 Linda here from ITTT back this week with another live session and today we're going to talk about how to become a freelance TEFL teacher. All right. I think this is a topic that a lot of people are going to find very interesting. A lot of people are probably going to want to kind of follow in the footsteps of this newer kind. Well, is it a new career? But I mean, we've definitely seen some changes in the teaching industry and the teaching market. Also thanks to the boom in online teaching and freelance teaching, freelance English teaching has definitely become increasingly popular for many different reasons. Many of these reasons we're going to go into, we're going to go into what it actually means to be a TEFL freelance teacher, the benefits of it, also kind of the challenges. And then some tips how you can get started as a TEFL freelance teacher. And yeah, I just want to start off by saying hi, welcome. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you can see me and hear me and everything is working well here, please leave a hi, a hello in the comments. We are live on Facebook and on YouTube at the same time. So please like leave a hi and where you're watching from in the comment section. I'm always very curious to know where are you right now? Where are you watching from? How are you doing? I hope everybody's doing fine. I'm in South Korea. It is 1030 a.m. Friday morning. And yeah, thanks so much for joining and tuning in. And if you're listening to this as a podcast episode, also thank you so much for the download. As many of you know, we always turn our live sessions into podcast episodes. So if you're interested in the audio only format, if you want to listen to this later on or, you know, upcoming episodes or past episodes, if you want to listen to them, go to any major podcast platform. So that is Google podcasts, that is iTunes, Spotify, bunch of other ones everywhere where you can get podcasts. You can go and type in the Tefal and TESOL podcast by ITTT and you will find us there. So yeah, thank you so much. And so that this is a live, a live, a weekly live session, right? So if you don't want to miss our upcoming live sessions and you're always up to date with what's going on at ITTT, please don't forget to like and subscribe so you get notified. You see our posts, you get the notifications, et cetera. So you know when we're going live, even though we go, usually go live at this time on this day, same time, same day as always. But sometimes things change and you're just updated and you see what else we share. We share a lot of good stuff, teaching materials, job offers, Tefal information, of course, on our Facebook page and also on YouTube, so you don't want to miss that. So like and subscribe, please. All right. We have, oh, is it Xoff? Xoff. Cool. Hi. How are you doing? I hope I'm saying that right. And Xoff says, on part heading home to Dublin, California, San Francisco Bay Area. Okay. Nice. Awesome. How are you doing? Sounds awesome. Then we've Angie here. Hi, Angie. How are you doing? Where are you watching from, Angie? Oh, Xoff. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Xoff. That's cool. All right. Daniel. Hey, Linda. How are you? Great topic selection. Yay. I thought that you would like that, Daniel. Awesome. All right. Angie from Chicago. That's cool. Okay. What time is it there? What time is it in Chicago? And we have, is it Megan? Megan. Yeah. Megan. Ago worker. I hope I'm saying that right. From Japan. How are you doing, Megan? Thanks for tuning in. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Thanks for tuning in. That's awesome. Very, very cool. All right. Nice. Well, I think we have some new people here. So let me introduce myself so that you know who I am, why I'm here. Angie says it's 834 p.m. in Chicago. We're originally from California, Orange County. I just moved here. Oh, cool. How do you like it? I bet it's very different from California. Cool. Is it very windy? All right. Also, before I introduce myself very quick, we have 30% off today. I always share a 30% off discount code during our life sessions only during our life sessions. So that is very special. So you don't want to miss it. If you're not yet Teflor T cell certified and you're like, okay, I'm ready to do this now. Take advantage. Don't pay full price. Use this code 30% off so you can scan this QR code here. Or there's also a link and I'm going to share the link with you guys in the comments here. This is it. It ends with FB live minus Linda and you click on this link. It will lead you straight to the application page so you can fill out this application. And this is no commitment, right? No commitment application. You just fill this out and then you can pay later as well. That's fine. And when you click on this link, you should see at the top, it should say congratulations. You get 30% off something like that. So just keep that in mind and you will see it there. And then you know it's the right link and you can save it. You can apply later. You can pay later, whatever you want. If you're not yet ready, if you don't know yet which course you want to take. We have so many different course options. So I understand it can be overwhelming. But also that's why I'm here. So at the end of today's session, we're actually going to have a Q&A session. So you can ask me your questions maybe about different course types. You can kind of tell me your situation, your background and what you want to do. And then I can recommend a suitable course for you as well. So that's what that's what we can do in the Q&A session at the end. You can also always email us if you have questions. And my team will get back to you. And that email is courses at tesal-tefal.com. So if you have any questions about ITTT, about today's topic, about anything related to our courses of course, TEFL. If you want to know anything about that, email us courses at tesal-tefal.com. And you can also, if you want to reach out to me directly, for example, a great way to do this is via Instagram. So here is my Instagram handle at Linda Goes East. And you can just send me a DM with your question. And I will try my best to answer it and get back to you. Okay. And Angie says very much. Is it like very much windy? Or you like it very much or very much different. Probably that awesome. I bet. And then Zoff says, I'm curious about training my native Spanish speaking staff in English culinary. Sorry about my poor typing. I'm on the training commuting. Oh, cool. No problem. Yeah. Okay. So do you have a restaurant? That's cool. Interesting. It's very niche, but yeah, that's that's really cool. I'm sure our courses are courses are really for everybody, for everything and everybody. So just real quick, the basic course that we have is for example, that's the most popular course as well. The 120 hour course. And this one really like basically teaches you how to teach. So that's a good course to start with. That's what we always recommend. And that is also the international standard for teaching jobs abroad. So that's a great place to start. And then from there, we also have specialized courses. Unfortunately, we don't have a course for teaching culinary English. That would be actually great. And we should kind of, we should maybe get into that. That'd be cool. But we do have business English. We have a course for teaching children and also teaching online. But culinary English, not yet, but there's an idea. So that's great. Awesome. And Megan says, I already got ITTT T-SAL certificate, but could I use this discount code for a 60 hour course as well? Yes, you can. This discount you can use for any course. Any course in our website. So feel free. Or yeah, get a specialization. One of the specialization courses, right? Teaching online, teaching kids or business English. That's what I would recommend in your case for sure. All right. Good. Good stuff. So