How to Set Up a Tutoring Service

A Student Edge member explains how they got their side-hustle off the ground.

I am a first-year university student studying K-12 education with a mathematics major, and to get here I had to move away for study.

This meant I had a few extra costs to cover compared to those who still lived at home. I needed money. And that’s where my little side-hustle came in.

It was a matter of deciding what my interests and skills were to decide what my side-hustle was to be. If you are creative, you could set up an Etsy store, or sell handmade items at a local market. If you love cooking, bake some yummy treats and sell them at a market!

I knew I wanted to do something with youth, as I want to be a teacher, but I wasn’t particularly excited about the thought of babysitting. That’s when I decided on tutoring.

Of course, tutoring isn’t for everyone, but there are plenty of different subjects you can specialise in.

For instance, though I tutor mathematics from kindergarten to year twelve, you could tutor any subject taught at school; even musical instruments or visual arts, if that is more your style.

You can charge anything from around $20 all the way up to about $80 per hour for tutoring, depending on your location and experience. I personally charge $30, as I went into this having no experience, but next year I will increase my prices slightly.

There was very little organising to do in setting up my side-hustle. I simply put an advertisement on Gumtree and waited for people to contact me. Of course, there are other means of advertising, such as on social media, with posters or by contacting schools and requesting they advertise your services.

It was about a month before I had a potential student contact me about tutoring. I agreed to meet them in a café to discuss my services and hopefully get my first job out of it. (Note: Always meet up in a public location first, if you don’t know the person you are tutoring! Sadly, you cannot automatically trust everyone.)

Within a month of being contacted by that first student, I had a total of four students to tutor. This was better than I had ever hoped!

Eventually, I was contacted by a tutoring business and I am still employed by them, and have been for the past three months.

For my high school students, all I do is turn up with my thinking cap on and go through their textbook with them, assisting them with questions. I do a little bit more planning for my primary school student, skim-reading the syllabus and finding worksheets online that relate to their topics.

I love tutoring so much. It is so rewarding, in that you can see that gleam in a student’s eye when they finally understand something they didn’t before. So, if you're old enough and have the inclination, stop just thinking about it; go and start up your own side-hustle! If your experience is anything like mine, you won’t regret it!

Congratulations to Molly for winning this week's writing challenge: How to Set Up a Side-Hustle for Some Extra Cash. Molly wins a $50 Westfield gift card for her submission. For your chance to win, check out our latest writing challenges in our Competitions section. Also, be sure to follow this guide on how to win the writing challenge!

Photo: iStock.com/Eva-Katalin