 Welcome to another live session. My name is Linda from ITTT. I'm so happy to be here again this week. If you can see me, if you can hear me as always, please just leave a quick comment in the comments box below. That'd be really, really great. We are live on Facebook and we're live on YouTube at the same time. Welcome. Today we're going to talk about teaching English online. Also, if you're listening to this as a podcast episode, thank you so much for the download. We always turn our live sessions into podcast episodes later. If that's something that you're interested in, go check us out. We are available on all major podcast platforms like iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts. Check us out. Just type in Teflon TESOL Podcast by ITTT. You'll find us there and you can then download these episodes for audio only. If you're here, please just leave a high in the comment section. It would be really, really great that I can see that you're here, that everything's working well. I know last time we had some, or the previous, I forget, but one time we had some audio issues and you were not able to hear me for a few seconds. If that happens, please let me know and I'll fix it as quickly as I can. Sometimes there are issues like that. Hi there. We have Moira. Hi. Thanks so much for tuning in. Adriana, hi. Good to see you. Hey, Valerie. Awesome. Valerie says, I hear and see perfectly awesome. Everything is okay. Hi, Marcia. Hi, Juliana. Hi. Good to see so many familiar faces, some new faces. I love it. Thank you so much for tuning in today. And yeah, I'm sure since you're here, you're all interested in teaching English online. So I'm excited to talk about that today. I know my colleague Lisa, who also goes live once a week. So at ITTT we go live twice a week, one time it's me and one time it's my colleague Lisa. And she already did a live, or I think two or three, with like teaching English online. She was talking about how to plan your online class. She did it last week and the best platforms to work for when teaching English online, also for non-native English speakers. But I decided to also talk about teaching English online today and just kind of cover everything, all the basics and how to get into it and all the little things that just are associated with teaching English online. Because I myself started teaching English online this year and it's been six months now. Yeah, it's been six months or seven months, I forget. But yeah, half a year that I've been teaching English online, I've really enjoyed it. I learned so much and now I feel slightly ready to pass on some of that knowledge to you guys or just share what I experienced and yeah, like that. So that's what we're going to talk about today. As always, if you have any questions, just feel free to ask your questions in the comments. There will also be a Q&A section at the end. So you can always wait until then. And also, yes, please don't forget to like and subscribe. So like our Facebook page, subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you never miss any of our upcoming live sessions. Like I said, we do go live twice a week, one time me, one time my colleague Lisa. So you don't want to miss it. And also in general, all the content that we share on our social platforms, you don't want to miss it. It's very useful, especially if you're a teacher or if you're just getting into Teflon and T-Sol. So yeah. Hello there, Fethi from Algeria. I remember you. Hi, thanks for tuning in as well. Yeah, so please don't forget to like and subscribe. I also want to mention we do have the 30% offer. Again, we always only share that during our live sessions. So very special. So if you are interested in Teflon T-Sol, you're not yet certified. Now is a great time to get started, get on that and save 30% any Teflon T-Sol course from ITTT 30% off. Also, if you're already Teflon certified, I'm actually going to mention that in just a little bit. They're also specialized courses that you can take little top-up courses, especially specifically today, one for teaching English online. I'm going to show you that in just a second. So maybe that's something you're interested in and then you can save 30%. That course is $175. So minus 30%, it's not really that expensive. So you might as well just take it. I also took that. I think last year, I took that course last year. It came out last year in 2020, about a year ago. And no, it came out at the beginning of 2020, I believe. So that's why I took that course and it was really useful. And then see, I started teaching English online and here we are. So you never know how it goes. Okay. Hi. Interesting topic for today's live session ready to listen. Great. Thank you so much for all of you for being here today. As you might have noticed, it's one hour later than usually, but I just needed a little bit more time this morning. And I figured one hour plus or minus won't hurt. Oh, hi. I love someone says, Faris says, hello, Linda. How are you, Egypt? It is 4 a.m. here. Wow. Faris, if you can't make it until the end, I am not mad at all. You can always watch the replay. Also Pedro, hi. It's 3 a.m. in Portugal. That's crazy. What are you still doing up? Yeah. That's actually a good point because you can always come back and watch the replay. But obviously then you won't be able to ask live questions, but you can still ask your questions in the comments and we do our best to get back to your comments anyway, even later. So you can find our previous live sessions on YouTube, of course, in our live video section. And then also on Facebook, in our video section there, we have a dedicated playlist for all of our live sessions. Valerie says, I'm so lucky I wouldn't have been able to make it at 6. OK, great. Yeah. So sometimes that's why we switch up the times as well so that everyone's able to listen in once in a while So yeah, happy to have you here today. And without further ado, let's just jump right in before I just start rambling because sometimes it happens if you've watched me for a while, you know. Just making sure I'm keeping an eye on the comment section and then I'm going to make myself smaller for just a little while so that you can all see my slides that I prepared. Again, feel free to always ask your questions in between, no problem. And also at the end, there will be a Q&A section at the end. Oh, and I actually forgot. Let me make myself bigger again. I mentioned the 30%, didn't I? But then I didn't say anything else like how to get it. So you can either scan this QR code in the upper right-hand corner and then fill out the application to get your 30% off or you can also just click on this link that I'm going to share with you in the comment section. Here, you should see it now. It looks like this. This is the link with Facebook FB Live minus Linda at the end and also if you're listening to this as a podcast, you find that link in the podcast description. So you just click on that. You fill out your application. You click on