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Wyzant

One week before my students' final exams and without warning to me nor my students, Wyzant effectively abandoned my students by abruptly terminating me from their platform. During one of the greatest times of need for my students, Wyzant had no standing care plan to notify my students after my termination nor to assist my students with finding another tutor who was well versed in the course materials from the university most of my students attended. 

Why did Wyzant totally disregard the best interest of my students and terminate me from the platform?

According to internet posts by many other former Wyzant tutors who were also abruptly terminated for non-substantiated reasons, Wyzant's business model includes terminating long term tutors from whom Wyzant retains only 30% of the tutors pay, while effectively marketing the new and inexperienced tutors from which Wyzant retains 60% of their pay. (For reference, most tutoring platforms only collect 25% of the tutors' pay). In brief, Wyzant's business model is no less than discriminatory and many former tutors have filed complaints against them. 

According to Wyzant, I violated our business agreement. Only after demanding an explanation for my termination, did I received this bogus explanation, "Your profile has been closed according to paragraph 18(c) of the Independent Tutor Agreement". Paragraph 18(c) states Wyzant may deactivate an Independent Tutor’s account secondary to "Wyzant’s good faith belief of Independent Tutor’s misappropriation of Tutor’s Students from the Site for Independent Tutor’s own pecuniary gain."  When I challenged their accusation by requesting SPECIFIC examples from my interactions with students exhibiting that I had violated 18(c) in the agreement, I received the following response, "Wyzant considers this decision to be final and a representative will not be made available to further discuss this matter". In brief, Wyzant uses gas lighting and denial of due process in an attempt to shift the blame for terminations from Wyzant's profit maximizing algorithm to the tutors. This is nothing less than predatory.

In the end, Wyzant screwed itself. My very loyal students told their university how Wyzant had abruptly terminated me as their tutor and the university decided after their investigation to discontinue their relationship with Wyzant.  Now I tutor the university's students directly and at my full rate of pay. The university, the students and I all come out better in the long run. No more middleman. 

Bottom line, if you are seeking a fully transparent tutoring platform where you and your students are treated professionally and the student only pays for your tutoring time, cut out the middleman and build your own platform! That's what I did!

Tutoring for WyzAnt assumes you know the material and are you willing to travel to a student's location to tutor them.
I had to prepare 4 templates for each of the 20+ subjects I am tutoring, one each for: in person tutoring with confirmed payment, in person tutoring with unconfirmed payment, online tutoring with confirmed payment, and online tutoring with unconfirmed payment.
I must check every morning to see if there are any jobs to respond to.  When a tutoring location is beyond my 10-mile driving radius, from my home, I charge $1.00 more per hour, but I must get them to accept the augmented rate before I tutor them.
If the student does not like my service, they may rate me less than 5 stars.  If that happens I ask them why they rated me less than 5 stars and ask them to increase their rating of me to 5 starts.  If they will not change their rating of me, I cancel that job, lose the money for that job, and try to keep my overall average rating as high as possible.
I only tutor new students for 1 hour the first time we meet, so as not to lose more money for a bad rating.
I have several students that continue year to year but there are always those students and parents that want 2 or 3 hours on the day before a big exam, which is too-little too-late and I'll probably get a low rating, so I prefer 1- 1 1/2 hours per day and 2 - 3 times per week, so that we can go over all the material the student covered in class, and to make sure they can do all their own homework.
Do Not Do the Student's Homework For Them! 
I must write up a summary of the things I did with each student and submit it after each tutoring session in order to register the job and get paid in about a week.  I use direct deposit. I write off the mileage and, tutoring supplies and tutoring food, like coffee donuts and burgers.  
Most teachers could not do this because this job requires me, the tutor to: be my own administrator, as well as the subject knowledge expert, and the deliverer of the material to the student I am trying to train, at the input rate that the student can successfully absorb.
The joy of this tutoring experience is when the parents tell me that their student did well on their recent test, and when I see the student go from tears and fears, to joy and confidence.
When I started tutoring I was only able to keep a small percentage of what I charged, and now after having tutored over 400 hours I keep 80% of what I charge.  I can also keep 100% of my rate if I find my own students to tutor, but they must pay an additional 7% to WyzAnt. 
All my students want to be educated, which is different from the students I taught in public high school.  There is less stress than teaching, but I must manage the whole process.

