How to Accept Payments for New Tutoring Companies

A question that commonly comes up with new tutoring companies is how should I be paid by customers. Should I accept only cash? Should I be paid in advance or at the end of the week or month? Should students pay for each session separately or should they pay for several sessions in advance.

There are several variations for accepting payments, but there are a few rules new companies should adhere to more than established tutoring businesses.

1. Get paid in advance
   Regardless of the form of payment – cash, credit card, checks or PayPal – insist on being paid in advance of tutoring sessions. The reason you want to be paid in advance is so that you will receive payment before you incur any expenses. If you wait for the end of week or month to be paid you will likely first have to pay your tutors their wages and you will likely incur other expenses before you receive any cash from customers. If you always receive payment before you have to pay your tutors or other expenses you won't run out of cash (assuming your revenues are greater than expenses).
2. Keep it simple – If you're just starting out you don't need to offer payment methods like PayPal or credit cards. All customers should have easy access to cash or checks, so you aren't offering much more convenience by accepting credit cards, but you would be increasing your expenses in the form of credit card processing fees.
3. Be firm about your payment policy – if you are lenient about payment terms, customers will become relaxed about paying you and you may run into problems if they delay their payments and you need to pay expenses. Tell your clients that you hold all clients to the same payment standards and can't make special exceptions.
4. Be willing to accept payment for single sessions instead of a package of sessions. Some tutoring companies will sell a package of sessions to a client that they will pay for up-front. However, if you are a relatively new tutoring business or a customer is new to your business they may not feel comfortable paying a large amount of money in advance. You can extend these people the option to pay before each session and as you build your reputation for reliability you can require payment for multiple sessions in advance.

Learning About Branding from Asia's Wealthy Tutors

In many countries, the branding of tutoring services is tied to the tutoring company itself. People are aware of large national companies such as Kumon, Huntington, or Sylvan. There are also many well-known regional or local brands that use the same method of branding.

In many Asian countries tutoring companies have adopted a different method for branding their tutoring business. Instead of putting all the emphasis on the company, they've put just as much emphasis on building the brand names of their individual tutors.

In Hong Kong for instance, tutoring companies put up billboards and ads on the sides fo buses with the faces of their tutors and the subjects they teach. Their tutors are dressed in the latest fashions, have trendy haircuts and are marketed like pop-stars – all in an attempt to create demand for the specific tutor. Richard Eng was one of the first to start this method of branding in Hong Kong and has now achieved celebrity status as one of the best English tutors. His company also has several tutors that are also modeled to be celebrities.

In South Korea, tutor Rose Lee is considered the top English teacher and earns $7 million per year as a result. People might know what company she works for, but when they look for an English tutor they think of her name and they want her as their tutor. The same goes for Woo Hyeong-cheol a South Korean math tutor who earns about $4 million per year. Woo is known as the best math tutor, so people want to attend his classes.

In many other countries, people sign up with a tutoring company and don't know who the tutors are. Furthermore, the reviews provided about a tutoring company may say more about the tutor than the company itself, so prospective students really can't be sure what they will be getting.

Tutors in western countries should emulate the tutors in Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore in developing their personal brands. By building a strong personal brand they can attract more students who are seeking the best teacher at a particular subject instead of just signing up with a tutoring company and taking their chances. Over time as a tutor develops a reputation as one of the best in their field they will be able to earn a higher income, just as sports celebrities earn higher salaries based on their skill level. Tutoring companies can attract more students by leveraging the celebrity status of their tutors.

The idea of developing the personal brands of tutors is an interesting concept and has performed well in Asia and it works in other industries and professions. The same strategy can be applied to tutoring in Western countries and should lead to the same success for the tutors that apply it.

Choosing Tutor Scheduling Software

Recently I've been looking at some options for scheduling tutors in my company.  Up until now I've been using Google Calendar to manage my own tutoring schedule, but now that I'm beginning to hire some other tutors I'm looking for something a little more robust. I've created a list of some of the requirements I'm looking for in a tutor scheduling system and I've listed them below.  This list helps me evaluate each system using the same measures. 