Apply and then you'll see the discounted price on the next page minus 30%. And you can go from there. So that's, I almost forgot that because I know how it works. You know, I do it all the time. So sometimes I get ahead of myself, but I caught myself. So that was good. Then we have Alessandro from Brazil. Hi. Thank you so much for tuning in and Irma. Nice to see you again as well, Irma. Thanks for being here. Okay. So I'm sure you're all excited that we're finally getting into this topic now teaching English online. It's been a huge topic for the past year or two and it's increasing all the time. So let's get into it. Again, I'm going to make myself smaller and I'm just going to do a quick introduction because I do see some new faces here who might not know who I am, who might be watching for the first time. So my name is Linda. I'm on one hand, I'm a travel writer and content creator. That's just one of my passions. I love sharing my experience of living abroad in Asia. Under my name, Linda goes East East because I've been in Asia pretty much since 2012. I've lived in China and I now live in South Korea. I've been here for the past six years already. You can find my own website at lindeghosteast.com and also on Instagram, on Facebook as well, but also on Instagram. That's my main platform where I just love to share my content at Linda goes East, Linda goes East. I can't talk this morning. So you click on that and you just, you know, you can send me a message at any time. You can just say hi. You can like some of my posts and follow me that we highly appreciate it. And yeah, I'm originally from Germany and the U.S. My mom is German. My dad is American and I'm based in South Korea. I've been here for six years now and for the past, yeah, five, six years. I've also been a Teflon diesel marketing professional for ITTT. Before that I was actually teaching full-time and then I transitioned towards just Teflon diesel marketing for ITTT. ITTT stands for international Teflon diesel training. And yeah, our website is Teflon course.net and also on Instagram at international Teflon training and ITTT is a leading Teflon diesel course provider worldwide. We have a great variety of different courses. Some of you have already taken a course with us. Some of you might not have taken one year but that is who I am and what I do and yeah. Hi guys. I keep an eye on the comments. Hi Joey. Hi Jerome from Boston and Jonas from State and Island. Awesome. Thank you so much for being here today. I see there's a lot of people here today interested in teaching English online. So let's get right into it. First up, I want to ask you a question. So who watching right now is already teaching online? Let me know if you're teaching online or if you are teaching like in person, if you're teaching abroad or if you don't have any experience yet. Let me know in the comments. Let me know. So who is already teaching online? Who is not teaching online but in person and who is not teaching at all? A little bit complicated. Okay. Pedro says in person. Okay, great. In person. Marcia says I'm teaching both. Okay, great. That's good. And Adriana also both. Juliana in person online. Also both. Jerome not currently at all. Okay, great. Joey is on Instagram. Cool. Yeah, I'll connect with you. And he's teaching online via zoom. Awesome. So I'll go ahead and connect with Joey here. On Instagram. Irma really wants to learn how to teach online. Okay. Great. And Alessandro also both. Look man on. Oh, sorry, look man, not yet, but soon. Okay. Jonas, I have never formally taught, but I did once teach homeless people to read. Cool. So you do have teaching experience. And I bet it's very difficult to do to teach someone how to read. So that's great. The Turks is online. Valerie says I've taught in Japan in the jet program three decades ago. Wow, three decades ago. That's amazing. I have a friend who also taught in Japan in the jet program. Now I have my certificate. I want to start teaching again. That's great. Awesome. Cool. Blended learning to needs. Okay. So is that both in person online? Awesome. Great. So I guess you already know a lot about teaching English online. So maybe there's something that you can also teach me today. If you have, you know, whatever, you know, tip you have advice you have, or if there's a platform for teaching English online that you especially like, share that with everybody, that would be really, really awesome. I would appreciate that because there's always something that I also learned from you guys, which I, what I love doing these live sessions. Okay. Joey also says in addition to online teaching, I do in person assignments in Russia. Very cool. Okay. Great. We have a very, very good group here. So I'm sure this is going to be very, very beneficial for all of us today. Very nice. We have Amy joining as well. Hi, Amy. Welcome. We're talking about teaching English online. So first let's cover the basics of teaching English online. So some of you might already know this, but people who are completely new to all of this, they might not know this yet. So let's just cover this real, real quick. So basically what does teaching English teaching online in general involve? It involves either, or most of the time, one to one lessons, sometimes also group lessons or, you know, you teach two students, for example, but typically it's just one to one. These lessons are obviously delivered online, either via Skype or Zoom or other platforms. So depending on which platform you work for, it can be that they maybe have their own internal platform through which you're teaching. So it's not through Skype or Zoom, but their own internal one. Why teach English online? Maybe you can answer this. Why are you teaching English online? But basically teaching English online allows you to work from anywhere in the world and also take command of your own schedule most of the time, which is really great. What a lot of people want in today's world, just being able to get away break free from the nine to five and just make your own schedule and hours and just have a little bit more freedom, which is great. And you can make money from literally your couch basically, which is great. Who can do it? So anyone with a Tefl qualification, a webcam and a reliable Wi-Fi connection can find work online. Sometimes you don't even need a Tefl, but with the huge surge in teaching English online, it's become pretty much the standard also online to have a Tefl or T-SOL certificate. And then the last question, do I need to be a native speaker to teach English online? No, it's possible to teach English online also as a non-native English speaker. And actually my colleague Lisa that I mentioned just earlier in the introduction, she has a lot of great advice on that. Oh, Joey says technical difficulties. Am I not here? Oh, no. Can you not see me right now? Can you hear me? Was I gone? Am I back? I hope I'm back. Just want to make sure. Can somebody in the comments just let me know if I'm back, if