One of the side hustles you hear about most is teaching English to students overseas, principally in China. This can be a great side hustle for teachers, or if you need to replace only a portion of your own income in order to stay home with kids, this would be an option to actually help you bridge that gap. Here is a link to their teacher website, so you can check out the basics.
I wanted to get the scoop from someone I know and trust, so I called my good friend Julianne. She has a strong entrepreneurial streak and previously started and ran her own paint-your-own pottery store. She has since moved away from that area. VIPKID allows her to work from home and keep a flexible schedule. If you decide to give it a go, her referral number is http://t.vipkid.com.cn?refersourceid=e01&refereeId=4058854. and I’m sure she’d love for you to use it.
How long have you being teaching for VIPKid?
It’s been just about a year now. I started in Oct. but my shedule wasn’t full until after Chistmas. That’s fairly typical. About 2 months to get your time slots filled.
In an average week, how many hours do you work for VIPKid?
15-20
What was the hardest part about getting started?
Probably just getting familiar with their format. Their teacher portal and also all the lessons. Just getting in the rhythm . There are at least 7 different levels and within each level there might be 100 different lessons. Just getting in the flow of what’s in the lesson – what you’re going to need. And then the tech stuff. Is the webcam working? That stuff is super important. They’ve been updating a lot because they’re getting so many new teachers, so just getting that figured out.
About how much do you make an hour?
$20/hour. Everybody has a base pay. My base pay is $8 per 25 min lesson. As long as you show up on time you get an extra dollar, and if you teach at least 45 classes per month, you get an extra dollar. So that makes it $20.
How much do you make from bonuses, like referrals and special promotions?
Not much really. I think if I worked more hours I would. There are certain prime time hours that I can’t work because I am getting the kids ready. But sometimes they will give a bonus if you open up all those slots.
I haven’t really done much on the referrals. There are other opportunities within the company. They have stuff like teacher mentors and curriculum development. You can move beyond just teaching , but I don’t know much about it.
What do you like best about VIPKID?
The flexibility. Most of the kids are really fun and they take their lessons seriously. I like to be able to work at home. I can sit in my little office in my comfortable clothes. Once you get into the rhythm of the lessons, it’s pretty easy.
If you could change one thing about VIPKID, what would it be?
Maybe that the Parents can rate the teachers. So every class you teach, you can get 1-5 apples. If you don’t get a 5 apple, you aren’t eligible for some things and if you don’t have a perfect 5 rating other parents might not book you. If there’s a kid misbehaving and you reprimand them, they can give you a low score and theres nothing you can do about that. VIPKID isn’t very flexible about the evaluations. Sometimes it’s a little difficult to correspond with VIPKID about stuff like that.
Who would you recommend VIPKID to? In other words, what would you consider to be their ideal recruit?
Someone that really enjoys working with kids. Somebody that can have a little bit of an understanding of the culture, especially regarding education. Why the parents are putting their kids through this education. They are spending a lot of time and money on these lessons. Someone who is energetic and patient and understands that it can be challenging to learn another language. You don’t have to be a teacher but need to have experience teaching children in some way.
Other options
So there you have it. Since Julianne and I are such good friends, I have heard about her VIPKID journey from the beginning, and I know it has really made a difference for her. If you want to try a side hustle, but don’t think VIPKID is the one for you, check out our post on other high dollar side hustles that can net you well over $20 an hour.
We’ve all read those articles about “50 Ways to make money in your spare time.” We get all excited, but when we read the article and then figure how much we’d make per hour, it works out to about $1.50 if we’re LUCKY! I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time for that! If I’m going to get a job on the side, it had better be worth my time. That’s what I call a high-dollar side hustle. So here are four jobs on the side for teachers that can earn you $20/hour or more.
Side Hustle #1: Pet Sitting (or walking during the summer months)
This is a high-dollar side hustle that will make animal lovers smile. Rover.com matches animal lovers with people who want pet care while on vacation. The pets come to your house and you care for them. Some providers snap pictures to send to owners and do other cute things, but mainly it’s about providing safety and care without the pet having to experience the stress of a kennel. The going rate usually runs between $20-25 per day per pet, and some care givers also offer pet sitting, drop-ins, or house sitting.
