However, searching for a mentor who is an industry expert can be quite a task. Similarly, finding a well-deserving mentee can be difficult too. Hence, this challenge brings up a new opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to connect both sides effectively. By building an online mentoring platform they can help connect experienced mentors with mentees.

Types of Mentoring

We can see a huge scope in the online mentoring business space, but before tapping onto its potential let us see the different types of mentoring prevalent in the industry.

Individual

Also known as one-on-one mentoring, where a mentor with desirable experience and expertise, guide, and help a mentee achieve his goals. All points and feedback are discussed privately in face-to-face sessions.

Group

This type of mentoring involves a mentor guiding several mentees in a group. Here mentors can reach and guide more mentees in a shorter span of time. This is useful where no individual attention is required and the same skill is to be taught to every individual in the group.

Collective

In this type of mentoring, a group of mentors would guide and share knowledge with a group of mentees. This type of mentoring is mostly popular in enterprises.

Necessary Features for an Online Mentoring Platform

Before you start building your own online mentoring platform, there are certain necessary features that you should consider for the success of your platform.

Matching Algorithm

A mentor and mentees’ match is neither made in heaven nor is it guesswork. Albeit, it requires an effective matching algorithm to read user profiles and make suggested recommendations. A well-organized mentoring platform allows mentees to choose mentors according to their requirements, and in turn, mentors can add relevant particulars about themselves on their profiles to make that search easy for them.

In case, mentees don’t want to choose their mentors themselves, the admin can assign a mentor to them. Correct matching will ensure satisfaction at the mentees’ end and will increase trustability on your platform.

Interactive Tools

A well-established mentoring platform must have good communicative tools to facilitate seamless communication between mentors and apprentices. They should be able to interact in real time via video call or chat. They should be able to easily collaborate with each other by sharing links, and documents, on the platform.

Furthermore, features like a virtual whiteboard, screen sharing/recording, chat support, etc. are essential for any online mentoring platform.

Multilingual

If you wish to serve globally, this feature can help you get an edge over your competitors. This feature can help you break the language barrier and open opportunities for you to serve and mentor participants worldwide.

Progress Monitoring and Tracking Reports

This could be an important feature for mentors and mentees to evaluate the progress of the mentorship program. As accountability is essential for any training program and mentees’ success, monitoring and tracking reports that can show the progress of mentees in the form of graphs or in scores can be an added advantage.

Through these tools, mentees can assess their performance and can also identify weak areas where more support is needed.

Ratings and Reviews

Ratings and reviews can play an important role in improving the transparency of your platform. Mentees can provide feedback about their mentors and further new students can decide whether they want to hire a particular mentor or not. The rating of mentors can also be shown on their profile page to increase their accountability. Hence, we can say that ratings and reviews play an important role in client satisfaction.

As we have discussed essential features that should be included on the mentoring platform, let us see how you can start building your own online mentoring platform.

Building an Online Mentoring Platform

An online mentoring platform can majorly be developed in two ways:

1. Custom development
2. White-label solution

Custom Development

In custom development, you need to hire web developers and designers who will custom-build your platform from scratch keeping your business needs in mind. This solution offers high scalability and efficiency for your platform. Custom development allows you to fully reflect your brand identity and add personalized small touches to your user interface.

The main drawback of a custom-developed solution is that it takes a lot of time and money in the development process as the platform will be built from scratch.

White-Label Solution

A better alternative to custom development is to purchase a white-label solution that can cater to the needs of your business. As it is a pre-made solution, it is quite affordable. One of the major advantages of white-label solutions is that your platform is ready to launch within 2-3 days. And, as the platform developed from this solution is tested several times, there are fewer chances of any errors or bugs.

The expenses saved using white-label software can be realigned in a more effective way. You can use that budget in marketing your business to attract more users and eventually increase the profits and ROI. Moreover, investing in white label software eliminates the need to control the process of product implementation and you do not have to spend time and effort on project management, thereby saving a lot of time and effort.

Yo!Coach is one such popular solution that allows you to build your platform in a short period of time. It is white-label software that is fully customizable. It is cost-effective, highly scalable, and has all the basic and advanced features needed for establishing an online mentoring platform effectively.

This solution provides lifetime ownership with no recurring fee and is pre-integrated with popular video conferencing and payment APIs. There is no one size fits all choice when choosing the approach to build your mentoring platform. You should make your decision based on your unique business requirements.

Bottom Line

With the advent of new technologies and tools, we can see a gradual shift of people towards digital modes of mentorship, where they can not only attend classes according to their convenience but also can be guided by experienced mentors. Mentoring platforms exist because there is a need for such platforms in the market.

Facilitating both mentors and mentees with a feature-rich online mentoring platform can help turn your mentoring business into a success.

The post Essential Features For an Online Mentoring Platform appeared first on Tricky Enough.

The prevalence of conflicting views and opinions can leave a novice entrepreneur confused and overwhelmed. The problems get even more confounded when one is found lacking in the following areas:

• Self-confidence
• Experience
• Capital
• Loyal clientele
• Clear prospects of business expansion

As a result, it seems tempting to stick to the professionals i.e. teaching on tutoring marketplaces, and not testing the waters by yourself. However, it may not be a wise decision in the long run. There are a number of profit-sharing and lock-in considerations to factor in with other marketplaces which are significantly less with launching your own marketplace.

