Who we are

Online School Business Guide is a small, independent publisher run by people who have built and sold online courses, tutoring services, and cohort programs. We are not a software vendor, an agency, or a course platform. We make money from a paid newsletter and from selling our own guides—not from selling you a platform or a dream.

We started in 2019 after watching too many capable teachers and trainers lose money on course launches because the advice they found was either vague (“just be authentic!”) or tied to a platform’s sales pitch. Our founder, Maya Chen, had spent six years running a tutoring business that grew to 40 contractors before she sold it. She kept getting the same questions from friends: how do you price this, how do you get your first ten students, what do you do when no one buys? The answers were scattered across forums and podcasts, often from people who had never run a business that paid their rent.

So we began writing down what actually worked—and what didn’t—based on our own P&L statements, contractor agreements, refund policies, and the mistakes we made along the way.

What we do

We publish practical, numbers-first guidance for people building paid online schools, tutoring businesses, and course companies. That means:

• Case studies with real figures. We share revenue, costs, churn, and conversion rates from our own businesses and from operators who agree to be named. We don’t use rounded-up success stories.
• Templates and checklists. Contracts, pricing calculators, refund policies, and onboarding sequences that we have used ourselves. They are free to download, no email required for most.
• A paid newsletter. $12/month for one deep dive per week on a specific operational problem—like how to handle a student who demands a refund after 60 days, or how to structure a contract with a tutor who wants to bring their own clients. The newsletter is how we pay our writers.
• Workshops. Twice a year we run a small, paid workshop (capped at 25 people) where we walk through building a financial model for a course business. No upsells, no mastermind pitch.

We do not offer one-on-one coaching, and we don’t take affiliate commissions from course platforms. If we recommend a tool, it’s because we use it and pay for it ourselves.

Our mission and values

Our mission is to make the business side of online education less opaque. We believe that if more people understood the unit economics of a course or tutoring business before they launched, fewer would lose their savings on Facebook ads.

Three values guide what we publish:

1. Specificity over inspiration. A post that says “know your audience” is useless. A post that shows how we segmented our email list by past purchase behavior and what happened to open rates is useful. We aim for the latter.
2. Transparency about failure. We write about the launches that flopped, the contractor who quit mid-term, and the pricing change that caused a 20% drop in enrollment. Those stories are more instructive than the wins.
3. No hidden agenda. We don’t sell software, we don’t run a mastermind, and we don’t accept sponsored content. Our only revenue is subscriptions and guide sales. That means we can tell you when a popular platform is a bad fit for a small tutoring business.

Why you can trust us

We have been on the hook for payroll, refunds, and chargebacks. Between us, we have:

• Run a tutoring company with 40 contractors and $1.2M in annual revenue.
• Launched 14 online courses, 6 of which lost money in their first year.
• Sold a course business in 2021 and navigated the earn-out period.
• Consulted for two state education agencies on vendor contracts (we don’t take consulting clients anymore).

Our team is small: Maya writes most of the case studies; our editor, Daniel Okafor, a former CPA, checks every number before it publishes; and we commission freelance writers who are current or former operators. You can see their bios on our team page.

We are not journalists, and we don’t pretend to be objective. We have opinions—for example, we think most people should start with a small cohort-based program rather than a self-paced course. But we show our work, and we correct errors publicly.

How we make money

The paid newsletter and guide sales cover our costs. We don’t run ads, and we don’t have a “pro” tier that unlocks basic information. If you ever see us recommend a product, it’s because we use it—not because someone paid us. You can read our full editorial policy.

Get in touch

If you have a question about a specific situation in your business, email us at hello@onlineschoolbusiness.guide. We read everything, though we can’t always reply individually. If you’re an operator with a story to share—especially a failure—we’d like to hear it.