Rover is ideal for someone who can really demonstrate they have experience and a knowledge of dogs, but they only accept about 20% of people who apply to work through them. However, you can also let your friends and neighbors know this is something you’d be willing to do. Just know your limits and make sure you can adequately care for any pets you are entrusted with.
Since rover.com provides the insurance, you don’t need to worry about it. Yes, they do take a cut, but the insurance plus the fact that they help with getting your name out there makes it not such a bad deal.
Side Hustle #2: Teaching English online
Teaching English remotely to students in China and other countries has become a huge business, and it can be a flexible and portable job on the side for teachers. One of the best things about this plan is that it allows several options, based on what you’re looking for.
If you’re interested in freelancing, you can sign up through verbalplanet.com. It costs nothing, but you have to build your own clientele base and create your own lessons. VIPKID, on the other hand, is a little more corporate. They provide lesson plans (which you are expected to use). One of my close friends has been doing VIPKID for over a year, and it really works for her. Read more about her experience here. If this interests you, this is one of the most up-to-date articles I’ve found on the different options available.
Side Hustle #3: Offering premium classes in person
Offering group classes can allow you to earn a great per-hour rate (think over $80 per contact hour!). Now that’s a high-dollar side hustle that beats the pants off of filling out surveys online! I am a language teacher. Instead of offering one-on-one tutoring, I teach group classes in preschools and just-for-fun classes at a local winery.
Maybe you are a dancer, a black-belt in karate, or have a knack for making science irresistible for kids. All of these are currently successful businesses in the preschool enrichment world. But you don’t have to build a huge business. If you can get 1-2 locations with lot of interest, it can add $800 or more to your monthly income.
Or if you’re not into the preschool scene, wineries and micro-breweries might partner with you to lure clients in at off-peak times.
If you’d like to offer a group class, think about what skills you have and who might be interested in them. Be creative. Do you knit? Are you an artist? The winery where I offered classes also partnered with a henna artist, a tarot card reader, a message therapist, and a yoga instructor to use their back room when it wasn’t booked. So this is limited only by your creativity and ability to market your skill as fun and useful. If you want to learn more about starting a successful preschool group class, check out my article on three make or break steps.
What you are looking for here is a skill that 1) you know well enough to teach 2) you enjoy doing and 3) people are willing to pay for. Often, after you’ve built a class up, you can earn $60-$100 per contact hour. Not too shabby!
Side Hustle #4: Offering autism-specific services
This one is for you, special ed teachers. You know you are amazing in the classroom every day, but how about using your gift to not only make money for yourself, but also allow a special-needs parent to get a service with peace of mind and zero stress? Do you have a knowledge of autism or other special needs? Have you ever thought about how stressful it must be for the parent of with special needs to get good-quality family photos done? Or find a babysitter they feel confident leaving their child with? From what I hear, it can be a nightmare.
Let’s look at photography as an example. Most photographers don’t understand how to work with these special kids, and so a lot of parents don’t even try to get professional quality pictures. So instead of marketing yourself as just another photographer (or whatever your service is), do some thinking about how your service could be made more attractive to parents of kids with special needs. Then use your expertise to market yourself as a provider of services for this special demographic. This high-dollar side hustle will also let you help others in a big way.
What other services do you think create stress for parents of special-needs children? I’ll bet you can think of a few, and some of them might even be something that you love doing.
Work it
There you go. Four possible high-dollar side hustles than can earn you $20 or more. Will they all work for everyone? Heck, no! But you don’t need five or ten different ways to make money. You need 1-2 ways that fit your personality and work for you.
The other thing I hope you gain from reading these ideas is the belief that where there’s a will, there’s a way. Once you start thinking about business ideas and how you can turn your own skills and interests into a viable income, you’ll eventually hit on an idea that is perfect for you. It might not be the first idea you try, or even the second or third. But action is the important thing here. Try something. Do something. See what works and what doesn’t. Then adjust if you need to.
