Everything you Need to Deliver Quality Tutoring Online

Considering the fact that the online tutoring industry was projected to grow, there is no wonder why entrepreneurs are brainstorming about how to start a tutoring business. 

Online tutoring marketplaces are being tossed as a popular alternative for classroom teaching and the market is crowded with N number of tutoring platforms. However, what makes a tutoring platform unique is the features and functionalities it possesses. 

As education is shifted to online, online tutoring remains at the forefront in alleviating the negative effects of the closure of schools. This also gave rise to the trend of online tutoring marketplaces, making it one of the most lucrative businesses of.

Approximately 825 million learners across the world are affected due to the closure of schools, colleges, and universities. The best-in-class feature that a tutoring marketplace must have. 

Key Features Of Online Tutoring Marketplace

When it comes to launching an online tutoring marketplace, features are one of the important aspects you need to consider. Features and functionalities are powerful to make or break an online tutoring platform. Here are some of the key features of a tutoring marketplace. 

Multiple payment gateways

• Including multiple payment gateway options that are convenient and secure for users is one of the critical features that an online tutoring platform must have. Make sure you use commonly available payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal so that your users can choose the ones they would like to use. 

• To ensure safety, implement the escrow method that allows the payment to be kept on the online tutoring platform and transferred to the teacher only after the confirmation from the student. 

• This helps to prevent fraudulent acts and protects both students and teachers. Make sure you choose an online tutoring software that helps to implement multiple currency availability in your online tutoring platform. 

Single-step signup and sign in

• The first thing a user would do after visiting a tutoring marketplace is signing up for the platform. The multiple-step sign-up is a thing of the past. Provide a single-step sign-in using email id or social logins to make it easy for your users to move over to discover the marketplace. 

Intuitive search

• Implement a smart and intuitive search for your users to search for relevant learning material. Integrate a smart search that understands keywords easily. Implement tutor and course filters so that students can find tutors and courses based on factors like subject, top courses, price, reviews, country, etc. 

Student and Tutor profile creation

• A good tutoring profile consisting of teaching experience and academic qualification is the sales pitch. Allow tutors to create a succinct and concise profile to attract more students. 

• A good tutor profile must include personal and professional details, an option to upload a resume, the specialization, a video introduction, etc. Likewise, implement a student profile set up so that students can create a personal profile of their own.  

Personal dashboard

• Both tutors and students must be able to create a profile of their own which will take them to a personal dashboard that displays their activities in the online tutoring platform. 

• A dashboard must display the courses purchased, related courses based on browsing and purchasing history. Likewise, the personal dashboard of a tutor must show the booked schedules, payments, and a lot more. 

Virtual classroom

• There are many different ways to conduct classes on an online tutoring platform. Some tutoring sites allow searching and scheduling alone while teaching happens offline or on video conferencing apps like Zoom or skype. 

• Whereas, more sophisticated online tutoring software allows Zoom integration through API which allows tutors to take classes within the platform. Virtual classrooms also feature functionalities like a whiteboard, screen sharing, sending of files, messaging through chats, etc. 

Q & A Board

• Another important feature of an online tutoring marketplace must have a section that allows students to post their doubts so that tutors can rely within a stipulated time on. This feature helps students to raise their doubts outside their classroom.

Reviews and ratings

• Allow students to leave their reviews and ratings for tutors once they finish a particular class. 

• Reviews and ratings also improve the appeal and trust of your online tutoring platform. Not only it helps to capture more attention, but it also helps to attract more students. Include the feature to filter the review so that only authorized users who have truly completed a course with a tutor can leave a review.

Notifications

• In a physical classroom, it is quite easy for students and tutors to understand when a class begins and ends. Whereas in online tutoring set up, the important updates are exchanged via notification. 

• Implement notifications in your online tutoring platform that allows tutors to send alerts and reminders to students about new classes or courses, schedule changes, and more. Make sure the notifications are relevant to users in terms of the content. 

Multilingual capability 

• Offer multilingual capability which gives flexibility for your platform by allowing students to view the tutoring platform in the language of their own. This becomes more relevant when you are expanding your services to countries that have a first language other than English. 

Multi-device compatibility

• Multi-device compatibility is a critical feature especially in this digital world where users have access to N number of devices. Make sure your online tutoring platform can be accessible across all mainstream digital devices and operating systems. Though a little expensive, a mobile application of your online tutoring platform will be a smart addition as well. 