you can see me, if you can hear me, I might have to check on my phone. Oh, okay. Valerie says I can still see and hear you perfectly. Okay, great. Good. I was scared for a second because I was just talking and talking and then someone said, oh, no, technical difficulties. I'm sure Linda will be back soon. Okay, great. Good. All right. Valerie says you never left. Okay. So maybe it's on your end. Great. Thank you so much for letting me know. I just got a bit of a shock. All right. Never lost you here. Great. Okay. So yes, what I was saying about non-native English speakers and teaching English online, I highly recommend checking out my colleague Lisa's live sessions, she did live sessions about how to find a job, also abroad teaching abroad as a non-native English speaker. She has a lot of great tips how to enhance your portfolio and all those things. So I highly recommend checking her out because obviously that's the great thing about both of us because she really has that insight into what it's really like, you know, having a successful teaching career as a non-native English speaker. So yeah, just that on the side, check her out as well. She is mostly teaching English online now. So those are the basics. Then I also want to cover obviously what do you need to teach English online? So those are the three main things you need. First up is a Teflor or TESL qualification of at least 120 hours. So that is the same for teaching English abroad nowadays. You need at least 120 hours of, you know, Tefl certificate. There are different types of Tefl certificates. So some of them are under 120 hours, but so you don't want to get that one. You should really at least have 120 hours also from an accredited course provider like ITTT for example. It's also very beneficial to take a specialized course that focuses on how to teach English online. There have been a lot of new courses like this specialized Tefl courses introduced in recent times specifically for teaching English online. And obviously ITTT also has those I'm just going to share that with you real quick if you're interested. So the first one is the 120, 170 hour Tefl certificate, which is what I just shared with you here in the comments. So this is that you can click on that. This is for people who are not yet certified at all. So this is basically 120 hours, the standard Tefl plus 50 hour specialized teaching English online course. And then if you are already certified and you have your standard Tefl, you can just take a specialized, the specialized teaching English online top up course, which looks like this. That's the link. You can just click on that, check that out. That's 50 hours only. So if you already have a 120 hour Tefl, you can take that separately just to 50 hours very quick. Doesn't take much time. It's not very expensive. And like I said, we also have the 30% off, which you can scan in the upper right-hand corner. I'm also going to mention it again at the end of the class, at the end of the session. So I'm already so into teaching at the end of the session. So you can get your 30% discount. So those are the courses that you want to take if you are serious about teaching English online. I recommend those. So that's one side, the Tefl qualification. The next point, number two here is the right equipment. And I think this is very important and also the teaching platforms, they really look at that as well. So you want to have a laptop, a computer, obviously, a webcam and a good headset. They're all absolute musts. So sometimes it's better to wear a headset, a headset with a mic. It's just going to be a lot clearer for the students to understand what you're saying, because sometimes there is like this background noise or like noise from the computer. I know my laptop is sometimes very loud and students can hear that working, the brimming sound. So you want to avoid that by just having a headset. You also want to make sure that the lighting is good. So I can actually show you what I use normally because I go live during the day in the morning. It's 11.30 now. So actually the sky is blue. It's very nice. I don't actually need additional lighting, but sometimes I teach students at night when it's already dark and then I like to have a ring light like this. So this just kind of stands next to my laptop or kind of behind my laptop. And it just gives me, if I could put it back, it just gives me this additional light, especially at night. This is very nice because it's very important that your students, they can see your facial expressions. Right? When you teach English pronunciation, they need to be able to see your mouth. You just need to be well lit. And this thing literally just costs 20 bucks. It's so worth it. It's really nice. So I recommend getting something like this. And then also, especially if you teach children, you want to get a variety of different props. So this could be a whiteboard, even just a small whiteboard that you can, you know, it's like this, those little ones that we all had when we were kids. One like that, for example, or just any kind of little toys, flashcards, anything like that. And I also like using flashcards or like some kind of props also for my adult students, actually. So sometimes what I do is I have like these little cards. I just written this is actually German. I teach German as well. So those are questions that I prepare on cards, because sometimes it just makes it a little bit more interactive. And I let them choose, you know, a card and they're more involved in that. Or I'm just going to show you this real quick. This is great for kids. So those are like little ABC, little tiles that you can use. So if you have a board, you can stick them on there and you can build words, for example. So just something like this to make it a little bit more interactive, especially for kids, excuse me, especially for kids, it can be difficult to just sit in front of a computer for a long period of time. So you want to have some props. Yeah. And then other requirements for teaching English online. So some platforms they require their teachers to have a degree. So a university degree. Usually it doesn't have to be in teaching in English. It can be any degree, obviously a teaching degree or in English is obviously a plus. You also want to have a good fast internet connection and some platforms, they actually check your internet speed. So you have to do a speed test on your computer and you might not be able to teach on that platform if you fail that speed test. And also what I've seen recently, some teaching platforms even require you to do a background check. So they require you to do a background check. I checked that out on one platform recently who wanted a background check on all of their teachers, which obviously is great. So that, you know, parents, it was for kids to a platform so that the parents can be sure that you know, the teachers are decent and yeah, but that can happen. So it's, it can be a lengthy process from actually applying