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Want to start an online tutoring business

Discussion in 'General Business' started by rosaparks, Aug 3, 2009.

  1. #1
    I want to start an online tutoring business. Where would you suggest getting tutors and students?

    Also, how can you suggest to prevent the tutors I hire from stealing clients once I give them students to tutor?
     
    rosaparks, Aug 3, 2009 IP
  2. subtle

    subtle Active Member

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    #2
    Are you able to tell us a little more about the business? I.e how will the tutoring work? Will the tutors and students be communicating through your website? or is the website just a place where students can find tutors and vice versa? If you are able to provide a bit more detail then everyone else including myself might be able to provide you with some good advice
     
    subtle, Aug 3, 2009 IP
  3. rosaparks

    rosaparks Peon

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    #3
    i am going to be using an online whiteboard and skype as the method to tutor. Currently I have a few students that i am tutoring using this method. However, im thinking of getting more students and other tutors to help these new students out. I will be getting payed by the students and after, I will pay the tutors I hire to tutor them. I will have a site, but it will just be used as a place to find information about my tutoring service.
     
    rosaparks, Aug 3, 2009 IP
  4. subtle

    subtle Active Member

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    #4
    Ok, well if you are after tutors and students think of a place where you can obtain these people relatively easily. As I understand it, you would like it to be relatively local, therefore why not advertise throughout colleges and schools around you area?

    Use a simple campaign like... "Want to earn some extra cash? Become a tutor! Join our ever growing online network of tutors and students.....blah blah blah"

    If you want to find people online, look for websites appealing to college kids, school kids as well as school childrens parents. If, down the track you become successfull it might be worthwhile to spend a bit of money on web development and incorporate an ecommerce system of some sort, where users are able to purchase tutoring credit, you could also pay your tutors online etc.


    Good luck!
     
    subtle, Aug 3, 2009 IP
  5. rosaparks

    rosaparks Peon

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    #5
    thank you that is great advise.

    however, once i get tutors and they use skype and online white board to tutor, howdo i prevent the tuors from stealing my clients and charging them less for tutoring on thier own, w.o me as the middle man?

    what do you suggest?
     
    rosaparks, Aug 3, 2009 IP
  6. subtle

    subtle Active Member

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    #6
    Yeah thats the tricky one. I think if you provide the correct facilities etc, whiteboard, skype etc then the tutors would rather just go through your website to be honest. There would be a higher chance of tutors "stealing" your students if they were from a local area, because that way why go through your site when they can have real life tutoring sessions? The only thing I can think of at the moment which would be the best way to prevent this is get the students to purchase non-refundable tutoring credit, this way they have to spend their credit and wont leave (and if they do you have their money anyway).


    A few issues I see arising which you should take into consideration are:

    1. Why will the tutors and students go through your website and get less of a personal experience, rather than real life tutoring?
    2. How will you check the credibility of the tutors? And furthermore, how will the students know they are getting a creditable tutor?
    3. Will people be suspect getting online tutoring?
    4. You have many larger competitors, how will you combat this?

    Perhaps think about those before you go through will everything, I always advise to draw up a business/marketing plan before you start anything. I learned the hard way, I have spent upwards of $25,000 in the past with new ventures on design, development, equipment etc, only to realise I hadnt taken into consideration one major factor, which would in turn have a massively negative impact on my business.

    I wish you all the best!
     
    subtle, Aug 4, 2009 IP
  7. zurpit.com

    zurpit.com Peon

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    #7
    maybe make it so only you can initiate the tutor sessions between the two so it still has to go through you, they don't have their info directly
     
    zurpit.com, Aug 4, 2009 IP
  8. chister123

    chister123 Active Member

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    #8
    You need something like this custom developed:

    http://www.tutorvista.com/howitworks.php

    Make it so the tutors and students cannot contact each other directly, they have to go through your website.

    Make them buy tutor credits and after each session, the student can rate the tutor.

    Coding for a project like this will cost you at least $5k. You will need, chat, email, whiteboard, your own voip (like skype) embedded into the site. All in one solution, for the best online tutoring experience.

    I have been looking for a ready-made script for something like this for years, as I wanted to start my own tutoring site a while back. I came to the conclusion, that to make a project like this successful, you need a extremely well coded website plus a good site interface design.

    Website's like this will be the future of education.

