u/mothlight111

I generally only ask students to pay after meetings, and so far I've never had problems with students ghosting me / not paying even though I am nervous about that sometimes when it's a student I don't know well. But even so as I increase the number of students I have I've found it adds a lot of extra overhead to keep track of past meetings, who has paid and who hasn't, and sending emails to chase them down, etc.

So I'm considering asking students to pay in advance before each meeting. Maybe even having the payment be part of an automated calendar booking page. On my side it simplifies things a lot with tracking payments, and it also gives me more control over e.g. when to issue a refund when a student cancels a meeting with short notice. My only concern is maybe that some students might be put off by having to pay when booking, especially if it's a first meeting / they don't necessarily trust me yet.

Just wondering what do other tutors do? has anyone switched to pay-first and found any problems with that?

Followup to a question i asked yesterday, I was focusing on getting referrals from current students, but people mentioned that many referrals come from parents, and I also wonder if it's common for some people to get referrals from other tutors? I only know a couple of friends who also do CS tutoring, I wouldn't say I have a large network of tutor contacts, so I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to try to connect with more other tutors to exchange referrals.

With that said if anyone else is doing online tutoring (ideally CS/physics/math or similar) and wants to stay in touch for potential referrals definitely dm me!

For example I mainly tutor CS and within that field I can tutor most topics, but e.g. I get a lot of requests for cybersecurity and I don't have the expertise there so I always turn it down. If i knew anyone who could tutor cybersecurity I'd definitely pass those on with a recommendation. Calculus, linear algebra and statistics are other areas where I often get requests that I turn down due to difference in desired rate, timezone, etc.

I've been doing CS tutoring for many years but recently I'm trying to expand my hours / number of clients. A lot of people here have said that referalls are key to expanding a network of clients, but in my experience it's really rare that a student will actively refer a friend / family member to me. Recently I've tried offering a 'referral bonus' by saying I can do a free session for the both the prospective client and for the person who referred them to me. But so far that hasn't seemed to have made any difference.

I don't think the problem is that they don't like me since some of these are students who have been continuing with me for a year or more, so they clearly are getting some value out of the tutoring.

So I'm wondering does anyone have any other strategies for encouraging existing clients to refer new clients?

I've been tutoring for many years as a side gig and I really enjoy it so I'm trying to get more students. I have a bachelors in CS and I previously worked as a SWE at Apple before going into independent game development. DM me to discuss, we can do a free 15-min consultation, and I'm offering an introductory rate of $29/hr for the first 3hrs.

These are the main subjects I often tutor:
- Python, Java, C, C++, C#, JS, Go, Rust
- AI/ML theory and applications
- Data structures & algorithms
- Web development and design (HTML / CSS / JS)
- Systems programming and OS
- Interview prep (technical and behavioral)
- Game development (Unity, Game Maker, Godot)
- AP Computer Science
- Theoretical computer science (theory of computation, type theory, etc)
- Statistics, linear algebra, discrete math