Why Create Your Own Online Tutoring Marketplace Platform?

While there are a variety of learning platforms to choose from, nothing can replace the convenience of having your own online tutoring platform.

The website must not only be appealing in looks, but it must also feature, both basic and advanced functionalities like delivery of live classes, dashboard, analytics, and reporting tools, managing access of tutors, processing payment, accepting reviews, etc.

Moreover, you are not encumbered by the restrictions of a third-party platform that has the features that you might not probably need.

Let’s look into the advantages of building your own learning management system.

Full Customization

By building your online tutoring website, you can fully customize the platform by adding or enhancing the essential features and functionalities. You can improve the existing layout, authoring tools, ways of deployment, reporting capabilities, etc. in alignment with your business requirements.

You can choose individual components that will make your online tutoring system functional to suit the users learning capability and skills.

Integration Of Your Branding

With your own online tutoring website, you will be able to customize the overall look and feel of the site in a way it suits your color scheme, company logo, etc., which can be a very powerful branding tool. By integrating your branding into your learning platform, you reflect the image of the brand in all aspects.

Cost-effective – Pay Only For The Feature You Actually Need

Creating your own tutoring site means that you only have to pay for the features you need instead of paying for both features you need and you are not going to use. You can add the essential functionalities you need to make your tutoring website more streamlined.

Key Things to Consider Making Online Tutoring a Successful Business Venture

Moving forward, a lot of budding entrepreneurs are inclined towards pursuing this business opportunity. However, they are not sure of how to avoid the pitfalls and challenges in the way. Here are a few things discussed that need to be considered before making up the mind.

Decide the Niche: Having a niche is extremely important when starting an online tutoring business to create a successful business model. It avoids competing head-on with the already established tutoring businesses and helps in earning higher profit margins in the initial stages. Moreover, identifying the niches where the demand exceeds the supply also allows you to maximize your profit margins. However, regular monitoring of the initial results helps to recognize if one needs to shift the focus to a different niche.

Know the Target Audience: With the advent of online tutoring, the range of learners varies from primary schoolers to working professionals with varying educational backgrounds and based at different locations. It is essential to know the audience, their characteristics based on behavior, age, location one would like to aim for. Conducting a deep dive analysis of the behavioral traits will help in recognizing the audience and their requirements. An in-depth conversation with the target audience also gives an insight into what they expect from an online tutoring platform.

Study the Market Share: Knowing the market share one can simply estimate the number of potential customers of the tutoring business. It helps to learn what share of market one can aim for and what can be expected from the business. Evaluation of market share provides the best chance for the success of the online tutoring business.

Analyze Competitors and Their Offerings: Researching about the competitors in the niche market and finding gaps in their system or practices that can be given a more creative spin helps the tutoring business to define its USP. Ranging from businesses’ offerings to teaching style, and even prices can be the USPs of any business. Customers can easily outline the differentiating factors and select the platform suited to their needs.

Monetization Channels for Online Tutoring Businesses

Revenue generation strategy should be among the top priorities of every online tutoring business. Without a proper plot of getting ROI, a business cannot attract investors’ attention. Here are some of the most promising monetization strategies that are already tried and tested for various online tutoring businesses.

Commission from Tutors: This revenue stream brings a small share of each session’s cost, usually before the payment reaches the tutor. Business owners can retain a commission from tutors for every delivered session. The rates for every tutor may vary depending on the session price, teachers’ popularity, subject, etc.

Subscription: One of the most popular monetization strategies is to implement a subscription model. It includes a subscription fee from the learners in return for access to the complete tutoring platform and its tutors. The model is quite useful for learners who are willing to study different subjects and courses from different tutors.

Freemium: The platforms can offer training and live sessions for free, however, the learners need to pay for course completion certificates/diplomas. Additionally, platform owners can also choose to offer a final exam, feedback, mentoring, or anything that might be of value and interest to the learners.

Pay-Per-Session: With the pay-per-session, business owners can entice learners to pay for the premium sessions with the tutors in addition to the free content available on the platform.

Tiered Access: Business owners can set different levels of memberships (bronze, silver, gold) at different prices. Learners can preview the different levels but can only access them after purchasing the membership.

Website Ads/Banners: Selling the advertising space to a third-party ad network provider is another revenue generation However, business owners need to make sure the user experience is not hampered due to them as it will turn them away and render the monetization strategy.

