Getting started as a tutor

Everything from signing up to taking your first booking, in the order it happens.

1. Create your account

Go to upmarktutoring.com/signup and choose Tutor — Teach & earn. You’ll need your full name, date of birth, email and a password; the phone number is asked for but isn’t required. You can also continue with Google instead of setting a password.

We’ll email you a confirmation link. Click it before you carry on — nothing else works until you do.

2. Sign the declaration

The first thing you’ll see is a page headed Before you start. It asks you to confirm two things about yourself and to tell us whether you’re getting a police clearance. This surprises people, so here is what it is and isn’t.

Why it’s first. You’re going to teach children. We ask before you build a profile rather than after, so nobody spends an hour on a profile they can’t use.

About the police clearance. You can teach on UpMark without one. There’s no deadline, no reminder, and nothing is taken away if you never get one. We show every tutor’s answer on their profile and parents decide for themselves. Answer honestly; either answer is fine.

It’s permanent. Once you sign, it can’t be edited or deleted, by you or by us. That’s deliberate — it’s a record.

3. Don’t stop here

This is where most people stop, and it’s the single biggest reason tutors never get live on UpMark. Signing the declaration feels like finishing. It isn’t — it’s the door. Your profile is empty until you fill it in, and nobody can see or book you.

4. Fill in your profile

You’ll land on your profile page with nine steps. You don’t have to do all nine. Four of them are required before you can go live:

• Your subjects, and the grades you teach them to — step 3, “Subjects & credentials”.
• Whether you teach online, in person, or both — step 7, “Lessons & location”.
• At least one time you’re free each week — step 8, “Weekly availability”.
• Your hourly rate — step 9, “Your rate”.

The card at the top of the page counts down those four by name. The percentage beside it is a completeness score across everything on the form, most of which is optional — it is not a countdown to going live.

step 1, “Your ID and qualification” — your documents isn’t required to publish, but we can’t approve you without it. Upload your ID, and either your matric certificate or your degree or transcript. Before we can approve you we need a certified copy — a commissioner of oaths stamp on the photocopy, confirming it matches your original. It is free at any police station or post office, and most banks and attorneys do it too. A clear phone photo gets your application moving and you can fetch the stamp while we review the rest. Only we see these; they never appear on your public profile.

Teaching in person? You also need an approved profile photo — a student meeting you in person needs a face they can recognise. It isn’t one of the four above and it isn’t a document slot; it’s the photo on your profile, and an admin approves it. Without it we can approve you online-only.

Everything else — your bio, your teaching style, your experience — is optional. It is also what a parent reads when choosing between you and someone else.

One optional step is worth more than it looks: your topic strengths. When a student tells us which topics they’re least confident about, your topic strengths are the biggest single factor in where you appear. Leave it blank and you miss out on that part of the ranking.

Availability lives in step 8, “Weekly availability” of this page, and only there. The Schedule tab has a Weekly availability button that brings you back here.

5. Publish, then wait for us

When those four are done, publish your profile. We’ll check your ID and your qualification document, then approve you. You’ll get an email when we do, and that’s when students can find and book you.

We don’t have a fixed turnaround, so we won’t promise one. If it’s been a few days and you’ve heard nothing, email support@upmarktutoring.com.

What you get paid

You set your own hourly rate. UpMark takes a commission from it, and your profile shows you exactly what your rate and your commission are. Money from a lesson is held until after the lesson — see Running lessons for how we know it happened, because that part matters and it’s easy to miss.