Try a Tutor

Some more lessons learned

Here’s a few more things that did and didn’t work this semester:

1. Recording Prep Sessions

   I purchased two tripods and two camcorders in the summer with the intention of recording each of my prep sessions and making them available online. I’m competing with other companies in the “math exam review” department and I thought that, by making the prep sessions available after the fact, it would give me a leg up on the competition. After the 4 hour marks, it’s pretty clear that students aren’t digesting material at peak efficiency. It was a good idea - in theory. However, my computer isn’t top of the line. And recording and editing video can end up taking a long, long time. Much more time than it was worth, unfortunately.

2. Prepaying for webhosting

   In the summer, I planned to make several study resources available online for people who signed up for my prep sessions - randomly generated practice exams, study notes, videos, etc. Sadly, most of this never came to fruition due to me being about ten times more busy than I’d planned. Since my current hosting provider couldn’t support a lot of the necessary features I’d need, I signed up for two years of prepaid hosting from another provider - most of which will never be used and is non-refundable.

3. Getting money upfront

   Sadly, despite my willingness to accept people’s honestly and trustworthyness, only a small minority of the people who promise to pay me the next time they see me ever do. One people came at my prep session and left his email and phone number and promised to pay immediately afterwords. Five emails later and I’ve yet to get any money. The phone number turned out to be fake. Additionally, I’m owed about $200 from students who never paid for tutoring.

When You Can’t Take Anymore

What Works And What Doesn’t

With the semester over, I have a better idea of what’s working and what isn’t.

1. Weekly Sessions

   Since most of my students end up asking me the same questions and everyone finds the professor a bit useless (refuses to answer questions or meet with students privately), I decided to try an experiment. I rented a room on campus for every Sunday of the semester and I allowed students to sign up for a semester for a flat rate of $140. It worked out to be much cheaper than private tutoring! The plan was that I would basically teach the entire course week by week. Last year, this was moderately successful. By the end, a total of 20 people signed up. This year, I expected to have a few more. I ended up with a total of 4 people signing up. Factoring in the cost of renting the room, this meant that I was losing money each week! The main problem is that students were reluctant to give up every Sunday (they wanted to use the weekend to go home and visit family and friends.) So, this semester will be the last that I run my weekly sessions. 

2. Prep Sessions

   I ran prep sessions as a quick overview of the material people needed to know for the test or exam. People would sign up and we’d spend either four or six hours together in a classroom reviewing everything right before the test. I learned two things about my prep sessions. Firstly, because my weekly sessions were held on Sundays, that meant that my prep sessions had to be held on Friday or Saturday. Students will go for a Saturday prep session - if they’re in enough trouble for the course. But, they’re less willing to spend their Friday doing math. This problem was compounded by the fact that my main competition held their prep sessions on Sunday. Next semester, with my weekly sessions out of the way, I can hold the prep sessions on Sundays. Secondly, several of the prep sessions I held early in the semester actually lost money. The room I rented was bigger than necessary. And earlier in the semester, when the material is easier, people are more confident in their abilities and don’t feel the need to get help. It’s when the final exams approach that people really feel the crunch. Especially after that first test didn’t go as well as planned.

3. Study Guides

   For a few courses I tutor, the textbook is particularly horrible. Each section offers only 5 - 8 questions that are relevant to the actual material covered. And several problems that frequently appeach on exams don’t show up in the textbook at all. So, I managed to get hold of several years worth of old exams and I compiled them, along with some review notes I wrote, into a study guide. It totalled 150 pages and I sold them to students who wanted an alternative to the textbook. The feedback I recieved was overwhelmingly positive. I also posted some formula sheets for each test on my website for free. I was told that people found them pretty helpful, too. I’m working on revamping the study guide for next year with more examples and explanations as well as full solutions. 

Where to Tutor?

I tutor my students at the campus library. The library has six floors. One is designated as very, very quiet. Even whispering would be disruptive to people on this floor. Three floors are quiet floors. A small amount of talking is allowed here, but no group work or other activities that require a lot of talking. The main floor is VERY loud with people coming and going. I tutor on the second floor - the group study floor. There’s a quiet area off to the side that offers few distractions (though occassionally there is a loud group at one of the adjacent tables). I think libraries are great places to hold your tutoring. Whether it’s a campus/school library or a city library. There’s usually a quiet atmosphere and few distractions. An alternative is to hold your tutoring at either your house or the student’s house. The problem here is that if lots of other people are around the house, it might distract the student from studying. I’ve heard of people tutoring at the local Starbucks or fast food place.

The point is that you want to find a place where the student can focus and isn’t hard for either of you to get to.

Choosing a Domain Name

By having your website at http://www.(something).com, you come across as more professional than if your site is at http://www.geocities.com/sites/(something). You can even build a website at Geocities (or some other site) and then purchase a domain name and have it redirect to Geocities. In other words, you won’t have a long, ugly URL. Domain names cost as little as $8/year. I used to have my tutoring page at www.(myname).com. After a while, I changed it to www.londonmathtutor.com. The second domain is more likely to show up when people search for “math tutor”. If someone is looking for a tutor, they won’t necessarily know about me yet. So, they won’t know to search for my name. It would be harder for them to find www.(myname).com than www.londonmathtutor.com. So, I’d recommend picking a domain that describes the subjects or grades you tutor.

