Create Your Own Independent Online English Teaching Business
Looking to start an online English teaching lesson? If you decided to pick the path of running your own teaching business, then here is a checklist to build a successful online English teaching business. Otherwise, you’re welcome to visit this Ultimate Guide to Online English Teaching Jobs, in which you would learn how to get an online English teaching job earning an average of $15 – 35 per hour teaching English online.
Here are key elements we will be covering throughout the guide,
- Video conference software
- Teaching curriculum & materials
- Payment method
- Contract – pay rate, cancellation policy
- Online teaching supplies
Let us know and leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions!
1. English Curriculum and Lesson Planning
Choose Your Teaching Niche and Specialities
First thing first, know your audience in order to deliver an excellent English language learning experience. Know what kind of English curriculum and lesson to plan is crucial by determining what type of student group you will be focusing and specialized with.
- ESL students – you will likely be taking care of the students learning English as a Second Language (ESL) or interested in attending a school or obtaining a job in English-speaking countries. You might want to get an English teaching certificate like TEFL, TESOL, CELTA to teach students English as their foreign language.
- Adult and Business professional – Business professionals tend to be the simplest ones to teach and pay a relatively high rate. Adults usually have clear goals on why they dedicate time and effort to learn English, usually ESL students. However, the downside is that there are very few of them due to the nature of adult life, which is the category with the most frequent cancellation. Here are some tips for teaching adult and business professional
- College entrance exam preparation – exam preparation is the best area to engage. Students have a clear goal to achieve, relatively long-term engagement, and last but not least, the highest pay rate among others. However, the bar for the teacher is also high compared to other student categories. You might need to show them your IELTS, TOEFL, SAT, GRE, or GMAT score if you’re teaching them that particular subject.
How To Create Online Lessons
Many resources help teacher like you to create your lesson plans, curriculum, and plans for their students. See the Marketplace to find the hidden gems. There are also sites out there that have everything done for you in a turnkey manner.
- Best Teacher – it offers many different written exercises and ideas for teachers to use. Even if you decide not to use something directly from these websites, they may inspire ideas to create your written exercises.
- ESL Gold – The strong point with ESL Gold is that it is automatically translated into nearly 70 languages to help your students. You can use the lessons when teaching one on one or in group lessons. Leverage the power of their site by sending your students to their lessons when you are not online with them.
- If you need some ideas for your videos and other presentations, take a look at Prezi. This resource allows you to make high-quality presentations for your classes. Think of it as PowerPoint on steroids.
- SpeechPeek – allows you to show individual attention to each student. With this tool, you can record your assignments as a video. Your students then use the software to record their answers with audio. You can then send them feedback about their audio files. It is a great tool if you have students that require extra attention.
- WizIQ – has continued to grow in popularity since it is a full platform for teachers who create courses or simply teach one-on-one. They continue to add features on a monthly basis, and from what most teachers tell me it is a must-have if you do not have a technical background but want to have your platform. They do not provide lessons or courses, but they get rid of the headaches when building them out, a place for hosting, and selling them to potential students.
2. Planning Your Lessons and Class Scheduling
You will have a lot to remember and to keep track of. To help you with this, you should use a calendar to plan your lessons efficiently. Here are three of the most popular. I highly suggest that you use Google Calendar or iCal. The reason why is that if you plan on having your website or will be freelancing, then either of these will probably sync up with whatever online booking system you are working with or a plugin that is being used as a booking system.
Here are a few online booking systems:
- Calendly – it is designed to help you schedule meetings without the back-and-forth emails.
- Acuity Scheduling – one of the main things about this calendar is that it will adjust to your student’s time zone. Your students can view your real-time availability, select the date and time for a lesson, and then pay with Stripe, Paypal, or Authorize.net.
- Appointy – with this scheduling system, you have many social sharing functions and can integrate with Reserve on Google.
- SimplyBook.me – this looks like another reliable solution for teachers since it offers a booking web page, a Facebook button for instant booking, full-blown statistics tracking system, and a booking button to help you integrate into your existing website.
Here are a few plugins for WordPress sites that allow for online bookings:
- Bookly – this plugin integrates with Google Calendar and WooCommerce for a streamlined user experience for you and your students. If you do not have WooCommerce, you can still receive payments using PayPal, Authorize.Net, and Stripe.
- WPBooking Calendar – if age is a sign of quality, then this plugin should be at the top of your list since it is one of the oldest booking plugins. The utmost quality of this plugin is that it is straightforward to use for you and the student. It is well-documented and allows you to customize your functionality by adding custom fields.
- Birch Press – a plugin that is proven and allows you to add a professional booking management system without too much configuration. Your students can easily book appointments and pay for them using a PayPal account or Credit Card.