then a little bit about me and I'm just going to make this bigger so you can read the slide. But my name is Linda and I'm a language teacher, Teflon expert, travel writer, travel blogger, content creator, marketing person. I do many different things. So this is why I'm excited about this topic because I'm also a freelancer in many different aspects. And it's very exciting for me to talk about this today. But my own personal website is LyndaGoesEast.com. And also, like I just said, my Instagram handle is LindaGoesEast. And that is because I've been basically living in Asia for 10, 11 years. And I'm very interested in Asia. My website is basically a platform for people who want to travel to Asia. You'll find travel guides on there. And also information on how to teach in Asia, for example. So if you're interested in that, go check it out. If Asia is also your thing. I'm originally from Germany slash USA. So my mom is German. My dad is American. And I'm based in South Korea. This is my eighth year in South Korea. And before that I lived in China as well. I actually studied Chinese and that's why I was super interested in China, mainly. And I moved to China. I worked in online marketing there. But then I also started teaching English in China. And then I went back to the States to finish my degree. And that's where I met my now husband who happened to be Korean. And that's how I ended up in Korea. I actually did not know anything about Korea at all. I was really focused on China, China, China. And then this guy comes, shows up. I don't know where and we hit it off. And he's from Korea. And that's how I ended up in Korea. Basically that's the short version of the story. And so I knew that I wanted to go and teach English in Korea. I wanted to move there. And so I was looking for a Teflon TESOL course to take. And after searching for good options, I found ITTT. And that stands for International Teflon TESOL Training. And the website is tefloncourse.net. And ITTT is a leading Teflon TESOL course provider worldwide. They have different, lots of different courses. And yeah, I decided to take their course. And that's how I ended up even working for ITTT. So you never know what happens. You never know what can happen. Endless opportunities with a TEFL certificate. There you go. So that's basically my story in a nutshell. And I'm in Korea since. And I know that pretty much all the countries are open again for traveling. I'm also traveling a lot in Asia and other places. So I'm very excited about that. So if you have any questions, let me know. Feel free to reach out. Yeah. I think that's it about me. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. And then yeah, we can kind of jump into today's topic. So like I said, today we're going to talk about how to become a freelance Tefl teacher. So we're going to talk a little bit about what is a freelance Tefl teacher? What are the challenges? What are the advantages? The benefits? Why should you become one or might it work for you? And then a little bit about how to set it all up and how to get started. And then at the end, like I said, we have a Q&A session. So you can ask me your questions. And this should maybe take 30 to 45 minutes. You can always watch the replay if you don't have enough time now, like Zoff who's commuting on a train. Maybe you can't watch everything. So that's fine. You can come back later. We always keep our live sessions on our Facebook page and also on YouTube in a playlist. So you can always refer to it. And you can also, if you watch the replay and you leave a comment, we'll get back to you later as well on the comments. So don't worry if you missed this, if you're not watching it live, don't worry, still comment and leave your questions and we'll get back to you anyway. But yeah, let's get into it. Let's start. So freelance Tefl teacher. Let's see what is freelance teaching anyway for those of you who don't know, you're not familiar. So the first thing is a freelancer of course is self-employed. So a self-employed English language teacher. And that means rather than working for a specific school or a language institute, freelance Tefl teachers, they basically market themselves directly to potential students. And this means you either have basically your own website or you work through an online platform that connects you with students. We're going to talk a little bit about that later too. Or like I just said, you have your own website or what a lot of people do nowadays, you have your own social media as well. Right. We see this a lot on, especially TikTok, a lot of English teachers on TikTok and you can post little videos of you and reach an audience like that. And of course, a lot of people have their own website, but basically that's what it is. So self-employed is the keyword here. And we'll also put here make your own schedule, but just flexibility. You're not tied to one company. You're self-employed. So that's basically that in a nutshell what freelance teaching is. And so how is it different from working for an established company or working for a school versus freelance Tefl teachers? So teachers for a school, they're typically hired as employees. And that means that you have a contract, fixed contract as an employee and you receive benefits oftentimes, such as health insurance. Also retirement plans are often included in also paid vacation time. Right. When you work for a school. This is also for teaching English, obviously abroad. You have a school contract, right? And you also, what's good about that is you get teaching materials, lesson plans and also a curriculum handed to you. So that is all provided when you work for a school or an established company as an employee. So that's all good and great versus the freelance teachers where you don't receive any benefits. You don't really have paid time off. And you also may have to handle administrative tasks such as invoicing and text filing on your own because you're self-employed. You have to do everything by yourself. You have to take care of that. And also the insurance, you're not going to have any insurance. You have to do that privately. So you also as a freelance teacher versus where at a school, you get your lesson plans, you have a curriculum. But as a freelance TEFL teacher, you are responsible for creating your own teaching materials and lesson plans and curriculum. So that's basically the big difference between the two. So, you know, there's not one right way to go with, right? A lot of people like the comfort and the benefits of working at a school, you get insurance, you get, you get benefits, you get paid vacation, or you pay into a retirement plan and also a lot of positions for teaching English abroad. You also get paid housing, free housing, right? Which is great. So that's a good point to work actually for a school and for a company and versus a freelance teacher where you actually have to do everything yourself. You don't have any paid vacation, right? You basically work, you make your own schedule. You can work when you work and have time off when you want to have time off, which is also great. So that is the big difference here. And let's have a look at the advantages though, because there are many advantages of being a freelance teacher. And I actually have five advantages for you. And the first one here, of course, is the flexibility, right? So freelance TEFL teachers have more control over their schedule and workload. And you can choose to work as many or as few hours as you like. And you can often work from home, obviously, or remotely. And this is for freelance teachers who teach online. Maybe I should actually also say this. So freelance teaching can be either you work online and this is more common that you work online as a freelance teacher, but you can also work in person, teach in-person classes as a freelance teacher. So that's also possible. But