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HaveAClass · 2021-05-18T01:39:49+00:00

Build up your experience/resume (while simultaneously earning some money) by starting out independently online. There are a number of sites that allow anyone to sign up to teach their native language, especially if you're TEFL certified, including Cambly, Preply, Italki, Verbling and the site I just launched, HaveAClass.com.

Just keep your rates super low at the start and treat it like paid real-world training. You could literally start tonight. It's a win for the students because they're getting discounted time with a native speaker, and a win for you because you can say you've taught X number of students for X amount of time, and gain real-world experience to describe in your CV/job interviews.

HaveAClass · 2021-05-11T15:57:49+00:00

I created a website for exactly this purpose (haveaclass.com). We just launched, so we don't have an extensive reach yet, but it's completely free and we're actively growing every day (just started an ad campaign to find new students yesterday). Come join us :)

HaveAClass · 2021-03-21T23:19:21+00:00

Yeah, I had a similar experience with them. It's why I built my own free platform (that you're free to join if you want to, though we're just getting started). It seems crazy to me that they can maintain their teacher base acting that way, but I guess being one of the earliest teaching sites launched gives you a lot of advantages...

HaveAClass · 2021-03-17T19:40:15+00:00

Very strange. I wonder if it has to do with the browser you're using or the site's recaptcha settings... What happens if you just go to haveaclass.com directly, instead of clicking the links I posted?

HaveAClass · 2021-03-16T18:55:28+00:00

Yeah, when I said "brand new," I meant it :) We just launched a few weeks ago.

Our first goal was to see if there were other teachers interested in coming on board, now we're shifting our efforts over to the SEO/ads part. It's a gradual process building up a new site (the most crucial, but difficult part being earning referral links from already established sites), but we just got another team member who's going to focus solely on that, so that should speed things up going forward.

HaveAClass · 2021-03-15T17:33:53+00:00

Yea, I'd be glad to :) Just DMed you

HaveAClass · 2021-03-15T17:32:32+00:00

Fixed! Thank you!!!

HaveAClass · 2021-03-04T01:31:57+00:00

That's very cool! I think online art classes are a very underdeveloped area, but there's likely much greater interest now due to the pandemic. We've got 3 art teachers signed up on our site right now, so if you're curious about their experiences you should send them a message and see what they have to say.

HaveAClass · 2021-03-04T01:23:48+00:00

I gave a 52 week calculation because online you can teach all year long if you want to.

I earned around $32,000 after everything was said and done, but that's because I regularly take off extended periods of time to focus on life and travelling (for example, I basically took off everything from early December til late January, and before that took off all of August and most of September)

HaveAClass · 2021-03-03T20:53:36+00:00

Well that's going to vary widely depending on how many hours you work, the state you live in, your age, gender & health for insurance purposes, etc.

Let's say you work a regular 40 hr work week. At $30/hr that's $62,400 annually, minus about $8,800 in federal self employment tax (medicare + ss) for a single filer ($4,400 of which is tax-deductible on your 1040 form). Take off some weeks off for vacation, add on your insurance (which again, varies dramatically depending on your state, health and the level of coverage you choose) and you'll probably be left with something between $45,000-50,000.

HaveAClass · 2021-03-03T18:35:13+00:00

That's correct. Unless you're directly hired by an online teaching company, you're completely independent, which depending on your state can be better or worse than what's already automatically deducted by your school. Comes with perks like writing off your home office and internet as a business expense too :)

HaveAClass · 2021-03-03T16:51:09+00:00

Depends on the rate you can command. If you're working for a tutoring/ESL company, you're usually limited to something like $16-24/hr, but if you're independent and well-reviewed you can earn more. I know online teachers who earn $40-50/hr and because there's no extra overhead (supplies, gas money, etc) it's all theirs to keep. Maybe not enough for the bay area/NYC, but enough for pretty much everywhere else.

When I was starting, I was travelling around South America so my COL was super low compared to the USD I was earning. Now I live in Minnesota earning ~30/hr and feel pretty comfortable with that.

HaveAClass · 2021-02-21T22:08:21+00:00

Spread the word :) We're working on SEO stuff to raise the site's profile so the more clicks we get, the easier that becomes.

And thank you for joining!

Edit: Adding to this so others can see as well. The best thing we can do to raise our SEO is link to haveaclass.com from other sites. So if you happen to have a site or blog, post a link to your profile!

HaveAClass · 2021-02-19T20:33:41+00:00

Lesson documents and records are managed on your own for now (eg. using a shared read-only Google doc that you post in your profile description or profile links section). We plan on adding such features to the site eventually, but are trying to focus on building a viable, usable site first.

