How to Become a Language Teacher Online? – Check Out Great 3 Benefits and 3 Options!

By | April 2, 2017

The Internet has opened us a huge amount of new doors. You can work anywhere in the world if you have a laptop and an internet connection. If you would like to teach languages but don’t like the idea of doing it at a local school, there are great possibilities out there for you. Today I am going to show you how to become a language teacher online. But first, I will list a few benefits of working online.

Benefit #1 – Work Anywhere You Want

I am from Finland and I scrolled a few available jobs for teachers. Did you know where most of them were? In a countryside where almost nobody is living. Many people don’t want to go there so there are jobs available for teachers. But what if you don’t enjoy living in a village of 500 people where the closest supermarket is 20km from your home?

Become an online teacher! Then you can literally choose where you live. You can live in your home country or abroad if you wish. You are not dependent on a specific situation anymore. The world’s most famous language blogger has traveled around the world for 10 years in a row.

How to Become a Language Teacher Online

Even this place can be your “office” if you teach languages online

Benefit #2 – Define Your Salary

What if you are a very skillful teacher but want a raise at your teaching job? Are they going to give it to you? In many countries, teacher’s salaries are predefined by the government and you can’t earn much more than other teachers. Even though you would be 10 times better than them.

If you are teaching languages online, in many cases you can define how much you charge per lesson. There’s also a huge benefit because you are a location independent. You can earn euros or dollars while paying in pesos or rupiah. Let’s say that you earn $20 per hour for teaching online. You can buy 15 lunches for an hour of work or pay a monthly rent for a day of work if you are living in Indonesia. Could you do it if you were living back home?

Of course, getting a good salary as a language teacher online requires that you have good skills and people are willing to pay for your services. But your salary doesn’t have any limit. Did you know that Michel Thomas charged £18,000 per lesson from his language students?

Benefit #3 – You Can Choose Your Students (and Serve More People)

If you are working at a local school and for someone else, you teach those who have been giving for you. If there are students that don’t fit you very well, you can’t complain. However, if you are working online for yourself, you can choose who you want to teach and when.

Many times you can set your own hours because of the time differences. You are not dependent on a place and time because you can find students from all around the world.

1.Italki – My Favorite Language Learning Community

You can easily become a language teacher or tutor in Italki. The community consists of language learners and students who support each other because of their similar goals and interests. I have practiced Spanish, French, German and English in Italki.

Even if you wouldn’t have any certificate of teaching languages, you can be a professional teacher in Italki. There are many people who are willing to buy your services if you have skills to teach languages. For example, a German teacher that I had in Italki, didn’t have an official certificate but she was a very skillful and an enthusiastic teacher. I enjoyed the lessons and I learned a lot.

How to Become a Language Teacher Online

Becoming a Language Teacher on Italki is simple

 

You can create a profile in a few minutes and get started. They have also comprehensive guides for new teachers that will help you to find students and start earning money by teaching languages. When your reputation grows over the time course, you will get students more easily and get paid more if you want.

How to Become a Language Teacher Online

Italki provides lots of help to get you started as a language teacher

2.PReply – A Place for Language Students and Tutors

Preply is a website that connects language students and language tutors. They have tens of thousands of students and teachers in the community. Most of the teachers have several lessons with the same student. I checked a few profiles and most of them had 20-30 lessons per student on average. It’s much easier if you don’t need always change your students. Then you will get to know his/her personal needs and adapt your lessons more easily.

There are also many other benefits of working in Preply like they explain in a picture below. One big reason is that you don’t need to use time on commuting. Many teachers use 1 hour per day and 5 hours a week for commuting. If your hourly salary is $20, you lose $100 + gas/other possible costs for commuting.

How to Become a Language Teacher Online

3 Benefits of Teaching Languages in Preply

3.Create Your Own Blog / Website

This is what I am doing right now. I created LanguagesAreEasy.com in the end of the last year to help people all around the world to learn languages faster. That is what many others have done and some of them are earning a full-time income online. The best ones are making a fortune with their language learning blogs and websites.

If you want to learn how to make money by blogging about languages, have a closer look at this step-by-step training. That training teaching you everything you need to know to make a successful language blog. It doesn’t happen in a minute but if you are willing to work, you will succeed. This is what the training covers:

  • Create a good-looking website
  • How to attract visitors
  • How to make money with your blog
  • How to write engaging texts
  • How to grow your website
  • And much more

The best thing is that it’s totally free to get started. You will get +12 hours of interactive video material and 2 websites for free. I know that this option may sound intimidating at first but I will give you my 1-on-1 support when you join that training. Everyone needs to start somewhere. If you think between these 3 options, this can be easily the most profitable one.

