Earn $30k to $70k as A Math Tutor Part Time

Some people enjoy tutoring and aren’t interested in growing a company and hiring employees, which I understand. You might like driving around to people's houses and doing in-home sessions. But eventually, like when you're 80 or 85, you're going to want to stop tutoring. You're going to want some retirement funds, and planning on Social Security might not be a good bet.

It’s a good idea to save 5% to 10% of your earnings and reinvest that back into your business, if you want to grow your business. Or if you don't want to hire anyone, you can still invest 5% to 10% of your earnings into a Fidelity account or Vanguard fund. Set up an IRA or Roth IRA. Do some research on those. They can end up generating tax free earnings. I would recommend looking into a Roth IRA, that seems like a pretty good option for most people. 

What you do with the money you save depends on how active you want to be. A good place to start is buying some index funds. The Total S&P 500 Vanguard index fund is good. Stick some money into there every month. Eventually you'll be surprised at compound interest. It's the eighth wonder of the world, as Einstein said. You start with some income from your tutoring, and then eventually your investment income might be greater. At that point you can still keep doing the tutoring, because you enjoy it. Or not. 

Most of us get into tutoring because we like helping others and want to make a difference. And that’s great. But it's also good to think about ourselves and our families. Putting some money away in case a catastrophe happens is a very good idea. 

If you want to be more active, you could buy some shares of companies, like Facebook, Microsoft, and Berkshire Hathaway as long term holdings. Buy some and hold it for 50 or 60 years. It's probably going to be worth a lot more at that point than it is now. Especially some of those strong companies with a moat that aren't going anywhere. There are thousands of people right now working at Microsoft, trying to make a better company. And if you own some shares, they are literally working for you. Even the CEO.

Alright, marketing 101 here. Let’s talk about marketing for math tutors. I've done most of it. I've done it all. Some marketing works and some doesn't. I’ll help you tell the difference.

To get started with your marketing plan, do some work thinking about your target customer. What does that person look like? When I started my first tutoring company, I made three profiles for exactly who I was going to target: what they do, where they live, where they shop, things like that. You want to narrow in on who your clientele is. 

Maybe you're just a calculus expert, and you want to help college students. You're probably going to be doing a little bit more Craigslist marketing, and you’ll want to put up flyers all around campus saying, “$30 an hour calculus tutor.” Go to the STEM hall or anywhere there are science classes, and post those up with pull tabs at the bottom. You're going to get some college students who want to pay you for help. 

When you create these profiles, write about your customers in more detail. Maybe they go to Starbucks or Subway. Those places often have bulletin boards where you can post things for free. Once you drill down into who your client is, and the type of routines they have, that's going to help your marketing strategy. 

We want to act with some foresight, before we go out and start marketing too heavily. I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said that if you have six hours to cut down a tree you should spend the first four sharpening the ax. We want to spend time planning for our marketing too, we want to spend 80% of our time planning what we're going to do, and then we can do it quickly. 

Anything that won’t take much time and will cost less than $20 is something that might be worth giving a shot. Whereas something that's going to be expensive and take a lot of your time is probably not worth it. I've made newspaper ads and magazine ads, and it’s not really worth it for tutors in my experience. Maybe in some businesses, you might be able to make money using those, or if you're good at writing advertising copy and have a big budget. But even small magazines charge $700 for a tiny square ad. And you're hoping you get a couple clients out of that. But people might not even contact you. 

I've even sent out over 30,000 postcards all over Oregon. Actually I ended up getting some clients from that. But in the end it’s not really worth it. I also went door-to-door and dropped off postcards and brochures. And you might be able to get a few people that way. But I would stick with those flyers with the tabs at the bottom. Focus on places where you know your target customer from that profile hangs out. Putting those up is going to be more effective than most other advertising methods. 

The world is moving toward digital digital marketing, social media, and having an online presence. Some people are really savvy social media marketers. If you're great at Instagram, you can be making clips about factoring or mathematics and posting those. The same idea applies online, of going to places where your target clientele is going to be hanging out. There are many moms on Instagram and Facebook these days. Those are fair places to market. Google AdWords can be really good too. If you're savvy at creating websites, you could create a website or even just a blog and start writing your thoughts about mathematics. Test things out and learn from that and be able to keep growing and move forward.