I've really enjoyed tutoring through Wyzant. They have a comprehensive system for getting approved for new subjects, lots of job listings for online and in-person lessons, and great customer service by phone. Their payment system (wait until payment information is on file to schedule a lesson, and everyone has to approve a rate change) allows me to conduct lessons without awkwardly having to take time out to discuss money. I also like the system by which students can review their tutors, and tutors are able to share selected reviews with new potential students.

Difficult things about tutoring through Wyzant: You can only take each certification test once, so make sure that you study up. They're short, which means they don't take much time, but if you miss a few questions (for instance, on adjective endings, in a foreign language test) you can never tutor in that subject. Most postings you apply to won't get you a response- I've been applying to about 15 jobs a week through Wyzant for a month or two, and have only gotten responses from 9 students (3 of whom have become students.) That means it's not great as a full-time job. I also rated it 3 stars for compensation/benefits, because you will never receive the full amount you are charging. You will receive 60-80% of your rate charged, depending how many hours you've tutored. That means that if you charge $30 an hour, you start off only making $18 an hour, despite the fact that your students are paying $30 per hour plus a service charge to Wyzant. Still, $18 per hour is better than a lot of other jobs, and Wyzant allows you to adjust the rate charged for an individual student or your default rate.

Their system allows me to connect to students online and in person, arrange a time to meet, and not worry about payment. It helps me show of my expertise and become approved (or show interest, if I don't have the time to get approved yet) in as many areas as I want. I never have to worry about a student not paying me for a lesson or be concerned about how to find opportunities. Overall it's a very good system, and has helped me tremendously.

***FOR POTENTIAL TUTORS***: Get approved for as many subjects as you can, sign up to tutor online and in person if possible, and study for every subject test before you take it. Happy tutoring!

I work as a tutor with Wyzant since 2015. I loved the fact that tutors could fix their rates. For years the low average was $35. The incentive when I started was that the more you were working with them, less Wyzant was taking on your rate. Basically, you were starting with them taking 40%, then after 100 hours working with their students, they would retain 35% for the platform fee, then 30%. I think the lowest they would take was 15%. Well, after some years they decided to change the rules and to fix the rate they take at 25% for everybody! It was just when I was supposed to reach the 20% platform fee. Moreover, the algorithm always made it very difficult to have new students. Even if your reviews are excellent and you work all the time with them and answer very quickly to job requests. A good point is that if your student cancels at the last minute the lesson, you are free to apply cancellation fees which can be the whole hour scheduled with your student. However, these last months, I noticed that students request very low rates such as $15 or $20 per hour. I checked online and saw that Wyzant was advertising these fees! I checked the sales benefits of Wyzant for 2020 to see if they suffered from the Covid 19 pandemic and they report record-breaking growth. I noticed as well they do not expect their new tutors to have real credentials as it was before. It means that you are competing with people without real credentials who are ready to teach for very low fees. Regarding the support from Wyzant, all these years, I tried to communicate with them to share with them the improvements they should do to help their tutors to do business and to satisfy their customers (the students). I have never seen them implement anything. They do not communicate with their tutors but on the positive side, you have total freedom. To finish with another positive note, you are paid 5 days after you submitted the lesson.

I have found three students on WyzAnt whom I have tutored.  While it sometimes takes awhile to attract a new student to tutor (I have answered many more ads than I have had responses to), the students I have tutored, for the most part, have remained loyal to me and been a joy to work with.  The ads usually contain enough important information about the needs of the prospective tutee so that I can make an informed decision about whether this would be a good fit for me or not.  I particularly like the fact that the city and mileage from my location are included, as I prefer not to drive more than 20 miles for any particular job.

