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Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Tutoring From a Business Perspective

Technology has improved significantly over the last 20 years to the point where it is now quite easy and cost-efficient to provide tutoring services online. While many independent tutors and tutoring companies view this as a favorable change in the industry it also poses many threats to existing businesses. Many articles look at the advantages and disadvantages of online tutoring from the perspective of the student – this article will explore this topic from the perspective of the tutoring business.

Advantages

The availability of technology for online tutoring is most advantageous to new tutors or tutoring companies that are not yet established in the market. Online tutoring requires low start-up costs, it opens the tutor up to a much larger market and offers more flexibility for scheduling. Let’s take a look at each of these advantages one at a time:

Lower barriers to entry

Although many independent tutors also have low start-up costs, if you are a tutoring company and decide to go the online route, you can avoid many of the expenses associated with starting up a traditional tutoring company. Traditional companies often require an office for administration or where tutoring takes place, marketing through local media, driving to meetings to prospective clients, etc. Online tutoring companies do not require an office other than a home office and definitely do not require a building for teaching students. Online marketing is lower cost and can be targeted more directly than traditional marketing, and talking with clients can be done online or by phone. These low start-up costs make it much easier for new businesses to start online.

Larger market

Traditional tutoring companies are limited by geography – they cannot cost-effectively serve students outside of their geographic area due to time-constraints related to transportation and the cost of transportation. For this reason, tutoring companies have much smaller markets and can only enter new markets by adding new locations. Online tutoring businesses do not face this limitation. They can reach anyone with an internet connection and the only real limitation is language. For this reason many individuals prefer to start an online tutoring company so that they can reach a much larger market. This can be a very good strategy if your company teaches a highly specialized subject that would not have enough people locally to support the business.

Tutoring companies can also hire tutors from a much larger area and may be more successful in finding top-quality teachers in the subjects they offer.

Flexibility

Online tutoring companies have more flexibility since they can choose to teach students in different time zones. Tutors that are only available to teach in the late evening can easily teach students from a later timezone where it is afternoon. This makes it easier for independent tutors to fit their tutoring into their personal or work schedule.

Lower operating costs

The ongoing operating costs of running an online tutoring business are also lower than traditional tutoring. Some of the eliminated costs come in the form of building leases, phone, transportation and marketing. Online tutors can do everything from their home, they can use free or low-cost online phones like Skype for communication and they don’t have to spend money driving to the tutoring office or to clients’ homes.

Disadvantages

Many of the advantages of online tutoring can also pose challenges for tutoring companies. We’ll look at the disadvantages below one at a time.

Lower barriers to entry

Low barriers to entry make online tutoring attractive to new tutoring companies, but for incumbents this is a negative since it makes it easier for new companies to enter the market and compete with them. This ultimately leads to more price competition and lower profit margins.

Competition from other markets and other countries

Online tutoring overcomes the geography barrier which is also a disadvantage for existing tutoring businesses. This means that instead of facing competition only from tutoring companies in their immediate market they now face competition from tutors in other parts of the country and in other countries all-together. Many online tutors are from countries like India where the cost of living is much lower. Thy can teach American students online and charge a rate that is still much lower than standard rates in the United States, yet still well above the rate they would earn for tutoring in their own country.

Technology limitations of students

While most people have a personal computer at home and internet access, many students who need tutoring do not have the required technology to receive online tutoring. In addition to a computer, a high-speed internet connection is ideal, a headset and microphone are needed for talking with the tutor, and hardware such as a writing board may be required depending on the subject. This means if your business wants to provide only online tutoring there will be many students that you cannot reach.

Effectiveness

While online tutoring can be effective, there are certain subjects where face-to-face communication and explaining concepts on a sheet of paper are more effective than communicating online. It can also be more challenging to keep students engaged when tutoring online, which can have a negative effect on the student’s progress.

Online tutoring creates both opportunities and challenges for tutoring businesses. By understanding and evaluating these challenges, tutoring companies will be better prepared to respond to them and adapt their business strategies to the changes it brings the industry.

The Disadvantages of Home-Staging Business

There’s no doubt that there’s money at home-staging. If you are a home-stager, you know that you are in a unique business. You get to apply your designing and decorating skills while getting paid! But just like anything else, this business has its disadvantages aside from its benefits.

In this down real estate market, every seller wants to sell their homes fast that they do almost anything to generate a sale especially for their properties which had been stuck for more than a year or so. This is because in real estate, the longer the property stays in your hand; the more difficult it is to be sold. The listing becomes stale and real estate agents will not be willing to show those buyers as there are newer properties in the listings.

The best strategy for sellers to get rid of stuck properties is home-staging. But is repairing, painting, changing of curtains and putting a few flowers in a property worth it? Let’s just say that doing all those processes are not expensive, but have you thought about your competitions? The new built homes? The following are the other disadvantages of this business.

There are many anxious sellers who are desperate of getting rid of their homes and the easiest way that they seem to make that happen is to have their home for home-staging. Staging is, no doubt, the most unique approach to sell homes. However, is it really worth your time and effort? What if you staged a home, and still never sell? You just got your money wasted as well your own time. So what to do?

The following are some tips on the advantages and disadvantages of home-staging your property that is up for sale:

1. It takes so much time and so much effort, and may become expensive in the case of homes that are hard to sell.

2. When talking about investment, home-staging is not practical. Remember, a good investment is spending one dollar and getting two in return. If it’s 1 to 1 or 1 to 0, then it is a very bad investment.

3. If you stage the home while you are still living on it, you will have to empty the furniture, empty the closets and drawers, and keep the bathroom clean and fresh every day. That’s another household chore that is difficult to maintain in regular days.

