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For the past year I have been offering freelance bookkeeping. However, it is just not working out the way I planned. The customers that have used me only do it for a limited time. I am very open with how I do things and I think that I am basically teaching them how to keeo their own books. What if I offered a tutorial class as an option? It wouldn't be steady money. During these times, do you think this could be an option?
If you have local colleges in your area, they often have adult classes for "real world" activities and they often need teachers for the classes. There are also training companies worldwide who specialize in teaching skills like this and would either be looking for a trainer or someone to help them develop and then train a class. The point is that you can then use that class as a marketing channel for your actual bookkeeping business.
As an extension to what Freelancier said, you should also get in touch with the community liaison from the different local school districts (especially low-income ones) and offer to teach financial planning or basic bookkeeping classes to the parents and community members. Most school districts have budgets set aside to be able to pay for things like this.
People enjoy learning online. Have you considered starting a website or blog to offer your bookkeeping tutorial? Check out my site below where I offer a business plan writing tutorial.
Have you considered offering your service as a personalized hands-on set-up, implementation and training? If that's what clients are effectively buying from you now and you have good experience of the lifecycle of the product, from introduction to when they move on, you could package and price accordingly and expand your revenue stream in addition to your class offerings.
Sounds like your are working more as a consultant than a bookkeeper anyway, so why not package your service this way? You go in, set up a bookkeeping system for the customer and train them over time how to manage it. Lots of small businesses could really use this type of service. By selling a short term service, you can charge more, and probably sell more. As a business owner, I'd be hesitant to hire a bookkeeper just because I'm not sure I'll be able to afford it long term, but if I knew I'd only be paying a set price and would come away with a functioning system that I can use myself, but don't have to take the time to set up and learn on my own, I might be willing to pay for that. You could also charge a premium to come back and straighten things out later when they've screwed their books up beyond their ability to repair! You could also offer longer term support contracts to add too or fine tune their bookkeeping systems as the company grows or changes, offer support on the system ect. Such contracts can be very lucrative if set up properly- basically your getting paid in case they need you, but often they don't.