to then getting to teach. It's not as quick as like this. So there is an application process involved. Some platforms are more strict than others. So yeah, that's typically what it looks like. Good. Then let's see what's next. Yes, let's talk a little bit. Okay. One second, I'm going to look at the comments. Thank you. Thanks so much, Linda. I'll absolutely continue to watch you all the best. Great. Thank you so much. Are you leaving us already? You can always watch the replay. No worries. Great. All right, let's talk a little bit about the online EFL market, what it looks like at the moment and some trends and how the facts basically about online EFL. So according to the statistics, there are around 20 billion people who are speaking, learning English around the world, which is very, very, which is a lot, many, many people. And it's increasing. And then also what boosts online EFL market, the online EFL market is an increase in internet access globally as well. So there is a statistic as of the internet users, 60% of the world's population and that is increasing all the time. So more and more people are getting connected to the internet and more and more people are learning and speaking English and you combine those two and you have the online EFL market also increasing. Then something very interesting that I read recently. So online teaching has proven to be actually, so some research actually shows that on average students retain 25 to 60% more material when learning online compared to only 8 to 10% in a classroom. That is crazy, I think. That is really crazy. So I read that in an article and I thought that was very, very interesting because a lot of people, that's what a lot of people complain about since the whole pandemic thing and a lot of students had to go online that they're not learning as much but this research actually proves the opposite. So how effective online learning actually is, which I thought was super interesting and then also with the online EFL market evolving and growing comes great innovation. So you'll see a lot of new and interesting platforms showing up that you can use in your virtual classroom. So things like unlimited video conferencing time, auto translation capabilities which is super cool, real time co-editing of project work, for example, and also a smart calendar scheduling. All of those things are improving since the pandemic and since the EFL market, the online EFL market is growing so much. So just a few floor major points about the online EFL market at the moment that I just wanted to show you and why it is so booming at the moment and why it's a good idea to get your foot in the door now. Good, now let's cover the types of online teaching. So, and you can let me know, some of you are already teaching online which of those two fits or you are doing, which of those two. So one is online platforms, you're working for an online platform or the other one is teaching independently. So online platforms, there are so, so many out there. The plus is for working for an online platform is you can easily connect with students because they already have this huge student base, right? And you're just new, you're adding yourself to the platform and then you have access to this huge pool of students. You also have access to lesson material, normally some platforms where you don't and you have to create your own lessons, so it depends. But typically a lot of online platforms they will have their curriculum they can provide that to you, you don't have to do anything else. However there can be lengthy application processes for these online platforms so it takes some time to get started with them, you have to do maybe you have to do a mock lesson, you have to do an interview, you have to submit all your applications and stuff, so it takes some time and the worst part they take a cut of your pay so they take a commission. That's how obviously they work. So if you're working for an online platform they take a commission from your pay so you need to keep that in mind. Versus independent teaching where it's all on you you might have your own website or just your own social media channel and you advertise through that and get students you can set your own prices you can teach your own lessons whatever you want. However it needs a lot more advertising efforts so you need to promote yourself you need to get yourself out there versus on the platform where you already have access to all of those students and some setup costs are involved so you might have to do a website you might have to print business cards you might have to pay for some like ads online to get students or access to different groups and things like that so that's definitely one of the downsides. Alright, let's take a look at Valerie's question with the online platforms don't you have to compete for students with all the other teachers? Yes, that's also true so actually when we talk about online platforms there's also two types of online platforms. So one is the online like school platform and the other one is the online marketplace so if you're teaching for a marketplace or you have your profile setup on a marketplace you basically need to attract your students so they need to book you and you need to advertise. You can also make your own price the kind of lessons that you want to teach that's with a marketplace so you put up yourself basically like a profile and then students can find you and they can book you versus with an online platform like a school where they pretty much give you students they assign you students so yes you do have definitely there's competition especially with the marketplaces with the other online platforms typically the schools they would more or less kind of assign the students to you from what I understand I actually work for a marketplace or I work on a teach on a marketplace which has been actually great because what they do because they also want you to be successful on those platforms so the platform that I teach on and I can share a little bit more about that in a bit but what they do for new teachers the algorithm how they structure their site is they push you so you would show up in search results as new teachers and you can also you know have like promotions coupons free trials so that you can build your student base it takes a little bit of work and effort and now for me teaching after six months I have a steady pool of regular students but it definitely took some months so now after six months I definitely can say that I have a steady yeah pool of students regulars that book me every week but that definitely took some effort but those platforms they have those strategies in place to really boost and encourage their new teachers because they want you to be successful so they would put you higher in the search results as well when you're new there so that you can have a good position and good start basically so yeah great so that is that so you can choose for yourself which one makes more sense typically