Online ESL Teacher for Buddy School
Summary(Review): Buddy School has been around for a long time and is reputable. They allow for native and non-native English teachers to apply. The pay rate is five dollars to $20 per hour you’ll be teaching a wide range of students all away from elementary students up to adults. You do not need a degree to apply and you do not need a certificate but it is preferred. All lesson materials are provided for you for each lesson. You upload these materials and store them in your media library. You can teach a wide variety of subjects which makes this great for teachers who teach more than just ESL.
Job Overview for Online ESL Teacher
Pay Rate per Hour:
Minimum: $5
Maximum: $20
Class Size:
1
Student Ages:
Elementary & Junior (age 5-15)
High School & College Prep (age 15-18)
Adult (age 18+)
Class Schedule:
Morning (9am-12pm)
Afternoon (12pm-3pm)
Job Details for Online ESL Teacher
Accent(s):
Native North American
Native UK
Native Australian/New Zealand
Native Ireland
Native South Africa
Non-Native Neutral
Degree Required:
No
Certification:
No/Preferred
Years Experience:
Min Hours Week:
5
Internet Speed(Mbps):
Min Uploading: 10 MB/s
Min Downloading: 15 MB/s
Online ESL Teacher Job Description
How to start teaching?
To start teaching at BuddySchool, just follow these few simple steps:
- Pick your username and create a free account!
- Log-in and complete your settings. Add your photo! Tutors with a picture receive more lessons than those without one!
- Click on Teach from the top menu. Follow the instructions and create your first tutor profile. Tell students about yourself – your experience, fees, if you want to offer free test lessons, etc.
- Declare your availability in BuddySchool Calendar.
- Activate your profile and start to teach!
How can I activate my profile?
BuddySchool is totally free to register but will charge you for your tutor profiles activation. To activate your profile just click on green button activate in the Tutor profiles section. Activation of each tutor profile costs $1 per month, $5 per half a year and $10 per year. You can extend your profile any time you want to.
If you want to buy credits, please click Buy credits at the top of the page. Enter the number of credits you wish to buy (1 credit costs 1 US dollar) and click one more time on the Buy credits button. A few moments after a successful payment, your credits will show up in your account.
There are no other mandatory fees. Please note that activation can be paid by PayPal or a credit or debit card.
Where can I see my scheduled lessons?
To see the details of all the lessons booked by your students, go to the Teaching section. You can easily access each lesson details in Lessons section or simply check your Calendar.
How do I get paid?
The student pays for each lesson in advance, so you can be always sure that you’ll be paid for your effort. You can send a withdrawal request 24 hours after the lesson is finished in the “Buy credits” section and you’ll receive money up to 1 business day to your PayPal account.
All your current and previous payment history you’ll find in the Check earnings section.
How can I tell my students when I’m available?
You can declare your availability on the Calendar page from the Tutor’s section. Students will see the hours you set when they look through your profile. You can set a one-off time period, such as “2013-08-13 from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm” or regular hours, such as “every Monday from 5:00 pm to 10:30 pm”.
Can I use teaching materials during the lesson?
Yes, BuddySchool provides a tool for you to create and store teaching materials which you can use during the lesson.
All lesson materials can be uploaded and stored in your Media library section. Teachers can upload all types of files: texts, photos, pictures, videos and audio recordings. Once uploaded, the materials can be assigned to any upcoming lesson as shared materials. When the lesson starts you and your student will be able to open and use the shared files.
For each lesson, you may also add notes or reminders for yourself of the activities to be taken at this point of the lesson. These reminders will not be visible to the student during the lesson.
Here’s how you upload a document and assign it to the lesson.
- Start off by accessing your Media profile page at the top of the BuddySchool page and adding new materials. Click on the button Add media.
- Once you upload the material and when a student schedules a lesson, you may share it on the lesson page.
Go to the lesson screen and click on Add From Media Library. You can simply grab specific files from the Drag files here field. - When the lesson starts both you and the student will be able to open the shared materials and use it as teaching aids. Please remember that your student will be able to upload the shared materials only during the lesson.
How can I find students?
- Always Log Into BuddySchool to Build Your Tutor Score.
This one is the most important! Just like on eBay, students look for tried and experienced tutors, with good feedback from other students. Tutor Score is the measure of your reputation and skills. To make sure you receive feedback after each lesson, ALWAYS ask the student to schedule the lesson in BuddySchool. If the lesson is not recorded in the system, the student can’t leave feedback for it. Also, after each lesson is finished, leave your feedback for the student! - Be Active!
Log in often, check your email and don’t let students wait too long for your reply. If you don’t reply before the requested time of the lesson, you will lose that student forever. BuddySchool will send an email to you each time you receive a message from the student, but to make absolutely sure you never miss a new lesson, you can enter your phone number in your profile, and we will send you SMS each time you receive a new request for a lesson. Best part, it’s free. - Create A Compelling Profile.
