How to Start an Online Tutoring Business with WordPress

If you are planning to take your tutoring business online, this is the right time. The elearning market is expected to show a CAGR of more than 14% by 2032. WordPress is especially suitable for the educational needs, both personal tutoring practices as well as big institutions, schools, and even universities.

With a robust support system of WordPress and its Plugins, starting an online tutoring business is easy-breezy. It’s because the platform is powerful, scalable, and secure – all the things you need for a tutoring business model. So choosing WordPress is a smart thing to do for educators and tutoring companies.

In today’s article, we’re talking in particular about building an education business in WordPress, meaning, we’ll explain WordPress solutions for coaches, business tutor, and various instructors who want to share their experience online – and monetize it successfully.

With the right design and WordPress education plugins, you can easily transform your website into an online tutoring agency for your students or simply sell learning materials.

To get you started, you need to understand what learning style is best for you. Are you capable of creating various learning materials, docs, media files, links and organizing them into a step-by-step academia? Do you simply want to have a one-on-one with a student a few times a week? Are you looking to host webinars on your brand website? 

Based on your answers, you can choose the WordPress plugin that will support in starting a tutoring business online and utilize your expertise to earn money.

Suppose you have already chosen the right tutoring or school WordPress theme design, let’s move on to the solutions that will help you choose how to start an online tutoring business with WordPress.

1. Full-Scale LMS (Learning Management System)

A WordPress LMS plugin, just as full-scale courses creation, can be a great fit for teachers with a variety of styles. Especially for those wanting to set a course content, assessments, and student progress in a step-by-step manner.

Students then can work through the material at their own pace, revisiting sections as needed, which is ideal to self-directed learners.

LMS offers a range of built-in tools for quizzes, assignments, and feedback, which is great for assessment. From the business point of view, this is a great way to create a passive income since you can set the course just once – and sell it multiple times to many students, without a need to control every student manually. Also note that usually big courses are created by a team of teachers.

Key Possibilities:

• Simple WordPress class registration.
• Course creation and enrollment.
• Quizzes, assignments, and graded assessments.
• Progress tracking and reporting.
• Discussion forums and student communities.

Best LMS Plugins for Tutoring Business

LearnDash: Create, manage, and sell your online courses efficiently by starting a tutoring company on LearnDash. It provides multiple ways of monetization like course subscription, memberships, single time sell etc. It also comes with hosting, backup, and security solutions. Thus, it’s a complete tutoring business solution.

LifterLMS: Create an interactive home tutor website using the LifterLMS tool. You can easily create courses and sections using multimedia content. It provides reporting features, quizzes, drip content, payment gateway integration, and an online forum for discussion.

Tutor LMS: If you are setting up a tutoring business then TutorLMS is a great companion. Create an engaging course with a multi-tutor feature. You can even share revenue internally using this tool. It also integrates with multiple third party tools like Google Classroom and Meet.

Pro tip: Many tools also offer gamification features that you must explore. Overall, it helps give a boost to students with badges and achievements.

Best LMS plugins: LearnDash, LifterLMS, Tutor LMS.

Pro tip: Explore gamification features to boost student engagement.

2. Personalized Scheduling for Tutoring Business Using Booking Plugins

Appointment scheduling WordPress plugins offer a great list of benefits for online tutoring businesses that want to provide online consultations or lessons at specific times.

By simply putting an automated booking form to the website, a tutor can enable clients to easily schedule the needed lesson at the available time.

This is a great way for parenting coaches, health specialists, therapists, legal consultants, yoga teachers and other experts to provide online tutoring services of various types. In the LMS approach, you create varied learning materials and courses. Thus, you create it once and sell it to multiple people.

On the other hand, with a Booking Plugin solution for tutoring companies online, you dedicate a fixed time to each group or individual. If your online business for tutoring requires a personalized approach, opt for this solution.

Key Possibilities: 

• Create separate slots for individual and group booking sessions.
• Allot different tutors for each small group or individual for simultaneous sessions.
• Customize your available time for each day with an integrated calendar.
• Utilize the automated reminders and confirmation for easy booking management.
• Choose a Booking Plugin that integrates with video conferencing apps like Google Meet and Zoom.

How BookingPress Helps Top Tutoring Companies

BookingPress is a complete appointment booking solution for service businesses and beyond. Using this tool, you can build a perfect home tutor website wherein students book your time slots. This helps in avoiding too many students at the same time while you can focus properly on each one at ease. Here are some of the useful BookingPress features for a tutoring business online.

• A coaching class can create various groups of services and add a minimum and maximum capacity for it at a specific time. Thus, students can see your class timings, duration, and no. of seats left. Based on that, they can book an online class with you.
• You can even set up a recurring session if you are running a specific course module.
• If you are a private tutor or coach, allow students to book a one to one slot with you using your booking calendar. You can keep a buffer time before and after each private session to take a breather.
• Create workshops and events on the booking platform and receive bookings of interested people.
• If you are a team of teachers working on establishing a tutoring business, you can add everyone as staff members. Specify subjects or expertise of each by assigning services. Thus, simultaneously, the entire team can be engaged in taking tutoring sessions.