    EDIT: Another example: http://www.tutor.com/how-it-works
     
    chister123, Aug 4, 2009 IP
  9. cessvergara

    cessvergara Banned

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    #9
    I would try hotscripts in google, its a huge database of scripts for thousands of dif. kinds of sites. Their not free of course, but its good for finding something specific like this.
     
    cessvergara, Aug 4, 2009 IP
  10. IGSB

    IGSB Peon

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    #10
    Hi,

    We are a South-Asia based small online tutoring firm. We have launched a one-2-one, online, live tutoring service to UK based students for some UK Accountancy qualifications. Probably our programme is the first of its kind for those accountancy qualifications in the world. You may already know that online tutoring delivered from South-Asia is growing at a rapid rate as South-Asian tutors can speak English fluently, and more importantly we can provide personal tuition of the highest quality at around 1/3rd of the normal cost in the UK/US/Australia/Newzealand/Middle-east countries. I would be very happy to have a business relationship with you, for a win-win situation. This will also eliminate the problem of tutors stealing students from you, as the distance is far long, and I personally, will never like tutors steal students, as this hurts my profits too. You have another advantage is that, you do not have to concentrate on hiring tutors and monitoring them. Thus, if you can approach students/schools/colleges in your area ( I do not know your location), then we can do this at a highly profitable venture, and meantime, offering good quality education at a fraction of the cost, helping needy students. As we are not a big, large corporate group, you need not find 1000's of student through Government contracts. Just informal communication will do. If you are interested, please contact me on ATL dot GLOBAL at YAHOO dot COM I have also sent you a PM which contains the link to our website, so you can log on and see our services and more about us. Also you can contact us via the official email address in the Contact Us page.

    Best Regards & Lots Of Luck !
     
    IGSB, Aug 4, 2009 IP
  11. garysharma007@yahoo.com

    garysharma007@yahoo.com Peon

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    #11
    IMHO , and I have personal experience of investing and wasting $ 100000 of my hard earned money before realising this is extremely tough business and the jury is still out .
    I am sure my failure was more due to my mistake and execution rather than the inherent attractiveness of the opportunity. But still some learnings :
    1.This needs lot of money to make it work on large scale unless you want to be a mom and pop shop or individual tutor. The only real and existing players are TutorVista.com , Tutor.com and Smartthinking . the latter two have beena round for 8 to 10 years without any sign of successful monetization while TutorVista.com is around for 3 years , they have also forayed into offline tutoring and education - dont know if this means pure online does not work.
    Smartthinking fired the founder and CEO and appointed new ones - perhaps a sign of disillusionment with the progress and scale in the last 8 years .
    Tutor.com seems to be doing well but have raised money from Intel Capital and so has TutorVista from Sequoia and other investors including pearson.
    So be very careful , think of capital you have and how you will differentiate and what your key success factors will be before putting your money
    All the best
    gary
     
  12. opportunity2

    opportunity2 Peon

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    #12
    I actually think its a wonderful idea and you should go for it. If you need some assistance with this I offer free video business tutorials in my signature links.
     
    opportunity2, Aug 7, 2009 IP
  13. primeonlinemarketing

    primeonlinemarketing Peon

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    #13
    One of the biggest online businesses is teaching English. However, you have to penetrate East Asian countries. And, getting prospects in those areas could be quite difficult -- given the cultural barrier
     
    primeonlinemarketing, Aug 8, 2009 IP
  14. mentos

    mentos Prominent Member

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    #14
    The best way to prevent this is force the tutor to sign an agreement with you.
    If they break it,you can fine them for $200k/each client.
     
    mentos, Aug 9, 2009 IP
  15. Bertrand-Grospellier

    Bertrand-Grospellier Guest

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    #15
    Why not try non-english speaking countries.. There are lots of students out there who wish to learn english and I think most are willing to take english tutors online.. You can still communicate with them as they know basic english.. Try to search it out.. I have seen some.. I just couldn't remember the link..
     
    Bertrand-Grospellier, Aug 9, 2009 IP
  16. SonicVPS

    SonicVPS Peon

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    #16
    Start a franchise and get other tutors to join in the network ;)
     
    SonicVPS, Aug 9, 2009 IP
  17. lindamood1

    lindamood1 Active Member

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    #17
    you can build group and do online tutoring services on messenger like skype, yahoo
     
    lindamood1, Aug 9, 2009 IP
  18. rosaparks

    rosaparks Peon

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    #18
    I have created a website for my service. Does it look professional? its in my signature.
     
    rosaparks, Aug 19, 2009 IP