Become an online Tutor and teach globally! 

Learn how to become an online Tutor and get jobs

Whether you’re a qualified teacher, recent graduate, a specialist in a particular field or discipline the reasons why you should become an online Tutor are multiple and varied. From the option to work around your own schedule and commitments, the freedom to be independent of working for a school or big corporation to the ability to earn some extra money and experience outside of your normal working hours in your own home. The benefits can be emotionally and financially rewarding. 

Online tutoring offers anyone with a skill set the opportunity to teach online, be this maths and science, ESL, English literature and even dance, yoga, cooking or photography, all of which can be done working from home using online platforms. To find out if you have the qualifications and skills necessary to get Tutoring work with Tutor Around, keep reading our tips for Tutors on how to become an effective online Tutor.

Can I become an online Tutor and earn money?

Having the skills and qualifications to teach is the first step to becoming an online Tutor, however, it’s also crucial to have the personal, soft skills that are essential to building a good rapport with your students. Emotionally intelligent teachers have to work doubly hard online to build a good relationship with students and it’s worth noting that this doesn’t come naturally to all academics or teachers. ​

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How to become an online Tutor?

If you think you’ve got what it takes, the next step is to start publishing your services. Apps and websites like Tutor Around’s are perfect for getting your name out there in the initial stages. Through the search tools, potential clients are able to see your CV (more on this later), location and pricing. 

It’s important to sell yourself online properly, explain why you want to Tutor and the kinds of things you can help students achieve, be this excelling in school exams, getting into university, improving their business English or learning to cook French food. If people can see you excel, they’ll be inclined to want to work with you.

How to become a full-time Tutor?

If you’re just starting out in the world of Tutoring and you don’t want to join the ranks of a big tutoring agency, then you have to think of yourself, and your brand, as a business. This means taking some time to consider why people should hire you over someone else. Having a USP (unique selling point) is crucial - this could be that you’re a hands-on teacher, you have a quirky way of teaching (I once heard of an Italian teacher whose first lesson involved asking students all the Italian words they knew, writing them on the blackboard and then saying ‘right you know some Italian now! Lesson over!’ and walking out. He was the most popular teacher in the school), a dress sense that everyone notices or simply an excellent way of making a student concentrate and focus on their work like never before. 

More than anything, make sure you’re a clear communicator, this means being able to explain complex theories or things that seem easy to you to someone who’s struggling to understand. 
​
Once you’re ready to get started it’s important to gain as much experience as possible in the form of offering online Tutoring and in-person lessons. Not only does this mean you’ll gain networking opportunities from working with students in your local area, but you’ll also start to understand how students work in different lesson environments and plan your lessons accordingly.

Why should college students become an online Tutor

Whether you’ve just started university or your studies are coming to end, student online Tutors are in high demand for two reasons: many clients expect to pay a student less than a qualified teacher or an experienced Tutor, but also because many children and teenagers prefer to work with someone closer to their own age.

​Younger Tutors should aim to sell themselves as people who are relaxed, with a good sense of humour, but also better able to help students taking exams such as SAT, ACT, GRE, AP, IGCSEs, A-Levels and IB having recently taken the exams themselves. Plus there is good money in becoming an online Tutor.

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How can a teacher benefit from online Tutor jobs?

Aside from the extra income that tutoring can provide, online tutoring jobs also offer you the opportunity to help students most in need. Knowing that you help someone in need of personal tutoring is immensely rewarding; often the difference between having a Tutor or not can mean the difference of getting into a top school or university, moving to a new country or getting a promotion for the student, and knowing you helped someone on that journey is incomparable. 

If you’re tutoring in order to earn some extra money, unlike jobs such as bartending or waitressing, tutoring allows you to use what you’re studying and put it into practice as well as offering fast, measurable progress that keeps you working hard with your student lesson after lesson. 