Example of a Booking Type Online Tutoring Solution

Checkout the tutoring website of Wyzant Tutoring Company. It is a group of multiple private tutors. You just have to choose your preferred subject, a preferred tutor, share your learning goals, and book their slot! That’s how easy and powerful a booking solution is for starting a tutoring company. Wyzant tutoring is a great example to observe and follow.

Bonus: Integrate video conferencing tools like Zoom or Google Meet for online sessions directly within your booking system.

3. Tutoring Business Model Using Membership Community with Online Courses

If you are working on a long term vision where you want to retain students and create a community, opt for a membership style of tutoring business. It helps you create a loyal student community that offers recurring revenue streams.

Herein, you can use membership WordPress plugins to create multiple levels or tiered memberships. It will act as separate groups with different goals. You can provide content based on each level’s requirement and run a course by using a step-by-step custom drip feature.

Such plugins make it easy to provide exclusive course materials, live sessions, or downloadable resources for members only. Things that will simplify your life as a tutor include automated tasks like enrollment, access control, and subscription management.

As for business benefits, it’s a great chance for tutors to convert one-time students into loyal members who pay recurring fees. What’s more, you’ll be able to easily accommodate a growing student base but with almost no administrative overhead.

Key Possibilities:

• Tiered memberships to provide exclusive study material and content to explore.
• Provide online workbooks, worksheets, solution material, or other resources that support students in learning.
• Course delivery with drip-feed scheduling and content protection.
• Discussion forums, live chats, and member directories.
• Tracking membership trends and student behavior to improve your offerings and pricing strategies.
• Gamification of membership to provide badges on certain achievements.
• Allow internal community discussion, private messaging, posting, etc.

How ARMember Helps Establish a Business Tutor Website

ARMember is an all rounder membership site solution with a feature to create online courses, digital downloads, and social community. Here is what you can accomplish using ARMember for tutoring business.

• Create multiple tiers of memberships to cater to different students. For instance, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced group or standard wise membership levels like Middle School, Highschool, Freshman, Sophomore.
• Sell individual posts like special reports, question papers, answer keys, or project material. This helps attract the students who want access to only a specific content. It supports diversification.
• Create a self paced or time specific online course using the online course addon. Using this, you can create multiple chapters, sections, add audio, video, or images. Eventually, you can sell a single course again and again to different students for additional income.
• Build a social community and allow internal discussion among your member students. Additionally, also allow private messaging, likes, comments, and posts for an interactive business for online tutoring.
• The myCred gamification addon helps you establish badges and achievements to motivate students to complete various tasks and courses.

Go further: Offer additional benefits like downloadable resources, community events, and exclusive discounts for members.

4. Simple Information Page and Video Conferencing

If you are looking to simply build your tutor or coach brand online and offer a few basic contact or other interaction options, you can create a concise information page about your educational services, target audience, and qualifications. WordPress itself is good enough to achieve this goal.

When maintaining your WordPress tutoring website, you’ll need to respond to student inquiries and messages from potential students, attract new students by making your educational services easily discoverable online, for example, with SEO.

By integrating various plugins, you can also host webinars and conferences right on your website.

Key Possibilities:

• Clear overview of your teaching services and expertise.
• Easy integration with video conferencing tools like Zoom or Google Meet.
• Contact forms or scheduling options for inquiries.
• Acts as a perfect online informational page of your offline tuition classes.

Tools to Use: You can leverage video conferencing tools like Google Meet and Zoom for taking online sessions. Further, you can use ARForms to create a signup or event registration form. Based on the entries received, you can sort them out and take different online or offline classes. It is also a great tool for student surveys and taking online quizzes.

Best plugins: Zoom Video Conferencing, ARForms.

Pro tip: Optimize your page for search engines to attract potential students.

5. E-commerce WordPress Website with Educational Materials

If you want to create expertise and authority through valuable content and sell digital products on your own tutoring website, it’s easy to do so with some content marketing and an e-commerce plugin. 

You can write high-quality blog posts, video tutorials, or create downloadable resources related to your tutoring subjects. You can also offer paid in-depth content, exclusive tutorials, or personalized study guides accessible through a paid subscription or one-time purchase. It’s all about creating a tutoring business around a shop and selling both digital and printed educational materials.

Key Possibilities:

• Paid in-depth content, exclusive tutorials, or personalized study guides.
• Audio or Video guides for specific topics or lessons that are rare.
• Manage a shop front with multiple products and study materials to sell.

E-commerce Plugins: WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads

Note: This approach requires consistent content creation and audience engagement.

Tailor Online Tutoring Business to Your Teaching Approach

Choosing the best method for an online tutoring business on WordPress depends on your teaching style and student needs. Do you prefer a structured LMS experience? Or a more personalized, one-on-one approach via appointment scheduling? Do you want to sell e-books?

Based on what model is comfortable to you, you can choose a set of tools that support your idea of creating a tutoring company. You can even work on multiple modules at a time. For instance, membership and booking solutions. Your regular group of students can be your members for added advantage. Thus, creating a tutoring business has a huge potential with multiple options that you can begin with today!

Related articles on our blog:

• 600+ Unique Business Name Ideas for Every Industry
• 10 Free WordPress Plugins for Membership Sites
• 5 Best WordPress Newsletter Plugins For 2024