Preschool Enrichment Classes: Three Make or Break Steps
1. Selecting a location
In real estate investing, there is a saying that “You make your money when you buy.” While this might seem odd (“Hold on, don’t they write the the big ol’ check after I’ve sold the property?”), it is 100% true. Of course, what they mean is that if you don’t select a quality property that you can buy below market value, you’re not going to realize a profit when it’s time to sell. The same thing is true for your preschool enrichment classes. (Class that are taught by an outside group at a preschool location are often called “enrichment classes”.)
A big part of having a successful class happens long before you start enrolling students. You make your class successful by doing your research and finding a location where the parents already want what you are offering. If you are offering classes in the wrong location, you can do everything else right, but you still won’t have success. So how do you know what makes a great location?
Willing and Able to Pay
Well, first you need parents who are willing and able to pay and who value what you are offering. As you know, I offer language enrichment classes. I look for suburban centers with highly educated parents. These are parents who ALREADY WANT what I’m offering. I don’t have to convince them to enroll their child in Spanish class. They have been looking for a way to expose their kids to a world language, so when I show up, they are excited about enrolling their child.
Besides being willing to pay, they also need to be able to pay. Now, I am a lover of language and I want EVERY kid to be able to learn with me. But I also have to be able to turn a profit, especially until I get myself up and running.
So while you can certainly offer partial scholarships to students who want to take the class but can’t quite afford it, if every student is asking for a scholarship, you have probably chosen the wrong location. Also, I don’t offer any FULL scholarships for this simple reason: most parents can afford something toward the class if it is a true priority for them. Even if it’s $10 per month, I want them to be invested in their child’s success, and that’s a lot more likely if they are making a financial contribution every month.
So there you go.
Step one: Choose a location where parents are already interested in what you are offering and are able to pay for your enrichment classes.
2. Offering a Free class
At the beginning of each semester, I offer a free class at every location. This does several things.
First, it allows me to market my class. We try to keep the free class fun and upbeat, and at the end of class, each student gets a sticker with a reminder for their parents to enroll them in Spanish class. Students also go home with a sheet of frequently asked questions and a registration form.
Require a registration form for the free class
Here’s the real secret to a free class that leads to enrollment, though: require a registration form. When I started, I didn’t want to do this. I was convinced that if the kids experienced my engaging, fun, and all-around wonderful class, they’d sell it to their parents by begging to enroll. Yeah, whatever.
While that might happen in a few cases, it’s pretty rare that a parent who isn’t even interested enough to fill out a registration for a FREE class with absolutely no obligation is going to actually pay for the full enrichment class. Now sometimes it happens that they were just busy and I pick up a couple of registrations for the class even after the free class. But that is definitely the exception rather than the rule.
Because…
Here’s the other thing. If you offer the class to all of the students, your free class isn’t going to be an accurate reflection of how fun your class really is.
At the first preschool I went to, I agreed to offer the free class to all the students. They combined two preschool classes and had me offer a class to 25 preschoolers. It was NO fun. I had to cut all of my best activities to keep it from dissolving into chaos. My enrollment never recovered because none of the kids wanted to take my boring class – which had only been boring because there were too many students.
Step two: Start each semester with a free class, but ONLY for students whose parents fill out a registration form.
3. Educating parents
Whatever type of enrichment class you are offering, whether it’s ballet, karate, computers, language, or STEM, you are the expert. You know how much students will realistically learn and be able to do. You know the long-term benefits. You know why you do what you do and how it will produce learning.
But the parents aren’t experts. They don’t know any of these things. And if you don’t teach them, they never will.
My first location started out with 22 students – so many I had to break it into 2 different classes. I was thrilled. Then almost half of them dropped after the first month. Some of that was explainable. It wasn’t a good fit for some of the kids, and a couple of them had scheduling conflicts that popped up.
You’ve enrolled them, now you’ve got to KEEP them enrolled
However, the majority of it was my failure to educate the parents on language learning. I just assumed that they knew what I knew: how students learn to understand before they start to speak, that students will retain a ton more through Communicative methods (CI, for you language geeks), but it won’t show up as fast, and that learning a second language has very real long-term benefits to the developing brain.
But they didn’t. And so when I asked some of the parents why their kids dropped the class, I got a lot of responses like, “Well, they weren’t able to say anything.” Now, as a language educator, I know that after four 40-minute classes, that’s absolutely normal, but I hadn’t educated THE PARENTS! So they thought my classes were a flop.
