Ordered roughly by how fast they work and how much they cost you. The last section is the one most tutors need most, because it is where the time goes.
1. Marketplace profiles
The fastest route to a first booking, because the demand already exists and you are only competing for it.
What decides whether you get chosen, in order:
- A specific speciality. "English" competes with thousands. "English for nurses preparing for OET" competes with almost nobody and attracts someone with a deadline.
- An introduction video that shows you teaching. Explain something small. Most videos are self-introductions and are interchangeable; a video where you actually teach for forty seconds is not.
- Reviews. The hard part at the start, which is why an introductory rate with a deadline on it is a reasonable opening move.
- Availability that matches your students. More on this below, because it is underrated.
- Reply speed. On most platforms this affects ranking as well as conversion.
The cost is commission, between 15% and 33% depending on the platform and, on some, on how many hours you have taught there.
2. Referrals from students you already have
The cheapest students you will ever get, and almost nobody asks.
Ask at a moment of visible progress rather than at random: after a passed exam, a successful interview, a lesson that obviously went well. "If you know anyone else preparing for this, I have two slots on Tuesdays" is enough. A specific slot converts far better than a general offer.
Some platforms pay you more for students you bring. Wyzant, for instance, states that a tutor who refers a new student receives 100% of their rate for that student with no fee deducted. Worth knowing which side of that line your students fall on.
3. Being findable for one specific thing
Pick a search someone types when they have a problem you solve, and be the obvious answer to it. Not "Spanish tutor" but "Spanish for a wedding in Seville", "statistics help for a psychology dissertation", "German for an Austrian residency interview".
This is slower than a marketplace profile and compounds. It also justifies a higher rate, because there is no comparison shopping when there are three people offering it.
4. Communities where your students already are
Subreddits, Discord servers, forums, local groups for the exam or profession you serve.
The rule that makes this work is that you have to be useful there for months before you mention that you teach. Answer questions properly, with no link. People will find your profile. Arriving with an advertisement gets you removed and deservedly so.
5. A page you control
Your own site or a link-in-bio page matters less for discovery than tutors think and more for conversion than they expect. Somebody who heard about you needs somewhere to check you are real.
Keep it to: what you teach, who for, what a lesson is like, proof, and one way to book.
6. Paid ads
Only once you know your numbers, and rarely before. You need to know what a student is worth over their lifetime with you before you can know what one is worth acquiring, and most tutors do not. Ads spend money fastest of everything on this list and are the only item that can lose you money outright.
What mostly does not work
Posting general tips on social media. Enormous time, very few students. The audience for "5 phrasal verbs" is other tutors and people who enjoy language content, not people ready to pay for lessons.
Being cheap. Attracts price-sensitive students who leave when you raise your rate, and it caps you at a rate you then cannot escape.
Waiting to be discovered on a marketplace with a thin profile. The profile is the work.
Breadth. "I teach all levels, all ages, all subjects" reads as nobody's specialist and loses to a narrower profile every time.
The thing that beats all of it
Keeping the students you have.
A student who stays six months is worth many times one who takes a trial and disappears, and after the first lesson they cost you no acquisition effort at all. Retention comes from a visible plan, correcting usefully, a consistent weekly slot, and sending something after the lesson.
The second-biggest lever is utilisation: matching your availability to the hours your students can actually take lessons, which for most online tutors means somebody else's evening. Going from half your slots booked to three quarters is a 50% pay rise on the same rate and the same students.
Most tutors spend their attention on acquisition and almost none on these two, which is the wrong way round.