Since I started tutoring online, I spend hours dealing with inquiries wasting a lot of time.

Since I started tutoring online, I spend hours dealing with inquiries, but prospective clients regularly turn me down, don’t reply to emails, etc…?

Most experienced freelancers would agree that for freelancers regular rejection is often the rule rather than the exception, working online is, in fact, very competitive and online tutoring is no exception.

From your question it is not clear what your inquiry-to-client conversion rate is or if you are getting any client at all, therefore we will keep this post rather general. An inquiry-to-client conversion rate in the 20 to 30 % range is usually considered very good by freelancing standards.

If you are getting a conversion rate in the range above, you may not be doing anything particularly wrong and there can be several reasons while clients turn you down. Below are a few possibilities: -Nowadays tutors, even if they only work locally, are often complaining about mail shooting, when a prospective client sends the same email to many tutors, often tens of them; the problem is amplified for online tutors, people can copy and paste an email and send it to tens of tutors before choosing one. You can also get some follow-up emails but still no conversion. The problem is amplified when tutoring online non-locally and internationally, leading to a lower inquiry-to-client conversion rate. -Some people, mostly competitors, may not be genuinely interested in your services but just want to get information about them and pretend to be interested in your services by acting as a potential client; the majority of experienced tutors have experienced this and the problem is amplified when the tutor works online.

Several years ago when I got started as online tutor, I would spend hours dealing meticulously with each individual inquiry. Sure that lead to some conversion but it also made me waste a lot of time. Fast forward several years here are some tips on how to greatly reduce the amount of time spent dealing with inquiries while retaining a satisfactory client conversion rate, based on my experience:

-you may want to build a small database of standard replies to the most common questions a prospective client typically asks

-if you are working internationally I suggest you prepare replies with your hourly rates in various currencies. Note that when you reply to an inquiry from a specific country you should only send your rates in the local client’s currency. That will avoid a lot of confusion and will increase your chances of converting the inquiry into a client.

Once your collection of replies is ready it will typically take less than a minute to reply to an inquiry. With a 20 to 30 % conversion rate that would not be a bad result. In some instances you may need to tweak some of the standard replies but having a template of a reply even if it is not the exact one, will make you save a lot of time.

Once a prospective client replies, you may want to get more specific with the following replies, the more replies you get from a potential client, the higher the chances that the inquiry will eventually convert into a paying client.

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