 

DISCLAIMER: Working as a language teacher online requires hard work. Salary doesn’t come automatically just by snapping your fingers. However, I see that there’s much greater earning potential than working at a local school. I think that the best language bloggers are earning +$10,000 every month. In addition, you don’t need to have official certificates or something like that. If you are good enough, people will pay you.

 

Have you thought about teaching languages online? Which languages would you like to teach? What is holding you back or would you like to start right away?

Let me know in the comments below! 🙂

I will be more than happy to respond all your comments personally within 24 hours. Reading new comments from my visitors make my day, so please be kind and let me know what you think.

10 thoughts on “How to Become a Language Teacher Online? – Check Out Great 3 Benefits and 3 Options!

  1. W Tucker

    The content of this site is great. It shows the benefits of being a language teacher online and how it works. The details of how it works and the sites to look at are included, so there’s no nebulous information.
    I would, however, suggest that the English be cleaned up a little. It’s obviously a non-English speaker who is writing and the site would benefit from a good editor. The information would flow better and be easier to understand.

    Reply
    1. Roope Kiuttu Post author

      Hi Tucker,

      thank you for the feedback. Yes, my native language is Finnish instead of English. However, I am using more English than Finnish in my everyday life. I believe that the quality of my text will improve over the time course. The most important thing is that people understand what I write and they find an answer to what they are looking for. What do you think?

      -Roope

      Reply
  2. Christina Sallem

    Everything you wrote here about offline and online teaching is awe-inspiring. This article tells pretty much like I’ve been thinking about lately that I need to give up on my teaching career because the synchronous course delivery and fixed salary cause stress instead of a life. Opportunities of well-paid and flexible (asynchronous) jobs are all over the world and some of them are just as close as fingers to the keyboard. Someone doesn’t necessarily have to be in a specific defined location and regularly scheduled time to get things done. In fact, the work can be done in the shore while you are enjoying your vacation as you illustrated. I’ll consider to try one of your recommended online teaching websites but I am also thinking to build a conventional business. But let me hear from you your experience of teaching online at the first time. It must be very challenging.

    Reply
    1. Roope Kiuttu Post author

      Hi Christina,

      yes, Internet opens awesome opportunities for language teachers. Of course, there’s a lot of competition because many teachers want to have a freedom to work online. It requires hard work and persistence but I know that you could do it very well :).

      I have had lessons as a student and informal tutoring with language learning partners. Language exchange or language lessons are almost always fun and educating. At the same time you get to know other people and learn something from them.

      -Roope

      Reply
  3. This blog is needed

    Awesome! My wife is a teacher and she has always been looking for teaching opportunities outside of a classroom. This is perfect. I will tell her about this and show her your blog.

    Can you be native speaker of a language and also teach it? Keep up the good work.

    Reply
    1. Roope Kiuttu Post author

      Hello,

      show your wife these ideas. I am sure she will like it. The Internet has opened wonderful opportunities for language teachers.

      Being a native speaker makes it even easier to find students because many people want to practice with a native.

      -Roope

      Reply
  4. Kien

    This is very interesting. My girlfriend has been telling me that she wants to teach language online. I just bookmark this page so I can show her later.

    I agree with you there’re many benefits of becoming a language teacher online. You’re pretty much your own boss and you are in control.

    Reply
    1. Roope Kiuttu Post author

      Hi Kien,

      very good. I believe that your girlfriend will like these ideas and opportunities.

      Being a language teacher online opens lots of possibilities and new opportunities. It gives also freedom to work whenever and wherever you want. However, one must also consider that freedom brings lots of responsibilities as well.

      Hard work will pay off 🙂

      -Roope

      Reply
  5. jayveeborres

    My mother is a teacher and she was looking for opportunities being a online English teacher. She might not be able to teach in school because the school has low salary on it. I know she is independent when she will teach online and there’s no one controlling my mother with it.

    Reply
    1. Roope Kiuttu Post author

      Teaching languages online is definitely a great choice instead of teaching at a local language school. You can be your own boss and decide your hours.

      In addition, with a language blog/website you can reach millions of people worldwide instead of just a couple of people at a local school.

      Reply

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