 Hi, welcome. Linda here from ITTT back this week with another live session. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you doing? Where are you watching from? What's going on? Today we're going to talk about teaching English online and how to get started in 2023. If this year is the year for you and you want to start teaching English online full-time or on the side or whatever you're feeling like, this is the live session for you to join today. So welcome. And if you're already teaching English online or if you're teaching English in the classroom, whatever it is, feel free to leave comments and sort of give your own feedback and input to what I'm saying today. Maybe you can give others some tips. I'm going to share obviously my own tips, but everybody's experience is different, right? So I'm going to share, of course, from my point of view and from other people that I've talked to. But if there's anybody out there today who wants to share their opinion, please do so in the comments. We're always up for that. And let me know where you're watching from today. Where are you watching from right now? I'm in South Korea. It is 10.30 a.m. Friday morning in South Korea here. And let me know where you're watching from. What time is it there? How are you doing? What's the weather like? I don't know. Let me know. I'm always super curious about you guys and where you're watching from so that I know who I'm talking to. It's just more exciting that way. So yeah, let me know guys in the comment section. We're live on Facebook and on YouTube also on two platforms. And yeah, don't forget to like and subscribe so you never miss any of our upcoming live sessions. We go live every week, same place, same time. So if you like that, if you are all about free Tefal T-Salt teaching English information, I highly recommend you click that like button, you click that subscribe button, and you turn on the notification bell on YouTube. You know how it works. You know what to do. So yeah, then you're always notified whenever we go live. But it's usually this same time and same day so you know for the future. We might sometimes change it up a bit so that we can reach other people that might not be able to watch it during this time. But even if you are not able to watch it live, these videos will always stay in our playlist on YouTube and on Facebook. And we also always turn our live sessions into podcast episodes. So if you're into audio only, go to iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts from, and type in Tefal podcast by I-T-T-T-T. No, that's too many T's. I-T-T-T. And you'll find it there, wherever you get your podcasts from. They will be there. Oh, Denise says a bad connection. Is it a bad connection? I'm so sorry to hear that. Well, let me know if you can't hear me, can't see me, then I might have to, I don't know, reconnect. I hope it works out for you, Denise. Christina. Hi, Christina Marie. Can't say it the whole time, but just discovered the podcast. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. I've been listening to at work. Oh, awesome. Hoping to get certified this year, Phoenix, Arizona. Yay, cool. So that's really cool to hear that people are finding us via the podcast, which is really cool. Like I just said, we always turn our live sessions into podcast episodes. And yeah, cool to have you here, Christina. You listened to the podcast first and now you joined live today. That's cool. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Then we have a scene from Morocco. Hi. How are you doing? Oh, Jacqueline. Jacqueline is back. I think you were there last time too, right? Wisconsin USA. We just received six inches of snow. The temperature is nice though in the 20s. Wow. Okay. That's awesome. That's awesome. Cool, cool, cool. Okay. Jacqueline is all good here with the connection. So maybe Denise, I don't know. Maybe that's on your end and you have to refresh, but we'll keep an eye on that. Jacqueline says, yes, left these sessions. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. That's so cool. Thank you. All right. Yeah. Well, then I assume Denise, Jacqueline, Christina, Yasin, you are here today because you're interested in teaching English online. Is anybody already teaching English online? Let me know in the comments. I've been teaching English online since 2020 or 2021, maybe 2021. No, feels like 2020 or 2021. I actually need to double check, but it was during COVID because I was teaching a lot of in-person classes. And then because of COVID, of course, that kind of died down. Those were all canceled and everything moved online. And then I was like, before COVID, I was actually never interested in teaching English online. It wasn't for me, I thought, but then because of COVID, I kind of opened that door and I went in and I'm still in there. And I like it. I enjoy it. It's super, I love the flexibility of it. I can do this literally from the same room at home, my home office, I turn on the computer, and also I can connect with people from all over the world. And we're going to talk more about, of course, the pros, the cons also about online teaching today. But yeah, definitely let me know in the comments if you are also already teaching English online or not, or if this is something that you want to do this year. I assume that it is because you're here. So yep. Yasin says, great, thanks. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you so much. Thank you. And then we have Abbi. Hi. I'm Abbi from Sri Lanka. How are you? Hi. I'm doing very well. How about you, Abbi? How's Sri Lanka? I really want to visit. Can I come? Can I stay at your house, please? Can I come, Abbi? That'd be great. Or Abbi? Is it Abbi or Abbi? Maybe I'm saying it wrong. I'm sorry. Okay, cool. Then, as always, if you watched before, you know that we have a 30% off discount. So also, Christina, if you're here, I know we mentioned it in the podcast too, of course. And we have the link in the podcast descriptions. But now you can actually see it here on the screen. We do have a QR code that you can scan with your phone. Or I'm also going to share the link, of course, in the comments section. And again, in the podcast, it is in the podcast description. So check that out. It ends with FB live minus Linda. It looks like this. So you click on that link, you copy, paste it, whatever. And it will actually open to an application page and you can fill out your application. That is no commitment. You don't have to pay right away. You can fill out your application and you can come back. You can think about it. You don't have to pay right away, of course. Or you can just save this link and then sign up once you're ready. But this link will get you 30% off your TEFL or TSOL course. So like I always say, do not pay full price. Do not pay full price. I hope you can hear that. Do not pay full price. Use this code. Use this code. Or this link and get 30% off. That's a big discount, right? Big discount. So make use of it. Make use of it. And whether or not you need a TEFL course for teaching English online, we're also going to talk about that today. So let's see. Then we have Mohammed. Hi. How are you doing? I'm Mohammed from Afghanistan. It's my first time being here. Hi. Thanks so much for joining. Awesome. Mohammed, if you're interested in teaching, get TEFL certified 30% off, okay? Use that code. Awesome. We have a good crowd today. I'm excited. Cool, cool, cool. All right. All right. Well, since this is Mohammed's first time, let me introduce myself. And let me turn this banner off and let me turn this on and then let me make myself smaller real quick. Okay. Like this so you can see what's going on here on the slides. My name is Linda and I am doing many different things. And of course teaching and working in TEFL and TESOL industry is one of those things. That's why I'm here. But I'm also actually a travel, a travel, TEFL, travel writer. I'm both of those things as well. But travel writer and content creator. I love traveling and taking photos everywhere I go, creating content. So if you're interested, that is, you can find my stuff at lindeghosteast.com and Ghost East because I'm interested in Asia. I've lived in Asia pretty much since 2012. I lived in China and now I live in South Korea. Not now. I've already lived here for a while. Seven and a half