Online tutoring is growing really fast with more tutors adopting online teaching as an avenue to teach around the globe and more learners using the service of online tutors. With the rapid growth, more money is pouring into the online education industry and it is expected to hit $319 billion by 2025.
Due to the lucrative opportunities provided by the industry, many teachers are adopting online teaching. But running an online teaching business is not easy, it is quite challenging, especially when you are just starting out. An online tutor must be careful about how to teach online classes, reach potential students, and schedule classes effectively.
No matter how efficient your classes are, there are times when your actions can hamper the productivity of your business. Whether you are just starting with your online tutoring journey or you are a seasoned online tutor, it is likely that you might make some mistakes that can hurt your online tutoring business.
Here are some of the common mistakes most beginner level online tutors make when starting out with online teaching.
Not specifying a scope
Most online tutors make the mistake of widening their scope by teaching every subject possible to become Jack of all trades and master of none. While the intention behind this strategy might be to attract a massive audience and make more money, it might not always give you the results you have expected.
Let’s be very honest, every online tutor has their own strengths and weaknesses and not everyone can be truly good at all subjects.
Having a well-defined scope of subjects will not make you inferior in the industry. Instead, if you focus on one subject and even charge more for the same, it will help your students understand that they are signing up for an online master class run by an expert.
You must be an expert on the subjects you are teaching and must set your tutoring limits as well. For example, if you are a math expert, make your level clear by telling your students, whether you can teach up to secondary school math or university level math.
Failing to manage your time
As an online tutor, it is imperative to manage your time efficiently and productively. With better time management, you can schedule more online classes and accommodate more students.
If you are not starting your online classes on time, it might cause your students and parents to doubt whether you are punctual and would be able to keep up with the appointments. To make a good impression, you need to follow strict schedules and timings so that it helps to improve your reputation as an efficient online tutor.
If you need help with managing your time, consider using organization applications to sort out your class schedule. Spare half an hour of buffer time before and after your classes so that you can make sure you don’t miss out on online sessions at any cost.
Inability to establish a personal relationship with students
With online tutors connecting with their learners remotely, it is understandable that the lack of a personal connection with learners is viewed as a disadvantage of online tutoring.
However, this happens due to the fact that the majority of online educators fail to use a powerful online education platform with a suite of tools that helps them to create personal connections with their learners.
The following features must be implemented in an online tutoring platform that would facilitate establishing a personal relationship with your students.
- Best quality live audio and video streaming between online tutors and learners for real-time face-face conversation. Poor quality connections are one of the major online tutoring business mistakes most educators make.
- An easy to use communication forum for facilitating discussions between educators and learners to constantly build personal relationships with each other.
- An interactive whiteboard that allows tutors to illustrate the lessons through writings and drawings so that learners feel connected through the collaboration.
- A class scheduling calendar system that makes it easy for online tutors to find a time that works for both teachers and students.
Not marketing yourself
For online teachers to get potential students, they must market their online classes to the intended target audience. The truth is that the best referrals come from fellow educators and your old students.
That is not going to happen if you are not investing in marketing techniques like email marketing, SEO, social media marketing, or by word of mouth. You can also advertise your online tutoring business to spread the word about your classes or even join agencies who can help to reach out to your target audience.
Without marketing, it might be difficult for tutors to get students in the first place. Before you even think of how to teach online classes, list out the marketing strategies you can apply to promote your online teaching brand. You need to make plans about how you will advertise and promote your classes online.
Not resolving technical issues
Though online tutoring tools and applications have come a very long way, technical issues still seem to be a big challenge in hindering the growth of online tutoring.
Online tutors who regularly leverage such solutions say that they had to face and resolve technical problems on a consistent basis by having a technology back up plan.
If you are using an efficient online tutoring solution, you can keep away the technical issues to a great extent. By making sure your software is up-to-date and you have given the right permissions to access your camera and audio equipment, you will get up and running in most classes with absolutely no technical issues.
Lack of teaching resources
Like teachers in a traditional classroom setup, online tutors must also be well equipped with the teaching resources and materials to help their learners with their classwork.
Being an online tutor, you must be prepared to offer supporting learning materials to students so that they can excel in the subject they are learning. The lack of greatly crafted learning materials can disrupt the learning process and progress of your students.
Thinking you don’t need a dedicated online tutoring website
While you can start out without an online tutoring website, if you want to establish yourself as a leading education brand in the industry, the significance of a dedicated online tutoring website is something that cannot be ignored.
This is one of the most common mistakes teachers make. You can always rely upon third-party online tutoring platforms but the advantages of a dedicated tutoring platform outweighs the former.
When you start marketing your online classes, you need a dedicated tutoring platform that your potential students can look out for. Most learners these days look for official websites of their tutors to take advantage of a personalized online learning experience.
Moreover, you can cut off the miscellaneous fee you have to pay to the third party sites when hosting your online classes on their platform. If you are looking for a professional tutoring software, Pinlearn is the one of the best in the market that can help you set up and launch your online tutoring business effortlessly.
Not pricing right
When running an online tutoring business, it is important to set your prices the right way. Your price must be affordable but competitive, and it must match your offerings and expertise.
If you overprice your online classes, students might find it unreasonable and look out for alternative options. This may happen if you are taking general subjects alone.
However, if you are taking classes on specialized subjects you can price your classes high due to the value it offers. Before deciding on the prices, do some market research on how your competitors charge.
Spending too much money on one strategy
When one marketing strategy is working great for your tutoring business, most online tutors think why do I need any other strategy? This is one of the mistakes teachers make. But in reality, it is risky to rely on just one marketing strategy. If you are using one advertising method and getting good results, never get stuck with the same strategy.
As things in business change all the time you need to diversify your marketing techniques to remain stable when running your online tutoring business.
For example, if you are relying upon search engine optimization (SEO) and suddenly Google changes their ranking algorithm and your website goes down to the 2nd or third page. Make you sure you also split your budget for marketing strategies into different sections instead of spending only one strategy.
Conclusion
Despite living in a digitally-forward world that allows online tutors to be interconnected, jumping into the online tutoring space for the first time can be an overwhelming task. Most tutors recognize the same online tutoring business mistakes preventing you from developing your business faster.
However, all of these challenges can be curbed with the right strategies and tools. With the right device, internet connection, and online tutoring software in place, you can bid farewell to technical problems and allow your online tutoring site to handle all the challenges and to find new students and run your online classes efficiently.
Author Bio
Kathy Alameda
I’m working as leading experts on building and implementing the learning strategies. I have led learning & performance improvement projects form last few years.
Currently marketing consultant at https://www.pinlearn.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kathy_alameda