Private Tutor Enrolling – Pro and Cons of Five Main Ways Beyond Agents

       The ways of a private tutor enrolling students are often nothing more than the five listed below, no matter university student tutors or sophisticated full-time tutors. They will be analyzed one by one and see which the most effective way is.

Pros and Cons of Five Main Ways of Private Tutor Enrolling

1. Word-out-mouth, referrals from classmates.

2. Tutoring agents.

3. Social media platforms and forums.

4. Classified advertisement websites.

5. Self-owned websites or blogs.

Word-out-mouth and Referrals

         For a tutor getting new students, referrals from the existing students or classmates should be the best way. They know each other well and are on a good trust basis. Everything could be discussed and negotiated easily. It is also no costs.  However, the referral supply is limited. Their students may not often have friends in need of tutoring. The tutors’ classmates seldom have surplus students to share. Most of the time, both of them are also looking for students. Regarding to those new private tutors without many students yet, it is especially difficult for them to get students relying on word-of-mouth. 

Tutoring Agents

       When a private tutor has no methods to solicit, the most common thing to do is knocking the door of a tutoring agent. The advantage is that he needs to pay the agent fee only when he got a student. Those tutors with outstanding open exam results and teaching popular subjects can get students without much difficulty, but there are also lots of disadvantages. As many people know, the tutoring agent fee is very expensive. Their contract terms and conditions are harsh. It is notorious that tutors are easy to incur fines and even fall into frauds and disputes. Privacy leaks happened more than once. The press reported many cases about that.

Social Media Platforms and Forums

          To get rid of tutoring agents, many tutors would rather post soliciting advertisements on social media platforms and forums. The merits are free-of-charge, easy and without any agents. However, it seems neglecting the crucial aim – could the target students and parents see these advertisements? It is true that the traffic of those platforms and forums is huge, but it is not the case of the tutors’ advertising pages. Few parents and students could see those recruiting posts. People who could read them are the other tutors also in need of students.

(Image courtesy of Mister GCat FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

        Besides, the advertisement posts would “sink” quickly. Therefore, many tutors repeat posting their advertisements at regular time to avoid sinking. Some tutors spam the pages. Quite some of the spam is even disguised advertisements posted by tutoring agents. It leads the pages all in a jumble. Stepping into parents’ and students’ shoes, would you be interested to browse such chaotic pages, flipping through one by one to look for a tutor? Is this a professional and effective way for a tutor to build up his student base and raise income in the long term?

Classified Advertisement Websites

         Posting on classified advertisement websites to enroll might be a bit better choice. The benefits are free-of-charge, more traffic, good user interface and functions. Nevertheless, the above-mentioned two big problems also exist.

         Besides, because of the nature of classified advertising, there are over hundreds items. The tutors’ advertisements can be easily buried deep down under so many layers of other posts. Even if there are viewers, they might be looking for transportation, plumbers or disinfestation… etc. Does it mean anything?

Self-owned Websites or Blogs

         Some more aggressive tutors, usually full-time or teaching piano and music, would set up websites or blogs on their own to promote themselves. The advantages are low cost or even free-of-charge as well as no limitations. They can have any contents and designs they like, all materials focusing on themselves.

         However, the biggest drawback is that the work to attract traffic to their websites or blogs is huge. For many private tutors, it is very difficult and far harder than their tutoring jobs, even not taken the production of website contents into account. That is why it might not be cost-effective for even small- to medium-sized tutoring centres, not to mention private tutors.

         Would you have any other better ways to recruit new students?

         If spending $1.3 daily could solve all of the above-mentioned problems, would you be interested? Check it out on TutorBoard (in Chinese), which was interviewed by TV and newspaper!

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