WyzAnt

Once we got a tutor, it was a great experience. Only drawback was finding one. We were going to go with a tutor who listed area and would travel short distance. Then, upon contact, she only wanted to do it through the internet. Might not have actually been in the area. I must say, though, that WyzAnt protected us through the process. Overall, it was a very good experience and the tutoring was great.

My tutor pushed me to do the rating and write comments frequently on the WyzAnt, otherwise he would not get money from WyzAnt. That puts lot of stress and requirements on both the tutor and parent. As a busy parents, we hardly have time to check the email and write comments every time. That's too much.

I thought I would share my experience about finding a math tutor for my 5th grade son to hopefully help parents with their own search. After asking other parents and teachers for recommendations and coming up empty-handed, I turned to the Internet and was surprised to find out that there were quite a few Websites that list tutors that provide one-on-one tutoring. I started my tutor search by using Websites such as sittercity.com, care.com, varsitytutors.com, teacheratlas.com, tutor.com, takelessons.com, wyzant.com, tutormatch.com and instaedu.com. All of these Websites seemed to operate in the same way by providing detailed information on their tutors including their hourly rate, background check information, their experience, etc. You generally type in the subject you are looking for a tutor, and you will be presented with a list of tutors. You can then contact the tutors for more information.

Overall, all of these Websites including wyzant.com seem to provide very capable tutors. All of the tutors were very responsive to our questions. While I did not end up selecting a tutor from wyzant.com (we ended up getting a recommendation from a neighbor), I wouldn't hesitate to recommend wyzant.com (or any of these Websites) if you are in need of a tutor.

I have always needed a little push in the right direction and I have found that typee of help here at WyzAnt! Whenever I get stuck with a project I come here to figure out what it isd that I need to do to give me more insight to the project at hand and always find someone to help me get in the right direction when I get stuck! Best service!

Hello,
I have had some great students while tutoring thru WyzAnt. Sadly, I was discontinued because of some kind of policy infraction that I was unaware of and remain unaware. They need clarification w/ some of their practices re: tutoring rules. I have excellent reviews for college and secondary school. WyzAnt remains a good place to find a tutor if you need one but be aware of their corporate structure if you want to be a tutor.
Sincerely,
Dr. Vance High

I have learn with Belcha first time to exolain statistics that i could understand before. After that i really get benefits from touturing.

I'm writing a dissertation and needed help deciding on a research design. Ali met with me the same day I contacted him, asked appropriate questions to understand my proposal, and provided timely feedback and follow up. I couldn't have asked for more.

I've been tutoring through wyzant for over a year now. You have to put the effort in to get students: email open job listings, make a good profile, answer emails, be flexible, and do a good job. I've done those things and been very successful. Yes, they take a huge chunk for commission but I wouldn't have any students otherwise and I love not having to worry about getting paid. Some students and families are great and some aren't but that isn't wyzants fault. Same with tutors. Wyzant at least puts some effort into maintaining credentials but its more like a craigslist for tutors and students, you're not paying them to screen everyone first, you have to put the work in. They also have a guarantee if the first session with a tutor doesn't go well. They are also transparent about all of these things up front. I'd prefer to keep all my money but I really have no complaints.

WyzAnt is an innovative platform. The customer service, payment verification and processing, and scheduling system is a great value for people who want to tutor for some extra income, extra experience, or to develop skill in teaching and working with students.

The pay percentage system is designed to encourage investment in the platform. However, if you already have students and want to use the features of the system to simplify your work, WyzAnt currently has a way where you can retain most of your earnings. The screening, validation, and scheduling is the most valuable aspect of WyzAnt for me.

Great company. You can find tutoring jobs in your area from their website. I wish they would increase compensation for tutors, though. Easy payment (direct deposit to checking account). I've always been paid as promised on time for hours tutored. Easy website - very user friendly!

I needed a tutor quickly (within hours) for an assignment. The website does not allow to see what tutors are online so i spent a long time to find someone.

I've used this service a couple times myself. Admittedly, I was nervous paying for a service like this but I needed the help really bad. I was impressed by not only the effectiveness but the ease of using this service as well.

I am a Wyzant tutor and the experience has been great. So many whiners on here. If you feel 40% initially is too high, why not build your own site, manage it, market it, collect your fees, deal with charge backs and customer complaints, reply all the thousands of clients you will get, collect on bad checks... you get the message. We live in a society of whiners who will complain if they won a million dollars in the lottery.

Why would any parent be concerned about how much a tutor is getting paid? The client has already committed to paying that amount so who cares. I hope no whiners on here completed college because that would be so sad. With your degree you should be competent and resourceful enough to build your own tutoring company and pay tutors 100% while paying for marketing, payroll etc. Go ahead and try it.

I prepare for my lessons, tutor students in my local area through Wyzant, receive my earned income and love what I do. If I could build my own site I would have. Obviously I can't that's why I signed up with Wyzant and they're great.

Your staff is very helpful and James is an excellent tutor.

Ms Nadine is an experience tutor, she know a lot about math and life in general. Although she is great at Math, she is better at lower levels of math, like Algebra or something similar, for higher math i will not recommended her, although she can still help you wit the basic stuff.

It was ok.

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.

Good for getting started in the tutoring business. Flexibility, patience and following up helps a lot. The 40 percent cut for newbies is a bit steep, but the experience and connections you'll make helps offset that.

As a tutor, I had really positive experiences with WyzAnt and very negative experiences with the company.

Positive:

-you can make a lot of money as a tutor
-WyzAnt takes care of all the business side of things for you (payroll, advertising, conflict over payment with a parent, etc.)
-it's extremely easy and convenient for parents/students to find a tutor and for tutors to find parents/students

Negative:

-WyzAnt takes 40% out of your pay in the beginning (but come on! It's business--they have to get their cut somewhere, don't you think?)

