Get Paid for Teaching English Online

English is a global language. The language of technology, politics, science, and more. Hundreds of millions of people want to learn it, for a whole multitude of reasons. So, if you’re skilled in the language – or lucky enough to be a native speaker – you can easily get paid for teaching English online.

What’s more, there are a bunch of different ways to go about it, like selling video courses or hosting one-on-one classes. This guide will explore all you need to know to teach English online and get paid.

Get Paid for Teaching English Online: The Benefits

Before digging into the details of how to get paid for teaching English online, let’s explore the benefits:

• A huge audience: There are literally hundreds of millions of English learners out there. They’re all ages and all nationalities, all over the world. So there are always lots of willing and eager students, just waiting for your guidance.
• An accessible profession: You don’t need much to be able to teach English online and get paid. As long as you know the language and have a bit of basic hardware – a computer, mic, and webcam are all you need usually – you’re good to go.
• A flexible way of working: You can get paid to tutor English online your way. Pick your hours. Decide your favorite way of working. Choose whether to go for a full-on teaching career or a simple side hustle. It’s all up to you.
• Lots of options: A lot of people assume there’s only one or two ways to get paid for teaching English online. But that’s incorrect. There are several options, even some for people who aren’t all that comfortable with the idea of one-on-one teaching.

How to Teach English Online and Get Paid – The First Steps

We’ve seen the benefits. Now, let’s look at how it’s done, starting with the initial steps to follow before you actively start seeking students and teaching any English.

Make Sure You’re Proficient in the Language

Naturally, if you want to get paid to tutor English online, you need to have a certain level of proficiency in the language. Being a native speaker is obviously a big advantage here, and many learners will seek out native teachers or tutors.

However, you don’t necessarily need to be a native speaker to teach English online and get paid. There are plenty of examples of people who learned English as a second language and then went on to share what they’d learned with others.

The key is to make sure you’re confident in your abilities and understand the complexities of the language, like its tenses, verb endings, sentence structures, and so on.

Get Certified to Teach English

This step isn’t entirely necessary, but it can make it much easier for you to get paid for teaching English online in the long run. It may make it easier for you to attract your first students, for example, as well as provide you with some valuable teaching skills.

There are several courses you can take – many of which are available online for you to study at home – to learn the skills needed for English language learning.

The TEFL, or Teaching English as a Foreign Language, qualification is one of the best-known and most widely accepted. If you’re interested in getting certified, research the TEFL or similar qualifications and consider taking either an online or in-person course.

Gather All You Need to Get Paid for Teaching English Online

You’ll also need a few essentials to teach English online and get paid. You’ll require a computer or laptop, for example, as well as some other pieces of hardware, like a microphone and web camera.

You might also benefit from various pieces of tutoring software, along with a video call platform installed on your device. That’ll be essential if you intend to host live one-on-one or group teaching sessions, which is the most common way people get paid to tutor English online.

How to Get Paid for Teaching English Online – 5 Methods

With the initial steps out of the way, it’s time to decide how you want to teach English online and get paid. As touched on above, there are a bunch of different methods to pick from, so let’s take a look.

Make Your Own Video Courses to Get Paid Teaching English

One of the best ways to teach English online is by creating and selling your own video courses. Platforms like BlurBay make this process easier than ever, and it’s a super choice for those who don’t want to follow the traditional format of seeking out students and having one-on-one live lessons via webcam.

This method gives you more time to plan out the kind of content you want to create and fine-tune your approach. You can record, edit, and enhance your videos however you like, then publish them and potentially reach a huge audience in the process.

There’s plenty of money to be made this way, too, with a lot of the big creators on BlurBay posting substantial earnings. You can encourage your viewers to follow you on other platforms, too, giving you even more growth and money-making opportunities.

Get Paid for Teaching English Online as a Freelance Tutor

A more traditional option to get paid for teaching English online is to become an independent, freelancer tutor, teaching students via Skype, Zoom, or a similar video conferencing platform. Through this method, you can find students, work whatever hours you want, and be your own boss.

You can even choose to work with students of certain age groups, from young children up to older adults. You can pick between hosting one-on-one or group lessons, depending on whatever suits you best – one-on-ones allow a more personal approach, while groups can be more dynamic and chatty.

In short, this is a flexible approach to teaching English, but there are some challenges to navigate along the way. It can be tricky, for instance, to obtain your first few students. But, once you get the ball rolling and establish yourself as a reliable and effective tutor, there’s almost no limit to how far you can go.

Join a Teaching Platform to Teach English Online and Get Paid

There are numerous online teaching platforms where prospective teachers can apply for positions or simply sign up, make a profile, and offer their tutoring services.

Some of these platforms attract hundreds of thousands of students, so they can be very effective in bridging that gap between you and the people who can benefit from your skills. It’s a good option to turn to if you’ve already tried the freelance approach but found it hard to attract and acquire students.

Even on sites like this, it can be a little tricky to get your first students. But once you’ve proven yourself and got a couple of good reviews, it should get much easier to attract additional students.

Make Videos and Social Media Content to Earn Money as an English Tutor

You don’t necessarily need to carry out live lessons to get paid for teaching English online. These days, there are many other ways to share your knowledge of the language. If you’re a creative kind of person, you might like to make videos or social media content to teach your audience.

On platforms like YouTube and Instagram, there are many people who have become successful this way, sharing educational, engaging content based on the English language. You could make videos on popular topics like past and future tenses, or even make your own infographics and informative images to share online.

Over time, as your following grows, you could make a lot of money this way as a type of English language influencer.

Write Guides and eBooks to Get Paid to Tutor English Online

Last but not least, our fifth method to get paid for teaching English online doesn’t involve any direct student contact whatsoever. As such, this is arguably the best way for introverts to teach English online, as you can do it completely on your own, in your own time, all from the comfort of home.

With this method, you simply have to write guides, eBooks, articles, exercises, and similar kinds of content about learning English.

People learn the language in different ways, and many like to read and look at examples on the page to understand complex concepts. You can target those kinds of reading and writing learners in your work, publishing and sharing it on various platforms or even your own site if you’ve got a good following.

Get Paid for Teaching English Online in a Way That Suits You Best

When most people think about how to teach English online and get paid, their minds immediately leap to the classic Skype or Zoom lesson formula. But, as this guide has shown, there are actually many more ways to get paid for teaching English online, including more creative, independent endeavors, like selling video courses or making social content. Find your favorite method – or experiment with two or three of them – and start earning money in English language teaching today.