Post: #1

I am trying to tutor Spanish on the side to supplement my income. I am in grad school and I know there are many people who study Spanish at the University level but simply never learn to actually communicate.

I want this to be a good side-hustle, but my market of university students are of course not really rolling in dough.

I am considering charging $10 an hour for my first few students, just to build up a reputation. Of course, these people are studying Spanish and are the perfect people to help me build a bit of a reputation via word-of-mouth.

I have thought that $10 is almost an insultingly low price to me, which undervalues my services. But I think that it could be worth it in the long run if I get a few loyal and satisfied students who pay me $10 for one hour a week and enjoy it, and they help me build my market, to where I am later charging something like $30+ or more an hour. Hopefully.

Post: #2

Hey man,

I think you should start higher. I did it for about six months and started at $20/hr and that even felt like too little once prep time was factored in. It will also be a challenge to raise prices down the road unless you plan to recruit new clients.

Have you looked on Craigslist, bulletin boards at the universities nearby, etc to see what the competition charges? Maybe you could undercut that by a few bucks.

PM me if you have any specific questions.

Post: #3

As someone who has at least looked up Spanish tutors in my area (to learn)...

If you offer a free intro class and make them feel like they're communicating with you in another language, that they learned something and will advance to further learning with more classes...

You can charge more than that.

See if you can get them to "create" in the new language. Maybe give them a subject to tell you about next time, offer a discount for it. That's where I stopped my Spanish learning, but I knew that was the point where you really commit to it.

Post: #4

I agree with Heavy. You are better off giving them a free class at the beginning to see if you are worth the money and they like working with you.

edit: remove quote

Post: #5

The stuff you'll learn with a free class will justify your higher expenses down the road. You can come up with new ways to deliver based on student needs that you didn't initially anticipate.

It might be a good idea to hand out surveys asking the students where their weak points are so you can figure out what to focus on.

A lot of tutors think that tutoring is just handing out printed copies of PDFs and going over how grammar in this language has similarities with English grammar (as a reference). If you're dealing with college students just trying to pass exams, that might be an angle to consider.

When the free classes are over you can charge for one on one tutoring.

Post: #6

I am not using any books, worksheets, anything like that.

I only started with my first student last week. She is studying Spanish at University, has plenty of books and grammar exercises, has a decent basic/intermediate level of Spanish, but just cannot really speak or communicate.

Considering it's college students, I do not think they want any more books, pdfs, worksheets or packets. They have gotten that since middle school and frankly it doesn't work. I plan on speaking with them and practicing verbally, watching videos, helping them talk out their issues, and giving them practical advice that they will have to commit to memory, since writing it down has failed for 10+ years in most cases.

My first student was eager to ask tons of questions, get clarifications on things, and work through songs.

She surprisingly told me she had NEVER translated a song from Spanish to English before. She had been told by teachers that this was BAD and so avoided it.

We translated two songs and she was able to understand most of it on her own, I was there helping her understand some slang, turns of phrase, and a few vocab words she didn't know. I helped her pronounce it, try to sing it, and told her to commit these two songs to memory for next week.

She liked it and agreed to $20. I am glad she enjoyed it and didn't expect a "class". It should be fun for us both and I hope I can get more clients through her if she enjoys it.