How to Increase Your Income as an Online English Teacher

If you are already or are thinking about becoming an online English teacher, you’ll want to think of ways to increase your income and maximise your earning potential. Depending on the country you live in, you might find that some companies don’t offer a salary in line with this and want to earn more in line with your current cost of living. There are several ways you can start to do this; which we’ll talk about in today’s post!

Boost your teaching profile 

If you have a profile on teaching websites where you attract customers and set your own rate, you’ll want to increase your student intake. To do this, your profile needs to be the best it can be to help you stand out from the other profiles on these sites.

Ensure that your photos and videos on your profile are of high quality. This helps people see you more clearly and trust you. If you have recorded a video, ensure that your background is educationally appropriate and that there are no background noises. If your introduction video sets the tone for your lessons, you need to show students you have a quiet teaching space that you will use for their classes.

Make sure your bio highlights why you are the best English teacher for your potential students above all others. This might be by explaining your engaging way of teaching, coming across as approachable and knowledgeable or outlining your relevant experience to your learners. If you are an exam expert then let them know this! If you have 20 years of English teaching experience then explain how you have acquired the necessary know-how during this time that makes you a top online English teacher.

Find a niche

One of the most tried and tested ways to make more money in your online lessons is to specialise teaching in a niche area of English. This will make you more profitable as there are fewer people that can do what you do for your students. This might be teaching an area such as aviation English or English for real estate or medical students. 

You might need to undertake additional specialist courses in order to do this and equip you with the necessary knowledge. If you have experience in another area from previous work, then you could combine this with your TEFL qualifications. This makes you very credible as you have practical experience in the area. If you find a niche, work on this and make it known to your students that you are able to help them in their specific context.

Niche areas can mean that you can charge a lot more for group or individual classes per hour. You should also do some research on other teachers in this area and how many out there are offering the same type of classes that you plan on offering. You will find that teaching in a more specialised area can also open up other contacts by word of mouth in their profession, a big advantage!

Offer packages 

Making more money and having a steady income will depend on having long-term students who will continue their classes with you. Offering packages is a good way to secure this for you and stabilise your income. Including sort sort of discount for those who purchase multiple lessons will keep them committed and is actually easier for students to stick to a schedule rather than buying random classes.

Another advantage is that if students pay upfront, then you are covered more in terms of cancellations. Outline a clear cancellation policy so that your student is aware that they might lose a lesson if they don’t give you enough notice. With cancellations, you should be firm if it does happen on a regular basis and refer back to your policy, but having a bit of understanding for students who don’t usually cancel will go a long way with them also.

Gradual increases

The cost of living certainly isn’t going down so it’s perfectly reasonable that you might up your prices from time to time. Most of your students will understand but it’s important to go about it in the right way. Don’t increase your prices too many times within the year and make sure they are fair, smaller increments. Give your students plenty of notice, too. You could even offer a deal where existing students can receive the opportunity to buy another package at the old price before the increase. You might find that your students rush to buy at the cheaper rate!

When you inform your current students of price increases, ensure you provide a personalised message that might explain the increase. This might refer to the rising cost of living or highlight the effort and expertise you bring to their learning. This way, they will show more understanding and continue to see the value of your lessons.

Know your worth

This is key to increasing your online teaching income. If you want to earn more money for your online lessons then stop accepting less than what your lessons are worth. Of course, we need to be realistic depending on our teaching background and the services we are offering, but it’s perfectly acceptable to know what you want to earn per hour and charge that.

There are students who will always try to get free or cheaper lessons out of you. They may try to get a full, free trial class or ask for discounted rates. Some students will explain that the cost of living in their country is lower and therefore your rates may be high. However, if you are living somewhere else with a higher cost of living, you need to charge rates to be able to provide you with a sustainable and liveable income.

Thinking about your target market is also essential to align your prices with this. If you aim to teach students from countries such as Vietnam, then your students might not be able to pay the rate you want. However, if you are aiming to teach business professionals in the USA, your rates might be able to go higher.

Deciding whether to offer free trial classes is important. It can certainly be worth it but you might find yourself offering a lot of free hours and not getting much back in return. Offering a shorter lesson is a good solution to this and charging a small fee for a 30-minute class. This way, students are likely to commit to the class as they’ve paid something towards it, and you don’t end up working hours for free.

Create passive income

Once you’ve built up your TEFL experience, you might be equipped with the knowledge to create other streams of income. This might be starting your own online English school and having other teachers deliver the classes for you. You might also get into content creation through online courses for your learners, social media ESL content, or online resources for teachers. There are many ways you can diversify your income and create something that will start earning you money on the side. This isn’t going to happen overnight but with the right effort and ideas, you can end up more successful and increase your monthly income.

Word of mouth is huge for private English classes and you can earn money from this. If you find yourself with a long list of students you know you don’t have time for, you can offer them to another English teacher for a referral fee. Make sure it’s a teacher you trust and know will do a good job with their learning. Otherwise, the student might come back to you complaining, which will damage your reputation also.

Be efficient  

As an English teacher, it can be very easy to have your time sucked up by other tasks such as lesson planning, materials creation or admin tasks. This time is unpaid and if it takes up too much of your timetable, then you are not earning the maximum you can. Find ways to streamline these processes and become more efficient.

Save your lesson plans digitally so that you can reuse them with future students. Use useful tools for admin tasks like Excel or AI tools, which can help save you time. If you are a big fan of making your own resources, this is fine but make sure they are reusable. Having beautiful, tailored materials is wonderful but very time-consuming! There are abundant resources out there for you to use also which will help cut down the lesson planning time! Make sure you save useful websites in a folder so you can refer back to them quickly.

Keep upskilling

Teaching English online is always changing and new methods, techniques and activities come into use frequently. Stay up-to-date so that your lessons are modern and engaging. This might mean that you study some additional courses about using games in the online classroom or learning to use new technologies for teaching English online. Having this knowledge will help you keep your students and stick with the times. If you want to break into niche areas, upskilling is also key for this so that you are ready to teach these types of lessons. 

Increasing your income as an online English teacher is perfectly doable with the right approach, strategies and ideas. You have to think about what the right approach is for you and how you can put these into action. It might not happen overnight; these things take time and effort. However, you can start building your ideas and working towards your English teaching goals. A good idea is to set weekly, monthly or even yearly objectives and think about how you can reach these to help you increase your income teaching English online.

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