If you wake up every morning to your first thought being “Damn, I should be able to make more money tutoring!” then you’ve come to the right place. Too many tutors still using tutoring platforms overlook opportunities to convert their tutoring activity into a business and start making more money.

This can be due to a variety of factors. Sometimes, the tutor is just not aware of the opportunities that such a change will bring. Others are comfortable where they are tutoring on their platform and don’t want the hassle, or simply don’t have the extra time. Then, there are tutors like you — those who have an amazing idea to start their tutoring business but are not exactly sure where to begin and need guidance starting out. If you just read that last sentence and thought “that doesn’t apply to me, I know exactly what I’m doing” then I don’t know why you’re wasting your time reading this blog — send us a note, we’d love to hear about how you built your tutoring empire.

Still here? Good. Luckily, there are some practical steps that you can take today to launch your very own tutoring business.

1. Recognize your potential for growth

So, you’ve decided to start your own tutoring business, you smile, make yourself a nice cup of coffee with your favorite Coldplay song playing in the background, sit down in front of your laptop, crack your knuckles, snickering to yourself in satisfaction to finally begin what you’ve been wanting to do for a long long time… when it hits. Out of nowhere, like a big slap on the face. Imposter syndrome. We’ve all been there. That self-doubt that tells us that we’re not good enough. “I don’t have a degree in teaching, I don’t even have that many students, hell, am I even sure that I’m not making enough money through the platform? I shouldn’t be arrogant. Who am I to think that I can set up my own business?”

Very few people recognize that the first obstacle to starting your own tutoring business is psychological. Therefore, it is your job to do the mental work and target your limiting beliefs. I’m no therapist and I’m not much of a motivational speaker either, but the best I can give you is this. Think, “what’s the worst that could happen?” Meaning, how high are the stakes if you fail? In most cases, they aren’t that high. Maybe you’ll lose a couple of dollars here and there on marketing, and a bit of precious time experimenting. But it’ll all be worth it. Plus, if you follow these guidelines, you’ll have a pretty good chance of getting your business started — which is already a big step towards success! So don’t let self-doubt drown your business before you’ve even given it a fair chance.

2. Choose your niche

Once you’ve chased away the demons of doubt, it’s time to pick the topic that will make you a shining star within the industry. Or, ok, at least allow you to differentiate yourself amongst others and help your target customers identify you in a sea of tutors. When choosing a niche, think about the following — what interests you? What have you been teaching the majority of your students? What do you enjoy teaching the most?

Maybe you’re passionate about test prep and want to help students and job-seekers achieve their dreams of moving abroad. Perhaps you’ve worked in the corporate world and love talking about business, then maybe your target students are businesspeople and entrepreneurs working internationally.

Think about who your target customers are and what needs they have. Then, proceed to create a portrait of your target customer — this will help you appeal to consumers later on when you are setting up your marketing campaigns. For example, your target consumer could be Theresa — a stay-at-home mom who has just moved to a foreign country with her family. Or, it could be Jason – a 21 year old student planning on taking a gap year to travel South America. Theresa’s needs and program would evidently be different to Jason’s.Theresa is determined to learn the language to rejoin the workforce, while Jason just wants to pick up a bit of Spanish before he commences his travels.

3. Decide on the service that you are offering

As someone who is building their own tutoring business, it may be tempting to start doing everything at once — online courses, private tutoring, coaching, your own YouTube channel etc — the possibilities are endless! However, at the initial stages it’s a good idea to focus on one thing. Don’t worry — as your business grows, you’ll be able to expand into various platforms and offer a larger variety of services.

Yet, for the sake of actually launching your business, choose whatever you’re most comfortable to begin with. For example, if over the course of tutoring you’ve noticed that you like explaining things and you’re pretty good with iMovie, you could start with creating your own online courses (beats having to explain the same thing a hundred times to each individual student!). Perhaps you’re a seasoned tutor who can provide other tutors with guidance, in that case you should consider coaching. Or maybe you’d like to stick with tutoring, but move your lessons to a private platform. Whatever it is you choose to do as an independent tutor, make sure you are clear about it — because this is what you’ll be working on for the next couple of months! All these approaches require different next steps, but we’ll discuss that in another blog.

4. Set up your services

If you’ve been tutoring for a while, creating your own website wouldn’t hurt — in fact, it’s a great way to validate yourself as an industry expert and give your potential customers a way to reach you directly. However, having your own website is not mandatory at the beginning (though if your business becomes successful it will be a good idea to create one eventually). For those of you who are not ready to try your luck with WordPress or not yet willing to invest in a website builder like squarespace or weebly, you can start by setting up your business social media accounts, which will serve as a representation of your tutoring business.

Your social media accounts will be indispensable to your marketing efforts — not only will you be able to gain a following and hopefully retain customers, but you’ll also be able to use them as a platform to advertise your services. e.g. links to your courses/ master classes or to your tutoring handbook, messaging functions to book lessons with you etc. — all these are easily integrated on social media pages.

5. Create meaningful content

Once you have your platforms set up, you can start generating content. If you have a website, you can prompt people to subscribe to your email list. Content creation can also take the shape of Facebook blogs, or twitter posts. The purpose of this is to raise brand awareness, retain potential customers, and eventually convert these potential customers into dedicated students.

Make sure the content you produce is original and specific to you — choose to discuss topics where you’re an expert — this will add credibility to your tutoring business and attract a wider following.

While creating quality content is important, don’t stress about perfection — if you spend your time trying to perfect every blog post, you won’t have time for everything else, in fact, you might not even be able to finish the task at hand! Starting out is difficult, and routine things such as post creation will become easier with time. Have faith in yourself and focus on getting things done rather than getting them done perfectly.

Despite all the work tutors already put into promoting themselves on their platform and differentiating themselves by focusing on specific student needs, many tutors don’t see themselves as business owners, missing the chance to reach their full potential. Don’t fall victim to ignorance, (assuming you’ve read all the way down here) you’ve got the determination and the zeal to get you started. Use the guidelines to start out, add a little time and discipline to the equation and you’ll be running your own tutoring business in no time.