Unless you are willing to make sacrifices, exert extra effort and willing to risk your money, home-staging might not work for you, so think carefully.

Entrepreneur Advantages and Disadvantages

Entrepreneurs enjoy the freedom of making their own business decisions and becoming their own bosses. In addition, they also gain the stability and control that could never be achieved as a regular employee. If you have been dreaming of becoming one of these entrepreneurs, you should find out the disadvantages and advantages of taking on this role.

Advantages of Entrepreneurs

Excitement: compared to being regular employees, entrepreneurs enjoy much excitement beginning from the planning stage of the business up to development and realization. Thrill-seekers obviously love being entrepreneurs as they are exposed to too much risk. You should never forget, that all business risks that you agree on taking, should be calculated.

Salary Potential: most people who are employed generally feel that they are not being compensated for the work they do. In addition, they must follow the salary structure set by their employers. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, earn money that is commensurate to their efforts.

Flexibility: having control of work schedules and commitments makes the life of these entrepreneurs enviable. They are able to take vacations anytime and spend much quality time with their families.

Independence: for people who love the idea of not being answerable to anyone else but themselves, becoming an entrepreneur would surely be wonderful. They would be able to make decisions without the pressure of getting fired.

Disadvantages of Entrepreneurs

No Regular Salary: when you start a business, you should be prepared to leave behind the security of having a paycheck each month. Even successful entrepreneurs experience lean months when all financial resources are being taken up by the new business.

Work Schedule: although they have the luxury of a flexible schedule, entrepreneurs also make sacrifices especially during situations that require them to work longer hours. Unlike regular employees who are not worried too much about the status of the business, entrepreneurs must make sure that everything is going well.

Administration: because they own the business, all major decisions are made by entrepreneurs. This is quite a burden and handling such responsibility is quite difficult. Every decision directly affects the future of their businesses and avoiding costly mistakes is imperative.

After comparing the advantages and disadvantages, you will have to decide if you can realistically handle all the responsibilities of owning your own business aside from being prepared for all the risks you have to take. But if you look closely, being an entrepreneur is still desirable especially with the sense of fulfillment and accomplishment they gain from beating all odds and overcoming all challenges. As long as you have passion and commitment, you will be able to handle these disadvantages beautifully.

Beginners’ Guide – Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media

We all are beginners at some point. For the beginners the biggest challenge is to know the advantages and disadvantages of Social Media. Today we are going to talk about the Social Media – Advantages and Disadvantages. Many small business owners have not yet taken advantage of social media to help grow their business. It has become so vital for us to stay connected and convey the right message. To get the best out of this platform here are some tips and guidance for the beginners to know.

First of all some facts and figures of social media sites:

One in every nine people on earth is on Facebook
Twitter is adding nearly 500,000 users everyday
One in four Americans watches a video online everyday
During the second half of 2010, LinkedIn membership base grew, on average, by 1 million new members every ten days

Connect: Facebook helps you connect and share with people in your life. Just think what was your life before Facebook invented? Was it more relax, exiting, boring or challenging? In Facebook we can create a personal profile, add other users as friends & exchange messages. If we talk about LinkedIn, it gives us the opportunity to connect with professionals across the globe. Whether you are using it for personal growth or spreading your business. It also gives you the opportunity to connect with business minded people like you. If we talk about Twitter, it is simply amazing! Twitter is a real time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas what you find interesting. It gives you an opportunity to know what’s happening around the world in 140 characters long tweet!

Interact: With your connections Facebook gives you an opportunity to let people know about you. You can share your photos, stories and create fan page. As a business, Facebook pages are a good source of feedback on your product/services. In LinkedIn you can interact with professionals on one single platform. You can discuss business, resources, ideas, learning opportunities and lot more. In Twitter, tweets are text based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the followers. On a personal level Twitters allows one to communicate with friends and families. On business level it connects your current & potential customers with your product & service.

Exchange: With the use of Facebook, we exchange joy, fun, sorrows, help and many more things at one place! Facebook slowly also being used like email. So this is one of the cost-effective ways to connected. With the use of LinkedIn we exchange professional expertise along with useful information which eventually enhances our professional brand. It also exchanges stronger business ideas with each other. On a business level, it helps us to exchange feedback, comments which eventually lead to increase business. On a personal level, it helps you in personal development. Twitter is a powerful tool for exchanging information and news as Twitter user often link to useful sites or articles & can be source of alternative news.

Disadvantages: As we discussed the Advantages of Social Media but we cannot ignore the Disadvantages just to be more secure on online platform.

Think about the viral potential of media. When news are negative and bad in taste, the same will happen with that brand. It is hard to undertake damage control when you are dealing with social media. Your name might get spoiled within hours. The best example is MacDonald’s Twitter promotion. According to Mail Online news article – Mac Fail! MacDonald’s Twitter promotion backfires as users highjack hash tag MacD stories to share fast food horror stories. Opponents accused the burger franchise of making customer vomit, serving pig meat from gestation crates and dishing up a burger containing a finger nail. Another disadvantage is to face threat from fake profile and ID. This is one of the biggest disadvantages of Facebook. People often use fake profile to insult or harassing someone. Students who are Facebook addicted do a bad result on his or her exams. One of the major risks of social networking and the Internet in general is breaches in privacy. These sites collect considerable amounts of personal information, with email addresses being one of the most collected pieces of personal data. Also these social networking sites possibly reduce persons’ compassion. You can check Twitter updates from your phone and send messages from anywhere. Social networking sites have the potential of having spreading negative or Anti-social messages. Amongst

As discussed above there are both Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Networking. One thing is clear; it is up to the person how he/she wants to get benefit from Social Media platform. In life we are often subjected to good and bad choices it is only we ourselves, who can decide what we want.