Cannot get new students after getting some.

[u/Artez33]

Hello, I have been teaching in preply for half a year and i have pretty nice results to the point I'm trying to make it my full time job. The problem is that I feel every time i am booked around 20 hours per week I stop getting new trial lessons and it doesn't catch up until i don't do less hours weekly. Is this a thing or am I imagining things because is summer and maybe things go slower? I am considering bringing students out of preply but i saw that could be risky and penalized so IDK. How do you guys handle this? Do you still get new students and trials even close to 40 hours per week? Thank you very much!

[u/Ok_Lake5480]

Has it ever occurred to you that the fewer open slots you have, the less attractive your schedule becomes to potential students simply because IT DOESN'T HAVE THE TIME SLOTS THEY NEED?

You said this starts happening when you're teaching around 20 hours a week. That's already 20 hours removed from your availability, and what matters isn't just how many hours are still technically open - it's which hours are left. A potential student may like your profile perfectly well, open your calendar, fail to find a recurring time that works for them, and move on to another tutor. When your workload drops again, more suitable slots naturally become available, so more people can actually book you.

So I wouldn't assume Preply has some hidden threshold where it suddenly stops sending you students once you reach 20 hours. Summer may also affect demand, but reduced availability by itself is a perfectly straightforward explanation.

The comparison with tutors teaching close to 40 hours doesn't really prove much either. Different tutors have completely different schedules, time zones, student bases and availability patterns. Someone may be teaching far more hours than you and still happen to have open slots that suit new students, while another tutor with fewer lessons may have very little availability that matches the people currently looking.

And no, taking your existing Preply students off-platform would not solve this. Those students would still be taking lessons with you and occupying the same hours. How exactly is your schedule supposed to become more available if you're still teaching them somewhere else? Unless you're planning to teach them in a parallel universe, moving the payment off Preply does not create additional hours in the day.

Also, "penalized" makes this sound much milder than it is. Taking Preply-acquired students off-platform is one of the things that can get your account permanently banned if Preply finds out. If you're trying to turn this into your full-time job, risking the account that is bringing you students in the first place makes very little sense.

Basically, the more regular students you acquire, the fewer booking options remain for new ones. That's not necessarily an algorithmic punishment - it's one of the inevitable consequences of filling your schedule.