If you are developing your website or other online platforms, you should consider looking into planning and tracking software. This will help you stay on track and understand how much time you spend on various tasks. Here are some popular tracking tools:
- Tracking time – this is what I use all of the time. It can be used with multiple people as well by simply adding them to your tasks. It helps me understand where I am putting my effort without making much effort to set up projects and tasks.
- Trello – a top-notch tasking and planning tool which widely popular for project management.
- Asana – top-rated tool and suitable for when working with teams. It is extremely fast and responsive to use.
- Due time Tracking – Has great free and paid-for versions. It is the right choice for those who are also billing for freelance work.
- Rescue Time – Another great free application with a feature-rich paid-for version at a reasonable cost.
3. How Do I Communicate With My Students?
There are many, many, many different tools you can use to help you deliver your course and communicate with students. Many of the schools also have their own proprietary communication platforms, but you might not consider getting into that router due to the complexity and cost of building a proprietary platform.
Video Conference Tools and Virtual Classroom
The quality of your video and audio chat has a great qualify factor in the English learning experience. The unreliable and unstable conference tool or virtual classroom app introduces great frustration to both you and the students. You want to use a communication tool that feels natural and easy to use. The easier, the better.
Here’re some of the top communicating tools recommended,
- Zoom: Zoom is a very powerful conference tool with a comprehensive feature set, including conference video chat, screen sharing, session recording, reliable performance, and more. Many smaller companies also use Zoom if they don’t have their own in house teaching tools.
- Skype: Skype is an extremely popular app for video conferencing and instant messaging. It’s free unless you’re using its group conference feature. Here is a guide of Zoom vs. Skype.
- Appear.in: this is a newer app, but is very reliable and does not require any downloading of software if used on a computer browser. It doesn’t even require you to create a login account.
Internet Speed
The ideal Internet speed for video calling or screen sharing is 10+ MB/s to upload and download from a reliable source. Anything lower, you’re risking the bad video and audio quality during the lesson. However, if that cannot be achieved, then a minimal 5 MB/s is a must. Otherwise, you’re likely risking losing business or a job if you’re working for a company.
What are reliable Internet sources? Direct cable connection is undoubtedly the most reliable one. However, nowadays, Wifi is the most likely method you’re connecting to the Internet; just make sure you’re not too far in the distance from the Wifi router and no major obstruction, concrete wall instance, in between the router and your Internet device. Wifi shared and tethered from your cellular phone is not a reliable source for delivering video calling.
Pick Up the Right Online Teaching Equipments
Creating Terms And Contracts
If you are teaching on your own, you should have a contract that your students are aware of. At the very least, it is recommended to take the time to create an FAQ-style document to send to new students.
Students probably have questions when first sign up for your course, so a good idea to send them a prewritten copy to ease their concerns, which will help to build trust with you.
Here are common terms and conditions you should cover,
Pricing and Payment Terms
Payment terms includes the course pricing model and payment period.
- Pay rate – ex. a fixed rate of $30 per hour for one-on-one and $20 for an additional student. Discount for multiple sessions if pay at once?
- Payment period – ex. Prepaid for 10 classes or pay afterward?
- Late payment?
- Lesson package – provide a comprehensive curriculum consisting of perhaps 10 lessons and pay at once to increase your class schedule and income stability. You will able to focus on teaching instead of worrying about recruiting students at the same time.
Cancellation Policy
- It is incredibly frustrating if the student does not show up in the allocated class slot or cancels/makes a rearrangement at the last minute.
- Ex. Minimal class rearrangement within 24-hour notice. Half or no refund if they cancel just a few hours before the class started?
- Ex. Emergency policy if the student needs to cancel the class for an unexpected event.
5. Creating Your Own Website
Building a website is a bit harder to do due to the various tasks that need to perform to run a smooth site. The main thing you need to know about going this route is that you have to create your lessons and content. Another critical item to consider is that you will either need to become tech-savvy when dealing with building a site, creating a sales funnel, setting up e-commerce, and other functions, or be willing to hire someone to do these things for you. There is a lot more to it than you think!
However, if you’re looking into this route, then try checkout Wix and Squarespace for the easy setup using the templates or look into WordPress if you’re building something more robust. All have great tools in SEO.
Platforms For Online Language Courses
If you are working as a freelancer, you have to find students on your own. You will need to make your own website, market yourself, process payment and legal matters, and promote your courses. This is doable but it takes time and takes a lot of dedication. Furthermore, there is no getting around the fact that it helps if you are technically savvy or willing to make the effort to become that way. However, whether you have made the decision of building your own online English teaching business or not. While you developing your business, you can continue to teach online for some established companies, here is a complete list of online English teaching jobs.
David Eddy says
Hello, how do I log on to google chrome to have the interview? Don’t I need a password?