for new teachers obviously a platform makes more sense because if you don't have any experience yet or anything then it's just easier to start with a platform and then maybe once you have your material you know how it works teaching you know you have a couple of students you can then maybe move over to independent teaching instead of your own website and start you know doing that without having to give up part of your pay basically but yeah so those are the options then we have the pros and cons of teaching English online I want to just take a look at that then Juliana says I'm on one platform and two online marketing platforms yeah cool definitely that's also the great thing good point you don't have to stick to only one right you can work for multiple so you can do one platform one marketplace or whatever you want like Juliana one platform two marketplaces so it's totally up to you you just need to make sure that your schedule doesn't you know that two students don't book at the same time and things like that so it takes a little bit of scheduling and time management but you don't have to just stick to one platform absolutely great good point so the pros and cons of teaching English online let's have a look at that real quick so first up we have the pros just want to talk a little bit about those so obviously the flexible working hours and the great work and life balance are the biggest draws I think to the biggest pros for teaching online for sure it's also a good earning potential it's basically you know how much effort you put into you also get back so you can decide essentially how much you want to make right how much you want to teach how much you want to earn it's all in your hands which is really great it's also a really really great way to just get started in TEFL or EFL teaching so if you are someone who's maybe interested in teaching abroad later you could start with teaching English online get experience and then this is a good and also make money earn money save some money up for then to move abroad and teach English abroad the startup costs for teaching English online are also very small you only need a few things you can literally work from your couch your home your office room where I am right now so it's doesn't take much money you save money you don't have to leave your house there's no commuting you know you don't have to go to an actual office you don't have to buy any fancy clothes to go to an office or anything like that so you actually save some money you can also take holidays when you want which is really great so you know whenever you just don't want to work you can just block your schedule and students can't book you for example so it's totally up to you which is super great for teaching English online the cons obviously it's a variable income so that means every month will be different you don't earn a steady income it always depends how many students you have that month that's how much you make so it's never the same amount so that can be quite tricky for me actually my experience teaching six months this is not my sole income so I'm not dependent on it then it would be a different story but and I also don't do this full time I just do it a couple of hours a week but it's definitely been increasing also in the first few months I didn't have that many students so it's slowly increasing to a point where it's now pretty much similar every month because I do have my regulars so you can kind of expect to see it's fluctuating a little bit not too much after a certain point loneliness yeah let's talk about that for a second so if you work like me I work from home all day every day it can get lonely I'm a person who doesn't who doesn't really I mean I'm fine by myself I enjoy some me time but definitely it's lonely especially if you're a very social person so what I do I just sometimes go out work from a cafe so I am among people so you can always do that yeah staying healthy obviously if you're just sitting in your house the whole time not so healthy but I mean in your free time you can then work out the danger of always working that is a real thing because you work from home if you work you know in an office or outside of your house it's very clearly separated this is work this is home but when you work from home you teach English from home it kind of merges into one and actually a funny story because the platform that I work at I had a student yesterday just randomly call me at like 10pm I didn't know why I was calling me I actually didn't pick up but that is the danger of you're always working you're always sort of there right and then slow to start that's also something I just talked about now after 6 months of teaching online I can say I am at a point where I'm pretty happy with my regular students the amount of work I get from the platform but definitely it can be a slow start so you need to put some effort into it to get the ball rolling tech issues yeah just like now we have live sessions so sometimes for you probably the video it's buffering or the sound will be on and off sometimes so that's the same with online teaching obviously that can be quite annoying I had a student where we were both in Korea but it was like thunderstorm and there was a typhoon so the connection was horrible and it was a really challenging class to do I couldn't really hear her she couldn't really hear me so that's sometimes frustrating when you're trying to teach also yes unreliable students you can also sometimes get those I've had those they book a time slot I sit on the computer I prepared myself for the class I wait and then they don't show up so that also happens but most platforms my platform at least they will still pay you especially if they cancel like if they don't cancel at all or if they cancel very short notice my platform can actually decide if I want to charge them for that or how much I want to charge them for it so it's in my hands so I can make that decision but yes unreliable students are annoying but you have them in real life as well and then yes working late or early so depending on where you are you might have to work really late or really early especially if you're working for a platform that mostly caters to Asian students for example but you're in America right so that's the typical scenario then you have to get up real early or you work real late I'm very lucky I am in Asia and my students are all from Asia so we're pretty much in the same time zone it's like one or two hours different which is not a big problem so but you have to take that into account because you want to teach when most of your students are there right you want most of you want to be you want to get students so you need to look at that so that's one point that you need to look at when choosing your platform alright Valerie had a question about taking time off do students drop you as a teacher because they want the weekly regularity so this depends on you know how often you take holidays I guess if it's every week