years. It's going to be eight this year. Really crazy. But yeah. So that's my jam. And if you're interested in Asia, teaching English in Asia, maybe, or just traveling, go check out lindeghosteast.com. I would appreciate it. And also on Instagram at lindeghosteast. And I also always say that if there is somebody here who's a little bit shy, doesn't want to ask questions in the comments. Or if you have a question that's like a little bit more private or detailed, whatever, you can just go to Instagram and here at lindeghosteast, just send me a DM and we can have a chat in private. Totally cool. I'm originally from Germany slash USA. So my mom is German. My dad is American. And I'm based in South Korea. Yeah. I'm also, of course, a Teflin TESOL marketing professional or professional, I wouldn't say expert, but I've been in the field for a long time. For ITTT, of course. And ITTT, if you don't know, stands for International Teflin TESOL Training. And you can find us on the web at teflchors.net. We're also on social media. Of course, you're watching here on social media, Facebook, YouTube. We also are on Instagram at International Tefl Training. And we are a leading Teflin TESOL course provider worldwide. We have online courses, in-class courses, combined courses, all different kinds of study hours and formats. So do check that out. And like I said, we have 30% off. So yeah, save that link that I shared in the comment section. And when you're ready, when you know which course to take, use that link and sign up and you can actually save 30%. So that is me. Let's have a look at the comments one more time. We have Loretto. Hi from Botswana. Nice. How are you doing? Welcome. Mohammed says, absolutely. I've been an English instructor for almost a decade. Wow, cool. Awesome. So maybe a Teflin course, a TESOL course, if you don't have one yet. A certification is just what you need, Mohammed. 30% off. You should use that. Okay. I'm good here. Sure. Come. Yeah. I want to come. Cool. Thank you. I'll take you up on that offer and I will visit you in Sri Lanka. Yeah. Mohammed says, wow, that's awesome. That is awesome. Of course. All right. Let's get back to our topic today. So teaching English online. And I didn't get anybody telling me here if they're already teaching online, I guess then you're not. But Mohammed is an English teacher instructor. I assume that is in class. Maybe you had to do some zoom during COVID. Who knows? I mean, I think we all had, all the teachers had to go online at some point during COVID, right? So we do probably, many people already have some experience with teaching online. But what if you want to make teaching English online, you want to take it to the next level, you either want to make it a decent part-time or side gig, or maybe you even want to make it a full-time thing. And this is what we're going to talk about today. Specifically for 23 and how to go about and some trends and what we see and some new platforms that are out there that you can apply to. So let's have a look. That's what we're going to talk about today. And as always, feel free to send me comments, right? I usually ask questions. I want this to be like a dialogue between you guys and me. I don't like just sitting there and giving like lectures. That's very boring. And I know many of you are very, very smart, of course. Everybody's very smart here. You all have all different kinds of experiences. So please share. We can all benefit from that. I don't know everything, of course. So yeah, let me know what you know. Let us all know what you know. Muhammad says, I have had to issue classes through WhatsApp. Oh, through WhatsApp. Well, that's new to me. Interesting. Cool. Okay. Is that one-on-one? Or can you actually do like a group chat on WhatsApp? So I assume it's video, right? You did video calls then on WhatsApp. Interesting. Okay. Very nice. All right. Let's talk about how to get started with teaching English online. And I'm going to make myself smaller again. And we're just going to first start off with the basics of teaching English online, what English online is and what it isn't, so that we all are on the same page and we all have the same understanding. So let's walk through that. So what does teaching online involve? So teaching online, as you might know, it can involve, it is, of course, delivered online. I think we all know that. But it can be one-to-one, one-on-one classes, or it can also be group lessons. So for me, I actually mostly only teach one-on-one, but group lessons also possible, or sometimes you have two or three students depending on the platform that you work for. Or if you are a teacher and because of COVID, you had to teach an entire classroom, then, of course, it's many students. So it depends. And they are delivered via Skype, very often, Zoom, or another platform. So here, Mohammed said he delivered those classes through WhatsApp. Very interesting. WhatsApp. Or sometimes also depending on the platform that you work for, they have their own internal classroom, virtual classroom, and then it would go through there. So it depends. Of course, why would you teach English online? Because it's great, right? You can work from anywhere in the world. You can work from your living room, from your bedroom, from anywhere, from your home. And you can take command of your own schedule. Many of these things you decide when you want to teach and how many hours you want to teach. It's up to you in most cases. We're going to talk more about that in a little bit. And then who can do it? Who can teach English online? Literally anyone who has a TEFL qualification and a webcam and reliable internet can find work online. So also, non-native English speakers does not matter. I'm going to actually show you and give you a list of 20 online teaching platforms to work for. And I'm going to share that with you, I think at the end, towards the end. And it has all the requirements. So some platforms, they will say we only hire native English speakers. So then you would not be able to apply there, but some other platforms, they don't care if you're a non-native English speaker, they don't really care. So I'm going to share that with you too. So you know where you can apply to and also how much they pay, et cetera. And then, yeah, this already answers the last question. So do I need to be a native English speaker? No, it's possible to teach English online as a non-native English speaker as well. And I'm going to share that with you towards the end. And here we have a question that I want to answer real quick from Dania. Hey, please help me to understand what is the actual name of the website where I can buy it TT courses because I found two kind of similar ones. Okay. Yes. So I shared this link earlier. If you just copy, hold on this one. If you copy and paste this link, it will lead you to the exact website and it will also get you 30% off your TEFL course. So copy and paste this link. It ends with Facebook, FB live minus Linda. Use this link and then you're good to go, Daniel. Kashab, hi, how are you doing? He's difficult to go online with a big number. Yeah, with a lot of students. Yes, a big class that is challenging. And definitely with traditional online teaching, when it's not like through your regular school job, when you work for an online teaching platform, we definitely see more one on one or two or three. So not really more than that. Okay, so these are the basics. So we all know what's going on, what's what. And yeah, let's have a look at real quick. What do you need to teach English online? What do you need? So nowadays, you also need to have a TEFL or a TSOL qualification. Let me take a sip of coffee real quick. Okay, and you want to make sure just with teaching English abroad that this certification is of at least 120 hours. So the 120 hour TEFL qualification and it has to be from an accredited TEFL course provider. It's also very beneficial to take a specialized course that focuses on how to teach English online. This is something we're also going to talk a little bit about in the in a couple of minutes, but especially nowadays also teaching English online has become very competitive. And there are certain platforms, especially the better ones or the ones that pay more and offer more flexibility are also the platforms that have higher