I have found the personnel at WyzAnt to be very helpful.  Both times I have called with a concern the problem was taken care of immediately, and I was treated with respect and courtesy.  In addition, WyzAnt sends numerous email reminders about mail in my inbox on their site, calendar updates needed, and the submission of a lesson once it has been completed.  They seem very concerned about the safety of their tutors, as I also received an email indicating that it looked like a prospective parent was trying to contact me outside of the site, which they strongly advise against.  In addition, if I included too much personal information in an email I am trying to send, a reminder pops up indicating that I need to edit the email to avoid exposing myself by sharing too much information.  Another feature I appreciate is the opportunity to earn a greater share of the amount charged once I have secured more students or tutored for more hours.

As with any teaching job, I put many more hours into preparing for lessons than I actually do teaching, all of which is not paid time, but I do enjoy working with students, the flexibility, and the extra cash, which is directly deposited into my bank account.

I was a tutor for WyzAnt for some months and I had to deal with its Customer "Service" department many times. It is AWFUL! WyzAnt IS basically a scam for tutors. They say you are an "independent contractor" but it is a LIE. Wyzant monitors your e-mail, controls your meetings, PROHIBITS YOU TO HAVE MEETINGS with potential students that they don't like (I have the proofs about it!) and CONTROL how you meet with YOUR students. So, you are like an slave for them and they take 40% of YOUR PROFIT! Besides, they don't pay the taxes, YOU, THE TUTOR HAVE TO PAY THEM. Like a review says here: "They don't comply with state laws and search way beyond what is legally permissible". And, the most important thing: MANY OF MY STUDENTS (because I continue being a tutor and I'm NOT associated with WyzAnt anymore!) complain about HARASSMENT when, for example, they send the money and they don't receive it because there have been a mistake from THE BANK. HARASSMENT! WyzAnt is all about THE PROFITS, THE MONEY and NOT the students and much less the tutors. Other thing: WyzAnt sends TONS OF ADVERTISING, MARKETING INFO... a lot of SPAM, all day, every day. NOTHING about the unfair, illogical and "BIG BROTHER" rules' and then, if you present a complaint about SOMETHING, ANYTHING, they accuse you of things you never did. It is really creepy the treatment they give to their tutors. The last thing (that I will write, because I have sooooo much more information if someone need it): many of my students hired some WyzAnt tutors and they were SO BAD, so AWFUL, they didn't even know about GRAMMAR. I am a proofreader, expert in grammar and native Spanish speaker and the things they told me about many of WyzAnt tutors are embarrassing. Do you know how WyzAnt "KNOWS" that you are a "qualified" tutor? You take a simple, basic and really foolish "test". And, then, YOU BECOME A TUTOR. My advise? Don't waste your time, money and energy with WyzAnt.

Started tutoring math and science as a sophomore in college.  I was definitely nervous, since I had never tutored before.  Although I had always done well in classes, I wasn't sure what to expect walking in.

I applied on several different tutoring websites, and definitely prefer WyzAnt.  Compared to the other websites, I feel that WyzAnt doesn't take advantage students or tutors nearly as much.  Starting out, they took 40% of my rate which is a lot, but I was still making more than the other websites were willing to pay me.  In addition, their cut drops over time.  Plus, my students were getting charged my lower, non-degreed rate that I set myself, rather than the $50+ per hour that other websites charge them.  One such site charged their students $70 per hour then paid me $15.

The ability to tutor both online and in person is fantastic.  I definitely prefer online, especially since they added tablet/touchscreen capabilities to their online platform.  I did have to work hard to get my first client, since I was still a student myself, but once I had a few hours with that client requests came in faster than my crazy student schedule could keep up with!

That was three years ago.  Now that I have graduated, I get client requests daily and I'm making decent money on the side of my full-time career.  Could you make a living tutoring with WyzAnt full time?  Probably.  Although you don't get any benefits and steady, long-term clients can be hard to find.  I 100 percent recommend WyzAnt to anyone looking to make some extra cash to afford their hobbies, saving for vacation, or whatever they want to spend their earnings on.  Just be sure to set some of that aside for taxes, since you're responsible for those at the end of the year.