you're not there every other week probably they might not like that you can also try and give them you know advanced notice what I do as soon as I know I go somewhere I just marked that in my calendar it's never been like weeks and weeks on end it's just been a couple of days or like three days that I didn't work or like one week you know a whole week so they know in advance and they can prepare typically they're not that mad about it if it's just one week you know yeah that's why it's really important to build good rapport you know you have a good relationship with your students so that they really like you and only you as their teacher and then they are happy to wait until you're back so I wouldn't worry too much about that good so those are pros and cons then let's look at how much can you earn teaching English online so this really depends on which platform you work for or if you work independently how much the platform pays their teachers typically they pay by the hour and an average hourly rate for online English teachers ranges from $15 to $30 US dollars can be more some platforms you can make your own prices so you can earn absolutely more than that but you just need to make sure that it's also competitive you know so you're not if you're much more expensive than all the other teachers on the platform how do you justify that you know do you have more experience do you have better like qualifications you need to justify that somehow or else students are going to go elsewhere so yeah I think that's it about that part thinking I feel like I forgot to say something but I don't think so typically you will also be paid once a month on a specific day that's when they pay out all of their teachers you can usually either be a bank transfer or like paypal or something you get paid out you can usually choose that and yeah so it's in your hands how much you want to make a month basically that's how many hours you need to work then but yeah that's what it looks like okay yeah which platforms hire online English teachers so many there's so many out there now and those are just a few requirements hourly pay bonuses teaching hours and other factors they all vary obviously from platform to platform but those are some very well known ones and you're going to notice some of them are Chinese yes so magic ears Q kids VIP kid they are Chinese I think and if you heard about the recent situation about online teaching in China I'm going to talk about that in just a minute because you might want to look for other platforms other than the Chinese ones at the moment I think that's next yes so the online teaching market in China in 2021 so what's happening I just wanted to mention that because that's a big thing and a lot of these platforms are Chinese because the like online education English education in China is just so huge and so important so a lot of people work for Chinese platforms and so this is what's happening let me just read that real quick so in late July of this year the Chinese Ministry of Education announced new legislation with big implications for how the online tutoring market operates in China the new legislation places a ban on online teaching companies hiring teachers outside of China this means that it will no longer be possible for English teachers living elsewhere in the world to get hired by an online teaching company that caters to young Chinese students and this is the point young Chinese students so this is only for children if you work for a Chinese company and you live not in you don't live in China but you teach adults you're fine from what I understand from what it says so this is specifically for kids because they're trying to avoid the huge pressure that English education or education general is being put on young Chinese children so that's what's happening and I actually have 20 non-Chinese online teaching companies that you can work for so you don't have to worry about any of this and I want to show you that and you can also I'm going to share the link with you so you can access this sheet you can apply to all of these platforms they are not Chinese so you don't have to worry about any of this new legislation and stuff and you can be sure that you are not going to have any problems so let me just share that with you and we can go through that so this is the sheet the Google sheet you can click on this link I'm just going to show that to I'm going to turn this one off for a second one second I just want to show you this sheet so you know how to work it yeah so this is the sheet 20 non-Chinese teaching companies to work for so you don't have to worry about any of these new regulations in China when you click on this yeah I see someone's clicked on it so great what you can do file and then just make a copy and then you can edit this file yourself or you can just click on these and then apply directly so 20 platforms they're not Chinese so you can just check them out and also information about hourly rate what degrees required lessons provided yes or no you know do you need to plan your own lessons or not what kind of students you're teaching okay Valerie says I can't seem to open it I see some people here if you see people here already joined and they opened it so I don't know maybe this is on your end hmm maybe you have to copy like highlight the link and then instead of just clicking on the link maybe you just need to highlight it copy and then paste it in a tab Valerie maybe try that if that doesn't work I can also send that to you directly maybe if you just send me a message after this I can do that too but yeah it should work I see people have clicked on it already so just going to give you one more minute so yeah these are a lot of companies where you don't I don't see the link anymore oh okay if you are in the year on Facebook so if you scroll the comments it looks like this docs.google.com that's the link I can also share it again one second let me share that again here this is the link so you click on that and then you'll okay Alessandro says I've just clicked on it worked for me okay and Juliana says I see my marketing platform on a cheat cool which one is it do you want to share which one is it okay just came up got it okay perfect okay yeah so this is it and you can just pick you can apply to all of them you can pick the one that fits your um you know your style so whether you know the minimum some of them as you can see have minimum our minimum hours they make this bigger yeah some of them have minimum hours so you can just check you know do you want that or not are you a non-native speaker then you have to you know apply to those that accept non-native English speakers if there's experience experience required all of that stuff so check them out and then you just click on apply and you can apply very easily okay I see a lot of people have joined now great oh Valerie says oh now you're turned off am I turned off oh no am I here I'm here hello super pro okay super pro am I here hello okay hmm my