Add your photo and detailed information about yourself and your experience. Tutors with a photo receive more lessons than those without one! - Advertise Your Profile!
The easiest way to make a quick start on BuddySchool is to create a paid ad. With thousands of tutors registered with BuddySchool, it’s not always easy to show up on the home page or in search and category lists, especially if your Tutor Score is not very high yet. With paid ads, you can immediately place your listing on top of the list and only be charged a small fee for actual visits to your profile.Learn more about creating your ad and gaining instant visibility in the next section Advertisements.
How can I contact my students?
You can simply send a private message from the lesson box. BuddySchool will let you know as soon as your Student sends you an answer. All the messages sent between you and your Student will be available in your Message Box.
Rating – Tutor and Student Score
What is the Tutor Score?
The Tutor Score is used to evaluate the tutor’s reputation in BuddySchool. It is the most important information about a teacher. It tells the students how well others have rated the teacher in the past. The score is shown as a number and filled circles next to the tutor’s name. To see all feedbacks and detailed information about the score just log in a click on the Tutor score in the selected profile.
The points are awarded for performance during lessons. Each time a lesson is finished, the student has the ability to leave feedback about the teacher’s performance, which can increase or decrease the Tutor Score. It can be positive, negative or neutral. Positive feedback increases the Tutor Score by one point and negative reduces it. Neutral feedback has no influence on the score.
The Tutor Score is calculated for each teacher profile separately. Let’s say Anne has 2 teacher profiles – Math (Teacher Score: 20) and Spanish (Tutor Score: 300). Anne is a very good Spanish teacher, has lots of students who leave positive feedback after each lesson. Her Tutor Score as a Spanish tutor is pretty high. Anne also started teaching Math recently, but she hasn’t given many lessons yet and her Tutor Score is low – 20. The Tutor Score from Spanish profile has no influence on the Math profile.
Advertisements
How to get more students? Paid Ads
- Sponsored listing, which looks just like regular listings, are placed on each page in BuddySchool including in the central area of home page and on top of search and category lists. You are only charged if the student clicks on the ad and visits your profile.
- Highlighted listing, which makes your regular listing stand out visually from the rest on search and category lists. You are only charged once and during a 30 days period your listing is highlighted, no matter how many times it is displayed or clicked on.You can use both types of ads at the same time for maximum effect!
What is a sponsored listing ad and how does it work?
Sponsored listing ad is the fastest and easiest way to advertise your Tutor profile. It uses the information from your profile and looks much like a regular tutor listing. It has a photo and information about the subject you teach. Sponsored listings are displayed throughout BuddySchool: on the home page, on top and on the right side of search pages, category listings and in the right side area of most other BuddySchool pages. Their key benefits and features are:
- Instant visibility. By creating a sponsored listing ad you can make your profile visible in key places across BuddySchool in seconds. There are thousands of tutors in BuddySchool and competition can be stiff. Sponsored listing ads give you the opportunity to stand out from the crowd!
- You only pay for visits from students. You will only be charged for actual clicks on your ad, no matter how many times it is shown.
- You control your spending. While setting up your ad you decide how much you want to pay maximum for one visit to your profile (maximum cost per click), how much you want to spend on the ad overall (budget) and how much you can spend in one day (daily expense limit). Detailed reports give you full insights into your ad’s performance on daily and hourly base.
- You control your ad’s performance. Sponsored listing ads compete for visibility in a way similar to an auction. You can place your ad on top of the page and maximize effect by increasing the cost per click. The higher you bid, the higher your ad is placed. If you prefer a more cautious approach, start low and watch the results. Try out a few settings and pick the strategy that works for you!
- Contextual matching to maximize effectiveness. In most cases, your sponsored listing ads will only be placed on pages which match the subject you are teaching. If you teach English for example, your ad will not show on a page listing tutors in Chinese category, or in search results for keywords like “physics” or “computer science”. That means that you don’t need to set the price of a click to compete with all tutors on BuddySchool, you only need a good position in your category.
To better understand how sponsored listing ads work, please analyze this example:
Let’s say you had 100 credits in your account and you have created a sponsored listing ad, setting the overall budget at $25, daily expense limit at $10 and maximum cost per click at $0,5. On the first day, your ad will stop showing after reaching maximum 20 clicks (max $0,5 x 20 = $10), the same on the second day. By then the ad would have spent $20. Because the budget was set at $25, on the third day there are only $5 left and the ad would stop showing after maximum 10 clicks. You have used up 25 credits from your account and are left with 75. You can continue running the ad by editing it and setting up a new budget.