You’ll also need to decide what extension you want your domain to have. Here are the most common choices:

.com: This is the most popular. If your name is available with .com, you should choose it. The problem is that, since .com is the most popular, it’s also likely that your domain name will be taken

.org: If .com is taken, try .org. It’s the second best choice.

.ca (or whatever your country code is): I’m located in Canada, so I might consider getting a .ca website. Each country has it’s own domain. If .com and .org are taken, you might try your country code.

.net: If .org and .com are taken, try going with .net

.info: This is bad, but not as terrible as .biz. I’d avoid this.

.biz: Avoid. This domain is associated with scammers. A lot of scam websites are located on sites with this domain extension.

Scams

If you’ve posted your email address in any online directories, you may end up getting an email from a scammer. The scam targets tutors and I usually get one or two of these every year. That’s not to say you shouldn’t list your name in a tutor’s directory, but you should be aware that these scams are out there and use appropriate caution.

Here’s one of the emails I got:

Hi,
How are you doing today?I want a Private lessons for my son(Paul) at your location.Paul is 16 year old boy and is ready to learn.Please i want to know your policy with regard to fees, cancellations, and make-up lessons.Also,get back to me with the total fees for four month lessons(one-hour lessons in a week) starting from August 25th.
In addition,i want to know the lessons location and your phone number.Looking forward to hearing from you.

My best regards,
James.

Basically, the person will need tutoring for some length of time. Usually several weeks or months. They’ll ask for the cost. No matter what you reply, they’ll be interested and ask to send payment immediately. Except that they tell you that they’re going to send a cheque for more than your price. And they ask if you’d send back the extra money. The scam is that the cheque will be cashed from a fraudulent account. So, you cash the cheque and mail the extra funds to the client. In a few days, the cheque bounces and the money is removed from your account - now you’re out however much money you mailed to the client.

Old Tests and Exams

I tutor university mathematics. Particularly first year mathematics. Since most of the students I tutor are new to university, they don’t necessarily know about all the resources available. When I tutor, I try to have old exams to go through with the student. It really helps to give them an idea of what to expect when they write their own exam. Often the difficulty level of textbook problems isn’t on par with the difficulty of exam problems. And I find that exams (for the subjects I tutor anyway) follow the same format every year. There are a few ways to get old exams. The first is to email the professor and ask if you can have a few copies. Sometimes they’re willing to share some with you. Sometimes they don’t like to give you any. Another good place to check is the course webpage. If you tutor university students, find the school’s page, find the appropriate department and look for a “Course Pages” section. If you can’t find it, try figuring out who the professor is and finding his or her page. There might be a link to the course page from there. On my campus, you can also get old exams from the print shop or the book store. There are also clubs that keep old exam banks for it’s members - though you may need to join the club to get copies. If you tutor high school classes, you could try asking the teacher for old exams. Or, if you’ve tutored students from previous years, ask them if they kept their old tests and exams and whether you could photocopy them.

Craigslist

Craigslist is an online classified ads site and a great way to promote your tutoring services. Unfortunately, it’s only really popular in the United States. For people located elsewhere, you might try checking out Kijiji - Craigslist’s twin brother. Craigslist is divided into sections for each major city in the US. Each city has subsections for selling services, looking for romantic relationships, or finding work. To post an ad for tutoring, first go to craigslist.org and find your city. Next, you’ll need to find the appropriate section to advertise in. At the time I wrote this, you’ll probably want the “lessons & tutoring” category in the “services” section.

While you may think it’s a good idea to make your ad more attractive with fancy html or font changes, it might be best to stick with plain text. A lot of color and different fonts can make your ad read more like an infomercial. I steer clear of them.

Make sure you choose an appropriate title for your ad. Don’t use some cryptic line you think is clever. Keep it simple and make sure it clearly describes what you do. My ad reads “UWO Math Tutor Available” (UWO is the name of the university that I tutor at).

If you have a website, include that in your ad. Include your name and phone number if you want people to contact you (which you hopefully do). The more ways you include for a person to reach you, the more likely they will.

Make sure you use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation. Avoid internet slang like lol and omg. These things can each make you look unprofessional.

Facebook

Facebook is a great way to reach new students. It’s popularity is with high school and university students, but adults are also beginning to use it as a way to keep in touch.

I’ve used Facebook to advertise my tutoring services and the results were pretty positive. After you sign up for an account at facebook.com, log in and click  the “Advertising” link at the very bottom of the screen.

You’ll be taken to a page where you can buy a Facebook ad. You can either pay a flat rate for a set number of impressions (impressions are the number of times the ad will be shown) or you can pay a certain price for each time the ad is clicked. Ads that get clicked often will be shown more. Ads that aren’t clicked as much get shown less. I’ve tried both methods and I was happier using the “pay per click” style. Experiment and decide what works best for yourself.

Either way, you can target the ad towards people who live in a particular city or go to a certain school (if you’re targeting the students themselves). If you’re targeting the parents, you can choose to have your ad shown to only people in a certain age group.

I liked using Facebook ads because it let me show my ad only to first year students at my local university. So, I could target my students very well.