then, of course, if you're doing this in person and you are teaching, if you want to move abroad and do this as a freelance teacher, you have to figure out things like visa, things on your own. But there's actually a good life session that I would recommend to you if you want to go down this route. If you want to move abroad and still be a freelance teacher, right? A lot of people want to do this now basically digital nomad, be a digital nomad, a digital nomad teacher, right? So a lot of countries now, especially in Europe and also in South America, Latin America, the Caribbean, but also in Asia, actually, and Korea also recently introduced a digital nomad visa. So a lot of countries are coming out with these freelance digital nomad visas, which is super great for people who want to be freelance teachers because I think one of the big things, and I'm just going to make myself bigger here, one of the big advantages of being a freelance teacher is to be able to work remotely and work from home. But I think a lot of people here who come to us who want to take a Teflon and a TESOL course are actually looking to move abroad to teach, right? And these digital nomad visas or freelance worker visas that many countries are rolling out now combine the two. So you can have the best of both worlds. You can live abroad and you can work remotely as a teacher. So that's why I think this is super great and a great opportunity for a lot of people out there. And I did a live session about these digital nomad visas in the past. I might have to do a new update video. This was a few months ago, and I think a lot of countries now in 2023 have new digital nomad visas. So I might do an update video on that so you know exactly where you could go to and be a freelance teacher online at the same time. Because if you move abroad and are a freelance teacher, you can teach online and you can also find a lot of students for in-person classes, right? Because these people, for example, if you move to Korea to be a freelance teacher, you can teach online and you can find so many students in-person because the demand for English language teaching is so big, right? So combine the best of both worlds if you want. Move abroad, be on a remote worker, freelancer, digital nomad visa and be a freelance teacher. Work remotely, work online. So I think that's why today's topic is so exciting. There's so many opportunities. That's the thing. Sorry again. That's the thing. Now, TEFL teaching I think is a lot more, a lot more, you have a lot more opportunities than a couple of years ago because of this exciting freelance, these exciting freelance remote working opportunities and visas. So before, if you wanted to teach English abroad, basically your only option was to teach for a company at a school and have an employee contract and then you have to go in, you're tied, you're not a freelancer, you don't have that flexibility, but now thanks to these many new visas, you actually have that opportunity to do this also abroad in a different country, all right? Good. So flexibility I think flexibility is really the number one reason for somebody to start a career as a freelance teacher, right? Flexibility is great. I also enjoy this the most. I think I could never go back to office work or working full time in a school. I could ever. So I love the flexibility and when I, when the weather is great, I can just go out for a walk if I want to, or I can just go to the park for an hour if I want to and come back or yeah, you're just flexible as a freelancer and that's what I really love about it. I think that's the biggest, that's like the only reason you would really need for me as an advantage of a freelance teacher. But also let's talk about the higher earning potential and maybe a lot of people might think that this is actually not true, that you might actually earn less as a freelance teacher, but that's actually not true. You actually have higher earning potentials as a freelance teacher because you can often charge higher rates than you would earn working for an established company or a school because you can set your own rates first of all and you don't have to pay any commission. So if you work on an online teaching platform for one specific school online, they usually take a commission out of your paycheck. But if you work independently as a freelance teacher, you can set up your own website, your own rates, you don't have to pay any commission to anybody, which is really great and you can earn more. And also for in-person freelance teaching, there's a story of this guy, I don't know him personally, but he's a friend of a friend also in Korea and basically he is a freelance teacher, but he does in-person teaching and because think about this, if you work for a school, you have a set salary, right? A monthly salary. So it doesn't matter actually how many classes you teach. Your salary obviously is always the same. But as a freelance teacher, you get paid by the hour usually, right? You get paid by the hour. So the hourly rate is usually a lot higher per hour as a freelance teacher than your salary is per hour on a normal teaching contract. So there's this guy, a friend of a friend, who is basically working the same hours as a full-time teacher, right? Like nine to five, for example. And he has only freelance students, private students in-person. So he's charging his rate, which is higher than a normal school hourly rate. And he makes like $7,000 a month from that, from working full-time, doing only freelance teaching in-person because of the higher rate you can charge in Korea. This is in Korea. This was a couple of years ago. Now it might be different, but so yeah, very different versus a normal teaching salary in Korea would be like two and a half thousand, two thousand, two hundred, two and a half thousand. And he is making serious bank working as a freelance teacher because you can charge so much more and you don't have a school attached to you. So that's really great. Yeah. Then also greater variety. Let's talk about that part. As a freelance teacher, this really allows you to work with a wider range of students versus if you are in a school, for example, I used to work in an English-speaking kindergarten. So all of my students were kids, right? Kindergarten kids. We also had some elementary classes, but that was it. But now I can teach children. I can also teach adults at the same time. I can teach whoever I want. I can teach university students. You can pick your own students, right? And you can reach anybody. And the great thing about freelance teaching online, for example, you can reach a global audience. Like you're not tied to just your students in your physical vicinity in your school. You can reach anybody from any part of the world. And that's really, really a big advantage. So for me, for example, I teach online and I have a lot of students actually from Japan, from China, from other Asian countries. Some also are Asian and they live, for example, in Germany, because I teach German also. So you can really reach people from all over the world. So yeah, that's really great. That's one great point. So a great variety. If you're like, oh, I really don't want to teach kids anymore. I just want to teach adults. You can do that as well. You have more flexibility in terms of your students range. Okay, cool. Now I just want to show a comment here real quick from Amitava. Hi, how are you doing? Amitava says, how are you faring now? I sincerely hope that you have recovered fully from your recent illness. I almost, I would say I'm like 90% okay now. Thank you, Amitava. So I had a really bad cold, flu, I guess, and an ear infection. I still have a little bit like in my sinuses, I think a little bit, but that's about it. Everything else is really good. And today's my last day on medication. So I should be fine. Thank you so much for asking. I'm