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

I keep my iPhone on me—I keep it very close. And when I get an email from a new lead, I try to adhere to my five minute rule: respond to every lead within five minutes. There is a study suggesting you are 300% to 400% more likely to convert a lead into a sale when you respond right away. We live in a world where things happen fast. People want to get things done quickly. 

Influence is based on emotions, which are highly sensitive to timing. People feel differently about things at different times. To sell to people, we need to pay attention to timing. One of your main advantages as a tutor is that you’ll be thinking of yourself as a business. In your personal life you don’t have to respond to things right away. But in business you do. 

Imagine someone emails you at 9:30pm and they're thinking about tutoring. They say, “I'm looking for a mathematics tutor, can you help me?” Well, many tutors lose business because they don’t respond for two days. Finally they say, “Oh, yeah, I can help you.” But by that time it's done. You've lost that lead. Maybe they’ve changed their mind. Customers are fickle, and emotions change. Two days from now they might not feel like they need a math tutor anymore. Maybe they are feeling better, or maybe they decided it's hopeless. Plus, they probably sent emails to multiple tutors. That’s what people do. We get on Google, do some searching, and put out a few feelers to see what comes back. 

So boom, you’re the tutor who responds within five minutes and you're the first to email them back. Your promptness immediately demonstrates that you are on top of your game. This creates a halo effect. Now this client is going to see you in a positive light, and will perceive anything you do more positively from that point forward. They're going to think, this person is on top of it, organized, efficient, and is probably going to be a good math tutor. 

Compare that to the slouch who responds in two days. No one is going to want to work with them. 

The five minute rule is simple but it has revolutionized my business.

You can have success either by emailing people or calling them. However, one big secret I’ve discovered is to text your clients. At some point you could even get a business iPhone to text them on. Think about it, we text our friends and people we're close to. If you're iMessaging clients, you develop a bond with them before you even meet in person. Plus, it’s really efficient because you can be messaging five people at once. So if you get an email from a new lead, and email them back within five minutes, you might offer your number and ask for theirs. Offer to text them and set something up. Then move the interaction to text. This way you're going to develop rapport in that relationship, just by using technology to your advantage. 

It’s also helpful to meet people where they are comfortable. Some people just prefer to talk on the phone. Others like email. You can suss that out in your initial email. Most of the time, people will email you for their initial inquiry, rather than calling. At least that's my experience. 

Imagine someone emails you and says, “When can we have a call?” In that case, you probably don't want to keep emailing them and writing long explanations. They've mentioned a phone call, so they probably want to get on the phone. Get their number, send them a text, set something up, or give them a call right away. 

It's going to help you in your tutoring to read some things about motivation and psychology. And it's also going to help when you're dealing with clients. One phrase I use a lot, once a client signs up, is to say, “thank you for choosing to do business with us.” There's research backing this up. This phrase reaffirms that it is their choice to do business with you, they could be working with someone else. You're affirming their autonomy and telling them you appreciate them for choosing you. 

If you start listening now, you’ll notice that many companies do this. You’ll hear it on airlines, “Thank you for choosing United.” It's all over the place. I always chuckle when I'm in my seat and hear them use that line. They wouldn’t go through all the trouble of making sure all their employees say that during every flight if it wasn’t important.

After the first couple lessons you know how to get your first clients. And once you have a client the question becomes how to expand, develop, and move your business forward. 

One of the first things I want to touch on is the importance of getting into a weekly schedule with your clients. You should be meeting each client at consistent times each week. Generally, as a tutor, you’re going to be busy in the afternoon after school, and in the evening. Middle school and high school kids get out of school, come home, unwind, maybe have sports practice, and are ready for tutoring around four or five pm. It can be hectic as a tutor if your schedule is always changing every week. That can make it difficult to build consistency in your life. I encourage people to establish a set time for meeting with each client. You might work with Johnny every Tuesday at six, for instance. So then for the next person who wants to book a time, you can say, “Hey, I have a slot open at 7:30 on Tuesday evening. I could fit you in there. Would that work?” This way your schedule will fill up. It’s much better than having to email your clients and find different times every time they need help with something. This brings consistency to your life and helps you grow your business. 

Another thing to look at once you have a couple steady clients going is developing a web presence. That can be making a website or doing some social media. It’s easy to set up a website today on Weebly, Wix, or Squarespace. You can do some research into those. I think Wix is on the cheaper end. Squarespace might be a bit more expensive, look more sleek, and have a few more bells and whistles. Spend a few days setting up your website and get some writing on there. 