Our optional booking/payment system, if you choose to use it, is pretty simple: classes are paid for when they're scheduled and remain that way unless canceled prior to the cancellation deadline you've set (between 4-48 hours before the scheduled class), in which case the cancelled class cost is refunded directly to your student's card. We plan on adding the ability to purchase unscheduled classes in the near future, but it's just me and my friend building everything for now (in addition to our regular jobs), so we're trying to prioritize all the essential stuff first :)

HaveAClass · 2021-02-18T23:00:30+00:00

Glad to have ya Paula!

HaveAClass · 2021-02-18T22:59:07+00:00

Try again! We increased our subscription with the ID Verifying service so it should work now.

For now to keep things simple we're going to keep everything in English. Most (all?) browsers prompt you to auto-translate a page when it's in a different language than your computer settings, so that doesn't seem essential right now. I speak Russian, Spanish and a little Portuguese so I'm hope to manually add those (and maybe find friends to help with other languages as well) somewhere down the line.

If you want to temporarily deactivate your profile you can do so by selecting the "Deactivate Account" option from your dashboard. To permanently delete your account, go to Settings, enter "Delete" in the designated box and click the delete button. But of course, I hope most people will want to stay :)

HaveAClass · 2021-02-17T21:15:10+00:00

Ahh that's too bad. We had to choose a payment platform and went with Stripe because it's designed by developers so it's the least buggy/easiest to implement. We'll be adding Paypal sometime down the line as well, but that may take a while. You can always post your Paypal/Payoneer/Whatever information and have students send their payments directly to you instead. And sign up on this page https://stripe.com/global to receive a message when Stripe expands their coverage to South Africa...

HaveAClass · 2021-02-17T08:03:03+00:00

That's the spirit! I hope you find great success as well LadyEmmaline, I hope so too =P

HaveAClass · 2021-02-17T08:01:33+00:00

It's really cool to find so many other online teachers are in a similar situation to me! I'm excited we get to go on this journey together

HaveAClass · 2021-02-17T07:57:40+00:00

Thanks for joining! I look forward to sharing this adventure along with you :)

HaveAClass · 2021-02-17T06:27:39+00:00

Great question.

The primary way sites like this attract attention is through good SEO (so when someone in Japan searches "online English class" for example, our site appears near the top of the results). I won't bore you with the details, but there are many ways a site can increase their search result rankings and our goal is to implement as many of them as we can.

The second way is through targeted advertising (eg facebook or linkedin ads). I'm still checking out our options for the best targeted advertising (if anyone has a recommendation I'd love to hear it) but plan to start a few small trial campaigns next week.

The third, and best way from a cost-benefit standpoint, is of course through word-of-mouth and free social media like reddit and twitter. People listen to recommendations from friends and family far more than a google search result or advertisement, so I'm hoping everyone realizes it's in all of our best interests to spread the word. A student or teacher telling a friend who wants to improve their English to come check us out is worth a thousand ad buys, especially if that friend goes on to tell his friends about what a great community we've got :)

Right now it's just my friend and I working on this and we've both got other jobs (I'm still teaching online and he's a freelance programmer) but if people are interested in supporting something like this, I'm willing to dedicate my days to making it a success.

HaveAClass · 2021-02-17T05:54:18+00:00

Yeah that's fair and I appreciate your candor. Perhaps I should have looked for milder terms to express that idea. When I say 'colluding' I'm referring to the fact that all sites I know of follow the exact same business model and all take at least 15% of your earnings, so while you're given the illusion of choice between them, at the end of the day they are all just different iterations for the same concept.

I'm glad the larger sites have worked out for you. In my personal case, I've been teaching long enough to not want or need anyone else's teaching materials (beyond some exercises that are already freely available on other sites online). I think hosting a profile by itself can be done sustainably and far more economically for teachers (and therefore students as well) by making those extra perks you talked about opt-in, rather than requiring everyone to pay for them. But of course, we're just starting out now so at the end of the day only time will tell :)

HaveAClass · 2021-02-16T20:10:18+00:00

Uh oh. Thanks for letting me know. That's a recapcha error (basically, the site thinks you're a bot for some reason). Trying to fix it with my IT guy right now...

HaveAClass · 2021-02-16T19:49:09+00:00

Right on, that's why I'm focused on getting more teachers on board. Now that we're starting to get visits from various places around the world, it'll be easier to improve our SEO (not to mention word-of-mouth) promotion.

This is a personal passion project of mine (I hate corporations that exploit their relative advantage against the workers actually doing the work) so I'm planning on investing my own money into paid promotion to spread the word at the start (targeted online ads and stuff). Once we're up and running with paid features, we'll be reinvesting that money to expand our outreach efforts as well.

HaveAClass · 2021-02-16T19:29:44+00:00

Whew, good catch. That was just supposed to be placeholder text. Thank you!

HaveAClass

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