Benjamin N.

I've been finding students through Wyzant for about three years, netting about $30K for about 600 hours. I think Wyzant's end comes out to about $8K (I forget just when I raised my rates). Right now I bill $80 per hour and keep $64. Package discounts come out of Wyzant's end. It's not nearly a living, but it isn't nothing, either.

Over this time, the site has developed a bit, and some initially infuriating site behavior (clunky interface, slow server) has improved quite a bit. There are still some page glitches. Administrative responses to queries have always been prompt.

Their cut schedule seems fair--hey, they have a business model, and if you want to use their bulletin board service and accounting, you pay their fee. They try to control student/tutor contact to prevent poaching (from other tutoring services) and cheating (by their own tutors and their own students). Some of the resulting policies are silly (like how they don't print your registered clients' full surnames--you tend to find this stuff out when you meet them for the first time) and some of them are annoying and silly (like how they lock communications when long-time clients change credit cards without telling them). But I understand and respect their paranoia.

If I were to recommend one change, it would be to eliminate the word-count check on tutor lesson summaries. I do resent a computer program telling me how to write. Of course, it doesn't complain if you fill out its requirement with jabberwocky. If I were to recommend another, it would be to edit the mistakes out of some of their tutor qualification quizzes. Those could be a bit more rigorous, too--though that might cut significantly into their tutor base.