WyzAnt, an in-home tutoring service, creates an inflated system of pay by taking 40% of their tutors' income, which means you, as a tutor, would have to increase how much you charge your clients to get a decent pay, discouraging potential clients for the tutors.
For example, if you set your hourly rate as $25/hr for your tutoring services, you end up making $15 an hour because you keep only 60% of what you make after a tutoring session. WyzAnt collects 40% which is $10/hr!!! You are better off advertising your services locally or through Craigslist. With this system they have implemented, you would have to increase the $25/hr to $35/hr to receive a fair pay, which in turn clients are reluctant to pay.
You would have to work at least 20 hours in order to increase this percentage, which would only rise to 65% of what you get to keep. To be paid 80% of your hourly rate, you would have to work 400 hours with this company, which is near impossible since the amount of tutoring inquiries is very low per tutor.
Advertise locally and not with WyzAnt. As an indepedent tutor, you could charge your clients more affordable rates and not have some company hike your hourly rate, so that you can receive a decent pay. Merely charge $20/hr and not worry about WyzAnt stealing nearly half your income!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thanks for this. I've been looking for a job in the US and WyzAnt has lots of ads up on all the boards. I'm always suspicious of a company that has the same ten ads in every major city.
ReplyDeleteGlad you found it helpful. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteHi Carter,
ReplyDeleteI work for WyzAnt and wanted to respond to your blog post. Tutors select their own hourly rate and WyzAnt pays tutors 60-80% of this depending on experience, as you note. We also give students discounts of 5-20% for bulk lesson purchases. Of the remaining portion of the hourly rate, we devote significant resources to marketing and to running the site and services.
For more information, please review some feedback from students and tutors in your area: http://www.wyzant.com/Testimonials.aspx
You are a complete rip off! 40%! Are you insane? For what? Paying people to read every e-mail just in case a tutor is "cheating" you out of HIS/HER money? Very disappointed with your company. It should not exist!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI am a tutor for WyzAnt and find the pay scale to actually be fair for the service provided. Consider that the company has to pay programmers for the site, all the costs of running the site, people to manage the site, and the biggest advantage: they can accept credit cards--people can't pay that way on Craigslist. Credit cards take 3-6% of the money themselves (there are the REAL greedy culprits!!), then add in that most clients buy packages of hours to get the discount, and you can see why the pay does actually need to be set this way. Why should tutors that have only tutored a few hours for a company get the same rate as someone that has put in more time? I know of no company that would pay a new employee the same rate as one that had put in years with them.
ReplyDeleteI'll continue to tutor for them and hope others will continue to do so as well. Thank you.
Another option is www.LessonsinYourHome.com. They have the instructor pay a flat rate and then the instructor can earn as much as they want. Plus - I got a dedicated URL there and can promote myself all over the web. I put my URL all over Craigs and I got a ton of responses because I looked legit. They don't take over billing etc. Your students remain your own. I like the fact that the site isnt clogged up with freeloaders who barely teach. Works for me.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is that, like with airlines, most customers are price sensitive.
ReplyDeleteIt's just like more people will jump at a $99 fare with Spirit than pay $149 for a carrier with a more extensive and hence more costly network like Continental or American. Continental will snobbishly say they don't intend to compete with the likes of Southwest and Jetblue, but de facto they do.
Likewise, many tutoring customers will compare Craigslist and agency rates, and ask the agency tutor to beat them. But an agency offers better customer service and a more efficient payment system!, we tutors argue, until we're blue in the face. Too bad, the customer replies. I can't afford more than x dollars per lesson. But I'm a content expert! we tutors wail. But I don't care, says the customer. The high school or college kid down the street will do it for half your price.
I've been tutoring with Wyzant long enough to be at their 75% level (between 200-400 hours). This means that when a new student pays enough in advance to receive a 20% discount, I get about 94% of the funds (75/80) and Wyzant gets about 6% (5/80) for doing all the advertising and taking care of most billing issues.
ReplyDeleteWhen I do reach the 400-hour, 80% level, a student that makes an advance purchase and receives a 20% discount will be sending ALL their money to me, and Wyzant won't get a dime--although they will hold the prepayment.
It can be true, depending on the time of the year and probably depending on where you live, that "the amount of tutoring inquiries is very low per tutor," but if you're a good tutor at a reasonable price with an interesting profile then a significant percentage of those inquiries will lead to actual sessions, and a few regular clients can quickly help you leave the 60% level behind and boost you to the 70%-80% levels.
People like me are living proof that getting to 400 hours with Wyzant is not "near impossible." I'm well over halfway there. If it is impossible for you, that may be a reflection on your ability to attract and retain students.