Is it easy to use? I'm looking for a system that's easy to use.  I don't want it to take a long time to learn how to use it and I don't want too many steps involved in adding tutoring sessions. 

Can students and tutors access the tutor scheduling system? Having a system that is web-based so that it can be accessed easily by students and tutors is a must-have feature.

Does it record key details of tutoring sessions?
The key details I need to record are the tutor, student, location, time, date and if possible lesson notes or other details.  Some calendars I've looked at do not provide enough space for all of this information.

Is it easy to make changes to tutoring sessions? Tutoring sessions often get canceled or rescheduled, so it's important that the tutor scheduling software lets me easily change tutoring sessions and displays the updated results to students and tutors.


Does the tutor scheduling system let you record details about lesson attendance? Keeping track of missed, canceled and attended tutoring sessions in the calendar could be very useful, especially when calculating billing and revenue each month.


Does the tutor scheduling system tie into the rest of my company's administration system? I've been keeping track of everything in Excel since my finances are very simple, but it would be great to use tutor scheduling software that ties in directly to a system for billing and accounting.  Having the ability to track tutor hours based on the tutoring schedule is also an asset.

I've looked at a few different types of tutor scheduling software so far.  The one that really stands out from the rest is TutorPanel.  This is a full tutoring business management system.  It does everything from managing student information, to setting up recurring tutoring schedules, billing, accounting and tracking tutor hours.  Each tutor, student or parent can be given access to their own account that lets them access their tutoring schedule as well as billing info.  TutorPanel has a free 30-day trial so I'll sign up and give it a try.

Tutoring Rates: How Much Should You Be Charging

When asked the question by new tutors "How much should I be charging?" I always have the same response: "It depends."  This is the perfect response to almost any question that involves more than one variable.  The truth is for tutors and tutoring companies, the rate you charge depends on a lot of variables -- what type of tutoring are you doing, where are you located, do you face a lot of competitors, what experience level do you have, what are other companies in your market charging?  Each one of these factors will impact how much you should be charging.

A couple general principles about setting tutoring rates are that you should not price below the average rate in your market for your type of tutoring.  Many tutors or tutoring companies make this mistake in an attempt to grab market share.  The problem is that right from the start you are telling people that your tutoring services are not at the same level of quality as the majority of your competitors.  Students and parents often have little to go on when initially evaluating tutoring companies and deciding which ones to contact -- price is a major factor in how people evaluate the quality of a product or service.  Starting out with higher rates will also help you generate higher profits in less time which will allow you to spend time and money on marketing your business.  If your initial students have chosen you despite your rates being average or slightly above average you will likely begin getting referrals for students from families that are also willing to pay a bit extra for quality tutoring.

The other factors you must consider when setting your rates is what type of tutoring you are offering.  Are your tutoring sessions one-on-one, small groups or class format?  One-on-one will command the highest rates per student and will decline as the number of students for each teacher increases.

What grade level are you teaching?  Tutoring at the elementary level has lower rates because almost anyone can do it with limited education.  As the level moves up to high school, university and professional tutoring the rates also increase.

Where is your market?  If you're in a large city you will be able to charge higher rates because incomes in the city are higher and because the cost of operating your business in the city will be higher.  If you're tutoring in a small town your rates will need to be lower probably by an amount similar to the difference between the cost of living in a city versus a small town.

How many competitors do you have?  If you have a lot of competitors teaching the same subjects at the same level in the same area as you will likely not be able to charge much higher than your competitors.  One way around this is through superior marketing and superior teaching methods.  Both of these can distinguish your services from your competitor so that people will perceive yours as more valuable and will be willing to pay more.  Ideally you will find a market with little competition so that you have more pricing power.

Finally, you should evaluate the education level, teaching experience, and special qualifications.  The more experience and qualifications your tutors have the more you will be able to potentially charge for your services.  The key word is "potentially".  It's important that you communicate your experience and qualifications to potential clients so that they are aware that they are getting more in return for your rates.

