Why you should become an online tutor!

I have worked as an online tutor for the last two years and I love it! It's remote, flexible, high paying and I'm my own boss. Here is why you should consider doing it too!

Pros:

You get a high hourly wage.

Even at a base rate, most tutors earn between £10 - £15 per hour which is considerably higher than most retail jobs. As you gain experience, reviews, and success stories you can increase your price. There is no limit to what you can charge but most experienced tutors tend to make around £30+ an hour.

You have complete flexibility over your schedule.

You are your own boss which means you don’t have to clock in and clock out. You decide when you want to work - evenings, mornings, weekends and then you fit your clients into that schedule. You can also reschedule lessons if you have events come up that mean you are no longer available. You don’t have to get anyone's permission to take time off!

You get to decide who you work with.

When you start out the temptation is to take as many students who come to you for help as you can. Having taught over 1000 lessons I am now a lot more particular – only taking students who I think I can work well with and who need to cover content that I have already worked on before to minimize prep time.

You can work from anywhere in the world.

Even if you aren’t a traveller being able to work from home, in a café, at your parent’s house, or on the road is so much more flexible than an in-person job with a physical location. It also means you don’t have to spend any money on commuting. And, if you are keen to travel the world you can work anywhere with a stable Wi-Fi connection!

You use the knowledge and skills you have already acquired.

I teach the subject I studied at university – though the majority of content I teach is what I learnt myself preparing for GCSE’s and A-Levels. This means that there is relatively little preparation required and hopefully you choose to teach a subject that you are actually interested in which makes the process a lot easier.

You get to help young people build their confidence and get the results they need for their futures.

A huge benefit is the feeling of doing something meaningful and contributing in a positive way to someone’s life and education. Often students start lessons with very low self-confidence so having the ability to nurture them and see them improve is a truly heart-warming part of teaching.

Cons:

Tech issues can often disrupt lessons.

It can get particularly difficult if the tech problems are on your student's side as it makes it difficult to decide whether to refund them or not. When the tech works smoothly working online has even more perks than in person as the lesson can be recorded and re-watched as a revision tool. It can also make students feel more relaxed and comfortable.

Complete flexibility has its downsides.

If you cancel or move lessons around too frequently it can put a strain on your relationship with the parents and can cause some clients to move to a different tutor. Clients also have full flexibility to cancel at short notice which means that you can often find your plans changing last minute as clients cancel.

Difficult students.

In my experience, I’ve only ever had one student who was directly rude. The benefit to being self-employed is if you have a difficult student, you can simply decide to not work with them anymore.

To conclude, I think online tutoring is a great way to make money if you are looking for a high paying, flexible and rewarding side-hustle - or even a full-time hustle!