How To Turn Test Prep Tutoring Into A 7-Figure Business

How To Turn Test-Prep Tutoring Into A 7-Figure Business
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Summary: In the case of one-on-one tutoring, you have a limited number of students you can teach at one period of time. Imagine you can teach as many students as you want, share your knowledge with tens of thousands of students and earn equivalent money. Wouldn’t it be amazing?

Turning Your Test Prep Tutoring Into A Lucrative Business

We, humans, love to share our knowledge with others. I am actively blogging for 3 years now and consult people from time to time. And I understand the feeling of sharing knowledge with somebody and seeing those people succeed.

One of the most popular ways to share knowledge is tutoring. Nowadays more and more teachers are moving online as it opens new great opportunities. It is predicted that the global online tutoring market will grow at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 13.76% from 2018 to 2022 [1].

We will get back to the development of the online tutoring environment, but for now, let’s cover a blended learning approach, and how it can help your tutoring business scale without harm for students performance.

Blended Online Tutoring

When online tutoring became very popular, teachers wanted to cover as many students as they possibly could, without harm to students performance, so blended eLearning programmes emerged. In this type of education, students pass through the majority of the course content independently, but at times they can contact the tutor to discuss some challenges and setbacks. Most of the tests and tasks are checked automatically, so learners can get quick feedback and work on their mistakes.

It is a good practice to held everyday online lessons in addition to premade courses. With such tutoring approach, students still show great results on tests and you as a teacher are able to scale.

On blended learning platforms chats and social learning are usually included. They enhance the performance of the overall course as students can help each other and easily contact tutor in case of emergency.

Opportunities

Tutoring through an online platform opens such financial opportunities as teaching as much as 1,000 students simultaneously. For example, each student subscribes to your 6-month test preparation course for, let’s assume, $5 000. It’s $5 million in revenue in just 6 months.

The best part of this business model is that most of its parts can be automated. It allows you to focus on content creation, instead of time-consuming manual work, commute, and printing. Moreover, with the help of strong digitized analytics, you can see where your course can be improved and where most of the students are stuck.

Benefits of online tutoring for students are:

  • No commute
  • Open scheduling
  • Own pace of learning
  • Usually lower price than an offline equivalent
  • Opportunity to learn from the best

How To Create An eLearning Platform For This Business Model

There are two main options: custom development and use of ready-built platforms. Let’s talk about the pros, cons and when to use each of them.

Custom Development

The main reasons why you would like to use custom eLearning solution development is that it can have features that standard LMSs don’t provide. Moreover, it can grow into a whole online education platform with different subjects and even tutors, but that’s another business model.

The second reason is that if you have a unique method of test preparation, you would probably like the platform to be customized for that to provide students with the best experience and results. Moreover, the custom design of the platform is an important part of business branding and positioning.

In order to build a custom eLearning platform, you should contact a web or app development company. Also, consider outsourcing the development to lower costs, but receive a high-quality product.

Use Of Third-Party Platforms

You can start using an LMS that supports all of the essential features:

  • The creation and selling of premade courses
  • Mobile learning
  • Virtual classrooms with chat, screen sharing, and whiteboard
  • Tests, assessments, and online exams
  • eLearning analytics

This is a good choice if you are a beginner in online tutoring and want to start scaling.

Bottom Line

Modern online tools allow transforming traditional tutoring model into scalable multi-million business. But it’s not only about money; Kaplan’s test prep unit recently reported that students taking online courses outperformed their peers in traditional classrooms.

Individual tutors or tutoring companies should consider moving online and satisfy their learners' needs because Millennials live online, and they want you to be there too with the personalized online tutoring program.

Creation of custom eLearning solutions will create a better learning experience and results for your students as well as will open bigger opportunities for your business. Note that Venture Capital invested $8b into education technology startups in 2018 up from $2b in 2014 [2].

Would you like to scale your tutoring? And what do you think about automated online tutoring?

References:

[1] Global Online Tutoring Market 2018-2022 (https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/sqwgfw/the_global_online?w=5)

[2] 10 charts that explain the Global Education Technology Market (https://www.holoniq.com/edtech/10-charts-that-explain-the-global-education-technology-market/)