The easiest and most cost-effective thing you can do to promote your tutoring business is to set up a website. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of companies that can help you in this endeavor, and you can pay for pretty much anything from a few hundred pounds to several thousand, but doing it all yourself is preferable, from a cost point of view. obviously, but also because you’ll want to update it frequently to keep your audience interested.
Setting up a website can be complicated, and the necessary steps are outlined in this article. If setting it all up yourself seems too daunting, skip down to the ‘Easy Options’ section below.
domain names
You’ll need an address for people to type in when looking for you. The .com variants are the most popular, with the geographic options coming in second. Country code domains like .co.UK are useful in some respects, as although it might have a global reach, anyone wanting to secure their services would appreciate an indication of where in the world they are. You really can’t get on the internet today without bumping into companies that will register a domain for you left and right. Be sure to read the terms and conditions carefully and remember that price doesn’t always indicate value; Specifically, some of the companies that offer free domain registrations only do so to bind you to some kind of contract.
Accommodation
Once you’ve secured a domain name, you need a place to park it. This is known as hosting and will typically be expressed in terms of disk space and bandwidth. If you are looking for these things in the market, compare the available offers and choose one that fits your budget; neither will be very expensive. DreamHost and Black Chili offer popular packages for all budgets.
Make sure the company you choose performs well – search engines now penalize poor performing sites and visitors are likely to click ‘back’ if your site doesn’t load within a couple of seconds. Black Chili has been independently tested by LoadImpact, and results show that typical sites load 6x faster on their platform.
Email will be included in this setup, so once you’ve asked a company to host your domain for you, someone who wants to email you will be able to, although it takes a bit more work for a functional website. .
Design
This section is where the real work is, and there is more than enough material on website design to create books on this topic alone. From the point of view of a tutor in need of a website, there are several shortcuts available that will make building a website faster, easier and cheaper.
Not too long ago, if you wanted to build a website, you would need to master several types of code, HTML being the one you’ve probably heard of by now. Now, if you want to adopt our philosophy and learn to do everything yourself to become a complete professional, you could spend several months reading, experimenting, and in all likelihood eventually building a website you’re not satisfied with. anyway. Of course, you could be using that time more profitably and interestingly in tuition. Fortunately for all of us, there are many options available that will make it possible to design your website without learning any code.
the easy options
Content management systems, hereinafter referred to as CMS, have completely revolutionized the business of creating a website. Taking the company from professional design teams to being within the reach of anyone with a few hours to spare. That’s not to say you wouldn’t get a better result from a design studio, which you most likely would… but you’d also have to pay for that privilege. A CMS controlled website could be up and running in about an hour.
WordPress
As of this writing, WordPress powers about 50% of the sites you see on the internet, and it has several advantages:
It’s free
It is easy to install
It’s easy to customize, with FREE templates available
It’s easy to update, much like a word processing software package.
It is responsive so it will display well on mobile and tablet devices
It has plugins for any function you want
You may have noticed how often we mention that it’s easy because it really is easy. Once you’ve found an internet hosting company, they will almost certainly provide you with the means to install WordPress with a click of a button. You will be asked for basic configuration details, including usernames and passwords. Write them down somewhere, because 1) you’ll need them and 2) it would be a real shame if you were locked out of your own website!
Once you’ve installed WordPress, you’ll need a template. There are several built into the installer, most of which are harmless and ready to go. There are also template sites accessible through your favorite search engine that can provide you with templates tailored to your needs for minimal cost. For a little more they will install them for you too, although the process is far from difficult. Pretty much all you need in any case is a logo and some content. That logo could be anything right now: maybe a photo you’ve taken, a royalty-free image from the internet, or something custom. There are plenty of freelance sites where you can find someone to create a simple logo for you for the price of a cup of coffee.
Armed with some hosting, some WordPress, and a template, we’re onto the content. The basic ones will be:
Contact details.
A ‘Bio’ section, about you.
Details of registration services: levels and specialties.
This content will help your tutor’s website appear in search engine results, making it more likely that people looking for a tutor will find you, but for now, keep in mind that the more often update your site, the better from a search point of view. Updated website content shows the world that you are actively working on tuition, giving the impression of someone who is committed and passionate about your work.
Website Builders
One of the coolest recent innovations in the website space in recent years has been the rise of the onscreen website builder. Armed with little more than an account with a suitable hosting company and the software you use to browse the Internet, you can create your own website with just a few clicks. Companies like Wix and Black Chili offer their own variants of this system, and you’ll find a “how-to” video guide here, which will walk you through the entire process from start to finish. Using a web builder system, a complete website can be created in as little as 15 minutes!
professional directories
While WordPress and Web Builders have made building a high-quality website a realistic proposition for you, me, and anyone else with basic computer literacy, there’s an even easier option: redirection. With a handful of clicks, you can save all your website building tasks and continue teaching.
From within your hosting service, your domain name can be set to redirect to another site, so you can simply set it to do so. Once the redirect is enabled, anyone who clicks on http://www.yourwebsite.com could be redirected to social media or to their pages on one of the Internet’s specialized teaching platforms, like Tutorially™! Once you have registered, http://www.tutorially.co.uk/yourpage could show all your information to the world. This provides a very quick and easy means of displaying something informative and easy to navigate to your audience, and in the case of Tutorially™, your teaching specialties and availability will be displayed, and the ability is provided for students to book directly through Internet: a very attractive option!