Foolproof Marketing Plan of an Online Tutoring Platform

Once the online tutoring platform is set, the next question is to get traffic towards the website. As the competition is intense, it is essential to implement a well-formulated marketing strategy to set the business apart from the rest. Here are some ways which can help tutoring businesses put their best foot forward while marketing their tutoring platforms.

Blogging: This is a great way to generate organic traffic for online tutoring websites. Blogging establishes credibility and positions the business among the leaders of the industry. Publishing a blog post even once a week can also help to improve the website’s visibility to potential customers. Adding call-to-action inside blog posts is also a great way to start getting leads from prospective learners while offering them useful information they may be interested in.

Client Testimonials: Customer reviews are the brand ambassadors of any tutoring business making it the most effective online marketing strategy. A huge number of learners go through the reviews and feedback of the tutoring website before making the last call. Encouraging loyal customers to post positive feedback on the business and its services makes it easy for new learners to put their trust in the tutoring website.

Paid Advertisement: Advertisement is as essential as any other marketing practice, however, choosing the type of advertisement is quite a challenge. Tutoring websites with an extensive budget can reach out to Yahoo! for its advertising services and be assured of the ad reaching a vast group audience. Others can opt for Google AdWords for its pay-per-click advertising on search pages and pay as little or as much as they can afford.

Email Marketing: Email marketing is the cornerstone of online marketing. It is one of the most cost-effective tools to reach out to a global audience. Several feature-packed email marketing tools can help to create engaging and professional emails to grow your audience. Moreover, business owners can easily track and optimize email marketing campaigns to monitor the results.

Social Media Marketing: Social media platforms have reached out to almost every single user across the globe. Business owners can leverage the use of social media and run ads for the promotion of their tutoring platforms. All they would need is engaging content as it is the driving factor to attract the audience. If done correctly, social media marketing offers higher visibility, greater brand promotion, and huge traffic on the tutoring platform.

Choose a Readymade Software to Build an Online Tutoring MartPlace Platform

Readymade white label software is built with the concept of helping businesses have their tutoring platforms with the least investment. 

Highly leveraged by the businesses, it helps them launch their tutoring platforms outside of their skillset, expertise, necessary technology, and infrastructure at the minimum cost and in a minimum timeframe. 

There are various benefits of considering this approach for tutoring platform development.

• Cost & time-efficient

• No involvement in the project management process

• Tried and tested multiple times.

• Reduces time to market and risk of lagging behind

• Free from maintenance complications

Building a tutoring platform from scratch is quite a daunting process if one is not well-versed with programming and can easily defeat the purpose of launching and iterating the tutoring platform quickly.

A white label software solves this very problem of aspiring entrepreneurs and helps them start an online tutoring business as quickly as possible. The importance of white-label comes with choosing a good strategy to make things work and consider the best ready-made online tutoring software before the hammer goes down. 

It empowers the business owners to enter the market, test their business concept, verify market demands, and move towards an entirely mature tutoring platform.

Why Choose Trawex?

When looking out for a comprehensive and end-to-end solution to set up your own tutoring marketplace, Trawex fits the criteria perfectly. The solution plays a vital role in ensuring a successful collaboration between the learners and tutors via online video chat.

Descriptive admin and tutor dashboards aid in smooth management and efficient services. What makes this solution a must-pick for an online tutoring business are its impressive and outstanding features.

These not only add convenience for the business owner but also enhance the user experience and journey. We are sure there are enough reasons to opt for Trawex as your software partner as you embark on your journey to becoming an online tutoring business owner.

Conclusion

Choosing a tutoring solution is a tough job without proper research on all the options you have on the market. It is always a wise move to first research all the free and paid options, and then test out as many options based on your requirements. 

If you are looking for a ready-made customizable online learning solution, Trawex is the one that meets the modern needs of both business and education institutes easy-to-use, feature-rich, and has a configurable interface makes it a preferred software for numerous edupreneurs around the world.

Trawex is an excellent pick for those interested in launching their own online tutoring marketplace. It gives you leverage to launch a platform where learners and tutors can connect seamlessly, taking online education to a whole new level, and that too, while at the comfort of their home. An intuitive interface and plentiful customizations make Trawex a worthy choice of partnering as you begin your journey as an edupreneurs.