So if you want to KEEP those students you worked so hard to get, you’ve got to educate parents, and communicate regularly. Ideally, these should be short, informative blurbs of 150 words or less. They can be sent through e-mail or handed out on paper. Each one should cover one TINY bit of information and use only terms that a newbie could totally understand. Don’t go all jargon on them; make it something that 6 year-old could understand.
Step three: Educate parents so they know how you teach, why you teach that way, and how it benefits their child.
Can I guarantee you’ll have successful classes? No. There are too many variables, too many moving parts to make guarantees. But I can tell you this: keeping these three steps in mind will put you light years ahead of those who neglect them!
So why are group classes – classes with 4 or more students – superior to individual tutoring? Here are four reasons.
When teachers think of making extra money, one of the first things that pops into their heads is tutoring. After all, they already work in education. They are good at breaking down complex concepts. And they relate well to young learners. They have all the qualifications and they feel pretty comfortable with what it takes to get started. In short, it is totally within their comfort zone.
However, sometimes there are serious rewards for stepping out of the comfort zone and trying something a little scary. And this is one of those situations.
Group classes are more fun
I’ve done individual tutoring, and I enjoyed it. It was really rewarding, and my students were super-motivated. However, it was a little boring. No matter how interested the student is, the spark of interaction between one student and another is missing. As a teacher, that’s part of what I live for.
Get 4, 10, or even 20 students together, and somehow the energy just multiplies. Instead of an isolated learner and a teacher, you have a group dynamic. They make connections on their own that I just couldn’t make for them. (Now sometimes there’s a bit more energy that one might want, but that’s a whole different story, and for the most part, it’s very manageable.)
Group classes are more secure
Let’s say you devote 3 hours per week to tutoring. One student per hour for three hours. If you have three tutoring students and one decides that they don’t want tutoring anymore, that’s a 1/3 reduction in your tutoring income. You could take a huge pay cut simply because someone decides they want to play a sport or are “just too busy.” If you are counting on that income, it can be a major problem.
However, let’s change that scenario to group classes. Again, let’s say you devote 3 hours per week to student contact time and keep your minimum class size at 5. Even if 3 students decide they are “just too busy,” at most that’s only 1/5 of your clientele, and probably a lot less. Not super, but a heck of a lot better than the other scenario.
Group classes provide better value for your clients
Let’s say that you want to make a minimum of $60 per student contact hour. And let’s face it, your time is absolutely worth that. If you do private tutoring, you have to charge parents $60 for an hour lesson or $30 for a half-lesson. That means that only parents who are fairly affluent can afford to work with you.
But you know that LOTS of kids can benefit from your services, so instead, you offer classes. You design a weekly preschool group class that lasts 30 minutes and charge $12 per session per child. You have 5 students enroll. That’s a lot more affordable for parents! More kids can benefit.
And just because you are teaching more children, it doesn’t mean that each student is getting less. They are getting the same learning, as long as class sizes are reasonable. They might even learn more because they will be engaged and having fun with their friends. So you can offer the same benefit for a much better price.
Let’s apply that same concept to adult learners. You still want to make a minimum of $60 per hour, but adults can handle longer classes. Your group class becomes 75 minutes for $18. (That would cost an individual learner $75, so a major difference there.) Eight students enroll. Again, students get the same benefit (and often more) for less money and you are still making your hourly minimum.
Better income for you
So, if you were doing your math in the last two examples, you might have noticed that while the students were receiving a much greater value, you were also doing better in the group classes.
With 5 students paying $12 each for a 30 minute class (and that is usually as long as I recommend a preschool class last), you made $60 for only HALF an hour of contact time. That’s twice your minimum.
In the adult class scenario, you were teaching 75 minutes, but you were making $144. That is over $100 per hour.
It pays to be out of the comfort zone
If you have your heart set on individual tutoring, by all means, go for it. After all, this is your gig and you are in charge. Here are some tips if that’s the route you choose to take. But if you are willing to do something that could make you a little uncomfortable at first, you can provide incredible value to your students, have a lot of fun, and increase both your security and your hourly rate. If you’d like to try out the idea, check out my guest posts on fluencymatters.com or martinabex.com to get some ideas.
