u/No-Tea-3137

hi all, context first: i've been a tutor on preply for about a month. i have 15 students and a full schedule - i've been teaching english with my initial price set at $12. i've increased my price for new students since then following 5-star reviews, but my current students are all at the $12 mark and i plan to keep them there until about 3 months in as preply suggests. i'm a native speaker and i'm based in the US.

i've recently started to open up my availability a bit more to attract more trials/boost my profile in the algorithm, since my schedule is pretty packed with $12 folks at this point (all of my current students are at the same rate), and luckily i've had some interest for classes at the higher rate. a more open schedule also has the benefit of providing my current students with added flexibility on the off-chance that they need to reschedule - they can actually get in with me during the same week now!

however, i'm having "a good problem to have":

i have a student who is almost kindergarten age. we are in the same time zone, so our availability matches up almost exactly. she's a sweet little girl, and her parents say she really enjoys my class (it does seem that way!). i don't have to do much prep for this class either. they started with 2-3 25-minute classes per week, but later upped her schedule to every day that i teach. all good so far.

last week, i noticed that two of their classes had been scheduled for the same day - i messaged the parents and asked if that was a mistake or if they actually wanted two classes. they said it wasn't a mistake, and that their child just really likes the class. today, i checked and see that there are several days each week where we are scheduled to have two (and, on one occasion, three!!) 25-minute classes scattered throughout the day, literally just whenever there is any gap in my schedule.

while this isn't strictly a problem as my student is engaged and great to work with, and of course i'm getting more money than i would if she had fewer classes, it is sort of defeating the purpose of me opening up my schedule more for trials/rescheduling flexibility for other students. just about every time i open up a new block, i see that this family has snagged at least part of it for a 25-minute session. because i open things up about an hour at a time, this also eliminates the possibility for 50-minute trials to schedule in that block.

there's also just the general feeling that, as i build a more curated schedule, i would eventually like to stop teaching young children (i already took young children off of my specialties list). out of my 15 students, only 2 of them are young children, but i feel like this situation has like 30% of my day revolving around teaching young children.

they're definitely on my list for a rate increase when the timing is appropriate, but i'm wondering how other tutors would handle this:

• is this even an issue? would you even bat an eye, or would you just take the money because it doesn't matter who it's coming from, assuming that when the rate is increased they would either pay it or drop off, solving the problem anyway?
• would you message the parents asking to cap lessons at 1x/day to allow for more space in my schedule for other students, and if so, how would you approach that kind of message to keep things professional and positive?
• would you continue to open up availability on your schedule for other students, or would you not in case the family booked those times up too?

thanks for your insight! i'm just curious how other tutors would think about this.