Start Your Own Online English Teaching Business

So, you’ve decided to go into business for yourself as a teacher. The following checklist will help you to begin your own online English teaching business. You are also welcome to browse our Ultimate Guide To Online English Teaching Jobs.

These are the main topics we will be discussing in the guide.

• Tools for video conferencing
• Establishing a curriculum and instructional resources
• Add a payment method
• Contract agreements: Ex, Pay rate, and cancellation clause in the contract
• Teaching resources found online.

If you have any queries or ideas, please let us know by leaving a message!

The Curriculum and Lesson Planning for English teaching

Knowing what kind of English curriculum and lesson to prepare is essential for having a better English language learning experience. But first, you have to decide what sort of student community are you trying to target? Know the target audience can help you choose the right lessons.

English as a Second Language (ESL) students

If you target ESL students, you will be taking care of students new to the country who want to go to school or work in English-speaking countries or wish to develop their English skills. You might want to give just a lesson or even a certificate such as TEFL to teach students English as a foreign language.

Adult and corporate professional

Many business professionals are easy to train, and the ones paying a substantial sum of money are usually quick learners. Adults, who are ESL students, are generally transparent about why they devote time and attention to studying English. On the other hand, however, there are just a limited number of them and owing to the realities of adult life, this group has the highest cancellation rate. These are a few tips for teachers to remember while teaching both adult and corporate professionals.

College entrance exam training

Teaching for exam preparation is one of the best ways to target because students have a definite aim to fulfill, a longer time of commitment to study, and so, they are the best paying amongst others. The teacher is expected to fulfill a much higher bar concerning other student groups. You would have to show your SAT, GRE, GMAT, or GMAT English score related to the subject you want to teach them.

Ways to develop online lessons

Various tools assist teachers in generating lesson plans, curriculum, and appropriate instructional plans for their students. Browse the Marketplace to uncover hidden gems. Also, there are many other websites where everything is planned for you in a ready-to-go way.

• Busy Teacher: The Busy Teacher supplies teachers with various written lessons and training concepts. Even if you plan not to use any of these lessons, you can still gain inspiration from them and use what you learn to develop your exercises for teaching English.

• ESL Gold: ESL Gold has many strengths, such as being available to translate automatically in 70 languages to support students worldwide. These lessons can be taught in one-to-one or group classes.Take advantage of the strength of their platform by letting your students navigate the lessons while you are offline.
• Prezi: Check out Prezi for more inspiration for your videos and other presentations. Imagine it as PowerPoint for steroids as this resource enables you to craft eye-catching lectures for your students.      
• SpeechPeek: With SpeechPeek, you can provide individualized attention to each student. You can use this tool to film your assignments as a recording. Then, the students use the software to input their responses using audio. If you’ve reviewed their audio files, you could give them feedback. This is a powerful tool if you have students who need additional assistance.
• WizIQ: The growing success of WizIQ is because it is a total forum for teachers who want to create courses or wish to teach one-on-one. They’re continually adding new features every month. Many teachers who have experience using it say that it’s a must-have for someone who doesn’t have technological experience but still wants to run their platform. They don’t offer lessons or workshops, but they can help minimize the headaches involved with creating lessons or setting a place for hosting and potentially selling it to students.

How will you get paid?

It is now easier to earn money by offering online services teaching English than it has ever been before. The most widely identified are:

• PayPal: The world’s largest and most popular online payment provider, used in over 200 countries around the world. Some of the prospective students might already have been registered on Paypal.
• Payoneer: Payoneer is an alternative to PayPal rising in popularity among students in developed countries since PayPal is not accepted there.
• Bank Wire Transfer: Bank Wire transfer fees can be very costly if the transaction size is not large since the standard $15 flat international wiring charge applies.

• ACH and transfer: Some banks don’t provide foreign money transfers, but there is a free alternative: a bank transfer and that works only with domestic money transfers.
• Gumroad: This is a wonderful method for accepting payments through credit cards or Paypal. Additionally, Gumroad has one other special feature that most other online marketplaces do not have: the capacity to collect taxes from EU-based customers
• Stripe: Stripe is a common tool useful for almost all WordPress and other online site payment plugins. It is more challenging to get accepted than with PayPal or Gumroad, but in the long run, you can save money.
• SamCart: SamCart is a commonly used system but can be expensive to use if you don’t have many students to teach. Various functions can help you promote your lessons and courses and, additionally, offer excellent monitoring tools to improve your business.

Lesson Preparation and Planning

Running your business means that you are involved in various personal tasks, things to remember, and documents to keep track of. It would be best if you used a calendar to organize your lessons more strategically and efficiently. It is widely advised that you use Google Calendar or iCal.If you intend to have your website or freelance, then one of these will sync up with whatever online booking system you are using or plugin that you are using as a booking system.

• Acuity Scheduling: This calendar will automatically switch to your student’s time zone to save you time. Teachers can show their live availability to students, pick a date and time for a class, and then pay with Stripe, Paypal, or Authorize.net.
• Appointy: Appointy has a scheduling mechanism with lots of social media functionality, along with the ability to do an integration with Reserve on Google.
• SimplyBook.me: Another acceptable option for teachers is SimplyBook.me, as it is a reliable service with impressive features like a booking web page, a Facebook integration button, a powerful statistics tracking system, and a booking button to help you seamlessly integrate into your existing website.