Teachers in training who choose to Tutor also gain insight into other classroom teachers materials, strategies, rubrics and methods, allowing them to better study for their degrees and programmes. Many Tutors work closely with school teachers in order to best help a student. With this additional help and information, Tutors can best plan their lessons and assist their students.

How can I get a Tutoring job with no Tutoring experience?

The best way to get a tutoring job is to request some career coaching from another Tutor. In many places where tutoring is popular among families, a client will often ask their English Tutor if they know a maths Tutor and vice versa. If you can get on the radar of another Tutor, ask them to tell their students about you. 

Volunteering to help students is another way to gain unpaid experience as a Tutor, this can be by helping out students with their reading, teaching maths to your family members or speaking to a school to see if you can work as a classroom assistant once a week. The more exposure you have to students and teaching methods the more you will eventually be able to offer paying clients.

What are the things needed to start online teaching?

The tools needed to start online tutoring depend on what subjects you’re tutoring in: 

ESL
  • Make sure you have all the materials you need available in an online format. Be this flashcards, videos, listening recordings and that you and your student are fully aware of the technicalities of using online communication platforms such as Google Meet, Skype and Zoom. 

Maths and Science
  • If you’re working with students who have specific theories or projects to work on, make sure they can send you pictures of their textbooks, which you can upload and view together.  

Humanities
  • Students often have a lot of reading to do for humanities subjects at school, if this is the case, make sure you upload reading materials onto a shareable platform such as Google Drive, and make notes, highlight or ask questions as you help the students read through. 

For all subjects
  • Online lessons sometimes give Tutors less of an opportunity to improvise if you run out of materials or time with a student. This requires extra preparation. If you’re teaching a lesson where students need specific materials, make sure to tell them in advance to have these things on hand during the lesson. 
  • Always make sure that your students have more than one method of communication with you - if Skype or Zoom calls start cutting out you may have to switch to Google Meet or WhatsApp at a moment’s notice. ​

Make sure you can get paid

​​Something that often gets overlooked by Tutors and first-time freelancers is the financial considerations before you start to teach online. It’s essential, and only fair to you and your client, that you have a clear set of costs and conditions before you work together. These are our top tips to get you going. 

  • If you’re planning to make tutoring a regular part of your income, speak to a tax advisor in your country first. Depending on where you live, you will either need to register as a freelancer or learn how to do your taxes yourself. 
  • Set-up a payment service: this can be PayPal, Stripe, Transferwise, Revolut, Monzo or simple transfer to your bank account, but make sure you have it before as your student needs to know how and when you want to get paid. 
  • Create costs and conditions form and send it to your student to sign before you begin. Keep a timesheet of all your lessons with each student - Google Sheets is a great tool for this. This not only helps you keep track of your hours and bill the client accordingly but on the rare occasions a client asks you to prove the hours you work, you can show them that you kept track. Transparency is best practice.

What are the best online Tutoring applications/tools?

Unlike in-person tutoring, holding a student’s attention for an hour or more can be challenging. Distractions on a desktop, a phone or anything else in the room can prove a distraction even for the most motivated of students. Luckily there are now a plethora of online tools that allow Tutors to command attention. We breakdown the pros and cons of the most popular online tutoring tools below:

Zoom

​Pros
  • Allows professional meetings and conferences to take place with an unlimited number of guests
  • Lessons can be recorded and sent to students after for them to go over certain points or to reference in their homework
  • There’s a whiteboard option which can be used once you’ve signed up for Zoom, this is great for when you’re teaching subjects like maths and science where you would normally use a whiteboard
  • Screen sharing is immensely helpful if you want all the participants to watch a video or listen to something 
  • The ability to mute other participants and not have too much noise in the call 
  • The breakout rooms that are featured on the paid version of Zoom are useful when you want to set group work
Cons
  • If you use a free account, lessons of 3 or more participants are limited to 40 minutes
  • ‘Zoom Bombing’ became a problem during 2020, with outside individuals accessing private calls. Privacy is important during lessons, so make sure you choose to have a secret password between you and your student