almost back to normal. That's why sometimes I still have to cough today. I apologize and I have to drink a little bit more. But other than that, I'm doing pretty good. Thank you, Amitava. Okay, great. So here are three big advantages already. Let's cover two more advantages of being a freelance teacher. One great advantage also is the creativity. Okay. As freelance TEFL teachers are responsible for creating their own materials and lesson plans, they have the freedom to be creative and tailor their teaching to their students needs. Whereas if you work for a school or also an online school, you are tied to their curriculum. Right. So you have to teach what they tell you you have to teach, which sometimes might not be so fun, or actually might not actually be useful for your students. So if you are a freelance teacher, as a freelance teacher, you can make your own material. You can make your own curriculum, what you think fits best for your students. And you can actually make it a lot more fun, which I love. So sometimes I, for example, I talk a lot about recent events. I have a lot of conversation students. So we talk a lot about recent events and news and things like that, which is super great, which you don't really have in a normal school setting, depending on the school. But typically it's just always grammar and reading, and not a lot of speaking, I think, in most schools. But anyway, or what I also sometimes did with my students or sometimes do with my students, I go over like holidays. For example, today is St. Patrick's Day. So you could have a lesson on St. Patrick's Day. You can have an Easter themed lesson, Christmas of course, all of these things, or you can do something like a Black History Month or, you know, about history, whatever your students are into and what you're into. So you can literally do whatever you want. And this is also a great way to kind of find your niche and stand out from other teachers. If you offer like these really interesting special lessons, you can reach a lot of students and you can stand out from regular teachers because you're doing something different and fun. Yeah. Then we have the autonomy. So of course that's something we already talked a little bit about. So freelance teachers have the freedom to make their own decisions about how they want to teach something that we just talked about and they are not bound by a specific curriculum or any other restrictions. So other restrictions, some schools, of course, they would have restrictions when you can and can't do. Also, of course, maybe dress codes and things like that. Think about that, right? And when you have your lunch break and all of those things. So as a freelance teacher, you don't have to worry about any of those things and also fines. So with a lot of online schools, there are fines. For example, if you cancel a class too late or if you don't have enough students, some platforms, some online schools actually need you to teach a minimum amount of hours. And if you don't hit your target, you're going to get fined and all of those things. So as a freelance teacher, you don't have to worry about any of these things. You're completely free. You have autonomy. You're basically your own boss, which is really great. So these are the five biggest advantages in my opinion of being a freelance teacher and certainly something that I also think is true and that I enjoy. And so I wanted to share these with you guys. If you have any other advantages here, you want to add to this list, feel free to leave that in the comments. And also maybe here question real quick. Is anyone of you a freelance teacher already? Let me know. Let me know in the comments. Anyone of you teaching already freelance or who is seriously interested here in teaching English as a freelancer? Let me know. I'm sure many of you are because you're here and you're watching this. So I appreciate that. But yeah, is that an option for you? Let me know. And like I said now with these many remote worker and digital nomad visas, this is really... It opens up so many opportunities because you can live abroad and you can be your own boss as a freelance teacher, which is so, so great. All right, Megan says yes. Yeah, right? You are already a teacher anyway. Awesome. Cool. So maybe you can give some tips here. Megan, is there any advantage you would like to add here that I might have missed? Or maybe later you can share some of your insights. A&G says I want to be a freelancer. Just don't know how to start. Okay, we're going to cover how to start in just a minute. I think maybe right after this slide actually. So stay tuned. This is coming up. All right, Megan says I am a freelance teacher and this is the second year. It is so hard to schedule. Oh, that's a good point, right? Yeah, that's maybe a disadvantage or maybe just a challenge. Let's call it a challenge. You need to really schedule. You need to be on top of things, right? When do I have what student? When do I need to have time for lesson planning? All of those things. So yeah, when I started working remotely and as a freelancer, it took me a couple of weeks or maybe months really to get into a routine. It's not that easy in the beginning. So I definitely understand that, but I think it takes time. But you said this is the second year. But it sounds like because it's hard to schedule, you have a lot of students. That's awesome. But yeah, I agree. It is not always easy. Sometimes it is easier when you have a boss who tells you what to do. But then when you are the boss, you have to figure out everything. Sometimes it can be a challenge for sure. Great. Let's have a look at next. Oh yeah, perfect. Angie, here you go. How to get started. How to get started. Okay. So this one, the right setup. This is actually for online freelance teachers. So just be aware of that. Basically to get started as an online freelance teacher, you need to have of course a reliable computer that is very important. You also need to have a high quality webcam, but of course nowadays all laptops, computers, well computers, not so much, but laptops, if you have a laptop have webcams, right? If you don't, you have to get one. Also a headset with a microphone is always good. Like the girl here in the picture has a headset with a mic. That's always really good for, especially as a language teacher, you just want to make sure your students get the best sound as possible for pronunciation, for understanding you clearly. So that's really important. And then of course a stable internet connection is very important. And a technical certification actually will also help you. So this will not only help you because a TEFL course teaches you how to teach. So you actually know what you're doing and you learn a lot of techniques and things like that. But a TEFL certification will also help you in getting students because when they see you are certified, you are an actual teacher, they're more likely to book a class with you. Whereas if you don't have anything at all, there's nothing that says to them you know what you're doing. You know what I mean? So a TEFL certification definitely helps and it's great to have and showcase on your website, freelance website or on your freelance profile. So that's always a good idea. Maybe quickly if you want to be a freelance teacher in a different country, then obviously it's the same setup if you're teaching English online, but if you're not teaching online, you would and you want to move abroad but do private tutoring, freelancing like that, you will need to figure out first the visa situation. So you can pick a place where they have remote worker visas and things like that. But this really depends and varies from country to country. So I can't really give you a list now. But like I said, I did a live session about that in the past. So go and check that out about digital nomad visas and I might do an update because I think this year a lot of new visas have come out for digital nomads and remote workers. So I'm going to check that out and then probably do an update. And then we're also going to talk about how to create online lessons, which is very important because as we said as a freelance teacher, you need to do that on your own and then also how to find students because that's what's the most important as a freelance teacher. How do you actually find students to get started, to get teaching and to earn money, right? All right, Bi Huang says a freelancer has to be very self-disciplined. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But I think that's a skill that anybody can learn because if you don't work, you don't get any money. If you don't have any money, you can't pay rent. You can't pay for food. So that's a very good motivator right there. I think you need to get money. So you need to work. And to work, you need to be disciplined. I don't know. I hope that makes sense. Okay, and Angie says, yes, I have TESOL and TEYL certification. Okay, I'm a lot more interested in China since my husband is Chinese. Well, perfect. So this is also something that I did. Obviously, my husband is Korean. So you can probably move to China if you wanted to and have a visa because your husband is Chinese. You can get a visa. So you can set this up in China, right? Very easily. So that's also how I started. I, well, I started with working for a school, not freelance, with contract with the school, visa through the school. And then we got married and I changed my visa. And this allowed me really to freelance and get that going. But now I have a basically like a green card for Korea. And I'm, I can also work freelance with this visa. But that's what a lot of people are doing. A lot of people who have foreign spouses, right? You can move to your spouse's country and be an English teacher there, freelance also, because you have this visa. Many people can get a spousal visa. So this allows you to live and work there as well. So that's really cool. All right. Yeah. Then let's talk about how to create online lessons. So of course, as we already talked about creating lesson plans for your lessons is an essential part of teaching as a freelance Teflon teacher. You can't just have students that book a class and then turn on your computer and just wing it. It doesn't work that way. You need to have a plan. So these plans will really help you organize your teaching materials and your lesson content. And they obviously will make your lessons more structured and effective. And pre-made lesson plans will also save you time because you know exactly what you're doing. And you can use these for other students. And it saves you time. And you can use this time to find more students or to improve your teaching skills or just do more of what you like to do in your free time. So yeah, this is all about creating online lessons. And I think I have some tips for you. Or is this? Yeah. Exactly. Perfect. So tips for your online lesson plan. Not also maybe before we go into this, but this is what I wanted to say. Your TEFL course will teach you how to lesson plan. So if you take a TEFL course, you will already know, oh, this is how you make a lesson plan from A to Z. We cover everything how to make a lesson plan. So this will help you immensely. You're not going to start from zero after taking a TEFL course. You know exactly what to do. And then you can jump into here. So this is the first tip that I have here. Use the ESA method even for teaching English online. If you're not sure what is the ESA method or ESA methodology. This is what you learn in your TEFL course. This is a super effective and useful teaching methodology that stands for engage, study, and activate. So these are three phases every lesson should have basically. And if you follow this method and follow this structure, your lessons will be very successful. And this also goes for online lessons. So then you would choose a platform. This is again for teaching English online. You have to choose a platform. How will you teach you needed online whiteboard basically. And my tip here for you is my road. This is also what I use. This is a really great online whiteboard. It has so many features, so many things you can embed videos. You can create like full on board games in there. Of course, you can you can write on it type text, create all kinds of arrows and pictures. And you can also give your students access to it. So they can also do this at the same time. It's super useful. It's so it has so many features. It's incredible. So my row is my favorite and it's also free. You can create three whiteboards for free on a free plan. My row. So check it out. If this is maybe too much or too complicated, you can always just use Google sheets. So that's also good. Google sheets of Google docs. I think I actually wanted to say Google docs, not Google sheets. You can also use Google sheets. But I think I meant to say actually Google docs. Right. This is great for documents. I also use this for homework. Usually have my students write their homework in a Google doc. Right. And then you can also at the same time go through it and edit it and all that. Then we have Canva. Canva is also great. Another great tool. Canva is great for creating lesson material, work materials, worksheets, but they also recently introduced their own white board online board feature. So you can also check it out. Canva also free. They have a pro version, but I think to use the white board and everything, it is free. And also this presentation here is also made in here. I also made this. I always make all of my presentations and stuff in Canva as well. So it's a good tool to have. And then another one I recently discovered is called off to class. So off to class. They actually are a super comprehensive online here. What here says off to class is the ESL teacher toolkit that saves time and drives equitable English learner outcomes. So I think they basically have, you can have your lessons in their platform, I believe. And you can also, they have less than content already. So they, you can pick from their lessons. You can also assign homework via this platform. You can also do placement tests and assessments all in one platform. So if you're maybe not, if you're just starting out, you're not sure what you're doing. You can use off to class. I think. Yeah. And I actually wanted to check it out too. I'm going to check it out and maybe report back to you guys how I like it. It is free. I think they have a trial, a free trial, but after that you have to pay for it. But it might be just worth it. Yeah. Free account for individuals, teachers here. Okay, great. So for individual teachers, freelance teachers, you can have 20 students, 150 lessons and 20 placement tests. So that is pretty cool. And then after that, it's actually really cheap. Their cheapest plan is $8 a month for two students. Okay. And then the more students you need, the more you have to pay, but this might be a really good solution for first time online teachers. So that might be really cool. And then also teaching material resources, teaching material, what to teach actually, right? You can of course write your own, your own lessons, your own like worksheets and all that, but that takes a lot of time. So you want to, and you're not getting paid for a lesson prep. So you want to minimize the lesson prep as much as possible. What I like to use personally, I use a lot of Pinterest. You can go on Pinterest and then type in literally anything like simple past worksheet or something like that. And you will find something and you can use that, print it out, use it, or use it online, right? I also really like BBC six minute English. Like I said, I do a lot of conversation classes. So BBC six minute English is from the BBC British English. And they have podcasts. So