Apart from the calendar applications, listed below are some plugins for WordPress websites that enable online booking:

• Bookly: Bookly is a plugin that helps integrate Google Calendar and WooCommerce for a seamless user interface for students and faculty. WooCommerce is not necessary, as you can accept payments using PayPal, Authorize.Net, and Stripe.
• WPBooking Calendar: This plugin is simple and easy to use for you and the student. It is well-documented, and you can add custom fields to tailor your features. Since it is one of the oldest booking plugins, the WPBooking Calendar should be at the top of your plugins list if age is a consistency marker for you.
• Birch Press: Birch Press is another proven plugin that enables you to set up a professional booking management system by changing far fewer configurations of the existing system. It is simple for your students to book appointments and pay them with their PayPal account or credit card.

You should look into planning and tracking software if you are developing your website or other types of online platforms. This will help you maintain your schedule and help you comprehend how much time you spend on various tasks.

 Listed below are some of the most commonly used tracking tools:

• Tracking Time: You can use this daily. You can do this for different users, such as adding new users to your assignments. It allows you to figure out where your energies are focused without exerting much effort to build assignments and projects.
• Asana: Asana is highly popular and can be used effectively when working with teams. It’s very responsive and quick to use. The disadvantage is that it can get costly when you expand your team size.
• Due Time Tracking: Due Time Tracking has a range of free and paid-for solutions. This is an excellent choice for people who bill for freelance work as well.
• Rescue Time: Rescue Time is one of the best free applications on the market, with an impressive feature-rich paid-for version available at a very affordable price.

Communicating with your students

Although many schools still use their proprietary contact systems, developing your proprietary network may be challenging and expensive. You have several different ways to help you communicate with your students.

Facilitating Videoconferencing:

The video and audio quality has a significant influence on the English-teaching service you have. The unreliable and unstable conference creates confusion and uncertainty for you and the students. You’ll find some of the best communicating methods we recommend below.

• Zoom: Zoom is a handy conference tool with many features, including conference video chat, screen sharing, recording sessions, and reliable performance. Zoom is widely used by many small to medium-sized firms that don’t have their own teaching tools.
• Skype: Most people around the world use Skype for both video conferencing and instant messaging. The group conference function on Skype is chargeable; otherwise, it is free.

Although there are plenty of other choices for you to consider, we will suggest you try the ones above before going on to others because they are popular and more stable than uncommon ones. Students are more likely to have Skype built on their computers and mobile devices.

You’re looking for a platform that is easy to use and looks normal. Make it smoother; that’s all that counts.

The minimum required speed of the internet:

A recommended internet speed for screen sharing or video calls is 10+ MB/s or more for uploading and streaming. If you have less bandwidth, you risk bad video and audio quality during the class, mainly if you are not the only one using the Internet connection. However, if this is not possible, then a minimum of 5 megabits per second is required; otherwise, you risk losing your job or business if a corporation employs you.

What sources of internet can be reliable? For sure, a direct cable connection is the most reliable connection. But when it comes to connecting to the internet today, Wifi is a possible choice. Ensure no substantial barriers, including a concrete wall, is between the router and your computer.

 Using a Wi-Fi-based shared network and being tethered to your mobile phone is inadequate for reliable video calling.

Online language course platforms

You must find your own students to work as a freelancer or if you want to start your own business. To succeed, you will have to do all of the following: build your own website, market yourself, process payments,  handle legal issues, and advertise your courses. It takes time and a tremendous amount of commitment to achieve.

Additionally, without appearing cynical, it is difficult to ignore the reality that you ought to be technically skilled or involved in devoting the time and effort to develop that skill set. This is important to remember whether you’ve decided to launch an online English teaching company from scratch or not.

The best part is you will have time to grow your business while still teaching online for existing companies. To find out about more online teaching work, here is a full list of them.

Developing your own contracts and terms

Teaching on your own should be preceded by a formal contract arrangement that your students are aware of. Taking the time to build a FAQ-style guide to give to new students is a smart idea. When they first apply for your course, they will almost definitely have queries, and if you give them a prewritten document, it will alleviate their doubts. They would feel more confident in dealing with you because online purchases are based on trust.

Read the following for a general list of terms and conditions you should include.

Terms of payment

• Fees Payment: You can fix the fees at a given rate, for example, a set rate of $30 per hour for one-on-one tutoring and $20 for additional students. Significantly lower price for several sessions if you pay for them all at once?
• Paying period: For example: prepaid for 10 lessons, or pay after the classes?
• Payment after the due date?
• Lesson bundle – It can contain a detailed program that consists of ten classes and can be bought as a package deal to improve your class schedule and stabilize your revenue. You will be free to concentrate on teaching without thinking about recruiting students.

Cancellation Policy

• Students who miss their scheduled class are very frustrating, particularly if they don’t let you know about the schedule change and refuse to respond to your request to reschedule to a different slot.
• Slight class readjustment within 24 hours of notification. You can offer a partial refund if they cancel a few hours before the class is started.
• The emergency policy should be in place if the student has to postpone the lesson for an unforeseen incident.

Designing and Building Your Website

This is a little more complicated to achieve. When going on this path, you would have to be good at creating your own lessons and content as a professional content developer. Additional key points to remember include the need to become technology-savvy when working with site design, sales funnel building, e-commerce configuration, and other features, or the ability to employ others to perform certain activities for you. There are a lot more things to be taken care of than you may know!