I struggled with math my whole life. I got stuck behind because the class was moving forward but I had no idea what was going on. I was copying off Wolfgang and trying to get help but I wasn’t really learning the stuff. But the class would just continue and move on. But active learning strategies would have helped me succeed. 

Active learning is an engaging process. Instead of a professor lecturing about how to do something, the student actually discovers it themselves. There is research showing this leads to longer term learning gains, and there's a lot of evidence to support this. I remember in my calculus class later, in college, we were in a small group working on derivatives and rate of change for weeks, learning about how it worked, but we didn't know what we were learning was a derivative yet. And then eventually, after five weeks, the teacher put up a PowerPoint and told us about derivatives. And we said, “Oh, of course!” Strategies like that can really help. 

One great active learning strategy is questioning. That is something you can use in your tutoring sessions. Ask questions and get to the bottom of their mathematical reasoning. “What do you think about factoring?” “How would you describe the rate of change?” For one thing, this will show you how much they know. And you'll be able to see the holes in their thinking. But also they're going to realize their own errors by stating things out loud. They'll say, “Maybe I don't know this quite as well as I thought.” 

Asking questions is more engaging than lecturing. It's more fun and keeps people interested for longer too. Get your students engaged with the material by asking questions, as opposed to lecturing. And research other active learning strategies too. This way you can talk to parents and say confidently, “What I'm doing is backed by research studies.” People are looking for that.

Hopefully you can make things easy for yourself and work with kids who are currently in a math class. This way you don't have to create content and bring it to the session. The main thing you need is a car to get around to your sessions.

There are some benefits to in-home tutoring. For one thing, going to someone’s home helps you to build a long term relationship. It's more sticky than an online session. Going in-home is superior because you're physically there, making a connection not only with the student, but with the parent. And tutors might think the client is the student, because that’s who needs help, but the client is really the parent. Because they pay for it. 

When you meet the parent at the door on the way out you can talk to them after the session. Save time for this. Tell them how it went, what you worked on, what you went over, and what they should work on before the next session. It’s like a session recap. So you’re really demonstrating the value for the parent this way. But with online you don’t have the opportunity to do that. From what I've seen, these clients can be very long term. Even when the kids don't really need help anymore, they want you to keep coming. It's habitual, routine. Every Tuesday and Thursday at five, you show up. 

When you go in-home you can build a strong relationship with the family. You meet their dog, and the siblings. This way you have more to go on when you're having phone calls with the mom later on. You can say, “Hey, how's Chelsea doing? And how's Roxy?” Things like that are underestimated but they play a large role in forming relationships with clients.

There is not much you need to bring to the sessions. But it’s good not to show up completely empty-handed. If you're teaching algebra or geometry, you can find a $5 textbook that kind of goes over some of the standards in your state. Find some resources you like, and bring those. Maybe you have a workbook you bring and then you can even show the parents and add some value by saying, “This is the material I like. I've tried them all, and this one's really good. So I'd recommend you pick that up.” 

It’s also important to build a relationship with the student too. The parent is definitely going to ask the student how it went. You want to establish a connection. But realize every family is different. Even some of the best tutors aren’t going to hit it off with everyone equally. So don't take it personally if once in a while you get rejected or it doesn't work out. Even with my top tutor who everybody loves, I had one family who said, “We're just looking for someone a little more outgoing.” Now, I know this tutor is phenomenal because literally every time I send him out people love him. But I didn't argue with them. I said, “Okay, I hear you. Sometimes students want that, and we can get that for you.” And I found someone else who I really didn't think was as good of a tutor, but they liked him. 

You can develop a network of referrals as well. If you’re a mathematics expert, and you have clients asking for SAT you can say, “Oh, yeah,I happen to know this guy, Joe Schmo down the street.” Then let Joe know you sent a referral his way. Eventually some leads will start coming back to you if you send them out. That's how business works. By being there in the client’s home, you're going to get even more referrals. The parent is thinking of you more, because they see you there in the home. And they say, “You know, I was just talking to Nancy the other day and she was saying she needs a tutor. Maybe I'll connect you guys.” Whereas if you’re tutoring online, you're not being triggered as a memory. So that connection is less likely to happen.

One of the best practices for online tutoring is to get a gooseneck and instruct your clients to purchase a gooseneck as well on Amazon. They are like $8. That gets some compliance out of them and makes them feel more invested in doing tutoring with you. It's also just a good thing to have. It clips onto your desk and holds your smartphone, so you can easily record the surface of your desk. When your clients use these, you're able to see their desk. You can have them print out a worksheet and work on it. And you can watch what they're doing. It’s like you’re looking over their shoulder.