this is a podcast. And I think they come out with a new episode every week, six minutes, super quick. And they teach people, I think six or seven new vocabulary words every time. And you can kind of, I structure my conversation classes around this. This is for British English. You can check it out. BBC six minute English might work for you. They also have a American English version, which is below here, voa news.com. They also have podcasts with vocabulary. And sometimes they also include like grammar bits. So this is really nice for conversation classes. And then the other three resources below here. So we have teaching English.org.uk. And this is from the British council lingua house. And then we have online English teaching.com. These are all great websites for teaching material. So worksheets or just like grammar explanations, whole lessons, all of this, you can find that on there. They're also really, really good for free as well. Okay, let me check in real quick with Megan. Megan says I'm going to teach now. I definitely watch this video later. So see you soon. Thank you, Linda. Thank you, Megan. Have a great day. Have a good class. Then we have Ahava. Hi, Ahava. How you doing? Ahava asks, will this life be recorded and available to watch again? Yes. Yes. All of our live sessions, they will remain on our Facebook page. We have a playlist on there. And also I see you're watching on YouTube. So we also have a playlist of all of our live videos on YouTube as well. So you can rewatch this. If you don't have time now, watch it later. No problem. It will be there. Thank you, Sam. Hi, Sam. Oh, I didn't see you. Good morning. Hi, Sam. How are you doing? Thanks for saying that. The lives are uploaded to their YouTube channel. Yes, they are. Thanks, Sam. All right. So this is tips for your online lesson plan, right? How to create your lessons. Oh, maybe also a good way how I always start. When I have a new student, what I do, I usually give them like a level test. And you can also find them on Google. You type in English, maybe level test for kids or level test for adults. And there are so many different options. So you can pick a level test. And sometimes I give that to them before the first lesson and have it complete, have them completed and then send it back to me. And then I check and then I can see, oh yeah, this is like where they're at their current level. And then I can obviously make a lesson based on their level. So I always, I always recommend doing that first, having a level test first so you know where they are in their language journey. And you can find these, like I said on Google, you can just type this in English level test, etc. Yeah. Oh, Daniel asks, where are you teacher, the country? I am in South Korea. I'm in South Korea. Daniel, where are you at? Let me know. Okay. And then we're going to talk about how to find students. Oh, I didn't change the text here. That's the same text from the lesson plans. Anyway, so ignore this text. Finding students of course is the most important. I'm just going to make myself bigger. Finding students is of course key to a successful freelance career. Right. We need students to teach. So how do we find them? And there's so many different ways you can actually find students. And we're going to go over them right now. So first, if you really don't have any idea where to start, you can always start with friends and family. So you can start by reaching out to friends and family who might know someone interested in learning English because word of mouth is an excellent way to find potential students. So you might be surprised. Just let your family and friends know, hey, I'm starting to teach English now and they might know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody. You know how it goes. And then this is guaranteed. You're going to get a student from there because people have a word of mouth. People trust their friends and their family. So they're more likely to recommend you to their friend. Right. So if you don't know where to start at all, start with your friends and family. Then we have tutoring kids and teenagers. So there's a high demand for English tutors among children and teenagers. So you can start by offering your services to local schools or you can start by offering your services to local schools or by advertising your services to parents. So this one would work especially well. Of course in a non English speaking country. Right. If you're already abroad somewhere and you want to start teaching English online, reach out to local schools and let them know. For example, here I have a little in my, in my building complex here, we have a kindergarten and I always think, oh, if I, if I really, if I need like another job, if I want to get another like student base, perhaps I could just go down there and tell them, hey, I'm here. I'm available. If I should come in like once a week for English story time or something that'd be great. And I guarantee you that shows great initiative and people are really more inclined to reach out. Also schools, they usually have online like whiteboards, no blackboards. What are they called? Boards, information boards. Where you can put up your flyers, your information also in the physical school or just in the school area. So that'd be great. And then of course we have teaching foreigners. I think this is the most interesting to all of us, right? You can teach English to foreigners in your local community or online. So local community, if you are in an English speaking country and you are looking to stay in your English speaking country, but you're looking to teach English, you can find foreigners living in non-English speakers, living in your community. And then of course online. If you don't want to leave your country, you're from an English speaking country, you don't want to leave your country, you can always start out with teaching English online of course. Or of course, like I said, if you want to move abroad, for example, you moved to China, you moved to Korea, you moved to Mexico, wherever, of course there will be many, many potential students who want to learn English. But for online, there are various websites where you can find potential students such as Italki or PrePly. And these are online teaching market places. So that's a big difference. There's something to keep in mind. Online teaching market places, basically where you can put up your profile, your teacher profile. This is who I am. This is what I teach. These are my skills. This is my price. These are my lessons. And then they can browse profiles and they can book you. So this is also a great way. This is also what I do. Whereas online teaching schools or online teaching platforms, they basically assign the students to you oftentimes, and they give you the material. They have a set pay rate. You cannot set your own price. They tell you, hey, this is our hourly rate and you have to take it. You can't set your own price. So that's the difference. You want to choose a online teaching marketplace for that. Then we also have, of course, social media networking. This is something we talked about in the beginning, but you can use social media platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn to network with potential students. And here, especially joining groups or pages related to English language learning can help you connect with students who are interested in learning English. So you're going to see this a lot. There are so many groups on Facebook, on LinkedIn, in different forums. You can find groups and connect. I also hear Telegram is super popular where a lot of teachers share stuff and connect with students. So social media or like what we talked about, creating your own TikTok profile if you're into that and start posting and sharing English teaching tips, things like that. And then you can gain followers and find students