Asia's Millionaire Tutors

Found an interesting article recently about millionaire tutors in Asia.  I wonder if it's possible to replicate this successfully in the United States.

Here's a link to the article: 5 Lessons You Can Learn from Asia's Millionaire Tutors

What do you think?  Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Tutor Scheduling with Google Calendar

Google Calendar can be a great tool for tutors.  It's free, it can be shared with students or parents, you can display your tutoring schedule alongside events from your other calendars, and sync with other calendar systems.

To set up a Google Calendar for your tutoring schedule you will first need to sign up for a free Google Account at: Google Accounts

After you've created your account and set up your Calendar settings you can create a tutoring calendar.  On the left sidebar of your calendar find the section that says My Calendars.  Click on "Add" and enter your calendar details.  If you're planning on sharing your calendar with each of your students, you should create a separate calendar for each one so that they can only view their own lessons.

When you're setting up your calendar you can find a section at the bottom for sharing the calendar with other people.  Enter the email addresses of your students and/or their parents.  For permission settings allow them to view all event details and click "Add Person".

Now that you've created and shared your calendar, your students will be able to view their tutoring schedules as you add them to the calendar and they will also be able to see rescheduled or cancelled tutoring sessions.

Steps to Knowledge Retainment

One of my favorite websites about learning and memorization is www.supermemo.com. This website is filled with useful articles and tools for improving knowledge and learning. This site also includes SuperMemo software which helps you memorize more content in less time using a concept called spaced repetition.

Although many tutors and teachers would agree that, straight memorization is not an effective method for learning, it can't be denied that in many subjects memorization plays an important role in building knowledge and understanding in any subject. Particularly in language learning, where large vocabularies need to be memorized in order to use the language, memorization is very important. Even in non-language subjects, the ability to memorize formulas, definitions, or dates and events is important for fully understanding a subject.

Today I want to discuss an article called Six Steps to Excellent Memory. You can find the full article here: http://www.supermemo.com/archive/2000/power1.htm

This article is for people interested in building knowledge that will stay in their memories and not be forgotten. The article lists these 6 steps for storing knowledge in your mind.

1. Get hungry for knowledge - In order to remember information you need to be motivated to learn and remember it. To properly motivate someone to learn you need to link the content that they want to learn to something that they value highly. When a person sees the connection between gaining knowledge and accomplishing a goal or attaining their vision they will have the motivation to put in the effort to learn and learning will become easier.

2. Find what you really need – This point states that there is more information available to learn in the world than you can ever possibly have the time to learn. For this reason you must carefully choose what to focus your learning on. As a tutor you likely have a limited amount of time to work with your students, so you must also carefull choose how you will spend your time learning. This decision should relate to the goals of the student and where the student needs the most help.

3. Find sources of information – Wozniak lists the internet as an excellent source of information. But other sources such as TV, news magazines and libraries are also useful. The more sources of information you have at your disposal the more likely you will be able to find the information that you are seeking – multiple sources of information can also provide you with a variety of perspectives on different topics.

4. Formulate your knowledge in such a way that you can repeat it actively – This point is very important. Wozniak makes two important points related to this step. First, you must repeat to remember. And second, repetition cannot be passive – it's not enough to simply read the content you must ask a question and be able to respond with the original content. This is called active recall. As a tutor this can be put into practice in the way you review with your students. Instead of repeating information, ask questions that encourage your students to recall the information and formulate a response. This will help them reinforce this information in their memory and speed up their recall time when taking tests.

5. Repeat the material at proper time – this point relates to the concept of spaced repetition. What to repeat, when to repeat it and how often to repeat. The article suggests using supermemo, but you can also use spaced repetition without software. The chart below shows the forgetting curve and how often you should repeat content in order to add it to your long-term memory with the minimum amount of effort.
   
   
   
   
   

6. Keep managing your knowledge – over time your knowledge requirements will change. In order to maximize the time you spend learning, you need to check regularly that you are spending your time on information that is important to you or your students goals.

If you want to try using spaced repetition to improve your memory or help your students there are a few free websites that offer software to help you:

SuperMemo

Anki

Mnemosyne