My Review of Wyzant.com

Freelance Income Source

Dec 26, 2020

As I recently graduated with my Master’s degree, I started searching for ways to freelance on the Internet. I watched a great video by founder of Clever Programmer, Rafeh Qazi, on his YouTube channel and took notes on what he recommended - How to Become a Python Freelancer 2019 - Ultimate Guide. He mentioned that you can tutor on Wyzant to gain more exposure and develop your skills.

I signed up and set my rate at $45/hour. Link to my Profile on Wyzant

My Tutoring Profile on Wyzant.com

I immediately didn’t do anything to apply for tutoring jobs or seek out students as I was busy with finding and completing other freelance work.

Instant Book Requests

However, soon I began to see tutoring requests in my email. They would say “Urgent Book Request.” After clicking on a button, I could immediately book a lesson at a preselected time and message the student beforehand.

Instant Book Request on Wyzant

This was a Eureka moment for me. I realized that Wyzant’s algorithm was searching for students who needed help in topics that I had said I could tutor in. It was then sending out the same email to me and many other tutors to book a lesson with a student—the first tutor to accept the request would get the job. This is brilliant especially because it helps jobs come to tutors and it does not prioritize tutors with more or less experience.

As I started booking these tutor requests, some themes began to emerge. First, I noticed that some students had bad internet connections. This made it very hard to have a productive tutoring session. Next, I noticed that most of the students were genuinely good people who were trying to complete hard coding assignments that they were not prepared for.

Direct Student Messages

Wyzant has a feature where students can message a tutor and the tutor can either accept and start communicating with the tutor or just simply select ‘no’. With these interactions, I found that students generally wasted my time with questions about how Wyzant works and rarely booked an actual lesson with me.

Yes or No Option to Chat with a New Student on Wyzant

Third and finally, I would like to talk about Wyzant’s payment system. The money for the tutoring shows up directly into my account within a week. They show you the total amount Wyzant has given you and how much they still owe you (payments are posted to your bank account a week after the tutoring session). They immediately notify you when a student has given faulty payment information and they can’t collect payment from him or her; they block students as soon as they detect fraud.

Conclusions:

Overall, tutoring on Wyzant has been a great experience. I think it’s a great platform to encourage online tutoring. Within each session, there is a white board where the tutor can write down notes or instruction, though most of my time was spent screen sharing and going over code on a student’s screen. I recommend Wyzant to both people looking to tutor and students looking for tutoring help. I look forward to using it in the future.

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