What is a highlighted listing ad?
By creating a highlighted listing ad, you make your regular listing stand out visually from the rest, increasing the chance the students will notice it. Highlighted listing is a simple alternative or addition to sponsored listing ads. You don’t need to select cost per click, budget or daily expense limits. Instead, you only select the number of months (30 day periods to be precise) during which you want your listing to be highlighted. You are only charged once, a fixed price of 10 credits ($10) per month. During this time your listing will be more visible, no matter how many times it is displayed or clicked on by students.
What are credits and how do I use them to pay for ads?
Before you create an ad, the first thing you need to know is that ads cost credits and in order to launch an ad, you first need to buy credits to fill your account.
To buy credits, please click on Buy credits at the top of the page. Enter the number of credits you wish to buy (1 credit costs 1 US dollar) and click on Buy credits button. A few moments after successful payment, your credits will show up in your account.
Please note that you can buy credits only with a credit/debit card or PayPal.
1 credit costs 1 US dollar and each ad you create will use up your credits. With sponsored listings, for example, you are charged for actual clicks on your ad. If you set your price for 1 click at maximum $0,10 and you have 10 credits (equal to $10) on your account, then your ad will run until maximum 100 students click on the ad and your balance is depleted. It is similar to highlighted listings. If for example, you have 100 credits in your account, then when you create a highlighted listing for one month, which costs $10, you will use up 10 credits and your account will be left with 90 credits.
You can use your credits for any number of ads and for multiple tutor profiles.
How to create an ad?
Here’s an easy step by step guide to setting up your ad:
- Start from the page with Tutor profiles. Select the profile you want to advertise and go to My Ads section.
- Select the ad type. Click on Create sponsored listing ad and/or Add highlighted listing ad.
- Enter settings for the ad you have selected. For sponsored listings, it is the amount you want to pay for a visit to your profile (cost per click), the budget for your ad and daily expense limit – the maximum amount you want to pay per day. Setting up highlighted listing is done by selecting the number of months you wish the ad to be active.
- If you have enough credits in your account, clicking the Save button will launch your ad.
Why can’t I see my sponsored listing ad?
There are three main reasons why your ad may not be showing:
- low cost per click. All sponsored listing ads are assigned priority, based on their cost per click setting. Ads with higher priority are displayed more often and are placed higher on the page. In other terms, ads compete in an auction. The more you are willing to pay for a click, the better the chance your sponsored listing will show, and it will show higher on the list. If the cost per click is too low you may not see your ad at all or it will show very rarely.
- budget depleted or daily expense limit reached. While setting up the sponsored listing ad you are asked to specify the budget and the daily expense limit (optional). Your ad will not show if the budget is depleted or if, on this given day, enough students clicked on your ad to reach the daily expense limit. Please read the entry for the sponsored listing ad for more information about the relations of cost per click, budget and daily expense limit parameters.
- context matching. As a general rule, in most of the places we use context matching to show sponsored listings. Put simply it means, that in most cases your ad will show on pages where your regular profile would have a chance to show. For example, if you teach English, then your ad will not show on category list pages for Spanish, or in search results, for keywords like “math” or “sociology”. There are also pages on BuddySchool which are not directly assigned to any context, and in these places, all sponsored listings have a chance to be placed. One such example is the home page – ads from all categories are displayed there.
Online ESL Teacher Job Requirements
Ability to be able to teach English online. You must also be very computer literate as well and have a high-speed Internet connection. Make sure that you have a noise-canceling headset and an HD camera.
Online ESL Teacher Salary and Compensation
How do I get paid?
Student pays for each lesson in advance, so you can be always sure that you’ll be paid for you effort. You can send a withdrawal request 24 hours after the lesson is finished in the “Buy credits” section and you’ll receive money up to 1 business day to your PayPal account.
How to Apply to Online ESL Teacher?
Online ESL Teacher Interview Process & Tips
How to start teaching?
To start teaching at BuddySchool, just follow these few simple steps:
-
- Pick your user name and create a FREE account!
- Log-in and complete your settings. Add your photo! Tutors with a picture receive more lessons than those without one!
- Click on Teach from the top menu. Follow the instructions and create your first tutor profile. Tell students about yourself – your experience, fees, if you want to offer free test lessons etc.
- Declare your availability in BuddySchool Calendar.
- Activate your profile and start to teach!
Company Information for Buddy School
BuddySchool.com is an Online Tutoring Platform founded in 2007 with a simple mission: to connect tutors and students all over the world. We want to give our users a place to learn, teach, meet people and exchange views worldwide.
So far we have achieved:
- Over 90,000 users
- 300 000 lessons
- Almost 20,000 registered tutors
- More than 100 subjects
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