expectations. So they will prefer teachers with a TEFL or a TSOL certificate. And at ITTT, we have recognized that a couple of years ago when the online teaching boom really started and took off. And we also established or created a specialized TEFL course specifically for teaching English online. And I also took that course and after that I started teaching English online and it was really, really good. But as with anything, the more training, the more certificates, the more TEFL training hours you have, the better. And we have Amitava here real quick who says, hello Linda, how are you faring? I'm good. How are you? Thank you Amitava for always being here. I appreciate that. Kishop says impressive presentation and information. Thank you Kishop. I'm happy to have you here. All right. So this is number one, right? Your qualification. Of course, if you are a non native English speaker, any like English proficiency certificate is also really, really good. So any kind of TEFL, IELTS, TOYC, any Cambridge English proficiency certificate, anything that you have, the more you have the better, right? Always like that. But a TEFL TESOL is really like the bare minimum that you could have. And then for online, it's very important, this is point number two here, that you have the right equipment. Okay. There are a lot of English teaching platforms that will actually do checks. So they will check how fast is your internet. They will do checks of how like good your webcam is, etc. If you have a headset, all of these things, they will check that and then they will hire you or not, depending on the result. So a laptop or a computer, of course, you will need that and a webcam. Usually nowadays, all the laptops have webcams like integrated so you don't have to get a separate one. But if you have a computer, I think you need to do that. And also very important is a good headset. They're absolute musts or you can have like a microphone like this depends. You just want to make sure that your students can hear you clearly. If you've taken any online course, especially language course, it's very important that you can hear every word very clearly. And so with the right equipment, that is how you do it. And also you want to make sure that your lighting is good. Lighting is very important. So for me, right now I'm sitting in front of a window and the light is coming in. And I also have an extra small little ring light, very cheap. You can get this off of Amazon for like 10, 15, 20 dollars. So yep, you can get something like that, especially if you teach like in the evening, I have some classes that are in the evening. And then I have my ring lights here that just shines on my face. And that's also very important, just the quality is better. And then also they can see your mouth better, which is very important for teaching languages. And then you might also want to get a variety of different props, especially if you're teaching children. So this could be any kind of toys, cards, flashcards, or an actual like little whiteboard where you can actually write something on. That's super useful. Anything really you might even want to get like a background or something like that. So a lot of options. Thankfully, like with with all the amazing online video conferencing platforms like Zoom and Skype, especially Zoom has so many different cool functions, you can actually like change your background. So that's really cool. And they all have integrated whiteboards now. So you have a lot of options, actually. And I always was really worried that online teaching is boring or doesn't give me the same flexibility, like with writing on the board and all of these things. But I feel like teaching online, like a virtual classroom, you have actually more options. You can easily insert pictures from Google super fast, you can create like the most amazing games with pictures, little characters, everything. I think actually you have a lot more options. And it's a lot easier to do in and create these cool lessons online than it is in the actual world where you can where you have to print stuff out. And then you have to cut it out and you have to glue it and it's a lot of work. But online is super easy. Also takes time, but it's easier to do, actually, I think. And then there are some other requirements. So some platforms they require teachers to have a degree sometimes depends. And like I said at the end, I'm going to share with you 20 online teaching platforms that you can apply for. And the requirements are listed on this sheet. And you will see which platforms require a degree. It's not that many. So you can also find, you can find work if you don't have a university degree as well. And of course you will have, you will need to have good and fast internet. We already talked about that. And I also found some platforms that even wants to see a background check. So that's something that a lot of, or more and more, I should say, not a lot of, I've seen it on some platforms, but I feel like that could be a trend that they want to see a background check of from their teachers or the applicants, which is interesting. So again, because the competition platforms are just getting stricter and stricter here. So that's just something to keep in mind. And then we have Lorado saying, you talked about Lisa, who is a non-native speaker in the previous videos. May I kind of get her link too? And then you also say, I completed the 170 hours with specialization on online teaching. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, Lisa. Actually, Lisa is not part of our family anymore here at ITTT, but the videos are still available. In our playlist with Lisa, who is a non-native English teacher from Russia. And she did a lot of really great videos, especially for non-native English speakers, and they are still in our playlist. So please check it out. They are really great. But unfortunately she's not with ITTT anymore at the moment. Very sad. Yeah. And then we have Danil saying, in your opinion, how long it would take to finish your 170 hour course of teaching online if I need to do it really fast? Maybe Lorado, can you answer that? How long it took? So with the 170 hour course, and I'm going to make myself just bigger real quick. With the 170 hour course, this is basically a two in one. So first you complete the standard 120 hour course, and then you take a 50 hour specialization course in teaching online. And the 120 hour course, you have up to six months to complete that. And I think with the 50 hour one as well. So actually technically you have up to a year to complete it, but a lot of people do it much faster. So the 120 hour course, I finished it between three and four months and I was working full time at the time. So if you have a lot of time, you can finish it much faster. I would say the fastest because the 120 hour course has 20 units and you can work on two units a day. So the fastest you can do it is 10 days. And then the 50 hour course, I believe has 10 units. It's half the units, I think. So you can take that in five days. So technically 15 days, I think is the fastest you could do it. But Lorano, maybe tell us how long it took for you to complete this course. What is realistic? But yeah, maybe a month. If you work through it really, really fast, you can do that in a month, or obviously less. So if you work on this every day, two units a day, 15 days, seems like very fast though. You want to take some time and absorb the material. Oh, 50 hours is six units. Well, there you go. Then you could do it in three days, so literally two weeks. But yeah, depends on your study style. Thank you, Lorano. Okay, so this is what you need to have for teaching English online. And let's have a look at the online EFL market and what we see in here. And some current new facts and trends. So, and this also has actually increased since two years ago. And we now have nearly two billion people in the world speaking English. And what's good for us English teachers is that the majority aren't native English speakers. So many, many people are learning English more and more people are learning English worldwide. And with the rise of online teaching, a lot more people have access to teachers now and are picking up lessons online. And this is also due to this number two points here and increase in internet access. So this