sheet just I don't know my sheet turned off that is very strange anyway I can just click on file and copy okay thank you guys Valerie maybe Valerie had problems okay all right cool so you can just click on file and then make a copy and then you can always keep the sheet and you can just keep it for reference and apply good moving on oh yeah we're almost at the end so I just want to mention that ITTT also has job support that never expires also for teaching English online so every course graduate from ITTT gets access to our database of potential employers those are online jobs those are in person jobs abroad those are exclusive leads on unadvertised jobs you won't find them anywhere else just our partners, our recruitment partners and school partners and platform partners we also give you advice on constructing a high quality CV or resume also advice on writing cover letters and assistance with planning trial lessons for job interviews so sometimes when you have to do a job interview also when you sometimes when you have to teach online they ask you to just hold a quick trial lesson or a mock lesson for like 20 minutes so we also provide help with that just wanted to mention that in case you did not know that so yeah that's that and yes now we're up for Q&A but just let me show you before we go into that how you can find ITTT online so one way is just our website teflacourse.net then you can also find us on Facebook and on Twitter on Instagram and obviously on YouTube where some of you are watching from right now so check us out on there you can also check out my profile at Linda Goes East on Instagram I'd love to connect with you send me a message with your questions I'd love to help you out or just have a chat and then we can move on to Q&A so if you have any more questions also that's not related to teaching English online that's fine or if there's something that's not clear that I talked about today do let me know and then again you can get 30% off your TEFL or TESOL course by clicking scanning this QR code or I'm going to share the discount link one more time in the comments and you can get that like I said if you're interested in teaching English online I really recommend taking the 170 hour course in teaching English as a foreign language with online specialization or if you already have 120 hour TEFL I recommend getting the 50 hour course in teaching English online C-T-E-O so and you can do that 30% off alright I'm a little bit out of breath now but yeah that's what I prepared for today I hope you guys learned something from it I think really the sheet that I shared with you today with 20 non-Chinese online teaching platforms would be super useful for you because I know a lot of people are worried at the moment about China and what this means for the online teaching market but as you can see there's so many other options out there so many other options so you needn't worry you can still teach English online successfully and make it a career and pursue that so yeah I hope you learned something from today if you let me know if you have any questions also any other questions now is Q&A time I still have some time before I sign off so here we go yay Farah said thanks a lot for sharing all of that thank you so much for watching until the end that's awesome Jerome says thanks a lot Linda it was helpful and the sheet is helpful I think that's the most important take away from today right the sheet so please make sure you make a copy of that so you always have that available you can also save it as a pdf if that works for you we can do that Alessandro says thank you Linda I really appreciated that awesome Marcia says thanks for everything again Linda Juliana says I'm teaching languages on my online tutoring platforms yes that's also the great thing so if you speak any other language like myself I speak German in English so I also teach both on my platform I teach English and I teach German so if you you know if you're not only an English speaker if you also know another language very very well you might as well have also offer that for teaching it might be it was kind of daunting for me to teach German because it's very difficult and I don't know I didn't take like a course for teaching German like I did with teaching English the Teflon course so it was kind of daunting at first but now I really enjoy it and I get a lot of students for German as well so you never know maybe you start I started out with teaching English and now doing English and German so maybe there's some opportunities for some of you I know some of you are speaking a great variety of different languages so you might as well look into that as well maybe that works out for you too yes Marcia I'm thinking of teaching Spanish in the future yes you should definitely go for it there's a huge demand for Spanish as well definitely check that out great definitely do that and that's the great thing about teaching online I think you can just set up a profile and you can give it a go and then if it doesn't work out you just delete your profile like it never happened you can always do that your students don't know where you live so they're not going to come to your house and complain yeah but it worked out well it worked out really well for my students and that's why in the beginning I also charged less because I was a new teacher so I kind of put my price below average so also I would get more students maybe we could do a live about that too like how to do those little tips and tricks on how to build your online platform and make it on the platform that would be a good idea but I don't know if my tips are so great for that anyway alright we have a question from Ade Jumo I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly nice of you Linda I just got here a couple of minutes but I got that spreadsheet I'm going to watch the video over again I hope you'll post this video yes we keep all of our live sessions in our playlist I see that you're watching on youtube so you can just go to youtube we have a playlist there called live videos I think so it will be there it will be there for sure okay Valerie says does the ITTT online teaching course cover some of the text setup yes we actually do or it does the course does yeah it covers it Instagram yeah you don't need Instagram it just covers a lot of the other technical things yes it does yep also I think you can check your speed and it gives you help on that your internet speed and stuff like that yep definitely oh I can also show you before I sign off what it looks like the certificate I mean yay this is it this is the certificate in teaching English online you can see it here teaching English online yeah and I took this or I completed this on the 10th of July 2020 so a little over a year ago this is my certificate this is what it looks like if you've completed a course with ITTT before you'll know what the certificate looks like the certificates look like it just looks like that as well yeah okay I've always wanted