Write about your philosophy and what sets you apart as a tutor. Why should they hire you? It's important to not just write about math, but also about how you teach math. What is your teaching philosophy? Maybe you cater to the whole person. Maybe you think it's important to spend time talking to people about how their day was. Even small things can help set you apart and make you likeable. You want a parent to read this and say, “Oh, yeah, this is someone who I'd like to hire, bring into my home, and introduce to my child.” So set that philosophy up. If you get a decent website it could start to rank on Google and people might start finding you organically. 

During the early stages of establishing your tutoring business, you'll have to go out and do some work. You set the fliers up, do outreach, make profiles, and build the website. But eventually people start coming into your business through referrals and your website, and you can get a good business going. 

It’s probably prudent to get a Twitter going, a Facebook page, and maybe an Instagram. Think about who's going to be hiring you; it's probably going to be moms. Personally, 99% of the people contacting me in my tutoring businesses are moms. Sometimes it's the dad but that's rare. Think about where moms hang out online. Where can you find them? Well, there are a lot on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. So you can try to find your niche and your audience by posting helpful content. Maybe make a video about your tutoring philosophy!

If you have a client who really loves you, have them record a short video about how much they've loved your service, and post (if that’s ok with them, of course). Pin that on top of your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages. Link those all to your website. Make it easy to book a consultation on your website. So if someone comes across your Facebook page, they could end up seeing the video, going to your website, and signing up. 

You want to build out a presence and some credibility. Once you do, people are going to see you as an expert and perceive you as more credible. Maybe you’ll be able to charge a higher rate. Because now you are not just some guy. You have legitimacy. You have a Facebook and Instagram and you're writing helpful things there. People are making videos about how great you are. And parents see that and think, Wow, this person knows their stuff! They're writing about algebra and geometry, exactly what my daughter needs help with right now. And they're writing about employing educational strategies. This is someone worth hiring. 

Another great approach to grow your tutoring business is to get on some lists. Local community centers and neighborhood organizations will often have lists to help parents who are looking for tutors. Sometimes schools will even have these lists. So you can contact some local schools and say, “Hey, is there a tutoring list? If there is, can I put my name on there?” A lot of times, you'll have to write down what subjects you do, whether you do in-home, and how your charging works. Then you can start to get inbound leads that way from people wanting your service. Parents are inquiring at the school about where to find a tutor and the school refers them to this list. So it’s a great referral. 

Reaching out and connecting with schools and making some partnerships is always a great idea. That can be through the front office to get on the tutoring list, as we just saw, or it can be with the counselors. Parents will often bring up with their counselor that their child is not doing well in school. If you have some connections there, and you've done the hard work of building relationships, you can get some leads coming in that way too, and your schedule will start filling up. 

Once your schedule fills up to 90% capacity, you can aise those rates again, depending on the city you're in. You can also think about charging a bit more if you're doing in-home sessions and offering a discount for online tutoring. Some people might want online and that's not a bad gig. You can book sessions back-to-back and you could even be doing it from Hawaii. You could be sitting on the beach doing tutoring sessions and make money that way. So think about whether you want to offer online, and how you want the pricing to work. 

One of the big keys is just getting your clients on a steady schedule, where they're coming back each week at a certain time. This way you’ll have more predictable revenue and can retain clients more easily over longer timelines. 

Those are the main ideas on how to grow your business after getting your first clients. By now you have the tools to get a legitimate business going. Let’s continue with the next topic.

When I started tutoring I made a profile on universitytutor.com and forgot about it. For a couple months no one responded to me. But then I got a few requests, and I started working with those clients. And I liked it so I started looking for other ways to find more clients and grow my business. But those profiles were the first step. So if you’re just starting out as a tutor you should absolutely create profiles on various tutoring websites. 

There's universitytutor.com, varsitytutors.com, tutors.com, care.com, and others. Just start Googling and you’ll find them. The most important would be universitytutor.com, because that gets you some leads you can keep for yourself. Sites like varsitytutors.com will allow you to work as an independent contractor through their platform. You can make some pretty good money that way. 

Pro tip: a good way to get started is with a hybrid approach where you work a little for yourself and also do some work for a local tutoring company. Find those companies where you can get some hours and get established in the industry. 

Local tutoring companies will often pay higher rates than the big national companies. And you can find those by searching “math tutor Miami” and looking at the websites that come up organically. If they are ranking high on Google, they're going to have some inflow of leads. So those would be the biggest major areas to look for your first clients. 