To many potential customers, reasonable = low. Ironically, that's especially so in high-cost-of-living metropolitan areas. These customers don't understand that spending $29 to come to their location means you can not give them $16/hr, even if you advertised that in your profile intending it for local customers. (In NY, one-way bridge toll alone might be $8-10, for instance. In CA, $4/gal gas is not unusual. In both places, taxes are also relatively high.) Many customers don't realize that willing to travel does not necessarily mean for the same rate. That's even if your profile includes "Rates vary by location."
ReplyDeleteYet, WyzAnt apparently agrees. They do not easily allow rate customization. Never mind that the customer views the posted rate as a point from which to bargain down.
The customers also don't understand that, even if there is a low profit, of let's say $10, spending 3 hours total to earn it (1 hour tutoring and 1 hour travel time each way) means it's not worthwhile to come out. You could have given that time to more profitable customers.
Did I mention that, based on several firsthand experiences with such clients through several sources, those places tend to be dangerous, difficult to reach, and the customers tend to be very academically behind?
WyzAnt's advertising may indeed bring in lots of students, but, like my own tutoring flyers posted in college dorms, the majority of the fish are unprofitable small fry.
What is the exact distribution of % v number of houers?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering tho, as a tutor, you get to know student for the first time. Why don't you keep contact when them and have them paid you directly without having to go through WizAnt? I'm sure it's not good for WizAnt, but I saw that it could be done, and there is a loophole for it?
ReplyDeleteAs a Wyzant tutor, yeah you can go off Wyzant with tutoring your students, but when you sign up as a tutor, you signa contract saying you won't and they can (and will) shut down your account. It is obvious when people only have a couple lessons with everyone that htey are moving to private independent tutoring. And honestly, if you set your rate high enough it's plenty of money. It's not supposed to be a main income.
DeleteWhere's it written that tutoring isn't supposed to be a main income? My tutoring pays my mortgage.
DeleteWyzant stands behind its tutors and also gives refunds to clients who are unhappy after the first session. That fact alone draws customers to Wyzant. And if you're a client looking for a tutor, who are you most likely to trust: some unknown quantity who advertises on Craigslist (yes, they may be good, but they may also be terrible!) or a Wyzant-approved tutor? Yes, the tutor may turn out to be terrible, but if they're not, what's it worth to a customer (not all, but many) to have a tutor who's received many positive client reviews? A few extra bucks an hour? At least that much, at least for pound-wise and not penny-foolish clients!
ReplyDelete400 hours at 2 hours a week is 200 weeks or about 5 years. Tutoring is a part-time job. On top of that there are not that many tutor inquiries from students even in the busier disciplines. We are talking about 5 years of overchanging student. Maybe wyzant only cares for those poor souls who are "professional tutors" and still need to use wyzant. If you are a "professional tutor" there are other ways to advertise. Wyzant is a very good business, in any case.
ReplyDeleteI've been tutoring part time since feb 2015 with wyzant in San Diego, and I can say i reached 400-500 hours within a year or just over a year. I find that demand for the busier disciplines (here math, chemistry, physics) is extremely high, after having a full load (about 8 lessons per week: 2 lessons after work/ 4 days a week) I probably turn down about 5-10 inquiries/week once the school year gets moving.
DeleteI just made 20 hours and have seen the pay % increase. Tutoring is part-time for me and I enjoy it. I have to charge more than I would like in order to make it worth it for me, but it's their website and marketing that brings students to me, without me needing to expend any effort whatsoever. Their cut is fair and warranted. A lot of students pass on me due to my rate I'm sure, but you get what you pay for with anything. Serious students who want the best pony up and I have a perfect feedback score after working with numerous students. What kind of percentage do you get as an employee of a corporation against the profits made on your work? I'm sure that percentage pales in comparison. We live in the age of complaining about everything! Get over yourself :)
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, one can be a "serious student" and also not be able to afford to "pony up". Your argument leaves much to be desired. For example, you say you've worked with numerous students after only having reached the 20 hour mark. You'll get one more bump in take home percentage at 50 hours and then you'll have to wait till you reach the 200-400 hour mark to reach the next bump in take home pay. I'm sure if you're working where there's a market for price inflation in tutoring hourly rates, Wyzant seems like it's pretty great and you don't understand people who are complaining. I've been working for Wyzant for about 9 months and I still have mixed feelings about the service they provide and the terms of said service. Wyzant is not all bad, but it's not all good, either.
ReplyDeleteThank you! It was very helpful and I hope WyzAnt goes OUT of business!!!