It's more as if you're there in person, standing beside them and seeing the work as they do it. And you can say, “That's not how it's done. This is what we need to do.” 

I also really like the iPad and the Apple Pencil. I think it's probably worth purchasing at some point if you do online tutoring. You could write that off as business expense if you're using it primarily for work too. However, you can also set up your own gooseneck and record yourself working out solutions. That's about a $8 solution. But the Apple Pencil and iPad are nice. Then you can do a Zoom call and share your screen and you don't even have to be on video. You can watch them writing and solving problems and screen share a whiteboard. That way you can be a little more relaxed, kick your feet up on the desk, and hang back sipping coffee, watching Netflix on the other screen. 

I've also seen one of our excellent math tutors use a Doc Cam. Remember your eighth grade teacher using one of those? It takes a video from above while you write on documents. Of course, you can also do that with a gooseneck. Again, the $8 solution is nice just to get going, and then you can upgrade things later as you start to make money.

Think about any brand you admire. They probably have good customer service. Think about Apple, Amazon, or Nordstrom. If you email them, they always say, “Thank you so much for being our customer. Thank you for choosing to shop at Amazon. We are so sorry we've made this mistake. How can we help you? How can we make it right?” Even if it's not their fault, they still offer to do whatever they can to make it right.

I've had nasty emails saying, “What the heck, why am I still getting charged for this? I can't believe it.” They're mad. I don’t say, “You never cancelled your membership, idiot.” I accept responsibility for it. A great book is called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willick, check that out. Even if they are complaining about a super minor thing, or even if it was one of my tutors that made the mistake, not me personally, I'll still say, “Wow, I really blew this. I messed up.” 

Imagine you get an angry email from a parent. They thought you were going to be there for a tutoring session at a certain time and you didn’t show up. And they're really upset. You could say, “What are you talking about, we didn't have a session. Don't you remember? We cancelled after last week.” You might be right. But that’s not going to make them want to keep doing business with you. You can either be right or you can keep the customer. And I always choose to keep the customer. 

If that happened to me, and a customer emailed to say, “I can't believe you missed a session.” I would say, “Oh, my gosh, I am so sorry. I totally blew it. This is my fault. I can't believe I missed that session. When can we reschedule? When can I get back out there? How can we make this right? How can I get back in and help?” That's going to defuse the negative energy and you'll be more likely to keep that customer. As opposed to saying, “No, we didn't have a session, actually. You're wrong.”

Start to pay attention to the brands you like, and the ones that make you mad. What are the brands you like doing? How do they treat you? They're probably not blaming you for anything. They're going to take ownership for the problem, even if it's really your fault. That's what good leaders do. And that's what good tutors do. And that's what good businesses do. They take ownership for those things. 

Another important thing when it comes to responding to complaints, just like the initial lead, we want to be prompt. We want to get a message back to them quickly. If you're super busy, or on vacation, instead of waiting three days to get back to them, saying, “Oh, sorry, I've been totally swamped,” you can send a quick email and say, “Hey, I read this message, I'm busy over the next day, so I can't get back to you for a little bit. But I've read this, I'm so sorry, I'll get back to you.” That’s a million times better than no response at all. If someone emails you, they are upset about something. You don't want them to be getting more upset over the next two days. They're just going to be fuming about how you aren’t responding to them. Honestly, they're going to be finding a new tutor by that point. By the time you get back to them three days later it's over. You can find tutors all over the place. So they can find another tutor. 

If someone is getting really mad and you can’t calm them down via email, just get on the phone, apologise, and take responsibility. In my experience that’s going to defuse the situation and help you keep a long term client. 

Customer service seems simple. But I've worked with many tutors who lack that element and we've had to let them go. I had a Spanish tutor who wouldn't respond to my emails quickly. Tutoring moves fast. I would say, “Can you do this client?” and it might take two days for her to respond. By that time, it's too late. I ended up not giving her business anymore, because she was just too slow. One of the clients said, “She's really amazing at teaching Spanish. But she's not very prompt, and that makes it hard to work with her.”

Be prompt. People value that.