also increased by about 3% since last year. And as of April 2022, there were more than 5 billion internet users worldwide. So it's 63.1% of the global population has internet access. And many of these people are then also taking advantage of online education. Because that's the great thing about teaching English online or any online course, right? Even if you're in the most remote part of the world, as long as you have internet, you have access to all of this information. You have access to teachers. And this is definitely what we see a lot more of. And then if there are no schools around or no specialized English schools around, then the only thing a lot of people can do is having English online lessons or other lessons online. But that's really great news for us. And then there's also been some research that online teaching is actually highly effective. And they did some research, especially during COVID. And a lot of people were like online learning is not good. Others were saying online learning is good. And there's actually some research that came out that on average, students retain 25 to 60% more material when they're learning online compared to only 8 to 10% in a classroom, which is crazy. So this makes online learning actually a lot more effective than in classroom learning, which is really, really interesting. And I think it has to do with what I said earlier with the many creative options you have of how you can organize and prepare and deliver lessons in a virtual classroom. You can insert all the images, videos, songs, you can make it super, super interactive. And a lot of that is not possible in a real classroom because you don't have maybe a TV there or, you know, you have to print everything out and cut it out and it's a lot of work. And we teachers don't have time for that. But in a virtual classroom, all of this is possible and it's very fast. So that might be a reason, but just me. And then also, this is something that I just talked about with great innovation. So you have some access to so many great tools online. You have unlimited video conferencing. Even sometimes now they come out with auto translation stuff, real time co-editing of work. So you can have your, you and your students can work on the same thing at the same time, which is really cool. Smart calendar scheduling, okay. But like all of these cool tools and features that Zoom has now or all the other platforms have now. It just really, it makes it really, really great to teach English online at the moment. You have so many options. It's really not boring. And yeah, that's that's these are the trends that we see and what's happening at the moment in the online EFL market. So just something to keep in mind and that we really see that this is still a growing industry. It's not going away. It's very much like working from home during COVID. A lot of people started working from home because they had to because lockdowns. But now many companies are still keeping it up because they've seen the benefits of that. And I think this is something very similar. A lot of people started with online lessons and they have seen that how they have seen that it works and that it's really great. And we're continuing to see that evolving in that area for sure. So if you're thinking about whether or not it's worth it to teach English online in 2023, I would definitely say yes, it is worth it. We are seeing a growing trend still. It's not going away. It is further evolving and that's really, really great. So yeah, good. Then before I go into the next topic, does anybody have a question? Let me know in the comments and I just want to say one more time we do have 30% off and I'm just going to share the link one more time in the comments. But let me know if you have a question so far, if there's something not clear or if you want to add something to free. So again, this is the 30% off link down here. So if this all sounds good to you and you're like, yes, I want to start teaching English online or abroad or in your own home country, wherever you want. This is a great chance to get certified now 30% off any tech floor T-Soul course from ITTT. Okay. Also, okay, so I guess there are no questions. Good. Then I'm going to move on and I'm going to talk a little bit about the types of online teaching, because there's not just one way how you can teach English online. There's different ways. So let's jump into that. Yeah, so the two biggest things here to understand with online English teaching is that there are two different sort of platforms or ways that you can teach. One is online platforms and one is the independent teaching. So the online platforms as it implies you work through a platform. So you apply through the platform versus independent teaching is your own. You do everything yourself. So you could make your own website. You have to do all the promotion yourself. You have to attract the students yourself versus on an online platform. Either you have a profile there or the platform already automatically connects you with students. So these are the two differences. So let's have a look. Online platforms, like I just said, the pros are that they automatically already connect you with students and you have also most often access to lesson material. They will have a curriculum like a regular school and it will let you know exactly what you need to teach to your students. So you don't have a lot of prepping time and you don't have to really worry about attracting students. They will assign students very often to you. However, what we see a lot with these platforms is that they have a lengthy application process. So you apply. Sometimes they also stop hiring for weeks or months if they're full. They don't take on new teachers. So keep an eye out on that. But generally the application process is quite lengthy and they have different stages. So usually the first stage is that you just fill out a form on their website and you upload your resume, etc. And then a couple of days later, if that's good for them, they give you the green light and they will schedule a face-to-face interview. Not like a video interview online with you in a video like that. Interview, online interview. You know what I'm saying. And once that is good, they might also invite you back and you have to teach a mock lesson. And so that can take a while. And then sometimes there would also be a training period where you have to teach actual students. And oftentimes you're not getting paid for that. It's part of the application process. And then once you do a good job there, and then they would take you on completely. And also with these, of course, they don't just hire you and then, you know, let you earn all the money from the students. They would obviously take a cut of your pay. So yeah, that's usually how it works with these. Again, pros and cons. And I think for first time online teachers, usually what ends up happening is that they work for these kinds of platforms. And then once you have experience, once you kind of understand how it all works in the online teaching world, you would then move on to do independent teaching. But these are just easy. It's easy to set up, easy to reach students and easy to kind of get into the whole online teaching thing with a platform. But you can also do independent teaching. And with this you can actually set your own prices and you can teach your own lessons. But that also means that you need to create your own material or you have to find your own material. So there's a lot more prepping time. And of course, you also need to advertise your own lessons somewhere on the internet. You don't already have this access to students like what you would have on an online teaching platform. And so there might be set up costs involved. You might have to actually create your own website or you might have to pay, you know, to get the premium zoom or whatever. You have to pay for materials, maybe. So independent teaching is great because you don't have to give up a cut of your pay, of course. And you can teach how many hours you want. You can teach when you want. You can teach the stuff that you want. So here you can actually do like very specialized lessons if you wanted to. You can teach English. I don't know, American English pronunciation. You could teach American history. You could teach