Demand for academic tutors is increasing, and not just for school students, but for higher education students too. In many countries, however, there aren’t enough tutors to meet demand. If you believe you would like to help students be successful at school, college or University, you might like to consider becoming a tutor. It is satisfying and can give a good rate of earning.

You need not have formal teaching qualifications to work as a private academic tutor. In fact, there are no formal requirements to be a tutor – so there's no costly course or degree to do before you can start working. All you need is a good understanding of a subject and a desire to help students. You could start looking for work tomorrow if you wanted. Tutoring could be ideal for stay-at-home mums or dads, college students, retirees, part-time workers, and even full-time workers; anyone with a few hours a week to spare.

The most evident benefit of tutoring is to earn some extra money. Tutoring can be a great way of paying for an annual holiday, getting cash together for significant purchases, paying off a credit card, financing investments, or supplementing retirement income. Tutoring generally pays more per hour than many other types of casual work, and can be as financially rewarding as any part-time job, but with much more flexibility. You may even find you are able to work full-time as a tutor. Tutoring also tends to be very personally enjoyable too.

Tutoring is one of very few businesses with almost no set-up costs. All you need is some time to spend on securing your first clients (word-of-mouth referrals tend to create the rest of your business), a small amount of expenditure on stationery and similar things, and that’s about it. You can even work from home.

However, like with any business, it is a good idea to learn from others before getting started. It is possible to waste money and time when you start as a private academic tutor. You shouldn’t have to spend very much at all to get started in the business, and if you are selective about how you advertise, you shouldn’t have to spend too long advertising either. Some frequent mistakes made by novice tutors include: advertising in the wrong places; spending too much on advertising; advertising at the wrong times; and getting your rates wrong.

Even though most people would not know how to get started as a tutor, there is helpful advice on how to get started. In an effort to encourage more people into tutoring, for example, I have condensed my family’s 50 years’ tutoring experience into a practical and helpful guide for anyone wanting to tutor any subject at any level: You Can Tutor: A Guide to Getting Started as a Private Academic Tutor, published by Lulu Press, Inc., and available for purchase for just US$21.95 for a paperback copy or US$10.95 for an instantly downloadable e-book. This book began as a set of notes for the assistance of a teacher friend wanting to become a private academic tutor, and grew into a book.

This book shows you everything you need to know to get started as a private academic tutor. If you follow the principles in this book, the information should, in a short time, give you a return for you many times over the cost of this book. Information included in the book includes: how to maximise your earnings; sensible ways to advertise without spending much; ways to maximise returns from your advertising dollar; ways to make your working life more enjoyable; and more.

I encourage you to think about doing some private academic tutoring. I think you will find that it's an enjoyable and profitable enterprise.