I've had people who are great at mathematics or chemistry, but lack customer service skills. They almost think about how to deal with the customer too rationally, like it's math or chemistry, but customer service is different. We have to think about people's emotions. If you're not good at this, there are many customer service books out there. Starting with Dale Carnegie's book is going to be great: How to Win Friends and Influence People. You could also listen to some Jim Rohn audiotapes. Learn how to connect and calm people’s emotions.

We've all heard the customer is always right. But what does that mean? Jeff Bezos said when he was starting Amazon he would sit an empty chair at the table during meetings. And that would represent the customer. For every decision he thought about the customer. How is this going to benefit the customer? And really, that's why we are tutoring. We want to help the customer. They should have a seat at every decision we make. Any website we're making, or ad we're writing, or tutoring session we're doing is about the customer. 

Adopt the attitude that you work with the customer and together you're going to decide on a good plan for them. That's going to make you stand out from other people. Because customers are actually pretty savvy. They're going to subconsciously realize they have a seat at the table with you. They can feel that. And this attitude doesn’t just make the best business sense (which it does, Bezos is the richest man in the world), but it's also just the right thing to do. The customer should have a seat at the table. It's not about what you can get. It's about what you become and what you're able to contribute in the process.

Keep a long term orientation and focus on how you can contribute to these people. How can you make a difference today? 

I've interviewed people who said the reason they wanted to tutor was because they were trying to make some extra cash. Wow, okay. Maybe they'll be a decent tutor. But if all they want is money they're probably not going to be amazing. I’m looking for the person who says, “I did tutoring in high school, and I loved helping people.” That's a better tutor, someone who cares about not only mathematics but about helping people. 

Develop the mindset of you're in this to help people. Give the customer a seat at the table. When you do this, customers are going to want to buy from you. They're gonna want to do business with you. And it starts to change every aspect of your business. 

There are businesses that refuse to refund people when they aren’t happy. They get argumentative with customers. And that's because their mindset is, “What can I get from this?” Well, no one's gonna want to do business with people who are trying to get things out of them. A better mindset is, “How can I contribute?” People are going to want to do business with that person. They are also going to refer you to more clients automatically. 

Imagine you are emailing someone and they tell you they have already found a tutor. My mindset is, “That's wonderful. I'm really happy for you. If you ever have any questions about education at all, or need some resources or anything, send an email. I'm here to help. Even if you need help finding other tutors or something.” Focus on how you can actually help the person in any way. It's morally right. It feels good. And it's great for your business.

When tutors get on the phone with new leads, many make the mistake of starting off talking about why they're a great tutor. But if someone is calling you, they don't want to hear five minutes about you. They're stressed and anxious and they want to talk about the problem. They want to tell you what's going on. 

Sometimes a potential client might even start right in and ask you, “What are the prices?” or “How does this work?” You want to shift the dialogue to talk about what's going on with them. Say, “I'm happy to get into the nuts and bolts of what we do. But can I just ask, what's going on? What are you struggling with right now?” And normally they'll say, “Oh, wow, my daughter has been having a hard time in math this semester.” 

You want to get an accurate assessment of the picture. My initial question right off the bat is usually when the trouble started. “How long has this been going on? A long time? Or just all of a sudden this last semester?” The answer to this question makes a big difference. If they've been struggling with math since they were five, that’s not the same as if they just started struggling last week. Normally the parents will say they've been struggling for a while but this last year has been really tough. 

We really want to get to the root of the problem, so keep asking questions. “Why has this past semester been so hard for her?” And this information is really going to help you show this client the benefits of mathematics tutoring. They might say, “Gosh, she got Miss Jasmine, the worst math teacher ever, and she's really struggling in this class” or “She's having some mental health issues and is struggling this year.” Now you have some good information. 

This is where you can normalize what is happening. I spent time volunteering at a suicide hotline, and one of the most important things we did was normalize what people were going through. It makes us feel much better. So you might say, “Let me tell you, I've had this conversation so many times. What you're going through, I've heard that from other parents, and it sounds pretty normal to me.” 

You should also ask whether the parent has tried to help the child already (they always have). And you can even make a joke about Khan Academy videos, because that's how parents have always tried to deal with the problems at first. The parent has spent a lot of time watching Khan Academy lately, trying to learn the material so they can help their child with it. 