anything that you want. Nobody's going to tell you what to teach and what not to teach, right? So you have a lot more creativity, a lot more freedom there, but it is a lot harder to reach students, right? To set up your own website and then you maybe have to go on social media and advertise yourself. And we did live sessions about that before how to kind of reach students if you are teaching independently. So you can check our playlist with that and find it and check it out. I'm not going to go too deep into that right now here because this is an overview today. So once you've established that, then let's have a look at in general the pros and cons of teaching English online versus in person or in an actual classroom. So the pros, of course, as we all know, and that's I think why we all want to teach English online is that it's just so flexible. It's really flexible working. It's a great work in life balance. You are at home and then you teach and then you can get up and do something else. And you can sit back down to have your lessons. So it's very flexible. You can set exactly how many hours you want to teach a day a week. So it's really flexible. You can manage your own schedule. Nobody's going to tell you, hey, you need to work from nine to five. So that's really nice. It also has a good earning potential because there is, again, the more hours you work, the more money you're going to make. So this is really in your own hands. How much money you earn is in your own hands, which is really, really great. And it's also a great way to get started in Tefl in general. So if you're thinking about teaching English abroad, maybe teaching English online could be a great first start. So especially during COVID, a lot of people who wanted to teach English abroad but couldn't because of COVID, they started teaching English online and they gained experience that way. And they could also save up money for then to be able to go abroad. So that's really great. Again, the startup costs are small compared to teaching English abroad. You don't have to, of course, move abroad and get an airplane ticket and all that visa money, et cetera. So you can actually save money and also you can take holidays whenever you want. So a lot of people use teaching online kind of as a first step towards teaching abroad. You can gain experience. You can save money for then going abroad. Or of course, a lot of people are doing the Nomad digital Nomad lifestyle where they live in different countries on digital Nomad visas. And they teach English online from wherever they are at the moment. So that's also possible. You don't need to sit at home in your home office. When teaching English online, you can also travel and live in different countries by teaching English online. And that's also something I talked about in a previous live session where more and more countries are rolling out digital Nomad visas. So if that's something that interests you, check it out in the playlist. Check it out. More and more are coming out. Even Korea where I am, they are rolling out a digital Nomad visa this year, which is exciting. So maybe someone wants to come over. And Kishop has a question here. British and American English create a problem in teaching are both acceptable in any context. So I think, yeah, we hear this a lot. So some schools are very particular about this. And then they will let you know, right? I worked at a school in Korea before and their curriculum was very US American or North American. But they also had teachers from Ireland or the UK, Australia. But then like in the books, you would have definitely more of an American spelling. But it will depend on your employer. So if they're like, oh, yeah, we kind of do it the American way or we do it the British way or we don't care at all. It really depends on the employer. And for yourself, I think you should just pick one that you're more comfortable with. For me, of course, because my dad is American, I use American English. But whenever I teach, I usually sometimes I will use British English material and then it would be British English spelling. I do not change that. But I teach my students. So when they see that word, I'm like, yeah, this is spelled, you know, with OU. But in American English, it is just spelled with an O. So I would just teach them the differences. Because I think it's very important to know also for students kind of the small differences between American English and British English or whatever other English. So yeah. So these are the pros of teaching English online. Now let's have a little bit of a look at the cons. There are some cons as well. So the income, first of all, because and I see this for myself to every month or even every week can be different, especially if you don't have regular students or even if you have regular students. Some students, they take a class once a month, some students twice a week, the other student once a week or once every two weeks. So it's very, very different. So every month you might make a different amount of money. One month you have more students, the next month you have less students. So it's not always the same amount of money that you're going to make. And sometimes it's unpredictable, right? So that is a con. You can't really calculate, oh, this month I'm going to make this much or that month I'm going to make that much. You can set a goal, but it's not really in your hands. Really, because you don't know how many lessons are going to get booked. But for me, it kind of takes about like, I would say three months, maybe four months. Once you have a regular flow of students, and then you can kind of predict how much you're going to make, but it's always give or take, you know, not exactly that amount. Then second point here is loneliness. So yeah, if you work from home, I think this goes for anyone who worked from home before it came quite lonely. Me too, like I'm at home pretty much the whole day alone. So some people might not like that, but then you can also go out and you can work from like a different place. But with teaching English online, because you need to deliver lessons, you really want to be in like a quiet place with good internet. So I think working from like your home or like a quiet place is the best, not like from a cafe or something. The other thing is you need to think about staying healthy. Again, this is from for anyone who works a lot on the computer. I believe we're a lot from home, you know, then just make sure you stand up every hour for a little bit. You take some walks, etc. And the next point is very important, though the danger of always working. Yeah, so that can definitely happen. So I teach English online and especially the beginning because you want to build a regular student base and then it feels like in a beginning you have to work a lot. So sometimes I would work. I have students in the morning and then I have students also late at night because it depends on where they live if they live like in a different time zone. But then I think once you have regular students, you can kind of tone it down a bit. So for me, I made I made Thursday my kind of off day. I don't teach anyone on Thursday. That's just my day. So, you know, what's what's your kind of in the routine, you know, like how to create a better work life balance. There's the danger of always working because if you work from home, your work is your home or your home is at your workplace. It's the same thing. So it's it can be hard to kind of turn off your brain, but you just need to be consequent. And then the next point is a slow start. So yeah, that's what I said or touched on just a moment ago. I'm just saying it can take up to three, three to four months to kind of get regular students when teaching English online. It can be a slow start. So the platform, many platforms what they will do actually to support new teachers, they will show they will show new students like their profiles are higher in the search on the platform. So when students search for English teachers newer teachers, they will show up higher kind of to support them. A lot of platforms do that or they have like new teacher prices where your prices would be lower than the established teachers to kind of boost your profile to get students to sign up. But yeah, it can be quite slow to start. So don't be