What Makes Online Tutoring Business a Profitable Idea To Invest in 2022

The previous two years, 2020 and 2021, were the time when the online tutoring sector was witnessing extraordinary growth. While the world struggled with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, online education had become a common scenario when there was no better alternative for schools and universities to help their students. As a result, educators worldwide started investing in the online tutoring market to share their expertise and establish their own businesses.

Tutors who are new to online tutoring often think they can simply build a website and get enrollments; that’s rarely the case. Even if you are an expert in your field, you will have to build your audience, prove your expertise, and engage with learners looking for your help. Making money with online tutoring is possible if you get the foundation right. This includes choosing the right niche, setting up your online tutoring platform, implementing the right pricing strategies, etc.

The global online tutoring industry is expected to grow to $18.18 billion by 2028. This makes it the right time to invest in the industry as the demand for online tutoring is rising every year. If you are looking for ways on how to grow a tutoring business online, this blog has a lot of valuable information.

Is Online tutoring a profitable business idea in 2022?

Now that the effects of the pandemic have subsided and the schools are reopening, is online tutoring a profitable business idea? And as the market is already crowded, are there enough opportunities for new tutoring businesses to thrive?

The answer is a big YES!

Though the online tutoring market seems saturated due to the number of existing options, no market is fully saturated. There is always an opportunity to rethink market boundaries, brainstorm new sources of value, or simply position your tutoring brand in a different way from the existing players.

Even if there are many other online tutoring businesses with excellent teachers serving millions of students, there will still be unmet needs. So it’s just a matter of doing homework to find the niche that suits your focus on the right audience with the right unique offering.

Starting a tutoring business online- Steps to follow

Choose your area of expertise

As I mentioned at the blog’s beginning, you need to choose a niche to work around. It’s critical to identify your strengths and weaknesses while starting an online tutoring business. By picking a niche, you will stand out in the industry by attracting students who need tutoring in specialized areas. You can even choose multiple niches to broaden your reach and increase your class enrolments.

If you are an English teacher, you can choose niches like Business English, IELTS, and TOEFL exam preparation, or age-specific classes ( Teaching English to preschool children).

To make the task of finding a niche easier, consider the following questions.

• What are you passionate about?
• What do you love about tutoring?
• What types of classes have you preferred teaching in the past?
• What is the age group you enjoy working with the most?
• What is your teaching style- Professional or casual and fun? Or both?
• What niches can you combine effectively ( For example, teaching preschoolers and kids above 5 years)?

Do in-depth market research

Many of the questions given above you may have answered through your experience. However, tutoring businesses must conduct in-depth market research, especially when working on a highly competitive niche. To have a better grasp of the industry you are going to join as a new business, you must consider the following aspects.

• Who are your primary competitors?
• What services do other tutors in your niche currently offer?
• Who is your target audience?
• What are your USPs? What can you do to differentiate your online tutoring brand from the competition?

Performing market research will help you find relevant answers to all these critical questions. Look for any gap in subject availability, understand how much other tutoring businesses charge for their offerings, how many tutors other brands have onboard, etc. All of this information will help you better grasp what other tutoring brands are going to do and how you can outperform them.

Choose a business model

One of the important aspects to consider when starting a tutoring business is to choose a tutoring business model. Existing online tutoring platforms use different ways to make money.

Here are some of the common business models most tutoring businesses adopt.

Freemium

Some tutoring websites give part of their features for free while accepting a fee for advanced functionalities like premium classes, interactive tools, etc. If you are planning to adopt this model, you can consider offering a few basic level classes for free and then charge for advanced classes.

Subscription

Learners can pay either monthly or annually to access your tutoring website and book classes. For example, the online tutoring platform StudyPool provides its subscribers with millions of study documents, 10 of which can be downloaded every month for a $4.95 monthly subscription fee.

Pay per class

Students can access individual classes by paying a specific price assigned for each class. Then, they get what they have paid for.

Promoted tutor profiles

Online tutoring platform offers better matching between students and teachers for an extra fee. You can also charge a small fee for tutors to convert their tutor profiles to premium.

Commissions

If you are running an online tutoring marketplace (which is an excellent option if you want to grow your online tutoring business), you can take commissions from each class. For instance, at Preply, it takes 100% of the payment from tutors, and for the next classes, depending on the number of hours taught, the commissions vary from 18% to 33%.

