If you are reading this article, you are likely looking for ideas for your ESL tutoring business. If you are self-employed or wondering how you can get started in making yourself profitable as an ESL tutor, hopefully you can get some simple (and low budget) ideas here.

I have been a self-employed academic and ESL tutor for over 10 years. I love the freedom that being self-employed allows. I have a 2-year-old daughter and tutoring allows me to schedule clients around taking care of her. As an ESL tutor, you have the chance to set your own schedule and priorities. If you live in an area where there are a lot of international students, you should not have much trouble finding your place in the marketplace.

Of course, if you are considering being an ESL tutor, I am assuming that you are qualified. Mostly, this means that you speak English—usually a native speaker for the big bucks. You should have a good grasp of grammar and pronunciation. There are thousands of resources that you can buy or even get for free online to help you with your lesson plan ideas, etc, so experience as a teacher of some kind is not absolutely necessary, but always helpful. In some situations you may need a TOEFL certificate or similar, but for private ESL tutoring, being available and willing to learn is really all you need.

One idea to begin marketing yourself is to make up some inexpensive business cards (use Vista Print or even design your own) and find places where international students hang out. Pass out cards, put up some posters, and see if you can get a couple of clients this way. This seriously works. When I wanted to build up a client base in my town I did this very thing. Within a day I had two people interested. From them, word began to spread by word of mouth and within a year I was able to quit my other job and work as a tutor. This is in a town that is saturated with English language schools and tutoring organizations.

Do your research, of course. Find out what the average tutoring rate is, what your competition is, etc. Some people also find success advertising in other ways. In the article, “Teaching ESL to Adults: Advertising and Growing an ESL Tutoring Business” , by Debra Garcia, she mentions that she only advertises on craisglist.org when she needs a new student. If you want to take out an ad in the local paper or business directories, those are also options you can use. However, I found that getting clients the low budget way is just as effective as paying. Remember, students needing ESL tutoring may not have the ability to research local papers the same way a native speaker would.

Hopefully this gives you a few ideas to start with when trying to build your own ESL tutoring business. You can get more ideas from the above mentioned Debra Garcia from her blog “Teaching ESL to Adults” at http://www.esl-tutor.com . Good luck!

Technorati Tags: esl tutoring

3 Responses to “How to Make Your ESL Tutoring Business Grow”