One of the most critical considerations if you’re going to charge a rate of $40-$55 an hour as a tutor is the marketing plan. How will you let everyone know about your great tutoring service? Well, let me show you.

Why do we market?
Simple answer to a simple question: We market so that people know about our business and use our services.

Who do we tutor?
The conventional target market for a tutoring service is the following: K-12 private and public school students. However, this is not the only market that needs tutoring. Do you have a large college population in your region? You may want to market your services to them as well.

What do we tutor?
You can tutor Math, Science, English, History, Foreign Language, Standardized Test Preparation, etc-anything and everything that a student could potentially need help in. There are a host of Standardized Tests aside from the ACT/SAT including: GMAT, GRE, LSAT, GED, TOEFL, AP, etc.

How do we Market to our Chosen Demographic?
Once you have pinpointed your target market, it’s time to consider how to reach that demographic. There are an assortment of marketing methods that you need to be aware of in considering how to reach your demographic. Here are four good mediums for marketing your service:

#1: Newspaper AD–Have a well-developed, professional banner ad in your local newspaper advertising your tutoring service. Run this ad on a consistent basis for 6 months to a year tracking how many customers have called you from looking at your newspaper ad.

#2: Direct Mailing–A direct mail-out is a fast and inexpensive way to reach your target audience. Call a direct mailing house to do a search for all homes with high school age students in your zip code. Then do a mail out. If it’s ACT/SAT time of the year, make ACT/SAT preparation your top priority in your mail out.

#3: Brochures–Leave professional brochures at your pediatrician’s office, dentist’s office, toy store, etc., anywhere and everywhere where moms and dads of school age children congregate. Of course, you must ask the owners of these facilities permission to leave the brochures before doing so.

#4: Give Speeches-PTA groups, Churches, and business groups always welcome guest speakers. Faculty in-service meetings are also a good place to give a guest lecture.

I hope this has been a helpful article on how to market yourself as a professional $40-$55 an hour tutor. Good luck!

Robert Weigel tutored on the side for $40 to $55 an hour during the recession. He was overloaded with requests for tutoring so that he had to hire tutors to work for him. Eventually, his tutoring-on-the-side became a $100,000 part-time business.

He is the author of How to Tutor for Cash Ebook which is available at

Blogs are first intended as means of expressing one’s thoughts and opinions. Then, they gradually became a tool for publicity for celebrity and paparazzi. Later, blogs were picked up by the business world and used as a tool to promote their sites, create more online presence, and expand their businesses. From simple web pages, blogs have become an important online marketing instrument that can benefit both small and large businesses. Here are the benefits of blogging in online marketing:

Brand Building
A marketing blog builds your brand as easy as making one post per day. Blogs help you to generate not only online presence, but also brand recall, making it possible for your business to become known to whoever has access to the internet.

SEM or Search Engine Marketing
Blogging is a great way to generate organic traffic and a great way to directly communicate with your clients, but more importantly, if you are running a marketing campaign, it helps you generate traffic.

Inexpensive
Blogs are generally very cheap compared to other online marketing campaigns. You can just hire one blogger who will maintain one or many blog sites as well as update contents daily. Or, you can simply write one blog per day about your business and it will easily build online presence and reputation. And as long as blogs stay live, your content is valid and can be picked up for many years to come.

Accessibility
Users do not need to sign up to view your site. They can open, read, write comments, and get information easily without the time consuming process that is more common with other marketing tools like online forums.

Direct link to customers
Other forms of marketing tools do not quite match the power of blogs. Because your clients can post comments in blogs anytime, businesses can get instant feedback and can send messages back to the clients to provide answers to their queries. This makes the business more connected to the customers, providing a sense of personalized service.

Reputation building
Image is crucial to any brand. Any problem of your company or complaint raised by customers can be damaging to your business. If not addressed as quickly as possible, your reputation will suffer. Blogging helps your clients to discuss these issues directly to the business. You can then send replies to your clients addressing these issues right away, protecting the business from any damage that may result from any unresolved or unaddressed concerns.