surprised. It takes about three to four months to kind of get regular students. Then of course the other thing we need to talk about our tech issues. So with anything that happens like on the computer and online there can be some technical issues sometimes. So sometimes the sound might not be good. Sometimes your or your students internet connection might not be good. And it really disrupts the lessons. So whenever that happens, it's really annoying for both parties. That's why it's so important to make sure that you have, you know, good internet and you use good equipment. But I also had some students from Japan that I was teaching and they had like some not earthquakes, but they had I don't remember what they had like storm. Oh, a typhoon. It was a typhoon that they had. So they had to cancel their classes because of the typhoon and they couldn't. Yeah, they didn't have internet or something. So yeah, that can happen as well. Just keep that in mind. And oh, yeah, unreliable students that can also happen. Of course unreliable students exist online and in the real world. So you're going to have maybe students who scheduled a class that happened to me. Not that frequent, but it happens from time to time. And that's very annoying because you plan your day around that lesson. You're going home. You're at home at that time. You prepared everything. You're sitting in front of your computer and then you go into zoom or whatever the platform is and then the students don't show up. So that's annoying. But then some platforms, they will actually have that kind of protection for the teachers where you can then get either 50% of your money or even sometimes 100% if they don't cancel. So there is some protection, but of course your time is still wasted because you're here. You came, you logged in and you're prepared, but the students are there. So that is annoying. Just, you know, remember that. And then working late working early. That's also what I mentioned already. So depending on and that's kind of what Daniel says at the moment in the comment section. I'm going to talk about that. But working later working early. So depending on, especially with platforms that cater to a specific group. So there's some online teaching platforms that maybe cater to students in Asia, right? And they want English teachers from other parts of the world working there to teach children or students in Asia. But you live in Europe or you live in North America, your time zone will be very different. So you might have to end up working really late at night or really early in the morning. So just keep that in mind. But you can figure that out by talking with the people on the platform when you have your interview or just doing your research beforehand. They will usually say, yeah, these are our active times or something like that, very active times. And if they don't align with your schedule, with your lifestyle, then just don't pick that platform, maybe. And Daniel says, is it hard to manage time zones while working online? So that's what I just talked about. You know, it all depends on what times you want to work. So I recently started a new lesson where I'm the student and that teacher is in Brazil and it was like 11pm for them. And here it's 11am. So that's when I wanted to take my class and he had that available in his calendar. So I booked it. But yeah, he was like, yeah, I enjoy teaching at night or late at night, late in the evening. So some people like that, right? If you are a night owl, you might prefer teaching English, teaching in the evening. If you're an early riser, I have another student who's also a teacher and she gets up at 5am every morning and she's teaching people from 5.30. And she loves it because it gives her time at the end of the day, like more time or in the afternoon. Because most of her students are in a different time zone. So it can work for you. It can work for you. It's not always like that. So I live in Korea and I have a lot of students from Japan and it's the same time zone. So just whatever works for you. That's the beauty about teaching English online because you can really pick and choose who you want to teach, basically. Because you can reach everyone in the world. Daniel says, I guess it is just better to move to the wished country and lock yourself at home and then lock yourself at home and teach online. Well, you know, it depends. It depends. You can also move abroad and then teach students from other places. So I don't know if that's necessarily better. It depends on what you want, right? A lot of people don't want to move abroad or can't move abroad. They have other responsibilities, but they still want to teach English and they still want to maybe connect with people from all over the world. Then you don't need to move abroad. But if that's something that you want to do, then maybe teaching English in a classroom might be more for you. Or then you could do teaching English online on the side or you can go down the digital nomad route and you can move to country and teach only online. So that's the beauty of teaching English online. It's so flexible. It works for many different lifestyles and people. And that's why I also like it. All right. Let's move on to how much you can actually earn teaching English online. And we have Lamfet. Hi. I hope I'm saying that right from Laos. How are you doing? Good to meet you. So generally, you can make anywhere from 15 to 30 US dollars per hour. So with teaching English online, you will not have a fixed monthly salary. Right? You're paid usually by the hour and an average hourly rate is between 15 and 30 dollars. And again, the more you teach, the more money you make. And it also depends on the platform, how much of a commission or cut they take from your pay. So it depends for the platform that I worked for newer teachers, you have a higher, they take a higher pay cut. But then the more you teach, the more money you make, the better and better that pay cut is going to be for you. It's going to be smaller and smaller. So that's kind of a lot of platforms do it that way. So the longer you teach at one platform, the more students you have, the more you get rewarded and they take less money from you. So, yeah. And then which platforms hire online English teachers? There are really so many, so, so many. And these are only a few here. But important just to keep in mind is that the requirements that hourly pay, any kind of bonuses, teaching hours and other factors, they all vary from platform to platform. And here I added some newer ones that I found, which is Torrito, blah, blah. I think those are the two new ones, Torrito and blah, blah. These are new ones from 2023 to keep in mind or to watch out for. So these are other popular platforms, VIP kid, Q kids, I to the group, Burlitz, Cambly, italki, English hot, also preply or pre-ply, whatever you want to call it is very good. And then I think, yes, so this is the sheets that I want to share with you now with 20 online teaching platforms to work for. And I'm going to share that with you right now and then I'm going to walk you through it real quick. Let me see share. How can I share? Oh, here. One second. Okay. I'm going to share it in the comments right now and then I'm also going to share my screen so I will show you how to how you can save this sheet for yourself. Okay. So please click on this link. If you want this sheet, then you'll see that. And what you want to do is you want to go to file because now you only have the view only option. So what you want to do is you want to go to file and you want to go to make a copy. And then you can rename this or whatever and you click on make a copy and then you can save it for yourself and you can actually edit this and you can make changes. Because right now I shared with you the view only option so you cannot make any changes but if you click on file, make a copy and then just make a copy here. You can save this for yourself and you can make edits on this sheet. So again, I shared the link with you guys in the comment section looks like this. So if you want this sheet, go ahead and do that now. And yeah, here are 20 platforms listed on here that you can apply at you can see there's information like the hourly rate information of whether or not a degree is required for this platform. If there are