Like many others who were teaching ESL abroad, the worldwide situation cut down many of my tutoring hours and made a steady flow of income really hard to maintain so I decided to turn to online teaching. As I didn’t want to just teach kids I chose to start with Preply and after being online for two weeks with no students I felt very discouraged. I didn’t get to earn much from the few classes I did end up getting afterward as trial lessons had to be done for free and I even got a student who tried to use a different account to book another free trial lesson. Preply Space (their video lesson platform) also crashed on me and the only way to continue the class was to do it on Skype…
While I was sharing my demoralizing experience with one of my old colleagues, they shared the online platform they had been teaching on for a year already earning up to 2500 USD per month and told me that I should try it out. So began my journey with AmazingTalker! At first, I was really taken aback by the 30% commission fees + 8% fixed fees + money withdrawal fees that could reach 3.5%. It is really daunting for new teachers and if it wasn’t for my friend I don’t think I would have even tried! She explained to me that the more I earned the less they would take, so as long as I endured the first two months with a lower income I’d be able to lower those fees significantly after building up my student base. For every 100USD you earn the commission fees go down by 1% so it’s possible to reach 0% if you earn 3000USD per month, leaving you with just around 10% made up of the fixed and withdrawal fees.
Thankfully I was contacted by a fellow teacher who offered to become my mentor. Even though I was skeptical at first about why they were helping me, they explained to me that the platform allowed experienced teachers to become mentors and earn bonuses depending on how well their mentees were doing. She guided me through setting up my profile and making it more attractive for students. It is a marketplace after all and I needed to stand out! She also gave me a lot of tips on how to recruit students, like convincing them to buy packages by creating customized ones based on their needs. I basically had a crash course on marketing myself which all in all was really nice and managed to recruit around 20 stable students before the end of my second month.
Something that worried me was also the inconsistency of these marketplace platforms so it was crucial to plan ahead and schedule lessons with the students early on so that my schedule was always set for the next few weeks (you have to be prepared for some of them to cancel last minute, especially the adults who always seems to have more important things to do). After two months I had built up my profile with enough lessons taught and reviews from students and was able to increase my lesson price significantly. In the process though, I did lose some of my old students and for those that I enjoyed teaching, I offered personalized discounts.
You really have to put in the effort before you can really enjoy all the perks of teaching online! After almost half a year on AmazingTalker, I am now able to schedule my lessons around my personal plans, take holidays when I want, and get very decent pay for a job on the go. Overall it has been a wonderful experience being able to teach students from all over the world and to learn about their cultures and have them share their traveling experiences with me. I’ve also been able to connect with fellow teachers from different countries and built meaningful long-distance friendships.
Reasons why I chose AmazingTalker:
- Lower commission fees working full-time compared to other platforms
- Mentor support and a team of colleagues from all over the world
- Great income potential after building your team of mentees
