Tutoring is an excellent way to earn an income for potential teachers of all ages and experiences. Whether you’re a student who needs a flexible work schedule to suit your hours, a current or retired teacher looking to supplement your income, or even if you’re building your career as a new teacher. If you’re wondering how to become an online tutor, our guide will answer all your basic questions — plus give you some pointers on how to market yourself and keep your students engaged once you find them.
Understanding Online Tutoring
The popularity of online tutoring has exploded since the pandemic, but the reality is that the new medium of teaching requires new methods. While studies show that students are satisfied with online learning compared to the traditional classroom, it’s also true that holding the attention of students online can be tough. Especially if your tutoring students are young, you will need to adapt your teaching style to keep them engaged and focused on learning.
Benefits of Online Tutoring
Online tutoring is excellent for time-strapped students (or their parents!) since it cuts down on commuting time, and can sometimes cut down on costs. Most students and their tutors find that they can be more flexible with their schedules because of the convenience of learning-from-anywhere.
Offering online tutoring is a great way to earn money for people who need a flexible work schedule. This includes parents of young children and those who travel frequently or need a flexible work schedule . With a laptop and a stable internet connection, tutors can work while they’re on the road, or in-between classes and appointments.
Requirements for Becoming an Online Tutor
Online tutors need the same commitment to teaching, and the same educational background as in-person tutors — with a dash of extra patience. Not all learners have adjusted to online platforms at the same rate. It's necessary to accommodate students at their current level of understanding as a tutor. Remember, learning takes bravery — and it’s hard for students to learn new computer skills on top of the subject you’re tutoring them in!
Necessary Skills
As a tutor, you’ll want to be comfortable with any and all technology you use to teach your students. This includes your video call platform, your scheduling/calendar tools, and any websites or apps you use to aid in delivering your lessons. It can be frustrating for your students to lose time while you figure out a new program. So make sure that you spend time working out all the kinks before you begin your lessons. This will make you appear professional, and will ensure you stay calm and relaxed throughout your tutoring session.
Technical Requirements
When you feel confident with the tools you’ve chosen, ensure you have some handy guides available for students, and can explain the tools to them. Also consider their age and experience level. Very young or older adult learners may not be familiar with the platforms that teenage or young adults take for granted. No matter which technologies you choose, be sure you use stable and secure programs or platforms. Before you begin lessons, also make sure that you and your students have reliable internet connections.
Educational Requirements
As noted, an online tutor must have the same education and experience as tutors who would deliver in-person tutoring. Your level of expertise may vary based on whether you’re a high school student tutoring younger students in academic subjects, or you’re an experienced tutor with a long-standing in-person tutoring practice (and your rates should vary accordingly!). Regardless of your experience level, you should feel comfortable with the subject you’re teaching. Be ready to explain the material in a variety of ways to ensure student comprehension.
If you’re new to online tutoring, consider taking some training or completing some self-study on the most effective online teaching methods. Ensuring that you feel comfortable and confident teaching your students online, whether you’re only focused on one-to-one tutoring or are tutoring groups of learners.
Setting Up Your Tutoring Profile
As an online tutor, you’ll need a strong online presence to market your services. Most new tutors find it beneficial to create a profile with an online tutoring service, or post ads on related websites for services. This helps you to get noticed without having to sink time and money into a website.
Creating a Strong Profile
If you are an established in-person tutor, however, you might find that you want more control over your branding, and would like to set up your own website. Start by researching what other tutors like you have done with their own sites for inspiration. You’ll learn what information you want to provide on your own site, and what to avoid. From there, the sky's the limit for how much you personalize your site experience. Just be sure it’s professional, on-brand for you, and gives your potential students insight into your personality and teaching style.
Setting Your Rates
While online tutoring can be slightly less expensive than in-person lessons, the reality is that you still have to make a living with your tutoring. Your teaching should be no less effective or valuable just because it takes place on the internet. Plan your costs the same way you would with in-person teaching, and don’t forget to check out our article on how much you should charge for tutoring.
Choosing an Online Tutoring Platform
If you’re looking for convenience, choosing a service to market your tutoring skills and availability is the way to go. Services like TutorLyft make setting up your profile easy, and we also make sure tutoring with you looks as fun as possible. We’ll promote you on our cross-channel marketing efforts, and you’ll get the opportunity to work with us on an introductory video to showcase your personality and knowledge to prospective clients. You’ll get hundreds of potential students and their parents viewing your profile, and you’ll be able to ensure they’re a good match for your skills and teaching style. It’s the most headache-free way to start your tutoring business!
Marketing Yourself as an Online Tutor
No matter how you decide to set up your online tutoring business, it’s essential that you market yourself and your services. This can be as simple as putting up flyers in your neighbourhood. But as a digital tutor, you should invest in some digital-native marketing techniques as well.
Using Social Media
Starting with a few posts on your personal social media accounts is great, but consider if your followers are the right audience for your message. For example, if you’re a university student who wants to tutor children and teenagers, but your followers are people your own age, you’re not going to be hitting your critical audience — parents of children and teenagers who are looking for tutoring for their kids. Think strategically about how you can get your message out to the right people.
If you are hoping to make a career out of tutoring, and have the time and skills, consider setting up dedicated social media accounts. You can make videos of helpful tips for learning and studying, and build your audience through interacting with others. Just remember, building a following online takes time — and you’ll earn more spending your time tutoring than if you spend too much time posting!
Teaching Strategies for Online Tutoring
Active listening is key to how to become an online tutor. Without the benefit of being in-person, you lose a lot of the information that body language and other gestures can give you. Especially when you’re teaching young people, pay attention to their tone of voice and word choice. This will tell you a lot about how well they’re grasping what you’re teaching, and their ability to pay attention to your lessons. If you’re not engaging, most students won’t give you direct feedback on it — but you may see (and hear!) their attention wander throughout the lesson. Focus on when they seem most engaged, and give them options for activities or the order of lessons for each session to improve their attention.
Understanding Learning Styles
If you’re curious about different strengths and styles of learning, one easy method to help understand your students comes from author and podcaster Gretchen Rubin. Her book The Four Tendencies breaks down the four ways in which people respond to expectations: By always meeting them, whether set by themselves or others, by meeting all expectations from others, and struggling to meet personal ones, by questioning expectations and only committing to those that make sense, and by rejecting all expectations. When it comes to your students, these tendencies will affect things as simple as how well they do their homework, and as complex as how they relate to you personally, including if they trust your tutoring skills. You can find out your style with a brief quiz, and learn more about how the tendencies impact learning.
Conclusion
Being an online tutor is an art in itself. Learning how to connect with students online and build rapport can be much trickier than in-person learning. However, the benefits outweigh the shortcomings for most tutors. With online tutoring, you get a more flexible schedule, and access to a larger number of students than you would have before. If you’re willing to learn new skills and new tools, you’ll have more opportunities to teach your favourite subjects — and help others become enthusiastic learners, too.