to teach English but I noticed it's a bit daunting for non-native English teachers thanks for sharing this it will encourage me to take the Teflon T-Soll certifications now great yeah don't be discouraged at all there's so many platforms there's a broad that hire English non-native English speakers and if you did not hear me mention that earlier my colleague Lisa she's a Russian English teacher and she teaches English online she also taught English in China before so she actually has a lot of great advice in her live sessions about or for non-native English speakers to advance in that career so you should check her out as well in our playlist if you see a different face she's blonde and has short hair check her out she has really really great advice for non-native English teachers Valerie says how do you learn how to self promote you can take a marketing class maybe definitely use social media you know or also what Lisa I think Lisa actually did in her live session about that how to promote yourself you should check that out I think she did that yeah because that's what she does I think she teaches on a platform but she mostly teaches independently and she just finds students by herself so check Lisa out she has a lot of info about that so browse our live video section for Lisa again short blonde hair that's Lisa she has tips about that but yeah it's like Facebook groups for teaching English as a foreign language and all that stuff so she'll have great advice for that okay Jerome's asking how about future presentations on teaching techniques using technology oh is that a topic suggestion for her live hold on I need to write this yeah that's a good idea I think this is a topic suggestion right for future live session that's a good idea okay future presentations on teaching techniques using technology alright that awesome idea I will get on to that thank you I always look for new suggestions so that is great awesome Alessandro says do you think we should take TKT or SELTA as well let me see TKT teaching knowledge test hmm I think actually Lisa she mentions because you're a non-native English speaker Alessandro so she has a live session about what non-native English speakers can do what kind of certifications you can take to advance and to add on to your portfolio and I think she mentioned CPE is that it it's also a Cambridge certificate so check that out that's what she recommends doing one of those Jerome asks do you zoom etc do you use an actual white board or online etc things like that yeah okay that's a good idea I'm gonna I'm gonna do that yeah great actually Lisa again I refer to Lisa but she she's great for teaching online honestly that's why I didn't talk about this topic yet because I feel like Lisa knows so much more about that than me she did a live session where she explains how to plan your online lesson and she uses things like MIRO or MIRO which is online like white board so that's really great and I started using that after I watched her lesson or her live session about it and then also a thing called word wall word wall I've also been using that so that's really great those are very interactive fun things that you can use for your online platform check that out MIRO, M-I-R-O and word wall okay I have Maria says yeah TKT is from the Cambridge University I took it twice TKT is something like a proficiency certificate proof you can speak English okay yeah I mean anything like that that's the thing with your English online teaching platforms you can add your certificates so anything that's well known you know that's always a plus so anything from Cambridge is great or IELTS or TOEFL those things are always great for non native English teachers great you can add that to a profile on those platforms and then you can usually what you do is you have to take a picture or send them a PDF of your certificate and then they verify it that's usually how it works so anything that you have definitely useful and a plus okay I did you must please don't forget to post a link to the 30% discount offer I think I did I did I can do it again no problem no problem I thought I did maybe I forgot here you go it looks like this here so teflacourse.net slash apply slash and then the end part but yeah if you're listening to this as a podcast episode it will be in the podcast description anyone else watching live right now you can just click on this or scan the QR code up here I can never get this right because it's mirrored it's weird anyway good okay great awesome you had a lot of great questions today I am signing off very soon so if someone has a very last question I'm gonna take it if not I'm gonna get ready for some lunch it's after 12 now and I'm getting a little bit hungry I'm in South Korea so it's already Friday noon Friday noon but yeah today was really great I hope you really learned something from today and I highly recommend checking out that sheet again make a copy save it as a PDF refer to it you can apply to all of these platforms without any hassle without worrying about what's going on in China right now so anything else thank you so much Jerome for the the topic suggestion I wrote it down and I'm gonna do that probably very soon or maybe I'll pass it on to Lisa and she'll do it I think she has a lot of great tips or you might do it together we did a live session before together Lisa and I it was really fun as well so we might do a joint one again I think that'd be really cool for you guys as well so yeah cool I think yeah I forgot this link here it's in the comment box 30% off and like I said for teaching English online I recommend the 170 hour course from ITTT and the 50 for those who are not yet certified at all in Tefl um if you are already certified in Tefl and you have the 120 hour certificate already take the 50 hour course in teaching English online which I showed you just a few minutes ago looks like this I took this course as well because I was already certified as well I took this when it came out it's really great I started teaching online six months ago and I'm pretty happy with where I'm at now I have a regular flow of students every week and I really enjoy it so yeah thank you so much everyone for being here today I love this crowd so much please come again next week um thank you for coming all the way from Nigeria it's 4am in Nigeria thank you so much for staying up I really appreciate that that's awesome thank you again also please take care also Juliana thank you so much for always being here um I really appreciate you guys Marcia as well thank you have a great weekend as well yeah it's Friday I'm so excited for the weekend have a great weekend stay safe wherever you are don't forget the discount um reach out at any time here Instagram at Linnagos East or just ITTT directly and they will forward it on to me as well no problem reach out and um any questions you might have no problem at all alright then guys I'm gonna sign off and um yeah I hope to see you again next week thank you so much bye guys