ReplyDeleteIt's very useful for me. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteNew York Academics
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with the first comment by Carter in Feb . 2010. 40% is outrageous! If they charged 20%, people would be much more likely to try to get clients. I teach and tutor for different schools. I signed up with WyzAnt during last summer when I wasn't working and got one client. After a few weeks, they left the country but I received excellent reviews from them. Sporadically, I answered ads WyzAnt sent to me. I didn't try very hard because 40% is really high. Recently, someone wrote to me on Wyzant and identified themselves as a student of a school where I teach and tutor. Students pay for free tutoring in their financial package. It is not right to ask for money when they have already paid for it. I advised the student of this and WyzAnt dropped me from their list of tutors, although I had a 5 star rating. I asked them to reconsider. The student called me and told me that they had written an email to her asking if I had met and charged her. She said no, yet they still refused to reconsider.
Here is what you do. The first time you meet a student you exchange phone numbers/emails and then you explain how they are paying $20 for each our we work together and how the website is taking 40% of that leaving me with $12 per hour. After that you just work together directly without using the scam artists at wyzant.
ReplyDeleteLook, it is worth it to give them 40% for the first session or two in payment for the service of putting you and the student in contact, but anyone who continues to oay them the 40% commission after that is a moron. If they charged 5% they woukd make more money in the long run because tutors would continue to use them for the convenience of students paying online. The fact that they don't understand this means tgat they are morons. They are like the idiot who thinks his android app is so great he can charge $20 bucks for it, not understanding that somebody will clone it in a week and give it away for ad revenue... And the clone will be the famous lasting version. Same thing will inevitably happen to DumAnt.
Good riddance, then tutors can charge a rate that struggling students can afford and it can still be worth their time. Currently $20 per hour is the highest I woukd ever charge a student. Even that is tough for most to pay (they work 2 hours at burger king to make that) and of that $20 I only get $12 whereas the website builder gets $8? And not just from me, but from every tutor everywhere! Crazy! A scram bordering on criminality. It is old school "protection money" mafia style.
I have been a tutor at Wyzant for 6 years and it only took me about a year to get to the 80% level. Also, when I do my own advertising via craigslist etc, I get 85% so at 15% discount, I make 100% from many of my clients.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAs a tutor, once you get a student and they pay a few times there's no reason why the student would pay through the site anymore. It really is a flawed system. If the cut was lower to say like 5%-10% I think almost all the tutors would just accept the payment through the site. I believe Wyzant is potentially missing out on a lot of income from people who automatically turn away from the 40%, students who turn away from inflated rates, and people who work around paying through wyzant. Bad business move in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI know this was posted a million years ago, but I agree!
ReplyDeleteWyzant takes out way too much money. However, if you are smart, you may use them to find clients than offer the clients a discount to go off of the books.
I have tutored for Wyzant for many years. Wyzant originally had a fee scale where I initially paid them 40% of my advertised fee with the incentive to continue with them by having that portion reduced to 20% (higher than I thought fair, but not outrageous, so I stuck with them.) Additionally, the Wyzant service was FREE to students.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a couple of years to reach the 20% level and I've done a lot of tutoring through them. Recently, Wyzant decided to charge students 7% and currently 9% in addition to what they charge tutors. They didn't bother to tell me that they'd done that. When they did, I couldn't figure why my business dropped like a rock until I discovered on my own that they were going after my students for fees in addition to the already too high fee they were charging me.
Last year, Wyzant sent us tutors an e-mail telling us they were having a hard time getting new tutors launched because they couldn't compete against older tutors who were being charged 20% instead of the newby 40%. Their solution was to charge everyone 25% regardless of how long they had tutored through Wyzant. That was a great deal for new tutors but it represented a UNILATERAL 5% confiscation of my tutoring fee.
So, as things now stand, Wyzant is now collecting a 34% net fee (25% + 9% .) I get they were having difficulties with the bad fee structure they used at the beginning thinking that they were incentivizing tutors to continue tutoring actually making it hard to bring new tutors on board. They fixed that by effing-over their old tutors instead of grandfathering us at 20% and charging the all new tutors 25%... that wouldn't be such a large disparity and it would honor the agreement we both agreed to when we old tutors went to work for Wyzant.
Wyzant periodically sends me e-mails and letters asking me to stick up for them on chat boards like this. Why would I stand up for them when they have REPEATEDLY screwed me over? As a matter of principle, I don’t ask or accept student offers to cut WyzAnt out of the middle, but they make it harder and harder to think that that isn’t a reasonable response to how they have rigged their business against me.
Wyzant has been pretty awesome for me. Yeah students pay more but it's been difficult for me to find my own students starting from scratch. now that I'm getting some income I can spend it getting my own students and growing my own website. You're going to pay 20% for marketing and more if you're still learning how to market.
ReplyDelete