Exploring Side Hustles: Start A Tutoring Business

Exploring Side Hustles: Start A Tutoring Business

When I launched this site, I wanted to kick it off with a pillar post and in came 85+ Ways To Make Extra Money.

Believe it or not but writing that post took me about 30 days to complete as a newbie!

I poured a lot into it and as you read it, I hope you can feel my passion for all things business and side hustles.

As time has passed, that post has grown in popularity.

I figured I'd dip in from time to time and go deep into the practicalities of each suggestion.

A good example of this is my tutorial on how to start a blog, which then led to the free 7-day blogging course.

Today though, I'm exploring ‘Tutoring' as a way to make extra money.

Tutoring is #30 on the list of 85+ Ways To Make Extra Money.

There are 2 broad ways to make money from tutoring:

1. Make money creating a tuition business.
2. Join a tuition business and make money as a tutor.

I will cover #1 above from my personal experience.

I’ve then asked a friend who is a teacher to contribute to #2 in guest post to follow this one.

Make Money Creating A Tuition Business

Before I even considered making money from a tuition as a business, I first had to do tutoring as a tutor.

This is not necessary by the way as the goal with this business is to match a need with a solution.

First I needed to find a need and by offering a solution that really helps solve the need, then I’m creating value.

Once I spotted the value I could create, I decided to explore this as a business,

How To Create Value

The need that I found in the tutoring business was the competitive 11+ market for kids trying to get into grammar or private secondary schools.

These children were typically aged about 8 – 10 and their parents want the best for them and might want to invest in tutoring.

So the parents are the customers and the children are ultimately the consumers.

In the same way that I found this niche market, you can also find a similar one or find other markets:

• Music lessons for children or adults
• Dancing classes via a studio
• Elocution classes
• Creative writing
• Football coaching
• Etc

The key here is to understand the need, gauge the demand and track down the other players in the niche.

What was unique about the 11+ market for grammar schools was that it focused purely on 4 subjects. These were Maths, English, Verbal Reasoning and Non-verbal Reasoning.

A few hours on the internet in forums etc revealed to me that this was in high demand but I needed to test it in reality.

I checked out the key players I identified in London and did research on how much money they were making.

It was clear to me that this was a hot industry provided the positioning of the offering was right.

So we decided to give it a go and create the equivalent of a minimum viable product.

Before that though, we needed to think about how we would capture the value created.

Related post: 7 Habits For Highly Successful Side Hustling

How To Capture Value

Capturing the value created essentially refers to how you’d get some money into your pocket by offering a good service or product.

There are broadly three ways you can offer tuition services to your customers:

1. Offer premium one to one tuition face to face.
2. One to one tuition offered via the internet.
3. Tuition offered as part of a small group with one to one feel at a tuition hub.

Option 1 is usually the most expensive option, but requires that you’re able to match a teacher to a student for each request.

You also have to be prepared to match students to teachers by location. However, for all this work, you’ll charge a premium.

Lots of parents love this option because they usually like privacy. And many of them are prepared to sacrifice a lot to carve out the money for this option.

You capture value here by charging an hourly rate per tuition session.

Then you pay your tutor and keep the rest pre-tax.

Option 2 is great for the parent that wants a one to one feel but wants to pay a little less per hour.

With this option you are still having to do the matching as in option 1 but you won’t have to pay your tutor travel costs.

You capture value here by charging an hourly rate per tuition session.

Then you pay your tutor and keep the rest pre-tax.

Option 3 is what I went with when I ran a tuition business.

With this option, you create tuition centres or hubs. So you could focus on London for example or on regional towns with grammar schools.

What’s great about this option is that you can create small class sizes of say 12 students to 1 teacher.

You then need to find a building with classroom facilities e.g. primary or secondary schools and offer your services after school or at the weekends.

Then you need to find a high quality teacher who has experience in the specific area of tutoring that you want.

With 3 days of focused searching, you can find your building and teacher quite easily.

The reason I keep saying “building” rather than class is because if you create the business in one class, you can expand into other classes in the building.

Schools are usually empty evenings and  weekends and offer you the opportunity to execute this easily.

They also have all the equipment – Smart board, desks and chairs etc.

Note that you do not need to sign a lease! Just do it on a hire basis! Great if you’re experimenting as we were.

You capture value here by charging an hourly rate per student (X 12) per session (usually 2 – 3 hours).

You can run multiple sessions through the day. Then you’d pay your tutors and keep the rest pre-tax.

To improve the student teacher ratios, you might need a teaching assistant to support the teacher.

As they’re usually not qualified, they won’t cost as much as a teacher.

To give you an idea of numbers when we did this, the teacher was paid £24 per hour and the room hire was £20 per hour.

