Online Tutoring

Professional Writing Help via Email and the Web

Clearly, many of my writing lessons require in-person meetings for full efficacy. It is difficult to work on long-term skill-building without face-to-face contact. Students usually learn better through direct contact that allows them and their teachers to ask questions, interpret body language, and follow up with each other over a period of time.

That said, there are certain projects that definitely lend themselves to eTutoring: short term and single assignments, and simple editing/feedback. For these types of assignments, I can act in the clients’ long-term best interests, provide good value, and help my clients succeed over the web.

Recently, while in New Orleans, I have served clients from New York City and Connecticut via email in the following two areas:

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Starting a Tutoring Business

I’ve recently moved to New Orleans and started up a new tutoring business. It certainly helps that I did some tutoring in New York, though it has been a challenge to build a viable client base and business model without much of a social network. Add to that the current economy, and one would think I must be crazy to even think of this!

All of that said, Harrington Writing Professionals has been a success. Briefly, I am going to offer some tips to people who are looking to start their own tutoring businesses:

1. Choose a niche and know it. I am a writer. That’s my training. That’s what I am good at. I don’t tutor math or other subjects that I am less than 100% comfortable in. A niche helps a tutor to build a good reputation. I will branch out some for younger clients, but I want to deliver a stellar product. If someone asks me to tutor their child in Trig, I won’t do it even if I did reasonably well in Trig because that’s not my thing.

2. Advertise locally. Most of my clients come from posters that I have put up at universities and businesses in my target areas. It takes hours of touring campuses and main strips to get any payoff from the gruntwork, but it really is worth it in the long run. Read the rest of this entry »

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