Would you like to become a private tutor?
More and more students are choosing to get academic assistance from private tutors and private tutoring is an appealing prospect for teachers, students, and anyone with a skill they'd like to teach.
As a tutor, you can enjoy a flexible schedule, set your rates, and work with people to help them learn new skills or succeed professionally and academically.
It's hardly surprising why so many people are choosing to become part-time or full-time private tutors.
But is it really that simple?
Not quite.
Before you can become a tutor, you might want to set up an online presence with a tutoring profile on a site like ours or a personal tutoring website.
Potential students will want to know who their tutors are, what they teach, and, most importantly, how much they charge. Money talks and it's one of the most important factors that students consider when choosing their tutors.
The cost of a private tutor is their first impression of the tutor. Their eye will be naturally drawn to the $ symbol on your profile and the number that follows it almost feels as important as your education, experience, and the tutoring that you offer.
Offering low rates is a good way to draw in more students, but if you set your rates too low, you'll give off the impression that you're either unqualified, inexperienced or a tutor that's quite simply not very good.
Your rates indicate your quality as a tutor whether you want them to or not. Potential students will assume you're better than cheaper tutors but worse than the more expensive ones.
Your rate is how you position yourself on the market and you'll unlikely find one-size-fits-all rates. Instead, you'll need to carefully think about who you are, what you do, how much you need to charge, and how to carefully set your rates.
Step 1: Compare Yourself to the Competition
Start by looking at your competitors.
By looking at the other rates being charged, you'll get a better idea of the tutoring market and what students would likely pay for your private tutoring.
Here are a few things to look for when comparing rates.
Tutoring Rates by Subject
Start by comparing tutoring rates by subject.
There are lots of factors that affect the cost of a private lesson and the subject or skill being taught is one of them. Supply and demand affects the rates of different subjects so if there are lots of tutors for a certain subject and very low demand, these tutors would likely be quite cheap.
Conversely, if you're the only tutor for a certain subject and everybody wants to learn, you can almost charge as much as you want, provided your target market can afford it.
Certain subjects, fields, and skills are more expensive because they require specific equipment. Certain arts or sports can sometimes be more expensive because the tutor needs to invest in equipment and sometimes, transport this equipment to their sessions.
Tutoring Rates by Location
Local economics can affect the rates that tutors can charge. You'll see that tutoring rates vary by location.
This is due to several factors:
- average wages
- living standards
- cost of living
- schools and local education
- supply and demand of tutors in the area.
For tutors offering face-to-face tutoring, you'll need to look into the local economics and what your fellow tutors are charging.
Local economics doesn't play much of a role for tutors offering their services online because they're participating in a national or global market of private tutors.
Online tutors might sacrifice higher local rates for reduced rates on a global market with a much larger pool of students and the ability to schedule far more sessions each week. After all, there's very little travel time when you can just stay at your desk and start the next call.
Step 2: Market Positioning
Once you've seen what everybody else is offering, you have to work out where your service fits in.
Your rates need to reflect what you're doing in comparison to everybody else out there. The more experience you have, for example, the more you can charge. Setting your rates according to your experience is just part of setting your rates, but it's a big part.
Professions and Experts
Students want tutors who know what they're teaching and ideally, have lived it. We could refer to these kinds of tutors as "experts" or "professionals". When it comes to language tutors, though, they could be anyone who speaks the language or has had roles using said language.
These tutors are particularly specialised in what they do and should have a good understanding of the industry that they currently or used to work in.
Thanks to this specialist knowledge, they can normally charge more than tutors without it.
Qualified Teachers
Some tutors have academic experience rather than professional experience. For academic subjects, this is arguably a bonus because they'll likely know the curriculum, exams, and syllabus. Additionally, they'll also have experience teaching, which is worth its weight in gold when it comes to tutoring and you'll see this reflected in their rates.
Student Tutors
Student tutors are unlikely to have teaching or professional experience. Student tutors tend to offer lower rates to earn some extra cash during their studies.
They're likely to be motivated and enthusiastic even if they might lack some of the other more costly skills and experience offered by the other tutors. In some cases, however, it might be beneficial for students to learn with somebody closer in age.
The experience you have on your tutoring profile will also help you to charge higher rates.
Step 3: Tutoring Costs
As you hone in on the rates you'll likely charge, you now need to start thinking about the economics of what you're charging.
While Superprof doesn't charge tutors a commission, there are other costs inherent in being a tutor. Here are just a few of them.
Session Planning
Preparing a good session takes time and time is ultimately money. You also have time outside of lessons where you might need to correct a student's work, provide them with feedback, etc.
Generally, a tutor will spend one-hour planning for every hour of tutoring. Your hourly rate will likely be half of what you charge once you factor in planning time.
That said, as you gain experience as a tutor and get more familiar with planning tutoring sessions, this time will be reduced.
Travel Times and Costs
If you're offering face-to-face tuition, you might have to travel to your students or a meeting place for their lessons. Both travel times and cost need to be considered when setting your rates.
Sometimes, you can include your travel costs in the amount charged so that each student will pay a different amount depending on where they live. However, to keep things simple, it's recommended that you work out the average, set limits on how far and for how long you'll travel, and factor that into your rates.
Equipment
We've already mentioned that certain subjects charge more because of the equipment required, but you can also offer non-essential equipment as part of your lessons and charge more to cover the cost of them.
If you're teaching beginners' classes, you might want to invest in equipment yourself that your students can use and increase your rates. Some students will be happy to pay the increased rates rather than invest in costly equipment.
For music tutors, this could be a great way to secure new students by letting them use a musical instrument during the sessions rather than having to buy their own.
You could also have a rate for students who use the equipment versus those who don't.
Taxes
If you earn, you have to pay taxes. As a tutor, just like freelancers and those who are self-employed, you need to declare your earnings and pay tax on them.
There are several income tax brackets in New Zealand so how much you earn will affect how much you pay. Since these taxes can range from slightly over 10% to around 40%, it's worthwhile to remember that you won't ever be taking home the full 100% of your rates.
Step 4: Special Rates
To make your tutoring rates more competitive, you can offer deals and special rates.
Once you have a rough idea of what you're going to charge and added everything up, you can advertise special rates to draw in students.
Don't make these too complicated as no student should need a PhD in mathematics to work out how much their tutor will charge.
Here are a few strategies you can use.
Group Rates
Group tutoring doesn't offer all the benefits of one-on-one tuition, but it is a way for students to pay less while their tutor usually earns more. While group tutoring is often around 25% less per student, you'll make 1.5x your average rate just by teaching two students in a group.
Very large groups, however, may have to offer an even more significant discount.
Special Rates for Levels
The student's level should also affect the rates. After all, a beginner's class isn't as complicated as an advanced class and is usually much easier for the tutor to plan.
You can also offer discounts for new students and beginners who mightn't be as committed to your lessons as an advanced student who's spent years studying a particular subject or skill.
More advanced academic tutoring usually comes with higher stakes, too, like exams and qualifications so students need a better tutor to teach them and a better tutor tends to charge more.
You can offer the first lesson for free like a lot of the other tutors on Superprof do.
Block Bookings
To secure a stable income, it can help to ask students to pay for several sessions at once. The best way to secure several sessions at once is by offering a slight discount, especially to students who know that they'll be attending several sessions.
You can offer a discount or a loyalty scheme whereby students get every 10th session for free, for example.
Try out different pricing strategies to see what works for you and your tutoring business.
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