Students paid £22 per hour and there were 12 of them of them per room. So with 2 students, we achieved breakeven.

By this I mean Total Costs (Teacher and Building costs of £24 + £20 = £44) was met by Total Revenue from 2 students paying (£22 x 2 = £44) every hour.

So profits were being made on student number 3 all to the way to student number 12 per session per class.

There is also the option of adding booster classes during the holidays. More on this later.

You can hopefully see how this can become a very financially rewarding side hustle or business

However, you must provide good value by really delivering on the service and achieving results.

Those results will help your marketing efforts year after year.

Examples of tuition schools using the option 3 model are Enjoy Education and S6 Tutoring.

Capital Required

To get started, we spent money on:

• Building a website – You can achieve this with £250 especially if you build one in America and pay in dollars. This is a one-off cost.
• Design a logo (towards a brand) – You can do this for £90. This is a one-off cost.
• Buy some materials – £10 per month.
• Pay a teacher – £22 – £25 per hour. This is a variable cost you pay of you have students.
• Pay for the building – £20 – £25 per hour. This is a fixed cost if you use the building.
• Marketing – Flyers and digital marketing – £50 a month. This is a fixed cost.

Essentially what I’m saying here is that with less than £500 capital, you can start this business.

You’d then need to ensure that parents pay for the sessions in advance to give you cashflow.

Offer them incentives to pay for the term e.g. 5% discount.

Goal is to keep things lean and experimental as you build cash flow and reinvest.

Once you have mastered this, you can expand into another class and eventually another centre in time.

What Risks Are Involved?

As you’re dealing with people, the are always some levels of risk. However, it is very little with this business.

Key points are to have certain rules and controls:

• The same parents must drop off and pick up.
• Have insurance, although this is usually included in the building hourly rate above.
• Ensure the teacher is vetted by doing a DBS check. Teachers already have to do this so you just need to check their certificate is legit and up to date.
• Have a qualified teacher with experience and ideally one that is passionate about teaching.
• Ensure ofcourse that the building you’re using is secure. Most schools are and have their own safeguarding process.
• Accept no cash payments. All online for audit purposes and to prevent fraud.

As for general risks, this business idea is low risk. It all comes down to execution.

How Much Money You Can Make

If you get this right, you can make anything from zero to £20k+ per month revenue.

Especially if you build in other revenue lines such as:

• Summer boot camps (as they run all day for 5 days)
• Holiday clubs
• Online testing etc

As this business is seasonal, success relies on your marketing efforts and ability to plan ahead.

Another big factor is time commitment. If you’re doing this part time, I’d expect you’d make at most £5k – £10k per month revenues if done well.

At worst, you’d make up to £1,000 a month if new and managed to set up your first classroom but with low demand.

To make £20k+ per month, you’d have to do this full time practically speaking and be running for at least a couple of years.

Remember, I have to keep stressing, although making money is the goal, it is the secondary goal.

Your primary goal is to deliver a good service and results if you want this to be sustainable.

This is not a get rich quick path! You will make money, but you’d need to work hard for it and it takes time.

As you saw in my earlier illustration, it is quite easy to breakeven!

Keys To Success

• Focus on building a recognisable brand over time.
• Hire high quality teachers and focus on results.
• Choose venues that are accessible e.g. leisure centres or schools.
• Make a good teacher the manager of each tuition centre. This way you aren’t paying for a manager. Offer a bit more money for this added role.
• Marketing is key – Use flyers for local targeting and Facebook Ads for geo-targeting.
• Use the internet to drive traffic to your site. Start a blog and write content with intent.
• Plan well ahead. Think one year ahead in terms of marketing.
• This is business – So make offers and stand out with your offers.
• Offer holiday booster classes. This is where the money really is as they are all day classes.
• In time, aim to create branded digital products that can act as an upsell from just vanilla tutoring.
• Finally, as you gain experience of running this, explore other niches.

I hope you’ve found this level of detail useful. There is a lot more I could have gone into, but this post gives you a wireframe.

The important thing is to get started if this something you’d like to explore. See it as an experiment, test it and see what happens.

Then go back to the drawing board and re-test with a few things changed.

Key to making it a success is execution. If you need guidance, feel free to grab me for a coaching session.

More than happy to also take your questions in the comments too.

Related posts:

• 10 Big Lessons I Learned Starting My Own Business
• 8 Online Business Models To Explore For Your Side Hustle
• How To Choose And Thrive In A Business Niche
• 5 Ways To Start A Business For Free At Zero Risk
• How To Eliminate Your Expenses Through Side Hustle Income
• 7 Tips To Help You Find Time For Your Side Hustle

Ever considered a tutoring business as a side hustle? Got any questions?

Do please share this post if you found it useful, and remember, in all things be thankful and Seek Joy