I have been tutoring on Wyzant for about two months, and so far I have had a very positive experience. I received two student requests before I had even tutored a single hour, and the more hours I tutor and more positive ratings I receive, the more requests I get. I have begun to think I might be able to earn a full-time living from Wyzant.

The part I like best about tutoring on Wyzant is the independence. I choose my own hourly rate, when I tutor and the content of my tutor page. The one time I had an issue with a student, Wyzant customer service was great. Other than that they stay out of your way. I have noticed in looking for other tutor jobs that many places decide how much to pay you, and there seems to be less choice in what students you get. At Wyzant you can both apply for job openings and receive requests directly from students.

Another thing I like about Wyzant is the incentives are aligned between tutor and company. The more hours I tutor, and the higher my tutoring fee, the more money Wyzant makes. Therefore, they want me to succeed, just as I want their company to succeed. The better Wyzant's reputation, the more students will use it.

Trying to make a living as an independent tutor is not easy. It requires a lot of hustle, and also it demands a willingness to learn new skills and acquire greater knowledge. I learn a lot from each student I tutor, and that learning makes me better for the next student. 

Overall, I really have no criticism of Wyzant. I see some people dislike that they keep 40% of the fee to start, but that is only for the first 20 hours. Ultimately, you can keep 80% of your fee, and the amount you charge is up to you. Considering they find all the students and handle the advertising and bill collection, it seems a pretty good deal, especially for someone new to tutoring.

As an employ, I love WyzAnt.  Being a tutor is difficult unless you have access to people who can network for you, and network well.  WyzAnt eliminates that need.  They network for you.

Yes, they take a large percentage of your fees, but it's not unreasonable, and the more hours you tutor the less percentage they take.  If you start out with a moderate but understandable fee, you still make a great hourly profit off of tutoring for WyzAnt.  I do this on the side while being an adjunct for community college, and the extra income has really helped keep me afloat.

They notify you of opportunities for tutoring in your area regularly, if not daily.  They require the students/parents put their payment info on file before you can schedule an appointment with them, so that if something goes wrong, no matter what you will get your money.  That is a very generous and relieving thing to do.

If you're trying to be a tutor as a full-time profession, that's a little different.  WyzAnt, in my opinion, is not formatted for that kind of goal.  It is preposterous to judge it based on that criteria.  WyzAnt is for people who want to make a decent amount of money at their own time and rate, without the hassle of forms or classrooms or anything else.  They make it easy to make money without a lot of complicated secondary work on your part.

I'd highly recommend using WyzAnt if you're anyone who wants to make extra money on the side (in addition to a full-time job or full-time school schedule, for example) and has the ability to effectively teach a student something in any field.  Look into it.  I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I commute to my student's home for my one tutoring job, and it is within my stated preferred commute radius of 10 miles. One tutoring session lasts one hour at a time, and we meet once per week.  At present I have just this one session per week. My student is in middle school, and I'm tutoring him in PreAlgebra. The part about this job that I like the best is helping my student to better retain what he learns, assisting him towards greater academic success, and just plain getting to watch that proverbial "light bulb" turn on through his eyes and smile when he "gets it." It is overall a very rewarding job. The part about this job that is the most challenging is at times my student avoids writing out the steps of the solution to the given math problem, which is often the reason he does less than his best on tests. I'm working with him to get in a habit of writing the steps down, so that even if he gets the answer wrong, he can get partial credit for working the problem (partially) correctly, and it also helps a lot towards better retention of the material. The most difficult part of the job is finding more tutoring jobs this close to the end of the academic year, and just not having the hours yet that I would really like to have. Ideally, I would like to have 20 hours worth of session time, since prep time and commute time are involved also, which should render the work essentially full time. Overall, aside from the problem of lack of hours at present, this job is a very rewarding and satisfying one.

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