through that. That's an option. More old-fashioned way, you can just post flyers around town. That also works. That also happens a lot in Korea. You can post flyers out on the street or in elevators. A lot of teachers advertise there. So you can create actual flyers and post them in your local community such as cafes, coffee shops, libraries, community centers and make sure to include your contact information, of course, and just a brief description of your services, what you offer. Maybe even a picture of yourself and a picture of yourself holding your TEFL certificate. So that can go a long way. And you can also promote yourself through ads. So you can promote your teaching services by advertising in local newspapers. So if you're moving abroad or also in your own country, local newspapers, magazines or online classifieds and also if you have your own website, if you create your own website for teaching, you can use Google Ads to reach a global audience. So these are some really great ways on how you can find students. And I would recommend not just sticking to one way but kind of pick more than one. You don't have to do all of them. Some people like the social media side of things. I think Daniel wanted to start his own TikTok. Some people might not like that. It depends on what you want to do. Also some countries, the flyers, like I said in Korea there are a lot of flyer advertisements. So this works really well. But in some other countries, it might not be really that common. People might not really use it or advertise this way. So you can figure it out. So yeah, these are some really great ways. So again, we have first of all friends and family, tutoring kids and teenagers, local schools, foreigners. If you're in an English speaking country, you can find foreign communities, social media networking, then we have old school posting flyers and just promotion through ads, old school newspapers or magazines but also online classifieds and Google ads. So a lot of options on how you can build your freelance business. So let's recap. We are at the end. Let's recap. I have five most important points from today. What I want you to remember. What I want you to take away from today. Number one, becoming a freelance TEFL teacher requires proper certification and training. Why? Of course, not officially. Anybody can start doing this but to really get students and to really be successful, you need to have some kind of certification to show to your students, right? So a TEFL certificate really shows them that you learned all the skills to teach so you're able to deliver effective lessons and they can actually learn something from you. Also, if you're a non-native English speaker any kind of English language proficiency certificates like an IELTS, a TEFL any Cambridge English language certificate are great to add on to your portfolio. Then number two here. You have a higher earning potential more flexibility and more diverse teaching opportunities as a freelance teacher, right? Higher earning potential because you can set your own rates more flexibility. You're not tied to a 9 to 5 schedule. You can work whenever you want. If you like working at night, you can even just work and teach all night if you wanted to and more diverse teaching opportunities you can teach whatever you want you can make your own lessons and you can reach whatever kind of student you want all over the world all age groups, everything. However, if you want to teach online freelance online, what you need to have is a reliable computer and internet connection a headset with a microphone and of course good lesson plans. Good lesson plans are the base of your freelance business. You can find students through social media reaching out to friends and family and promoting through ads word of mouth many different ways right? Word of mouth goes a long way even online word of mouth if you have an online student and they tell their friends about you then they also might want to book you so word of mouth is really gold in this business and number 5 here to successfully freelance as a TEFL teacher it's important to continuously develop one's skills and knowledge and this is something I haven't touched on yet but of course it's always important to stay up to date also with maybe the teaching platforms that you use like I said I just discovered this new off to class platform I'm going to check it out I need to know what's hot and new in the industry and also like we talked about there are TEFL specialization courses so when the teaching English online TEFL specialization came out and I knew I wanted to teach English online I also got that specialization but even just free for free you can find a lot of free information on websites for online teaching just kind of stay up to date and see what's what and I think this is it if somebody wants to add something here to this list if I forgot something from someone who is already freelance teaching or an important point that I mentioned and you guys didn't understand what I was saying please let me know and then I will elaborate on that but I think this is the most important stuff you need to know if you want to start teaching online but also in a different country of course today there was a lot more focus on the online side because freelancing in a different country it's really going to depend on the visa situation but like I said there are more and more countries introducing freelance and remote work visas and I did a live session about that in the past so go and check it out and I might do an update on that this year also a lot of countries introduced new remote worker visas so we're going to see that and then let's go into Q&A right now and just real quick I want to share this code with you guys again so we have 30% off any Teflor T-cell course with ITTT you can scan this QR code but I also have a website link for you guys you can just copy paste this link it will lead you to the application page and you see congratulations 30% off your Teflor T-cell course from ITTT so this is it looks like this ends with fplive minus linda this is the code no the link this is the QR code so whatever you want to do you can do it and then I still have a couple of minutes here for Q&A let's give it a couple more minutes we are in 1 hour and 3 minutes now but yeah I can stay on for a little bit longer today my throat is okay so I don't need to cut this short today it's fine so let me know what are your questions maybe about today's topic but also about Teflor T-cell in general about our courses about ITTT whatever you want to know now is your chance to ask and I'll do my best in answering I also want to say I don't know everything right but I'll try my best and you can always and this is what I mentioned before you can always contact us at courses at tcell minus teflor.com and my team we have a great team of people who all have taught English abroad and have a lot of experience and so I'm sure one of them will be able to answer your questions if I can't so great Sam says how was Vietnam yeah so I was in Vietnam when was it 2 weeks ago 2 weekends ago I was in Vietnam it was amazing it was really great but after that I got sick I think because it was very warm there it was still cold in Korea but in Vietnam it was very warm and then the AC was on of course and then I think the flight back home really that's what really hurt my ear and I got an ear infection and the cold after that and 2 weeks later I'm still I'm finally better now but I did get sick but Vietnam was amazing we were in Hoi An this was our second time there me and my husband and it was just so great and I was like I could move here I could teach here too I could freelance teach and just sit at a different cafe every day in this beautiful town it was great so highly recommend if you haven't been yet to Vietnam or Hoi An in particular highly recommended it was amazing