Becoming an online tutor requires more than just a passion to improve other people’s lives. In today’s fast-paced e-learning industry, you’re going to need a top strategy and masses of dedication to succeed.
The market for online courses has absolutely exploded in recent years, and in 2020, a successful tutor with the right dedication and marketing skills can easily find their fortune.
Here are 6 essential tips to consider if you want to grow a thriving teaching busi-ness of your own:
1. Teach Niche Subjects
This is the advice that always works, but often gets ignored.
Teachers that run courses on niche subjects are always more successful than those that offer generic ones.
Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine you’re a restaurant owner looking to learn how to do your own online marketing. You’re browsing through the listings on an online learning site, and there are 200 providers offering “digital marketing” train-ing. Suddenly, you happen across a teacher offering a course entitled, “Social Me-dia Marketing for Bars and Restaurants”.
Which course would you choose?
Exactly.
Always find a niche within your area of expertise.
2. Have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
It’s a saturated market out there. How is yourlive online learning1 course signific-antly different than your competitor’s offering?
When it comes to being a great teacher or coach, the answer is surprisingly simple: You are your own USP.
Market your personality, make sure you let your potential clients see your enthusi-asm for teaching. Your students might think they’re choosing your course because of your expertise, but what they’re actually doing is making a judgement based on your personality.
Teaching is a very personal experience. Play to your strengths!
3. Promote Yourself Like Crazy
Modern online learning platforms2 are wonderful things. They feature comprehens-ive suites of tools to build your course and training materials. Most sites even help you market yourself too.
With all that being said, many teachers will join an online learning platform3 and wonder why they haven’t booked any classes yet.
The reality is that even if you’re on one the busiest online learning platforms4, you’re going to need at least a little external traffic to bring potential clients face-to-face with your offering.
Promotion is a whole subject of its own, but it’s a good idea to market yourself on social media platforms and work at developing partnerships with other profession-als if you want to bring in a regular flow of students.
One last piece of advice: Never underestimate the power of referrals. Networking and word-of-mouth recommendations are probably the easiest ways of attracting new clients.
6. Always Over Deliver
Speaking of referrals:
If you keep your students delighted and always over deliver, you’ll stand a much greater chance of becoming well known by word of mouth.
4. Use The Right Platform
Don’t become fixated on a single online learning platform. Before you begin to market your course or your coaching skills, take a tour around as many platforms as possible and consider which one suits your niche and style of teaching the best.
If you prefer a more hands off approach or you’re offering a more academic course, give something like Udemy a try. For more personalized coaching services that are booked by the hour, a site like Lrnkey.com offers a more compelling altern-ative for online live learning5 and consultations.
Finally, take time to consider where your clients are going to come from and also how they might prefer to pay. Some platforms are very region specific in nature.
5. Do Some Training Yourself!
Coaching and live tuition isn’t a stagnant process. You’re going to need to regularly update your own knowledge if you want to stay on top of the pile and attract the best clients.
On that note, there’s no shame in copying the industry leaders: If you’ve recently been impressed by a course that you’ve personally attended, you might want to in-corporate some of it into your own work!
Conclusion:
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your online learning business.
Take your time, pick a great niche and offer impeccable service, and the students will come to you in no time!
Becoming an online tutor is a great way to make extra money in a part-time capacity, whether you are a college student, a former teacher!