Skype

Pros
  • Much like the features of Zoom, Skype allows you to conduct both screen and document sharing that supports large files
  • Screen sharing is immensely helpful if you want all the participants to watch a video or listen to something 
  • It offers end-to-end encryption using Microsoft security software, meaning it’s one of the more secure platforms out there
Cons
  • No whiteboard or any ability to connect other apps or programmes within, which if you’re giving a technical lesson may be difficult to navigate
  • Video quality and connection are reported to be issues which can waste time during lessons
  • No ability (yet) to record your lessons

Google Meets and Google Drive

Google Drive has become an invaluable tool during the Coronavirus pandemic, with huge numbers of people able to link-up with and share documents, files and presentations in one place. Google Drive is wonderful for teachers of the humanities, as it allows you to see what students are writing in real-time and make comments and corrections to work that students can see instantly. You can also view edit history in Google Docs, allowing you to later check the revisions a student made in your absence or vice versa. Google Meets can be linked to a Google Drive account (run through Gmail), which means that students can have their lessons and work schedules in the same place. 

Pros
  • Google Meets has the same recording facility as Zoom, meaning students can see their lessons later and have it be saved onto their connected Google Drive folder. 
  • Tutors working with students with learning and/or reading disabilities have the option to put closed caption subtitles on their calls, meaning students can better understand what you’re saying. 
  • Google Meets linked to Google Classroom, a sharing platform many schools utilise every day. Meets has been created with students and teachers in mind, so it’s fairly user friendly and can cater to the needs of most lessons 
Cons
  • Some issues for Mac users, with a lagtime on videos and issues with computer speed while Meets is in operation. 
  • You can’t have so many members in a call compared to Zoom (although this isn’t an issue when you’re doing one-on-one lessons).

Blackboard

First pioneered by universities in the 2000s, Blackboard offers users a holistic online experience that allows teachers to post assignments, marks and recording of lessons or lectures. 
Pros
  • Is a professional workspace that allows Tutors of higher education students more options when setting work and handing back feedback
  • Students can easily track their progress
  • During live lessons, students can enter breakout groups and have discussions before joining the class.
Cons
  • User experience is a bit of an issue, it can be complicated to teach someone how to use Blackboard over an online lesson. 
  • Video quality and features aren’t as good as Zoom or Skype
  • Not suitable for young or older students unfamiliar with technology. ​

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Desmos

​Desmos is a free online tool that allows teachers to demonstrate maths equations and problems with ease online (it’s also available as an app on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android). 

Pros
  • Desmos is free to use and offers students a visual way to understand maths problems and view what instructions in real-time.
  • It’s easy to use for teachers new to the platform and aids student understanding 
Cons
  • It may take some time for first-time users to get the hang of - definitely allocate some time to teach your student how to use Desmos for the first time together.

PhET Interactive Simulations

​PhET allows teachers to add a large number of lab experiences to maths and science classrooms for free. 

Pros
  • While this site is student-guided, it’s really useful for Tutors who want their students to become more independent in their learning. 
  • Teaches students great techniques for how to use technology to solve problems 
  • Adds a multitude of visual aids to maths and science learning. 
  • Available in multiple languages
Cons
  • Not so suitable for very young students 
  • For students who struggle with using technology or aren’t independent, this tool can be a little clunky and difficult to use.

Things to consider before you become an online Tutor

Anyone who’s worked with students and technology before knows that anything and everything can go wrong, especially in your first lesson (often your trial/interview session), so make sure you’re prepared for any surprises before you begin. 
  • Make sure that you have a quiet workspace away from other house occupants and distractions (pets included) and inform everyone ahead of time of when you will be in session and to not disturb.  
  • Test out your software before: make sure your camera and microphone is allowed access to Zoom, Skype and Google Meets, nothing screams unprofessional and unprepared like a teacher who can’t get their technology to work. 
  • Test out your explanatory materials on someone else before you start, have a practice video call to make sure the quality is good enough and that your videos or listening activities are accessible and understandable. 
  • Make sure you use the feedback from your test-lesson to let your student know how the lesson will proceed - make sure their video and microphone works and that they’re familiar with the technology.

