Earn Money Online Teaching for VIPKID

As many of you may know, I have started out on a new entrepreneurial adventure (if you haven’t read it yet, check out this blog post). Since I have transitioned from full-time to part-time with my main job, there has of course been a decrease in income. My entrepreneurial ventures have not started bringing in a livable income yet. So I needed something to help make up the difference in lost income from going part-time. So, what am I doing to try to help keep my family from totally going under financially? I have recently started teaching for a company called VIPKID. Find out more (including a brief description of my personal experience of beginning to earn money online teaching for VIPKID) by continuing to read this post below!

NOTE that the button link below is a referral link – if you click it, sign up to become a VIPKID teacher, and begin teaching for VIPKID, I may receive a referral bonus from VIPKID. Thanks for your support!

What is VIPKID?

VIPKID is a platform that allows “teachers” to teach English to kids in China over the internet. Teachers who work for VIPKID open up timeslots (in half-hour increments) that can be booked for kids in China to take English classes. For teachers living in North America as I do, many of the prime time slots are in the early morning hours (evening in Beijing). If you know me well, you may know that I am not really much of a morning person. So getting up early to teach English online is not the easiest thing for me to do. But so far, it hasn’t been too bad.

The VIPKID curriculum is pre-done. There is a set of slides for each lesson, including teacher instructions at the bottom. A teacher can look over the slides ahead of time (as time permits) and ideally prepare some props to go with the lesson. The teacher then logs into the online platform in time for the scheduled class and spends about 25 to 30 minutes going through the lesson with the student.

The online platform includes an area for the slides that can be marked up by both the teacher and the student, as well as areas for the video feeds of the teacher and the student. Once the lesson is done, the teacher is to fill in a brief feedback form.

What Qualifications Are Required?

In order to become a teacher for VIPKID, you must have the following two qualifications:

At least a Bachelor’s Degree
Some teaching experience (VIPKID is apparently pretty flexible with what they accept as teaching experience – have you homeschooled your kids or taught children’s classes at church?)

If you meet these two qualifications, feel free to apply. The interview/hiring process can include an interview, teaching mock classes, and submitting documentation.

How Much Does VIPKID Pay?

Do you think you might want to earn money online teaching for VIPKID, but want some more concrete potential earnings numbers? VIPKID sets the payscale for a teacher at $7 to $9 USD per class. Remember that you can teach two classes per hour. You can get an additional $1 per class for showing up on time and stuff like that. Additionally, if you teach at least 45 classes during a calendar month, you will receive an additional $1 per class. There are other less common additions as well – for example, if you teach a trial class to a prospective VIPKID student and that student ends up joining VIPKID as a regular student, you can receive a $5 bonus. If you allow students to sign up for your timeslots with less than a 24-hour notice, you can also receive an additional $2 per class as a short-notice bonus.

So, to put this pay information together – if you are teaching 45 or more 30-minute time slots per month and you show up on time for each class and stuff like that, you can be earning $18 to $22 USD per hour. In certain circumstances, you can make even more than that some hours.

VIPKID also pays a referral bonus if other people sign-up and begin teaching for VIPKID using your unique referral code. So there is certainly the potential there to make additional money!

VIPKID pays their teachers around the 15th of each month.

My Personal Experience

Starting the Process

I started the sign-up process for VIPKID in later January 2018. I ended up submitting a short Express Interview video and moving on to the mock class portion of the process by early February. For Mock Class 1, you book a time slot, go over the materials to prepare to teach two different lessons, and then go online and teach an adult who is pretending to be a kid in China. During the mock classes, you receive some feedback about what you are doing well and what you can improve. There are some great videos on YouTube to help with preparing for the various Mock Class Lessons.

After my Mock 1 class, VIPKID determined that I was better suited to teach the upper-level students. If I ever do want to teach the lower level students, I can choose to be reevaluated or something like that after I have taught 100 classes to try to get approved for lower teaching lower level classes. But at this point, I think I may just end up sticking with the upper-level students.

My Mock Class 2 was teaching an upper-level class. Again, I was able to book a timeslot that worked for me and go over the materials ahead of time. My Mock 2 class seemed to go well, and I was soon offered the job, pending the submission of my documentation. Documents get uploaded online.

Being a VIPKID Teacher

For the first couple weeks or so, I had time slots opened up on the schedule, but didn’t get any students. At least part of the issue may have been that part of that time was the Chinese New Year in China – so apparently not a lot of activity.

There was a limited time jump-start offer where I could record myself “teaching” different lessons (this was great practice for me) and submit the recordings for some bonus pay. Once I had finished all eight of these lessons, I received a booking for teaching one of the last two of these eight lessons to a real student. I taught that class in late February. I received a 5 Apple rating for this lesson. Shortly after that, it seemed like the floodgates started opening! Many of the class timeslots get booked on Mondays (Beijing time). I have now had a good number of bookings, and have a lot of booked timeslots going a couple weeks out into the future!

Summary

While getting up early is not my favorite thing, VIPKID certainly seems to have some great potential for me! I appreciate the flexibility – before time slots are booked, I am free to go in and open or close them.

Do you want to earn money online teaching for VIPKID? Why not click the button below to start the process! Be sure to let me know if you have any questions or need any help with the process. You can leave your questions in the comment section below or contact me here.