Due to recent government regulations in China, thousands of freelance online English teachers are trying to pivot from their old platforms and build their personal teaching brand. In the past six or seven years, the online ESL industry has exploded with hundreds of thousands of teachers and millions of students across the globe learning together in virtual classrooms, with a large number of those teachers working for Chinese companies.
There are so many benefits of freelance teaching, but they don’t come without obstacles. Here is a list of 5 tools that will help you prepare to make the leap into freelance teaching:
- The Perfect Platform
- Awesome Teaching Material
- Easy and Secure Payment System
- Hassle-Free Scheduling System
- Simple Tax Solution
1. The Perfect Platform
Since the start of the global pandemic, Zoom has become a household name synonymous with a virtual video-meeting platform. It’s easy-to-use, has loads of features, and the free version is perfectly adequate for most one-on-one learning situations. The quality of the audio and video are extremely good and it has all of the annotation features a teacher and student need. At the time of writing this Zoom is accessible in China as well!
As far as paid solutions go, Classin has a great reputation with tons of robust classroom features. I’ve had some of my Chinese students request Classin, so you might even be able to charge a bit more for your classes to offset the cost. I can’t speak personally of Classin’s features as I haven’t needed to use it. For my one-on-one classes, Zoom’s free features have been more than sufficient.
We’ve tried two Chinese platforms, but have not been very impressed. Most Chinese students will have Ding Talk and probably use it already for some of their other classes. It’s totally free and the online classroom feature is super easy for students and teachers to use. You can upload your material in a PDF or a PowerPoint and it populates automatically in the classroom. However, the video boxes are far too small and you can’t expand them. I’ve found the audio quality can also be quite bad.
Another Chinese platform I’ve tried is VooV by Tencent. It’s the Chinese version of Zoom, but not nearly as smooth. It’s modeled to look and operate exactly like Zoom. Same features and same characteristics. I’ve found that my video often lags when using a virtual background (try turning your VB off if yours is lagging) and expanding the video boxes is very choppy. Overall it’s just a b-version of Zoom, but better than Ding Talk!
2. Awesome Teaching Material
A teacher is only as good as their material, right?? For those of us who have been in the industry for years dealing with an abundance of sub-par material, know that’s not always the case. Pulling off an amazing class while being forced to drag a 7-year-old non-native speaker through a lesson about shopping wholesale vs. retail (VIPKid Free Talk anyone?!) is magic on par with Gandalf or young Master Potter. However, it sure is nice when you have some terrific materials to guide your student seamlessly through the half-hour or hour that you share together.
Raz Kids has a lot of great material that spans many different subjects. Depending on what plan you purchase it’s about $100/year, but totally worth it to have a library of quality material. You can also sign-up for a free trial if you want to give it a test run. Another terrific option that we love is Teachers Pay Teachers. TPT is an online marketplace for education materials made by teachers. This is a great resource that helps other teachers get paid for their hard work!
For those of us coming from platforms like VIPKid, GoGo Kid, or Whales, I think we’re all missing the massive, leveled curriculum. I’ve been searching for weeks trying to find something similar online to purchase, but haven’t had much luck. Crystal Clear ESL has a curriculum for a few levels that is very similar to VIPKid’s. With a paid subscription you can screen-share the material with your student.
3. Easy and Secure Payment System
As far as payments are concerned, we absolutely love Stripe for this. Stripe is a worldwide, super-secure payment company that has numerous different payment products to suit almost any type of business need. If you want to have your own freelance teacher’s website you (or a developer) can integrate Stripe payment systems (including AliPay and WeChat Pay) with a little bit of code.
Another option is signing up with Stripe directly and creating invoices for your students. You can enable WeChat Pay in your Stripe dashboard and you should be able to have the WeChat Pay feature on your invoice too. Depending on where you’re located you might have to provide Stripe with your ‘business’ website or create a dedicated Facebook page for your business. Sometimes Stripe will want to see business filings, but it seems like some people have no problem signing up and creating invoices.
For those freelance teachers that need to set up a teaching profile page fast and accept Chinese payments easily and securely, check out TeachOn . Sign up for free in a few minutes, build your shareable teaching profile page with a Stripe-integrated payment system (see mine here) and start accepting Chinese payments now!
4. Hassle-Free Scheduling System
Many teachers transitioning into freelance teaching from a platform are not used to managing their own scheduling and booking. When I started freelancing I thought this would be an absolute nightmare! However, most of my students prefer to have classes on the same day and at the same time every week. Google Calendar has been totally sufficient as I create recurring events for each student when we decide on our time, and it’s done!
You can see in the picture below I’m using green for times that are taken (and paid for) by students and the blue slots with apples (with times labeled in BJT) indicate free times. I send this picture to my students letting them know what the different colored slots mean, and they easily choose a time that suits them.
Calendly is a great tool that can help you schedule your appointments. It syncs up with your Google calendar so your appointments are easily visible on all your devices. If you have your own freelance teaching website with Stripe, you can also integrate it with Calendly to consolidate billing and reduce no-shows by collecting credit card payments as you schedule meetings.
TeachOn will soon be able to provide scheduling and booking services for freelance online English teachers as well so they can have the convenience of payment, materials, and scheduling all in one place! Stay tuned!
5. Simple Tax Solution
Most online teachers are used to filing taxes as independent contractors. But, now as a freelancer, who’s going to help you prepare your taxes? There are numerous tax services that can streamline this process for you and save you a potentially massive headache. One service that we’re particularly fond of is Bonsai. You can do everything from time tracking and invoicing to expenses and taxes all in one place.
Here are a few reasons we love Bonsai:
-It has a super user-friendly design.
-It’s geared specifically towards freelancers.
-It has a mobile app with everything you need (dashboard, track time, view/create invoices and expenses.)
-You have the ability to create contracts very quickly using templates. It takes only 5 minutes and requires no legal knowledge.
Taking the leap into becoming a freelance online English teacher may seem like a daunting task, but equipping yourself with these five tools can help you make the transition smoothly. Please stop by TeachOn.org if you need help accepting Chinese payments!
