How to start a computer tutoring business in Australia

This is written for other IT people who have thought about doing this. There is not much honest information about the practical side, so here is what setting it up actually involves.

I am not going to pretend it is a path to significant income. It is not, at least not quickly. It is genuinely worthwhile for other reasons.

The paperwork, in order

1. Get an ABN. Free, from the Australian Business Register at abr.gov.au. Takes about fifteen minutes and you usually have the number the same day. Do not pay any website that offers to do this for you; several charge for a free government service.

You are a sole trader unless you have a specific reason to be anything else. Do not set up a company for a tutoring side business.

2. Decide about a business name. Trading under your own name needs no registration. Anything else must be registered with ASIC, which costs about $44 for one year or around $100 for three.

3. Get insurance. Public liability is the important one. You are going into people’s homes, and if you knock a television off a stand or somebody trips over your bag, you want that covered. Expect somewhere around $500 to $900 a year for a small operation.

Professional indemnity is worth considering if you will advise businesses, because that covers the consequences of advice being wrong.

4. Working With Children Check, if you will teach under-18s. In NSW this is a legal requirement for paid child-related work, not an optional extra. Apply through Service NSW. It is free for volunteers and around $80 for paid work, valid five years.

Do not start teaching children before it is issued. Parents will also ask for the number, and having it visible is a genuine advantage.

5. GST, only if you need it. You must register once turnover passes $75,000 a year. Most part-time tutors will never approach that. If you are under, staying unregistered is simpler and makes you slightly cheaper.

6. Keep records from day one. A spreadsheet is fine. Date, client, hours, amount, and whether it has been paid. Keep receipts for anything you buy for the business. Your future self at tax time will be grateful.

What it actually costs to start

• ABN: free
• Business name: $44, optional
• Insurance: $500 to $900 a year
• WWCC: about $80, five years
• A website: $20 a year for a domain, and free hosting if you build it yourself
• Business cards: $50, and genuinely worth it for this clientele

So roughly $700 to $1,100 for the first year, nearly all of it insurance.

You do not need a laptop bag full of equipment. You need a USB stick, a couple of adapters, a notepad, and patience.

Pricing

There is a longer piece on this, but briefly: work out what the job is worth to you, not what you could extract.

I charge $65 an hour with no call-out fee, which sits at the lower end of the local range. I can do that because I have full-time income elsewhere. If tutoring is your only income, do the arithmetic on travel, admin and unbooked hours before copying anybody’s number.

What matters more than the number is that it is simple and honest. One rate, no call-out fee, no minimum block. People have been overcharged and confused enough by this industry.

Finding the first clients

You will not get them from advertising. Nobody googling “computer help” trusts an ad.

What genuinely works:

Word of mouth, starting with people you already know. Tell family, friends and neighbours what you are doing. Your first five clients will come from there and each of them will tell three people.

Community noticeboards. Libraries, community centres, neighbourhood houses, church halls, bowling clubs. This clientele reads physical noticeboards.

A Google Business Profile. Free, and it is what makes you appear in the map results for “computer help near me”. For a local service business this matters more than the website. Set it up properly and ask satisfied clients for reviews.

Genuinely useful free content. Write things that help people whether or not they hire you. Somebody searching for whether a text message is a scam finds your explanation, and now knows you exist. This is slow and it compounds.

Offering to speak. Community groups, probus clubs, retirement villages and libraries are constantly looking for someone to talk about online safety, and they cannot find anyone who will explain it without selling something.

What nobody tells you about the work

You are not really teaching computers. You are managing embarrassment. Most clients arrive apologising, convinced they are uniquely stupid. Your actual job in the first ten minutes is to dismantle that, and everything else depends on it.

You will be the first person who did not sigh. People have been made to feel like an imposition by family, by call centres, by shop staff. Simply not doing that puts you ahead of everybody they have dealt with.

The scam conversations are heavier than you expect. You will meet people who have lost significant money and told nobody. Be ready for that, be kind about it, and know where to refer them: ReportCyber, Scamwatch, IDCARE on 1800 595 160.

You will be offered tea constantly. Accept it. The session goes better.

Some jobs are not tutoring. Failed drives, cracked screens and data recovery are repair work. Know where your line is and have someone to refer people to.

Is it worth doing?

Financially, as a side business, it is modest. Realistically a few hundred dollars a week for a handful of evenings.

As a use of your time it is among the better things I have done with a skill set that otherwise sits behind a screen in an office. You get to watch somebody who was frightened of a device use it confidently, and you get to show a teenager that there is a whole career available that nobody in their family knew about.

If you are in the Hunter and thinking of starting, get in touch. I am not remotely worried about competition. There is far more demand around here than one person can meet, and the people who most need this are not being reached by anybody.