Create a tutoring website- Developmental guide

Now comes the important part of starting an online tutoring business- Building your tutoring website or an online tutoring marketplace (where you can invite other tutors to be a part of your tutoring brand).

Here are the essential steps you have to follow after the research stage to build a tutoring website.

Choose the features and prioritize them

When building your online tutoring website, it is important to integrate an important feature that presents the functionalities of your tutoring platform. Most tutors’ main problem is that it is hard to find a platform that fully covers their needs. Most of them prefer using Skype or zoom for video sessions, and for payment solutions, they use a different app.

In addition, online teachers are forced to leverage different tools for tutoring. Hence, it would be great if you could combine searching, scheduling, learning, monetization, marketing, and branding all in one place.

With this in mind, let’s look into essential features an online tutoring platform must-have.

To make it simple, let’s divide the features into three sections: Student, teachers, and admin.

Student section

The scope of features for the student section consists of the following

Registration and student profile

Students must be able to create an account on the tutoring platform by email or social media profile. In addition, the user profile must store basic personal information, a list of scheduled and past classes, payment info, account settings, and notifications.

Search and matching

Students must be able to search for a teacher using filters like subject, language, availability, price of the class, experience, rating, etc.

Enrol for classes

Allow students to choose a tutor’s class based on their availability. Once a date and time are chosen from the calendar, the tutor receives a notification, and they can either choose to accept or reject the request. This approach helps to prevent schedule conflicts. You can also add a reminder option which will help to avoid forgotten appointments.

Virtual classroom

Integrate a virtual classroom to facilitate live learning so that students can leverage functionalities like a whiteboard, screen sharing, file transfer, chatting, and a lot more.

Rating and reviews

The student should be able to rate a particular class and a tutor in general, based on their experiences of attending a class.

Payments

Allow students to make payments securely through your online tutoring platform by integrating a payment gateway. Add multi-currency and multiple payment choices to cater to different types of clients.

Tutor section

A tutor section allows tutors to register, access, and manage their accounts and tutoring tools.

Registration

Different online tutoring marketplaces have different requirements for tutors. For example, it ranges from simple registration to interviewing and background checks. You can implement a strict enrolment process to ensure quality.

Tutor profile

After creating an account, the tutor must be taken to a profile where they can add their personal and professional information. Allow adding a description of their services through text or a video.

Class scheduling and managements

Tutors must be able to update their availability and schedule classes accordingly. In addition, they must be able to view and manage requests for the class as well.

Dashboard

An analytics page is a great way to display statistics about the tutor’s performance, completed classes, number of students, earnings, and more.

Just like the student’s section, tutors must also have virtual classroom and messaging features.

Monetization

Tutors should be able to view their earnings and withdraw payments.

Admin section

Admin must be able to manage everything from content and users on the tutoring platform.

User management system

Admin should be able to view all registered students, tutors, and their status. Admin should be able to check the information of newly registered tutors and either accept or reject them.

Reports

Admin must be able to view reports related to earning, traffic, and other aspects.

Payment management

Admin must have the authority to change the subscription price and commissions.

Manage notifications

Admin must be able to create and send out notifications to users. This can be implemented easily with the help of pre-made templates.

Developing the tutoring website

Once you have finalized the feature set and identified the requirements of your tutoring business, you can start focusing on the development part. So what’s the best option to build a tutoring website or eLearning marketplace? The best efficient, cost-effective, and time-saving approach is to use a tutoring software that is a white label solution.

Use a readymade script that comes with all essential features and functionalities that allows you to build a customized tutoring site to take advantage of the tutoring business opportunities.

Choose a self-hosted tutoring marketplace software like Pinlearn that can host both live classes and self-paced online courses. This ready-made script offers 100% control over the script with no design and developmental skills required.

Conclusion

The online tutoring industry has always been witnessing tremendous growth, and with the COVID-19 Pandemic challenging us in every possible way, there is no turning back. Online tutoring marketplaces that quickly connect students to tutors are gaining more momentum. Nevertheless, there aren’t enough solutions that offer all desired features and provide great functionalities to tutors. However, there is still room for more online tutoring businesses, as there are several micro niches to be filled. This possibility opens huge opportunities for new Edtech start-ups that want to invest in online tutoring in 2022.