There are also other places where you can do job postings. And most of this is free. You might spend $10 to $15 total as startup costs, which isn't bad. Make a post on Craigslist advertising your tutoring services. When I was studying for the MCAT I found a great tutor through Craigslist. So you can definitely find people there who are looking for tutors. It's $5 or $10 to post at the time of this course, depending on the city. 

So those are some basics for getting your online presence built up. You want to think of yourself as a little tutoring store. And you need to think about how you can get people to start passing by your store who are interested in your services.

After I got my first clients through universitytutor.com, I started wondering how I could expand my business further. And one simple thing I did was print out some of those pieces of paper with 10 slits at the bottom, where you can pull one off and take it with you. It's very simple and inexpensive. There are templates on Google and you can just write “Math tutor, Miami. $35 an hour.” And describe what you do. Talk about your background, and how you’ve always had a passion for mathematics, and why you want to teach. And then put the 10 slips with your email and phone number and the words “math tutor” at the bottom. 

And you can go around the city posting those up places. There are many places with free boards where you can post them. I'm from Portland and we have grocery stores with message boards. I got my second client from a community center. I went and posted a flyer with those pull tabs and someone ended up finding me through there. So that is an idea as well.

One little tip is that you should pull off a couple tabs when you put these up (so it looks like people are already interested). Maybe there are only eight left or something. You can get that done in a few hours. Think about coffee shops, grocery stores, community centers, medical clinics, yoga studios, and anywhere there might be good clients. Focus your energy on wealthier zip codes. Do some research before you start posting. Look for wealthy zip codes that are easy for you to drive to. You want to maximize your time. 

It's going to be hardest to find your first few clients. But once you get a few clients and do a good job you’ll get a referral. And things will grow from there.

So, why should you be a math tutor? Math is one of the most important subjects. Many families are interested in getting their math issues solved—and they can pay a good amount for it. If you have some skill in math (and it doesn't even have to be much skill), you should be able to make 30,000 to $70,000 as a math tutor, working for yourself or for a tutoring company. The majority of tutoring involves just algebra and geometry. Rarely you'll get into some calculus with certain more advanced students.

There are two main types of tutors. There is the rogue tutor who is out making a living and finding clients on their own. And there's a company tutor who works for someone else and has more steady work that way. Both lifestyles can provide significant freedom and flexibility, which is one nice thing about tutoring in general. There's even the opportunity to do a combination of these, working for a company while you also build your own business on the side.

Jobs in STEM fields are increasing right now by 8% to 9% per year. So there's demand for learning mathematics, and it's one of the toughest things for people to learn. For whatever reason people get stuck in algebra and geometry. So there's high demand for tutors in those areas. And parents want their kids to do well in math because STEM jobs are great and are on the rise. So, if you like mathematics and you've always done well in it, this could be a good job for you. Many people find meaning in being a math tutor, because you're helping people one-on-one to grow and expand.

So, if you have solid skills in geometry and algebra, the other thing you’ll need is some communication skills and empathy. That's an overlooked area of math tutoring, which can set you apart. There are many people who can do math, but few who can teach it.

Speaking of teaching, who am I to be teaching you about running a tutoring business anyway? I've owned multiple tutoring companies. I started my first company six years ago, and before that I was freelance tutoring for years. So I've been involved in tutoring for over a decade. And I have many stories to share. I've hired quite a few math tutors because I own a company now that specializes mainly in mathematics. In my first company I found math was about 90% to 95% of our business, so I focused my second company just on math.

One of the great things about tutoring as a business is that you can build long term relationships with your clients. We’ll see in a later lesson that building these long term relationships is a big key to growing your business. Many tutors miss out on that opportunity.

Math is really set up well for long term relationships because kids are enrolled in various courses simultaneously. And improving requires significant effort. So kids often need help for years, or even all through high school.

I've hired people with PhDs who weren't great tutors. The best tutors are people with the ability to communicate. You don't have to be the most polished speaker in the world, but if you have genuine desire to help people and empathy, you should be able to make good money as a math tutor. And it doesn't have to be full time. You can do this 20 hours per week and make a good living while pursuing other interests. We have tutors who love music and are constantly creating. They spend more hours making music than they do tutoring! They have good lives.

Tutoring gives you freedom because you're either going to be an independent contractor or working for yourself.

These are just some of the reasons for being a math tutor. 

We're going to go over all the tips, tricks, and tools of the trade in this course. I’ll show you how to make yourself stand out. And one of the most important things to know is how to get your first clients. Then we’ll see how to keep those clients on a long term basis, and how to get them on a steady schedule from week to week.