Become an online Tutor with Tutor Around - pay zero commission

​So now you know what skills you need to start out in the world of online tutoring you need to ask yourself ‘What is the best online tutoring company to work for?’ The answer, of course, is to find one that will represent your interests, one that doesn't charge you commission and offers more than just academic tutoring. Tutor Around offers teachers from all fields, backgrounds and experience levels the chance to work with clients from all over the world.

Whether you’re a business professional who can offer career coaching or recruitment advice, or a newly qualified special needs teacher who can work with disabled children online, the opportunities for a career as a freelance Tutor with Tutor Around are exciting and diverse. If you are a private Tutor providing home tuition, you will also find such tutoring opportunities on our platform. Learn more about why so many are turning to our company to find a Tutor.

Become an online Tutor and connect with Tutor Around students!

Tutor Around app is a commission-free platform and the app that is striving to be one of the best tutoring companies around to work with. If you’re interested in advertising your services as a Tutor we’d love to hear from you. Use our web version of the app to easily create your profile and demonstrate your abilities by uploading supporting documents, such as your Tutor resume, pricing, teaching certificates, recommendation letters and testimonials and more. Once you create your Tutor profile, Tutor Around will either approve it and it goes public, or they will ask you to adjust something. You must create a complete profile in order for Tutor Around to receive notification that it is ready for review.

Make sure to log into your account on your phone as well and it to your home screen. Since it is a progressive web app, you don’t have to worry about our app taking up important space on your phone, everything is done through a web browser. By adding the app icon to your phone homescreen, you will be able to receive notifications by potential students. You can also check with the web version and respond to those messages, but you won’t get push notifications alerting you of each new message. It is crucial that you respond quickly to those messages to not lose out on a potential tutoring opportunity, since students tend to message more than one Tutor at a time on our tutoring finding app.

Why become an online Tutor with Tutor Around

On our app and website, you are able to find online tutoring jobs and connect with students through Tutor Around, you can set your rates, availability and list your qualifications. As a freelance Tutor, your earning potential is unlimited. ​If you are a professional Tutor of America, UK, or elsewhere, consider becoming an Ambassador Tutor. Get the flag of approval. 
  • Free to join means that you can create your public profile and post your tutoring services at no cost
  • Many parents are hiring Tutors to provide academic tutoring
  • Students can view your profile and offer you a tutoring job 
  • Find Students nearby in your local community or online for more convenient tutoring sessions
  • Work with Students all over the world who are posting online tutoring jobs
  • Become an Ambassador Tutor and demonstrate to Students, Parents, School Administrators and Adult learners that you are highly qualified and experienced in your field of expertise
  • Get the most honest earnings for your session
  • Save on transportation time by finding students in your area or online
  • Easily and affordably self-promote your services, sharing your qualifications, certifications and subjects taught
  • As a member you can search the private Student job board to find students to tutor
  • Members can Ping Students to indicate their interest in a Tutor job posting
  • Without any additional costs, you can have a Student account as well when you select a membership ​

How to become an online Tutor in the UK or elsewhere

Ashleigh originally became an online Tutor in the UK. Now, she is a Milan-based Tutor of English and history specialised in IGCSE, A-Level and IB and undergraduate level studies. She also works with students looking to enter British boarding school, coaching them with entrance tests, UKISET & ISEB. She currently holds a 100% pass rate across all students looking to improve their marks by one or more grade boundaries or for entering the boarding school of their choice. Ashleigh can be found on our app for in-person and online English tutoring. This informative advice piece on how to become an online Tutor to pass on her knowledge to potential Tutors.