Did you know private tutoring is unregulated?
It’s good news if you have a specific skill and a knack for putting information across in a way people can understand and appreciate, because it means you can turn your skills into hard cash.
You might be an excellent cook, or be able to bake bread, biccies and cakes to perfection. Lay a tarmac drive, maintain bicycles, take cuttings from plants, grow veg, play bowling or paint watercolours, design a website, tile a bathroom or fit kitchen units. Teach English as a foreign language, play guitar, identify British butterflies, knit, make rag rugs or sew gorgeous clothes.
You name it. Whatever your skill, it might be in demand locally and you can earn as much as £30 per hour passing on your knowledge and expertise.
Home tutoring – going it alone
You can offer your services independently. It’s the simplest and quickest option. Try placing posters, fliers or postcards in local shops, pubs, cafes, surgeries and libraries. You’ll need to lay out some cash on printing, but online digital print technology means you can design your own card, get it printed and delivered for very little.
You can also do door-drops of postcards or fliers around the streets where likely customers live, delivering them by hand.
It’s good to ask around friends, family, acquaintances and neighbours too, so they can help spread the word for you. And you can also advertise for nothing on free classifieds sites like Friday Ad and Gumtree.
Home tutoring via an agency
There are plenty of good home tutoring websites, including hometutors.org.uk and fleet-tutors.co.uk. To register you usually need a degree in the subject you want to teach. Because they take a cut, you tend to earn less. On the plus side they find customers for you, which saves you time and hassle advertising and marketing your own services.
Pay your tax!
Save a third of your income to pay income tax. Keep a basic spreadsheet of incomings and outgoings. And find a good value accountant who’ll fill in your Self Assessment Tax Return for you. Mine costs me about £150 a year, a bargain considering I can’t make head nor tail of the forms!
(Thanks to http://www.sxc.hu/profile/iprole for the fab image!)
Unregulated is not a good thing.
Why don’t you campaign for regulation of some sort?