They’ll say, “I've been watching Khan Academy and trying to help her myself. But Gosh, it's just…” And this is where I normalize their struggles again and say, “I know, for whatever reason, it never works to teach your own kid. It's tough. That's really normal. I hear this from a lot of parents, it's hard. And people want people want help with it.” Many times, I'll also acknowledge how hard the parent has been working. I like to say, “I mean, gosh, you're working full time, too? You're cooking? You're the chaperone? And you're also the math tutor?” They like that.

When they call you, they're stressed out. You want to acknowledge some of that. And now it's a good point in the call to start transitioning into talking about yourself. Talk about how normal their problems are and how you’ve helped other people through this same thing. Start telling them a little about how you work. What is your approach? Develop a little bit of philosophy about what works best in tutoring. You could say, “I work on an engagement model” or “I use a holistic model where I focus on the whole person.” 

If you do some research online about active learning, there's plenty of stuff on it. It's the best way to teach mathematics. It's based in research and science. People learn mathematics best when they verbalize their mathematical thinking. So you could tell the client, “I like to use active learning and engaging type strategies, because it's more than just knowing mathematics. It's about being able to explain things in five different ways.” I always tell people that when I’m hiring tutors I look for people who can explain things five or six different ways. Because then if one way doesn't work they can just try another way to explain it. That's reassuring to parents. They like knowing you can get the idea across somehow. 

And talk about how you take a person centered approach and believe in creating rapport and creating a relationship. One big reason tutoring works is because it's not just a professor standing up at the front of a lecture hall, it's a one-on-one personal relationship. You develop rapport and the student feels comfortable asking questions and diving deeper into things.

The first call is also a great time to set some expectations for the overall relationship with the client. Say things like, “I focus on building long term relationships, and helping people over time. I wish I had a magic wand and I could just say poof, you’re fixed. But unfortunately, I don't. And it takes time to get better.” This way you’re teaching them what to expect. You’re conditioning them to the idea that this is going to be a long-term relationship. They realize you’re not going to just give up on them. 

And that's going to be good for you and for your business as well. Because we want to focus on having long term relationships with people. Some other tutor might only come in and be a quick fix and help the student for one test. Maybe you get four hours of work out of that. But if you're communicative, and you develop a relationship, you could have four years of work. If you're only doing four hours of work at a time, you have to keep getting new clients. But if you develop long term relationships, you have this phone call once and then you're set for four years. You have Tuesday and Thursday at six booked out.

The big key to the phone call is making sure to start by learning about what makes the customer tick and what's going on. Every story is going to follow a similar arc, but there will be nuances. You want to be able to communicate that their problems are really normal, and reassure them that you can help make the issues go away.

If you're working for a company like varsitytutors.com, tutordoctor.com, or a local tutoring company, you can think of it like Uber driving. Uber uses contractors. The difference between a contractor and an employee is that for a contractor, you can choose to open your Uber app and select a trip. You don't have a manager telling you to go pick a ride up, right away. If that happened, you would be an employee and they would be withholding some taxes for you. 

As a 1099 contractor, you are essentially your own business. Many people prefer to be contractors because you can work whenever you want. You can decide Wednesday nights are when you’ll practice your guitar. Whereas for an employee the company could say, “Put down the guitar, you have to go get this guy.”

The way a 1099 works is that if someone pays you over $600 in a given year they are supposed to report that to the IRS. If you make less than $600, they probably won't even report it. But when you reach that point the company will report your earnings to the IRS. So you’ll want to claim those earnings on your tax return as well. Otherwise, the government is going to see that things aren’t adding up.

If you're also working another job, like maybe you also work 15 hours a week for Amazon, and you have a W4 from them, you could do the maximum withholding for that job. That means they're going to take the highest possible amount of money out of your paycheck. Usually this would get you a tax refund at the end of the year. But if you're also doing some self-employed work, you won't necessarily get a refund but you won’t owe a bunch of taxes all at once, which is nice. 

Consider starting an LLC for your tutoring business. There are many benefits to doing this. First, it’s going to give you some protection, because of what's known as the corporate veil. If you have an LLC, that entity is doing the tutoring and the business, not you personally. You want to create a separate bank account for the LLC to make it seem as separate from your personal life as possible and draw that distinction. You could even pay for things through that account, like if you're driving to a tutoring session, you could pay for gas with that debit card. Or if you have to buy a textbook or something, you could do it with that debit card. And the nice thing is that you're going to be able to write that off on your taxes come tax day. For example, let's say you earned $1,000 so you owe 20% to Uncle Sam: $200. If you've also been investing this year, and you spent $500 getting a website going, now at the end of the year instead of owing $200 to Uncle Sam, you only owe $100. So you just saved $100.