absolutely gorgeous and you can see all about my trip on my Instagram at Linda goes East if you're curious and I guess Sam might have seen that on my Instagram so I appreciate it thanks Sam Vietnam is also a good destination for teaching English there's a high demand you also have a lot of schools that are looking for teachers I need to check if they have like a Vietnam remote worker visa if they have something like this that would be amazing ok here it says Vietnam is a great destination for many digital nomads that said it does not have a visa available specifically for remote workers but that doesn't mean there aren't options for digital nomads to visit Vietnam for a long period of time alright there you go so I assume you can just do it on a tourist visa I think that's what a lot of people do here so or there in Vietnam but yeah mmmm Angie says I'm confused about how taxes work as a freelancer yeah so that's one thing of course that is confusing and that's something that you have to figure out on your own and I assume you are a US citizen because you are from California living in Chicago so you need to file your own taxes and there are actually also for there are a lot of groups actually on Facebook I've seen them for this kind of situation where they basically other people help you with it somebody to help you with it there are agencies to do it for you or just yeah join one of those groups and they will walk you through how to do it how to file the taxes but that's something that you have to do on your own and figure it out but it's not impossible a lot of other people are doing it too so it's just I think the first time you're doing it it might be hard but like I said there are a lot of support groups that will help you with that yeah alright Bi Hong says do you think it's a good idea to start teaching with an online company so like with a different online company yeah I think especially as a first time if you're completely new to teaching online and all of that I think it's good to start out with a company just to kind of see how it works you know how to see like how things are how online teaching works what kind of material they use so you can do this for a little bit and then just quit and then do it on your own that's also possible I think it's good to start out with and to reach students right because these online platforms that's the big advantage of going with an online platform that they have the students you don't have to actually reach out to any students marketing stuff because they already have the students so if you're starting out this might be a good way but those platforms they will take a commission so not so great but to start out with I think it's really good and then once you kind of get the hang of it and you have like a portfolio you have experience and you have something to show you can do it on your own and make more money good question that's a good question you know there's no perfect answer for this this is just my opinion you can also just start out with completely on your own but because for me because I had no experience in teaching online and I started out with an online company and that really helped me because I learned a lot how everything works in this online teaching world so yeah now I still I'm still on the platform so I still have a couple of students because like I like these people so I don't want to like abandon them so I keep teaching on my platform where I teach there's this function where you can say like you don't want to accept any new students so they don't really put you in the search so you keep your regular students but no one new reaches out to you that makes sense I have like a handful of regular people but I'm not taking on any new ones so it's a lot more quiet on the platform and I have more time to focus on my own freelance stuff so that's very good and that's also the good thing with these platforms because you can decide how much you want to work right if now you have more time to take on more students but then later I have less time now so you can narrow down your schedule good question so Sam says can you teach online while you're still working with a school or institution so that depends I think it depends what your contract says you have to read your contract if you are in a teaching in a school and your contract says oftentimes your contract will say work somewhere else or something like that I don't know like the official term but your contract will say something to that effect but I mean a lot of people are doing it and how would your school find out if you teach online you know people from other countries there is very little chance your school would actually find out they probably wouldn't be mad as long as you know you're not taking their students so that's what they don't want they don't want you teaching their students in your free time and taking their students away from them so as long as you're not doing that they're normally cool with it and you can also just ask you know you can ask them hey I would like to start teaching online in my free time and they're like oh yeah just do it I don't think anybody would say no as long as you're not taking their students right and losing them money because it's a business right it's a business these private language schools are businesses so they don't want to lose any money but you teaching online a couple of hours a week students from a different part of the world I don't think it's going to matter to them but yeah it depends on the contract so read your contract what it says regarding other jobs and then you can figure it out with your employer I hope that makes sense but if you are a freelancer and you work you know for different clients different platforms you can certainly have more than one right that's what most freelancers are doing they don't have just one job right they have many different jobs so that they're definitely possible but if you have like one you're an employee at a school it's a little bit different so I hope that makes sense good question though that's a good question alright let's see let's do like one or two more questions if you have any and then I have to say goodbye unfortunately very soon so let's see last chance now to ask a question send them in real quick and we can answer it but then I have to go real quick in a minute or maybe everybody's happy no more questions that's also fine all good oh I missed this too Sam said yes yes I did your Instagram is awesome oh thank you thank you Sam that's kind of you and Jesus how often do you make lives yeah we go live every week usually at this time this day same same every week unless I'm like not here so but usually same place same time so like and subscribe so you're notified and you're not gonna miss it great question thank you Angie I hope to see you again next week I'll be here next week again I hope you too alright then I think I'm gonna say goodbye now Angie says thanks today was awesome well I'm glad things great I hope you learned something awesome oh also if you guys have any topic suggestions for future live sessions you can send them in you can comment you can also DM me like I said here on Instagram if there's like a topic you want me to cover in the future I always take suggestions so let me know about that and Amitava Amitava says okay Linda thanks for sharing your thoughts and have a nice day weekend thank you same to all of you have a great weekend have a wonderful rest of your week have a great St. Patrick's Day if you're celebrating and yeah oh Litturg is here too hi Litturg thanks so much Linda happy weekend thank you Sam says thank you catch you in the live thank you Sam I hope you'll be there see you all next week hopefully and have a great weekend and thanks so much for all of your comments and questions it was really great and yeah I'm looking forward to next week thank you guys see ya bye