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You often hear of personal tutors – parents are hoping that their kids do better in lessons, so they employ a physics tutor or German teacher to come to their place to help little timmy with his homework and prepare him for his exams. Well, what happens during the holidays? No-one is really interested in school or academia so much, and it’s time for a well earned break…

Well, what do those tutors and teachers do who rely on that extra source of income to help bring home some extra cash? It appears that the private tutor profession is a seasonal one, or so I thought…

I’ve never really been one to be happy in the classroom environment; it’s never really gone down well with me. something I do like, however, is skateboarding. I often go to the skate & bike park, trying out some well practised, and generally showing off! I’ve entered a few amateur competitions over the years, and around most times come back with a medal, if not first place. Last time I was at the park, some kids gathered round to watch, and were cheering me on. Once I was finally out of breath, I sat down by the railings and they walked over. They said “Hey, that was awesome! Where did you learn to do that?” I told them, “I kind of taught myself, from watching videos and DVDs when I was younger – you’ve just got to have determination and not mind that you’re going to get knocked about a bit!” They I said they wanted me to help coach them, but I said this was just something I did in my spare time, and couldn’t allow myself to spend more time at the park.

Later, when I got home, I looked up online, just out of curiosity, how much an coach would get paid. I saw that it was around £20 p/h! I looked for a website where I could maybe sign up as an instructor – but they were all really academically orientated. When I was thinking about giving up, I found a site called Tutorlink. The site promotes non-academic tutors just as much as they do academic ones, and if you have a gander at their facebook group, you’ll see that it’s all really non-academic orientated! So I thought, why not, and signed up! Since I wanted to teach any age level, including the under 18’s, I order an Enhanced CRB through the site, which was around the £50 mark, and whacked my profile up on the site. I even got their web address with my username on the end, so it’d look very good on business cards etc. The site is also indexed by google, so people who are looking for an instructor who’s not actually looking through the site, they can still locate me!

Since returning to the skate park, I bumped into that group of kids again. I now coach all 5 of them as a group once a week, and charge them 5 pounds each for an hour. So I now make an extra £100 a month! I’ve got a few other clients, but I’ve since had to hide my profile (an option they give you) as I had too many requests to be someone’s instructor. I am now thinking about either working part time at my current job, or giving it up altogether, to take on more worthwhile deals through instructing! I can charge upwards of £20 an hour for one to one sessions! I can actually charge what I like, but haven’t had the nerve to up it just yet! We are in a recession after all… but not for me!