Since there are pros and cons to both options, it is important to understand the nuances of both tactics. The one that is best for you depends on your specific goals and circumstances as an online teacher. This guide will explain all the hidden gotchas of both the options out there so that you can choose the right medium for your online tutoring business.

The teaching of Existing Tutoring Marketplace

The tutoring marketplace is a platform where tutoring service is provided by a number of different tutors which are managed by the platform owner. Examples include Preply, Cambly, etc. With such a platform, a tutor gets the following features:

• The session’s content, pricing, and marketing are influenced by the marketplace’s policy.
• Tutors can leverage the reach of the marketplace and not work too much on their own for marketing.
• These marketplaces have quizzing tools, mobile apps, worksheets, etc. making it lucrative for tutors and students.

Launching Own Tutoring Marketplace

Launching your own platform gives you the opportunity to sell on your own terms. It puts you on the front foot and offers you to price your live sessions freely, communicate with the students on the platform via email, cross-sell other sessions & webinars, and grow your brand exactly how you want it.

Pros and Cons of Teaching on Tutoring Marketplaces

Pros

• The biggest benefit of the tutoring marketplace is that a huge amount of sales will be directed by the marketing efforts of the marketplace. As their primary source of income depends on the number of students on the platform, they spend thousands of dollars in SEO optimization and paid advertisement.
• Online tutoring platforms have already built a huge student base that has thousands of potential buyers. You have a great chance to be shown to thousands of targeted students who are searching for a tutor in that marketplace.
• Marketplace owners provide a lot of free help and access to online instructor communities where everyone encourages and motivates each other to succeed.
• As these marketplaces have developed a strong brand and credibility, potential students prefer to join a known brand rather than an unknown tutoring platform.
• Many other benefits like no running costs, security compliances, and the presence of an adequate feature set let teachers completely focus on tutoring.

Cons

• The biggest drawback of teaching on a tutoring marketplace is that the teachers don’t have access to student’s personal contact information. Teachers are unable to develop a relationship with the students making it hard to scale their business outside the marketplace.
• Tutors are subject to the marketplace’s rules and policy. The marketplace owner decides how often tutors can communicate with the students, how much can they charge from them, and when tutors’ payments will be released. Tutors don’t have any other option but to abide by the set rules or else can be laid off from the platform.
• Undoubtedly, the marketplace makes use of its brand name and promotes its tutors for more reach. However, that marketing comes at a huge cost. For instance, many marketplaces act as affiliates and keep a fixed percentage of the sales generated by them.
• Tutors will not be able to grow and promote their own brand when teaching at a tutoring marketplace. They may be allowed to watermark their videos/courses, but that’s the maximum they will get to promote their brand. At all times, the students are exposed to the marketplace’s design and logo which eventually dilutes the tutor’s brand.

Pros and Cons of Launching Own Marketplace

Pros

• When tutors have their own marketplace, they have full control and ownership of their students with all their contact information. This helps to build a strong bond with them and get repeat and referral sales.
• With one’s own marketplace, tutors can customize the look and feel of their marketplace. In addition to this, tutors can promote their brand, integrate with other services, track conversion analytics, manage affiliates, and much more. All in all, the tutor is the boss of the marketplace.
• Having your own marketplace gives you the freedom of setting your own prices for the sessions and get paid immediately. Moreover, except for a tiny transaction fee, you get to keep all the revenue generated from the platform

Cons

• The complete marketing plan is to be managed by the tutor himself. Starting from building marketing and sales funnel, attracting potential students, and converting them, all is to be done by the tutor which is indubitably the most difficult and time-consuming part of launching own business.
• Maintenance costs increase as the business grows. Expenses like hosting fees, video conferencing functionality, email marketing automation tools, payment gateways, and many more start cumulating once the business gains speed and has thousands of users.
• New marketplaces lack credibility and the audience is not able to figure out whether they should trust newbies in the market or not. Even the review and testimonials do not help in this scenario as the audience is well aware these days and knows that fake reviews can be easily generated.

Verdict

So, to decide the better option between the two for your business completely depends on what are your future business plans. Teaching on a tutoring marketplace may sound like an easier option to get your first sales done and validate your idea of becoming an online tutor.

However, if you intend to build a steady and viable source of income, launching your own marketplace is the way to go.

Launching an Online Tutoring Marketplace

Launching your own marketplace requires ready-made online tutoring software in the first place. A ready-made customizable tutoring software will help you launch your tutoring platform with basic to advanced features in no time. Being highly scalable, this software can easily accommodate the growing requirements of the platform and business.

One such readymade online tutoring software is Yo!Coach that can be used to build platforms around online tutoring and consultation. This fully customizable software comes with a lifetime license without any recurring fees. Tutors can host unlimited group and one-to-one live sessions on the platforms powered by Yo!Coach.

This GDPR compliant software also takes into consideration the security and privacy of its users. The software has a wide range of features that make it compatible to cater to varied use cases in the online learning landscape. The interactive features and state-of-the-art integrations in the software deliver a whole new online learning experience.

Suggested:

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The post Launch Your Own Tutoring Website VS Teaching On An Existing One appeared first on Tricky Enough.