lessons provided to you so if they give you material already or not if you have to make your own material. Some information about the students, you know how old are the students. So here you would see this is more for young learners and teenagers, this is only for adults, and this is all ages. Then you have information about the minimum hours per week that you will need to teach so some platforms they will actually say that you need to teach a minimum of 10 hours or a minimum of 12 hours a week. Some some will be like we don't care how many hours a week you teach you could just teach one hour or two hours three hours doesn't matter. So whatever works for you. And then also if a TEFL is required or not you will see that and you will see in many cases yes it is or it is preferred. And here you will see if they accept non native English speakers or not so many say yes some say no. And also previous teaching experience and any additional requirements and here's the link to apply. So you just click on that and it will lead you straight there. So yeah, save the sheet and you can apply you can start your English teaching journey like this. Cool. All right. Also, okay, and I think. Yeah, all these are a few things that we see specifically in the online teaching market in 2023 I also wanted to touch on quickly on that two things to remember for teaching English online in 2023. So one thing here is what I mentioned already is that there is increased competition. So with the growing popularity of online English language instruction the market may become increasingly crowded, making it more difficult for individual teachers and schools to stand out. That's why you want to get a TEFL certificate. You want to get that specialized teaching English online certificate as well the better your qualification the more you're going to stand out. Okay, but at the same time because English online is so popular we also see a lot more new platforms popping up. So yep, more and more platforms are coming in and more and more are hiring, but they might have stricter requirements. So that's just something we see for this year. And then the other thing we see has to do with quality control. So also with how we talked about how easy it is to start teaching English online. There might be concerns, especially from platforms also from parents and students about the quality and qualifications of teachers. And so I think we're also going to see that this may lead to a push for more regulation and accreditation of online English teachers. So maybe platforms that are currently accepting teachers without TEFL certifications are going to change that and are going to also require teachers to have a TEFL certificate, or maybe they want teachers to have additional certification, additional work experience. So we might see that more because all of these platforms they want to be the best platforms they want to offer the best language training, right? So they might push for more regulation and accreditation. So again, the takeaway here is the more qualifications you have the better you will stand out more and you will have more access to more English online teaching platforms. So yeah, that is that. And also want to let you know that ITTT has job support. So if you take a TEFL or TESOL course from ITTT, you have access to job support, which also includes online jobs. So we actually have a database of potential employers for you. We have exclusive leads on unadvertised jobs. We also partner with online teaching platforms that you get access to and they will prefer people from ITTT with TEFL certificates. Yeah, and you got a bunch of other advice here, CV resume, cover letters and also assistance with planning, trial lessons for job interviews. This is all included in your ITTT TEFL certificate. Just wanted to mention that real quick. And then we are going into Q&A. We're already one hour and two minutes in here. So now is your moment to ask questions. And I see that Daniel has a question that I haven't gotten back to yet. So is it hard to teach without any platforms? So the independent teaching, I would say, especially for a new teacher. If you're completely new to online teaching, it is harder, I would say. Because you need to have a website. Probably you need to have maybe a social media presence and you have to post a lot. You have to spread the word that you are a good teacher. You have to find students to book your lesson. And a lot of it is also word of mouth. So once you have one student, you can ask that student, hey, can you let your friends know and they book my class, etc. But it's not so easy. It's a lot easier on online teaching platforms. But then, yes, you have to give them a pay cut, right? But on there, you will already have access to a pool of students. So it's all, you know, pro and con. If you think that you already have maybe a social media audience, you already have access to a lot of people online. Yeah, I would say independent teaching might be good, might work for you better. But I think for most people, the online teaching platforms might be a good first step. And then once you know how it works, you can maybe set up your own thing. Okay, good question. All right. Does anybody else have a question about teaching English online or TEFL courses about anything else from today? Let me know. Okay, Linda, could you talk about accreditation, please? Yeah, so the TEFL course accreditation. Let me know if you mean our accreditation. And then I'll get back to you. And in the meantime, Jacqueline has a question. So Jacqueline says, Linda, I received my TEFL through ITTT back in 2014. Oh, like me, me too. Is the benefit of support from ITTT still available to me? Yes, it is. So this is actually lifetime job support. So what I want you to do is just email us at courses at tsolminustefl.com. And let us know your full name, your email address. If you remember like your student login or anything, but I think name and email address might be enough and just say, hey, I took my course in 2014 and now I want job support. I want to teach English in wherever and then they will help you there. But definitely still available. Okay, Daniel says, yeah, ITTT accreditation. Okay, cool. So actually, let me see if I can show you here real quick. Yeah. So if you go to our website, this is our website and I'm just going to make myself smaller again one more time. So this is our website. Yeah, and it already says this right here. But anyway, if you want to go to here, affiliation at the top, you click on here and you see all of the accreditation that we have here. Our main affiliations and accreditation and you can have a look. So we have in class courses, they are accredited by Lamar University. So it depends on what course course format it is they are accredited by different bodies. And then the five day courses by the teacher training council. We have the Paris University of international education, which accredits the online courses here. And then we also have the National Institute for international education. They are actually in South Korea, and they promote international education through the Epic program. So we are also affiliated with them through the Epic program. We also have a membership with the International Association of Teachers of English as a foreign language. And then you also have the links where you can verify this. Where was this here. So you can just click on that and get all the information here but that's yeah. So this is how you can find our affiliation and accreditation information. And just to say yeah, this is our courses are all internationally accepted. They are accredited by all of these different bodies here. I also have ITTT TEFL courses. Like I said like Jacqueline, I also got it in 2014 and I taught English in China. I taught English in Korea with that always accepted never had a problem. And also the certificates, I don't have it here now, I have it in my folder. But they have a unique personalized number at the bottom of every certificate. And this is sort of for verifying the certificate. So what you can do is you can go to our website or your employer can go to our website and put that number in. And then also see that this is an accredited certificate and who took that that really you took it. It's not like fake PDF or something that you put like created in Photoshop. It's a real thing. Yeah, I think that's that about accreditation. So I hope that answers your question. And then yeah, great. Maybe one or two more questions here and then I will say goodbye for today. But that's good. That's important. Accreditation is very important. Yeah, that's the thing because when you Google like Teflon or TESOL courses, there are so many options out there. So I really know that. Yeah. Yeah. So Daniel says I'm thinking about taking the 170 hour online course is Paris units of international education, a good accreditation Institute. Sorry, I'm just not aware of the info. