College students usually resort to online tutoring jobs to pay bills, buy off something on their wish list, or just to have that extra cash.
So rest assured, if you have been wondering if tutoring students online as a college student is possible – Yes, it is!
You shouldn’t be surprised that there are tons of college students making extra cash from this.
But before we delve into the sweet process of how to become an online tutor as a college student, you should note that you can tutor online in 2 major ways, each with its pros and cons.
Where To Offer Online Tutoring Services
Sign Up With Online Tutoring Sites
Let’s say your choice of students is high schoolers, it’d be harder to gather high school students together since you’re in college.
Therefore, most college students who tutor online make use of online tutoring companies, where they’re found easily by clients.
Although you have access to various clients, you also have numerous competitors. This makes it harder for you to get a job or get noticed.
But if you put in enough effort and apply for tutoring jobs you’re good at handling, then you’ve got no problem, especially if you don’t have many competitors in the subject or course you’ve chosen.
Create Your Tutoring Brand
This option is for you if you have an audience or have easy access to your audience. For example, if the subject you’d love to teach is a course your colleagues find difficult… you can easily mobilize people online, as they’re all in your school.
But if you’re building your tutoring brand without easy access to your target audience, high school students for example, it becomes harder for you to get clients.
On the flip side, if you successfully build your brand or platform, you get total control of your income. That is, you don’t have to worry about paying service fees to online tutoring companies, and you don’t have to worry about losing clients to your competitors.
With that said, let’s delve into the sweet deal we all are here for—how to become an online tutor as a college student.
5 Steps To Become A Tutor Online As A College Student
Pick A Path
The first is to find & master your path. What exactly would you like to teach?
Are they exam-oriented subjects like WAEC, JAMB, SAT, ACT, or normal subjects or courses like General maths, Calculus, English language, or Languages?
When choosing your path, keep in mind that there are numerous other tutors out there, so pick a subject you’re superb at, or pick a subject and get perfect at it before putting yourself out there as an online tutor.
Common options for high school subjects you could go for include:
- Mathematics
- English language
- Languages
- Science subjects
- Literature
- Fine arts
- Social studies And Health among others
Whichever path you’re picking, choose well and ensure you’re good at it.
Build Your Resume
Your tutoring job might not sound like something serious to you, but go out there, and you will know it’s a lot because tons are taking it as their main job.
So to avoid blending in with the millions not taking their tutoring jobs seriously, you might want to create a resume to highlight your professional skills and boost your chances of securing an online tutoring job.
If you have no official teaching experience to add to your resume, you could check for schools around you or your neighbourhood and volunteer to take the kids for extra lessons.
You could also take your peers through a particular course and add it to your resume. Be sure to gather some experience – any teaching experience – to make sure you’re not starting on a blank page.
Create An Outline
You would rather not start running helter-skelter once you finally get that tutoring job, would you?
So once you’ve chosen your path or subject interest, the next thing would be to build your outline and gather your resources.
If you are taking high school students, you might want to fall back on your previous high school notes and textbooks and create your outline from them. You could also create simple and interactive slides for topics you’d be taking.
In short, take your tutoring job like a teacher would take his students. This not only helps in building credibility, authority, and professionalism in your selected path, but it also helps in making your online tutoring job easier as a college student, since you’ve prepared your outlines in advance.
Find An Online Tutoring Platform
Unless you’ve decided to build your brand, you’ll need a freelance platform or, much better, an online tutoring company that recruits student tutors.
When choosing a platform, the first thing you should look at is if it accepts students. After which you can now consider the competition, the pay, the flexibility, and other factors.
You should also consider the price and the percentage they’d be taking off your money for using their tutoring platform.
Create A Profile
There’s no need to waste any more time once you’ve selected a subject and a platform to work on. Get your hands dirty, get into the online business game, and get to work.
Create your profile on whichever platform you’ve picked and start bidding and applying for jobs, if you’re lucky enough, you might even be invited for a job.
Market Yourself
Finally, put yourself out there. You shouldn’t rely on online tutoring platforms for your business only. Tell everyone around you that you tutor students.
Share it on your social media or create a social media page for your online tutoring business. If you have reviews or testimonials recommending your tutoring service, put it out on your social media handles, too.
You wouldn’t know where your first client will stem from.
With the competition out there, it is not enough to create a profile and wait for clients to waltz in, you have to go the extra mile to stand out.
So how do you start your journey of the extra mile?
Here are our tips on how to get a job as an online tutor.
How To Get A Job As An Online Tutor
Build An Online Presence
Building an online presence isn’t just about adding your tutoring business to your socials, but by making your socials work for your tutoring job. You could either create a new account to build your online presence or use your account for your online business.
And it doesn’t stop at just creating your account, the real job is in creating content that’d resonate with your target audience.
For example, if you’re a math tutor you should post helpful content like short tricks for solving a particular question, simplifying difficult questions, and so on.
Getting visible to your prospective clients and building authority might take time, but you should give it a shot alongside online tutoring platforms.
Moreover, if you’re blank on which content to post, you can search on social media and check what other tutors like you are posting. You can recreate these videos while adding your unique touch, or just use it to tap inspiration for your content.
Offer Free Sessions
This is a surefire way to get new clients! If you’re a math tutor, for example, you could offer to teach your target audience “fractions.”
Your chances of getting one or two persons from this free session are high, especially if the students love your teaching style.
Offer Discounts
Among the people you’ve offered your free session or people who love your tutorials on your socials will be people who can’t afford your services. But by giving discounts, you’re providing an avenue to sign up more clients.
But as a student, you shouldn’t also take on more clients than you can handle, so you don’t end up neglecting your studies for your tutoring job.
Join Tutoring Communities
Although this might not result in an automatic job for you, it helps you to stay ahead of your job.
By joining communities of fellow tutors like yours, you could learn more about pricing, new methods to teach your students, and every other thing in the tutoring realm.
Join Students Communities
This is a gold mine. It’s like taking snacks to a school field with little ones. Of course, you’d sell.
Aside from finding one or more clients, by joining student communities, you’d also learn more about problems your students might be facing and then use the info to create helpful content and build an online presence.
Advertise
If you’re just starting out and still haven’t gained any clients, do not advertise. Only advertise when you’ve bagged some clients, successful ones, and you can afford to input money from your tutoring services into ads.
Be sure to include students’ reviews of your services in your ads, as it’s key to getting prospective clients to trust you.
Make Adjustments
When you’ve gotten your first set of clients, be sure to ask for feedback and make necessary corrections. Pay attention to aspects of your services that need to be brushed up and improved on them.
And that’s it.
What Are The Requirements For Online Tutoring Jobs?
In your search for online tutoring platforms, you’ll surely come across tons of platforms that’d require a university degree or diploma… and obviously, you don’t have one yet.
But some platforms don’t require a degree, although some might require you to tender proof that you’ve been admitted into the university while some will even require you to take a test.
And if you’re lucky enough, you might just be required to tender your high school transcript or GED.
In cases like this, once you pick subjects you’re good at and comfortable teaching, you’d be good to go.
Now you have nearly all you need, if not all, to step into the online tutoring realm. So go out there and have fun with your tutoring jobs.
