My schedule this month has been all over the place, some days overly busy, some days just 1 or 2 classes. 

Last week I had a surprising day of long lost students returning, one from back in June and one from July. They had various reasons but are back now, that was a nice surprise.

Last month I lowered my prices because I really wasn’t getting enough new students to make up for the students moving on. During a Preply training an experienced tutor described the “proper” way to increase your prices. Because the algorithm doesn’t like big price changes they suggested that you should raise your price $1 a day until you don’t get new trail lessons. So I have been doing that, not every day, but every week I make the call to bump the price or not. Seems like a good strategy.

The original students that signed up at my very low initial price are almost all gone now, only 2 left. I don’t chase after those students and let them drop out gracefully. I should probably raise the rates on those last 2 but…nah.

Preply has a special badge called Super Tutor, I have had that badge since my second month of teaching there, however, they will be raising the bar on the requirements in January and I don’t know if I will qualify then. Sad to lose it, but nobody ever noticed the badge anyway. The reason I want the badge is that, supposedly, corporate students (people whose company pays for the lessons) only see tutors with that badge when searching. 

Why will I not qualify for the badge anymore?….well, they track several metrics like missing lessons, cancelling or rescheduling trial lessons, average rating review and the troublesome one for me…the percentage of subscriptions after the trial lesson. This metric you really don’t have much control over, anyone can book a trial, some students just want one lesson for test prep or whatever, you can’t cancel the trial because that would mess up your other stats. My conversion rate was about 70% when my prices were low, but I’m only about 55% with the higher rates. In January the required rate will go to 60%.

Anyway, that’s my update for October. The classes I have now are easy for me to teach without prep, the format is flexible and enjoyed by the students (so they say),  and I have extra resources I can easily link to if they want extra work, homework or more practice.

Preply has been a great stepping stone to building up my own business eventually. I’m still paying my dues and learning how things should be done. On an average month I’m actually covering my meager expenses (mostly because of the low cost of living here). For the future, I need to find more lucrative ways to spend my hours, but for now, Preply gets 3.5/5 stars.

Still paying my dues