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it is good. So what you need to know like with with Teflon TESOL courses, there is no like one accreditation body. Different organizations can give out different accreditations. So there's not just one like this is the main like Teflon accreditation thing. There's actually different schools that have this power so to speak to give out accreditation. And yeah, we have the Paris, Paris University of International Education, and they are all validated. They are accredited and they're also credit bearing from an internationally recognized university. So yeah, so I recommend go to the site what I showed you on our website, the affiliations tab. You can read through that and then you can also go to the individual websites of all of these accrediting accrediting bodies. Yeah. Okay, and then Jacqueline says I'm curious what student ages you have worked with my personal experience state side has been with international students and refugees. Okay, nice. Yeah, so I started out with actually teaching mainly children. So that ranged from literally two years old to sixth grade. No, not even that old third grade, fifth grade, something like that. So mainly children in my early days of EFL teaching. And now it's a lot more adults. So now I teach. I had two students who want to be teachers in Korea. They are Korean. They want to be English teachers. I taught them university students. I also have a lot of Japanese students. Most of them are adults. I have one child at the moment, one child student at the moment. Yeah, now it's mostly adults, but it used to be a lot more children. So, yeah. And mainly Chinese, Korean, Japanese, I would say are the most. Yeah. Because I live here. I used to live in China. I live in Korea. And now the online platform that I work for are mainly Japanese. Okay. Cool. Danielle says, okay, Linda, thank you for the info and time. Really wanted to hear from ITTT company live. Appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. If you have any questions, I forgot to mention that any questions about anything like accreditation affiliation about the courses more in detail, please reach out to us. Courses at tsolminusteffel.com. So via email. We also have a callback function on our website so they can actually call you back and you can talk to someone. But email is always great. So, yeah. All right. Then Mohammed says, I'm sure it's going to be fun to do a TEFL certification that was standing the status quo is worsening day by day in our country, Afghanistan. So can I get student loans to go with or else I should be out. No, we actually have financing options. So you can actually pay in installments. And first of all, use the 30% off link that will already get take care of, oh, sorry, take care of a big cut. So take, yeah, use that 30% off and then you can still pay with installments as well. So we have, yeah, these flexible payment options. So if that's something you're interested in, I would also recommend email us or fill out the application first with the link that I shared. I'm going to share it one more time. Fill out that application and then you will see the flexible payment options on there after you filled out this application. So. And he says, anyhow, thanks a world, thanks the world for everything in today's great session. Yeah, thank you so much. And Jacqueline says, when teaching adults is your content more conversation based. Thank you for your expertise. So it depends on like on the platform that I teach at indeed. Yeah. They, they, I offer more conversation because that's kind of what those students are looking for. So that's why I also like the different teaching platforms because you can create your own lessons on there so you can, you can say what you want to offer. I also did like a book club before where I was actually reading or basically they were reading the book and then in the class we would discuss the chapters. So that's something you can do that works well. But yeah, most of the things that I teach now are conversation based. You can actually find a lot of material online. So I found really good material where it's basically some vocabulary, not too much, and then some like gap fill exercise for idioms. And then it's conversation, different conversation questions about the topic. Or what I also really like doing is have them listen to a podcast. And I really like using the BBC's Six Minutes English. And so it's a very short podcast and they also have like six or seven like vocabulary words in there that they focus on. And so I have my students listen to that podcast episode. And then in the class we discuss it. We go over the words, also do a little gap fill. And then I would ask them questions, specific questions about the podcast, what the people were saying in the podcast, and then also just general questions about that topic and what they think about it. So I also really like that. So the Six Minutes English, that's really good. So different things you can do. I usually don't just like to have like a casual talk. I wanted to have some purpose, but some students they really just want to talk. So then I also do that. So it's a mix, usually a mix. All right. I think then if nobody has any more questions, if you have a question, feel free to reach out at Linnagos East. But we are one hour 15 minutes. So I think we're going to go and say goodbye. If anybody has a quick one, quick question, leave it in the comment section right now, or else I'm going to say goodbye. Last chance to ask a question. Next week, of course, I will be back. You can ask me questions then as well. Or you can reach out to me at Linnagos East. That's always welcome on Instagram. You can email us again, courses at tesall minus tefl.com. If you have any questions specifically about Tefl TESOL and ITTT. If you have any other questions related to teaching or just about me in Korea, China, you can reach out on Instagram at Linnagos East. Don't forget this link with 30% off any Tefl or TESOL course from ITTT. And then I think that's it. All I wanted to say today. So thank you so much for all of your questions. That was really, really great. Daniel, thank you so much. Have a good day. You have a good day as well. Thank you so much. Mohamed, thank you for your questions. Jacqueline. Denise was here. Who else did we have? We had Lamfet. Kishab. Thank you. Lorado also. Thank you so much. Amitava. I appreciate it. Abby from Sri Lanka. Yasin, if you're still here, Christina. Thank you so much for being on today and asking me all your questions. I really appreciate it. And I hope you had fun. I hope you learned something interesting. Chio. Hi. And bye. Yeah. Jacqueline says thank you. Thank you for being here and for asking your questions. That's always super helpful. And I just like, yeah, having a conversation with you and not just me talking to my computer because that's very boring. So I appreciate you asking all of these questions. And I also wish you a happy, happy day and good day today. Denise as well. Thank you so much. And I hope to see you all again next week. We're going to talk about a different topic next week. So I hope I see you there. If you have any topic suggestions, things that you want me to talk about in the future, also let me know in the comments or via Instagram here at Linda goes East to say, hey, Linda, can you talk about this and this and this and in the next live session? And I will try and do that. And yeah, Lorado. Thank you. All right, guys, have a wonderful weekend. And I hope to see you all again next week. Don't forget to like and subscribe. So you're up to date. And yeah, I think that's all for me. Thank you guys. See you next time. Thank you. Bye.