The W9 is going to be a simple form that your employer will send you. Just fill in your name, social security number, and address. They're supposed to have that on file for you. 

If you get advice from an attorney or other business professional, they're going to want you spending money setting things up. But we want to do this for $30 in startup costs. So keep things cheap initially, see what's working, then invest money later.

How can you write about yourself in a compelling way? A lot of being successful as a tutor actually comes down to writing. You need to write an advertisement. Maybe it’s on Craigslist. Or you might have a website. You need to figure out how to write something that gets customers to raise their hands. 

One of the biggest mistakes people make is they start off talking about themselves. They say, “I'm an expert tutor, and these are the reasons why you should hire me.” That's not going to work. You have to start out talking about the customer. You want to dive into some emotions. I would say, “Are you struggling with math? Have you struggled for a long time? Has it been difficult to get A's on reports?”

People are motivated either to gain pleasure or avoid pain (and most of the time it’s to avoid pain). You want to talk about things that are painful for your customers, that they could avoid by getting tutoring. Maybe they feel like they are falling behind their friends. Maybe it’s a parent, worried their child might get a D in mathematics. Or afraid their kid might not get into a proper college—or any college.

If someone is looking for math tutoring, they're worried about their child’s math performance. Your customer is not the A student trying to get an A-plus. That's maybe 1% of the time. I had one client whose daughter was a math genius and just needed help to get even better. But that is very rare. Most of the time it’s people who are struggling. They have a B, or they have a C, or they have a D, and the parents are really worried about it.

So if you focus the beginning of your writing on these pain points, it is going to immediately connect with the customer. They're going to be reading other ads saying, “I went to Harvard. Look at me.” But people care about their own emotions, desires, and fears. Not about you. We want to tap into that pain in our writing so we can ultimately help alleviate it. 

In your opening sentences use the word “you” several times. There's research showing that “you” is one of the most powerful words for getting the reader’s attention and increasing sales. People pay attention to those three letters, y-o-u, because everyone is interested in themselves. Instead of writing “we can help you get better at math,” try, “do you want to get better at math?” Get in the habit of phrasing things in terms of the buyer, and what the buyer wants.

After a paragraph or two about the customer and their pain points, we can start to talk about ourselves. We can say, “I'm an expert in mathematics. I've been working with kids for twelve years.” I would also say things like, “Of course I know mathematics. That's the easy part. Many people know math. But what makes me unique is that I am also a strong communicator, and I'm doing this because it's purposeful to me.”

Using this kind of phrasing does a number of things. First, it shifts the focus away from your math abilities, so the reader won’t even question those. You firmly establish your math skills and get them focused on whatever sets you apart from other math tutors. In my experience, everyone is going to agree with this. I say this to parents all the time and they always say, “Oh yeah, of course you have to be good at mathematics. But can you communicate? That’s the important thing. Can you teach it?” And I say, “Oh, yeah, let me tell you. That's the number one most important thing.”

You can learn some skills for phrasing things in ways that connect with customers. Just like you learned mathematics, you can get better at communicating. Consider reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. He goes over many of the tips I'm giving you here. Another great book about this stuff is an audio program called The 10 Best Kept Secrets of the World's Greatest Communicators. How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less is another one I’d recommend. Find that on Amazon, it's a great book. 

If you're writing a tutoring profile or advertisement, you're talking to the buyer. Start by putting their wants and needs first, then give some ideas about yourself. You can charge people for the first session, but it’s a good idea to say, “if you're unhappy about this session, I'll refund you.” That's taking a little risk, but it's only an hour of your time. You don't have to do this. Many people are opposed to offering refunds. But any time customers are contacting you their concern is whether your services are going to work. Will you be any good? That uncertainty could prevent them from making a purchase with you. They're worried.

It comes down to fear and worry, again. They're worried about their child’s math performance. But they're also worried they might pay for something they don't want and get stuck with it, which is a terrible feeling. So we want to try to reduce that worry as much as possible. We can say, “The first session costs $35, but if you aren't happy with it and you don't want me as your tutor for a long time, I'm happy to refund that for you.” That's going to put them at ease. You've decreased their fear and anxiety. 

That kind of a guarantee is something I would put at the end of your advertising, or your bio, or your profile. Then you could finish up with a few ways to contact you.