Building an online business is like constructing a building: the deeper the foundation is, the higher it will go. Forget about laying down the right foundation and you practically have a business that is doomed to fail. But by implementing a solid internet marketing foundation, you dramatically increase your chances of success.

Planning
Every online business starts with a plan and planning happens even before you think about what your domain is and what your website should look like. Plan every aspect of your business from structure to launch, growth and direction. In real life, it makes it easier for you to get somewhere if you know where you are going. The same is true in internet marketing. Think about your online marketing strategies. Map out all the directions you want to lead. Your internet marketing plan should already be set up even if you don’t have a website.

Goal Setting
What’s the use of the future if you don’t have any plan for it? What’s the use of different internet marketing strategies you have laid down if you don’t know where it will lead you? Every successful internet marketer knows how important a goal is. It sets your direction, it gives you motivation, and it helps you to push yourself higher. Goals do not always have to be long-term. Break down your goals into short-, mid- and long-term. Once you have set your goals, accomplish them religiously, every day, every week, and every month. Set your goals straight and apply methods that will help you achieve your goals.

Business Plan
Every successful online business (or business in general for that matter) has a winning business plan. If you plan to earn a living from the internet, you should have certain products to sell or services to offer. You should also know how you can earn from them through your business models. This sounds simple enough and it is, with a little research and effort.

Traffic
What’s the use of a great website if nobody knows it exists? Your internet marketing strategies should be able to answer this concern. Traffic generation is the most important aspect in doing online business. Without it, it’s like saying you have built a business in the middle of nowhere. Resources about different techniques to promote and advertise your online business are abundantly available online. These include things like article marketing, SEO optimization, and blogging just to name a few. You should be able to utilize these resources competently and efficiently.

If you have the budget for it, you can make use of paid internet marketing techniques to promote and sell your e-book. These will cost you money but they are worth it and you’ll get your investments back provided that you utilize them properly. However, making use of paid methods is a double-edged sword. If you get positive results, then good. But if you get negative results, this could mean losses in your business. But don’t worry because negative results are often the product of sloppy and rushed techniques. If you follow the rules and implement the techniques properly, there is no reason why you shouldn’t get positive results from your efforts.

Here are some of the most common ways on how to sell an e-book using paid internet marketing methods:
1. Pay per click advertising or PPC. The most glaring advantage of this method over the others is that you only pay for your ads when somebody actually clicks on them. This means you don’t have to pay a single cent if nobody clicks on your ads. There are dozens of advertising programs out there that offer PPC services. The most popular of these is Google’s AdSense program. AdSense is the largest PPC service provider out there so it’s probably best that you start with it in promoting your e-book. But before you create your ads, you should research your keywords first. Placing the right keywords into your ads will ensure that your ads appear on relevant sites.

2. Banner advertising. You can in fact create a banner ad using PPC. However, there are advertising companies that specifically offer banner ad services. This internet marketing method is often more expensive because the ads take up more space not to mention the fact that it’s harder to design them. Make sure that your banner ads look enticing enough for people to click on them.

3. Direct advertising. This involves advertising on other websites and blogs without the help of a third party ad provider. You directly contact website owners and bloggers and ask them if you can buy advertising space on their sites. This can be very effective if your e-book belongs to a very specific niche. All you need to do is find the top sites in your niche and work to get your e-book advertised on them.

4. Buy links from websites whose topics are relevant to your book. This is very similar to direct advertising. But instead of buying ad space, you buy a link. The site may have a “recommended links” section or a “blogroll”. Have your website included in these sections by buying a link spot for it.

5. List your eBook in paid online classified ads. These classified ads providers can be in the form of directories, job listings, or PR sites. A lot of online users these days utilize these directories to search for products online. That said, if your e-book is in the listings, there’s a good chance your potential customers will be able to find it.