2nd February 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
It seems strange in 2012 that we should be asked so often where Blue Tutors operate. Why is it strange? Well, because we don’t need an office for every tutor and student to drop in to. Companies are far less limited by geography than in the days before the internet, and really there are no barriers to where our tutors can give lessons.
Having said that, the vast majority of our tuition is focussed in London, with Oxford and Cambridge being the next two most popular locations. The reason for this is simple: it’s where we have an overwhelming supply of tutors. Of course, the challenge for any face-to-face tuition agency is to try and have the supply of tutors and students to be roughly equal so that neither is left disappointed.
For tutors keen to teach outside of our three most popular areas, there are still lots of opportunities available. We have a significant presence in lots of major cities in the UK, but internet advertising has also allowed us to look for students for tutors who don’t live anywhere near a big city. It’s now possible to appear on an internet search within a certain radius, so we can be as specific as only appearing to students who search for ‘English A Level tutor’ within a few km of that tutor.
The difficulty in the past as always been that until there is a critical mass of tutors in a particular area, it’s not possible to advertise effectively there. We were originally pouring lots of resources into finding students in London through newspapers and directories, but doing that in, say, York, just wasn’t cost effective, because the few tutors there would still need us to advertise in a similar way and at a similar cost. The result would have been lots of students for whom we would not have a tutor, and a return much less than the cost of the adverts.
Now, when someone asks about where we operate, we still say mainly in London; with so many people in such a small area and with a decent public transport system, it’s a haven for any tutor looking to take on a lot of students. However, we also have tutor assessments taking place in Oxford, Cambridge, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Manchester, Bristol and Newcastle, so are recruiting tutors in those areas, and building our student base there too. Added to this, the specific online adverts mean we have tutor student matches dotted around the rest of the UK. There really is no barrier to starting to tutor, wherever you may be.