-WyzAnt takes a very non-communicative approach to resolving conflict between clients and tutors. They don't call you. You have to call them if you have a problem, and if you don't talk to them through email or by phone by a certain time, they will suspend your account. I don't think that makes a more "transparent internet" like the other commenter had said. Which goes to the next one:

-WyzAnt can suspend your account for any reason at any time. People don't realize this when they open email accounts and what not, but I find it hilarious that WyzAnt just shuts down accounts that don't respond to them, when all you need is have a small team to make a quick call to verify that it's a real person. This pisses a lot of people off, parents and tutors alike

-WyzAnt is not immune to internet fraud, like everything on the internet. Because it's not a brick-and-mortar business where you have to physically deal with a person and actually be there, a spammer can pose as a "parent" or a "student" and contact tutors. I have had a spammer contact me more than once already, posing as a "parent" who wants personal information from me.

But mostly, I find WyzAnt a great way to make some money and get experience teaching or tutoring. Like Marc C. Said, because WyzAnt deals with all the business aspects of the tutoring, the tutor can concentrate on educating the students to meet their needs. You don't have to spend all this time trying to market yourself--that's a lot of work to do for one individual.

As for the other commentator's opinion on whether or not the parents (and tutors) feel ripped off that WyzAnt takes 40% out of your transaction just for doing nothing more than marketing, I feel that, hey, if the parents want to pay $100 a week just so that the tutor can be there for a few hours a couple times a week, so that the tutor can get their good share of the cut, it's on the parents. It's the parents' responsibility to check out a tutoring company and make sure that this is the best decision for their child, not the other way around.

I have had one or two parents that want me to be there and pay me $20 an hour to "boost their child's social skills" and play with them for two hours once a week. Hey, if you want to pay a tutor to do that, great. The parents are happy and the tutor is happy, and everyone wins. I have also had parents that want me to do their children's homework for them, or parents who are willing to pay me to do their homework for them for $20-$30 each time. But on the flip side, I have also had parents who want me to tutor English, Math, and piano for $10/hr. And get angry when their child's grades didn't improve in a month because the child is having a hard time. But hey, who am I to judge?

Is the website really good? THAT DEPENDS

You get a lot of mixed reviews... some people are happy and some people aren't. However people saying they worked over 400 hours in less in six months seems impossible unless: They are already tutoring a LOT of people and started to tell them(pay me through wyzant which is dumb), they have a good network(know a lot of people), or just really lucky(which I don't believe). You can see on a tutor profile of how many hours they worked, and most I seen was +100 hours on wyzant but mostly +50... if any.

Honestly, there are a lot of factors that are involved that is often overlooked. Wyzant "markets" for you, but often it is a "equal opportunity" for everyone.

Like a pretty girl in school that has to a pick a classmate to get help on a school project, everyone raises thier hand... but she can only pick one. Same thing with Wyzant, everyone has an "equal opportunity". But Is it entirely "equal"? Not really because that is how the world works(just like that pretty girl has preferences when she picks someone).
Overlooked
First is Ignorance... People put pictures of themselves on thier profile(following the advise of wyzant), but too formal or informal, unprofressional, or just creepy. Imagine people don't know you and you have to make the best impression when you first meet them. Some just see a picture, and doesn't matter if you have a background check, doesn't matter if you are "well educated", doesn't matter how great you think you are... if that picture doesn't show that, people won't bother to investigate you further.

Second is sterotyping. Depending on where you live, people have already an ideal image of who they looking for. Someone who looks older(30-40) and female. Some females who are in thier twenties have an advantage because they are known to have good social skills. If your a male, your at a slight disadvantage... but you must talk clean, look clean, and appear trustworthy and approachable. What I mean about slight disadvantage, people trust women more than men especially when it comes to tutoring. Also, people tend to stay within thier own culture when looking for a tutor. EXample. White family looks first for a white tutor. Because they feel they can relate to the tutor easier than someone outside thier culture... but that is just a preference. I tutor different people from all walks of life.

Videos and blogs- which is great, but I see really unprofessional videos where people use thier own webcams and poor lighting, Making themselves look very creepy and untrustworthy. If you do a video, invest your time and money. Usually a white background and good lighting, but no video is better than a bad video.

If you write... spell check and think about what really matters to the audience(that is marketing). Often too much weight is placed on "my degree" and that is it. That is not marketing. That is just proving you know the stuff. Just because you know it, doesn't mean you teach it well. Marketing is thinking about what matters to the audience and tailor the matieral to them. And I found people without degrees can sometimes tutor better then teachers who worked for years. So the style of writing gives people an idea who how you teach which can be good or bad. Focusing on the audience also helps you avoid from appearing stuck up.

How much people you know offline? If your working in a school, your at an advantage. If you work around a lot of people, tell them and spread the word, print business cards and advertise. You can still have a life, but just because you have a wyzant profile... don't expect immdiate business(and don't be surprise if you don't get any business at all).

I just opened a wyzant profile. Also a Facebook page, a linkin page, and have my own website www.hamptonroadsmathtutor.com, and find other ways to spread my wings, soon getting a thumbtack page.

I don't mind the wyzant 40% at first, because not all my tutoring jobs are through wyzant.

For the most part... not everyone succeeds just like that some classmates will never get picked by that pretty girl. So you have a wyzant profile... so do hundreds and hundreds too. What you have to offer, what make you stand out? Many people have degrees, many people have certifications so you have to be different.

Focus on the audience and what *they want* and deliever that message that you can provide it.(That is marketing)