Meet the eHarmony of Tutoring If it works for dates, it should work for matching students with tutors.

If it works for dates, it'll work for tutoring. That's the approach WyzAnt has taken to introduce its roughly 2 million registered users to the 75,000 active tutors on its database, available to help anyone from kindergartners to Ph.D. candidates nail their coursework. Along the way, the Chicago-based service has booked $100 million in tutoring sessions, earning anywhere from 5 to 40 percent of each lesson, depending on the tutor's experience.

Princeton graduate Andrew Geant conceived the company (pronounced "wise ant") in 2005 after turning his back on a finance career to become a part-time tutor, specializing in math. But he struggled to find clients through word-of-mouth or listing services with limited ads. So he teamed up with software developer Michael Weishuhn, a buddy from college, to create a better way.

"We wanted to create a marketplace that eliminated the overhead and got past the friction of finding a tutor," Geant says.