The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of everything we were accustomed to doing offline. More people are ordering food and groceries online than ever, and Netflix has seen a tremendous increase in the number of subscribers since we cocooned into our homes during the lockdown. 

Not surprisingly, even the demand for online courses has shot up. For educators who are willing to take the leap to online teaching, this is a great opportunity to make a good amount of money. The best part is, you don’t always have to cater to a large number of learners spread across the country to make money. You can restrict it to your state, district, or even your locality with a limited number of students. In this post, we are going to find out how to start an online tutoring business in your locality.

Why start an online tutoring business?

There are many reasons why you could be considering starting your own online tutoring business. It could be anything from endless earning potential to being able to be your own boss. The latter can be extremely liberating; you can set your own hours, set your own rates for your courses, and take on as many students as you please.  

As an online tutor catering to the local market, this is an excellent opportunity to support students and parents (you may even personally know some of them). You are equipping them with the skills needed to give their best performance in the classroom and relieve their parents of huge stress. This is backed up by the fact that most school students also get extra tutoring, hoping that the tutor can change the outcome of their formal education. As you are the one controlling everything, you can even control who gets to be a part of your classes to maintain the quality of students. 

According to Research and Markets, the online education market is growing and is expected to reach $319.167 billion in 2025 from $187.877 billion in 2019. The time has never been this right to get into the business. 

Which model to adopt? 

Although there are many online education models out there, only two of them have been shown to actually work in the long run. Let us take a look at these two models in detail. 

Academy model

As the name suggests, this is more of a school-type model. When your students take a particular course, they learn every vertical in detail instead of focusing on one single topic. This is much like the Netflix subscription model. Your students will get access to the entire course materials or be given a set of materials for a monthly/yearly subscription. 

Night school model 

This is the more traditional model in the online education business. Schools and universities around the world have been using this for years. People choose this if they want to learn something apart from their nine-to-five job or formal education. This model might be more convenient for your students after a long day at school or work. In this model, students pay a fee upfront to access a course and follow a curriculum to complete it. You can provide standalone courses with course materials, delivered as online lessons or on-demand live classes. 

Qualifications you need before starting your online tutoring business

Before you can start teaching other people, you need to establish yourself as an expert in the subjects you plan to teach. Most tutors are expected to have at least a bachelor’s degree in their field unless they’re someone who has earned a name for themselves in the business world. Let’s look at the basic education prerequisites for starting your online tutoring business.

Bachelor’s degree: With an undergraduate degree, you can tutor primary, secondary school, and even high school students. If you have relevant work experience after graduation, you can also tutor college students in your area of specialization. 

Postgraduate education: With a post-graduate degree and anything above that, you can tutor elementary, middle school, high school, high school, and college students. You can also consider teaching adults who want to upskill themselves.

Tips to start your online tutoring business

Here are some very useful tips for starting and successfully running your online tutoring business. 

• Create a business plan describing the business and the business strategy. It is your long-term vision for the business. A typical business plan includes (i) Executive Summary (ii) Company Description (iii) Market Overview (iv) Sales and Marketing Strategy (v) Operating Plan (vi) Organizations and Management Team (vii) Financials.
• Get a good computer setup. This includes finding the perfect room and setting up all the required equipment like cameras, microphones, lighting, etc. Also, invest in good editing software to put everything together.  
• Determine the rates for your courses depending on the complexity/rarity of the course, your education, level of work experience, etc. 
• Register your business. Most tutors operate as a sole proprietorship or as a partnership. 
• Don’t just rely on a website; build a good social media presence by sharing high-quality content.

Two ways to build an e-learning platform for your tutoring business

There are two ways to build an e-learning platform for your online tutoring business. Let’s discuss both in detail. 

Custom development

You can build your own custom platform from scratch. This requires heavy investment and time is taken to finally get things up and running. You will have to outsource this to an app development company who’ll take care of everything from designing it to setting up a secure payment gateway.

Third-party platforms

A more modern approach is to go with a Learning Management System (LMS) that has all prebuilt features you’ll ever need to run your tutoring business. Such a platform should allow you to (i) create and sell premade courses in new formats (ii) facilitate mobile learning using a dedicated mobile app (iii) conduct virtual classrooms with chat, screen sharing and whiteboard (iv)conduct online tests, assessments and exams (v) get reports about various metrics from pre-built templates. 

How Learnyst can help 

Learnyst is one of the most technologically advanced and versatile Learning Management System (LMS) platforms in the market. Thousands of educators have successfully created and sold their own courses through our platform by leveraging the following features. 

• A personalized website for your course that will also look good on mobile.
• Create a custom mobile app for your course.
• Choose from a variety of customizable templates to create content from slides to interactive quizzes.
• Easily integrate with third-party tools. For example, you can integrate with Mailchimp to run email marketing campaigns.  
• Your intellectual property rights are protected using the latest DRM technology.
• Easily integrate any authoring tool to instantly transfer content onto Learnyst.

If you would like to know more about how Learnyst can help you set up and run a successful online tutoring business in your locality, get in touch with us today! 

If you already have course contents ready, signup with us and get your online academy for free 14 days.