similar audiences. This is where your content can go viral and your sales can explode. But your content does have to be good to start with. Learn more about that here.

Trust me, a digital  pixel is your friend and can help a single freelance tutor go into the heavens of Teacherpreneurship.

You don’t have to pay to use a facebook® pixel but when you start running ads, you can really grow your tutoring business and income if you do.

 

The Products and Services you sell

Digital products are always going to be the best choice. They are literally free to create, you can start small, so ideal for new freelance tutors and coaches are amazingly simple to grow with a little time and effort which suits more established tutoring businesses.

But the big factor is that they are also your UPS (Unique Selling Point). My English students buy from me because they know I write the lessons. My lessons, courses and materials they cannot get anywhere else. They like my accent and they enjoy my teaching style. This makes my products and services unique.

Whilst you can use platforms like ESL library, so can your students. If you can buy it and use it online, so can they. That makes your products and services less desirable and therefore decreases the value. 

You also cannot brand bought resources from third parties, so you are losing the opportunity of unique growth and business development.

In the Teacherpreneurs Challenge, tutors and coaches learn a lot of things but one of them is  how to turn their current knowledge into a viable product or service. Viable being the keyword.

5 Free Amazing Marketing tools to grow your Tutoring Business

The digital landscape has changed on almost every platform in the last 12 months and facebook® has rolled out some key features to help you grow your business online for free! Whilst Tik Tok is becoming a good competitor, it currently does not offer anywhere near the same scale of free marketing tools and resources that Facebook does and Tik Tok is already removing the ability for some profiles to not display a link in bio as they try to force Tik Tok Shops (and take 5% commission on every sale).

Use the FREE tools with Facebook® first, develop your strategy, create a solid digital product, find your audience and understand your marketplace before you invest in ads and growth strategies.

This is exactly what I did, then facebook® monetized all three of my brands. This could be you in a few years time, if not sooner!

Facebook Shops

With literally every business in the world having to take their livelihood online as a result of the pandemic, facebook® maxed out here with the novel idea of E-commerce with facebook® shops.

Any person with a business or brand page can now have a facebook® shop and this is instrumental in growing your online business. 

Facebook® shops are super fast and easy to set up and can literally take minutes to do if you are using the Facebook® shop plugins for websites like WordPress, Wix, Square Space, etc. 

The beauty of these shops do not only do they display your products on facebook® but if approved they are also visible on Instagram® too. So you have automatically tripled your online shops viewing audience:

  1. Your website.
  2. Facebook® shops.
  3. Instragram® shops.

But the real gem is in their dynamic pixel attribution.

As facebook® continues to record what each and every one of us likes and other demographics etc. this information comes into play with facebook® shops because facebook® show the scroller or viewer the content that they are more likely to be interested in as a result of their past viewing and purchasing which means dynamically facebook® show the viewer the items that they are most likely to purchase. How useful is that? And you didn’t even have to pay for it!

One key feature, I love with Facebook® shops is that one set up, every time you add a new product to your online shop on your website, it is automatically pushed to both the shops on facebook® and Instagram®, saving any business time and admin costs.

Facebook events

Now have the option of running paid events!

But not just paid events, paid classes, seminars and meetings. 

The beauty of events is that similar to facebook® shops they will automatically start showing in the feeds of those most interested. I have also noticed that if you Google the names of products or event subjects in Google, those that are listed on facebook® are showing up in Google search so these must also be boosting your SEO.

Instant Articles

Instant Articles are basically blogs or articles that you already have on your site but on facebook® they are called Instant Articles and their beauty is in their load time. Instant Articles load super fast on facebook® and also appear in the facebook® app along the bottom of the screen. Again facebook® show you what you are most likely to read based on your viewer and interaction history. This is going to be a winner for those trying to grow their business through blogging and it is an ever-developing space. I’m watching this one closely.

Instant articles are also monetizable. So instead of Adsense, you might want to have a look into earning some Income from your articles on Instant Articles. Those along with the other forms of facebook® monetization are going to make it very competitive, I feel.

Facebook Watch

Is Facebook’s take on Youtube I guess. You can happily scroll through lots of videos on facebook® now. To grow your business with this feature so as many live videos or prerecorded videos as you can. I find that facebook® pushes business pages with video content a lot more than others and one of these reasons is because they do that one thing that Social Media hinges upon and that is engagement.

If people are watching your content, they are staying longer on facebook® and you are also winning the opportunity of getting them to like, know and trust you and your business more which are key factors if you want to turn that secret scroller into a happy shopper!

Online Bookings

With a business page, you can now have your very own online booking system with facebook®.

The booking system allows you to choose from paid and non-paid bookings. People can pay directly at the time of booking via facebook® or they can pay on site. 

You can choose online appointments or book online for offline appointments.

These are great, as you can use them for consultations, lessons, interviews, and meetings.

Kartra
Teacherpreneur Evolution System

Genius

These five marketing tools that facebook® give you for free are key tools to grow your business online. Why they outweigh any third-party apps that you may already have built into your website is in their location.

These facebook® marketing tools are already embedded into your market environment. Simply by using them you have positioned yourself or your business in your ideal market place and you are open for business, globally 24 hours a day, Internationally. 

Facebook® has intelligently given you some of the best marketing tools for free, to help you grow your business online. Currently, I have not yet seen another Social Media platform embed so many useful marketing tools that interact so seamlessly with Social Media directly from your business website directly to your clients. 

This is pure genius, gold!

Teacherpreneur Courses
View Teacherpreneur Courses

Social Media Marketing for Tutors

Social Media has changed two major things in the online teaching world. 

Firstly, social media has enabled online teachers to teach anyone from almost any country in the world by being able to market themselves to online students. Teachers can now be their own content creator and get paid for creating content for to market their own businesses.

Secondly, social media has inbuilt e-Commerce into now, which means teachers can create low-cost teaching resources and digital products for their students directly from social media. Then convert these paying students into their own online courses, classes and memberships.

The ESL Content Vault is the perfect solution for tutors and teachers that want to learn how to create content that converts, into a social media marketing strategy for their freelance teaching business.

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One thought on “How to Grow an Online Tutoring Business to 40K students as a Freelance Tutor: 10 Top Tips that you can use and do today!

  1. I’m so pleased, I found your blog. Thank you for so much for taking the time to write this incredible post. Stuffed with lots of useful info I can use.
    I’ve also just registered on your challenge with you, I’m looking forward to learning with you, you know so much on this topic, thanks so much.

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