It seems like the conventional wisdom is that you can't earn as much online as you can face-to-face. I imagine this is because online lessons aren't seen to be as valuable as the more traditional lessons by teachers.
I saw a discussion a couple of weeks ago where someone was arguing that you won't be able to get close to $30 an hour for online lessons. His reasoning was based on the fact that some teachers offer lessons at $5 an hour.
This is the wrong way to approach pricing and, in fact, the opposite is true; teaching online and freelancing gives you the ability to charge much higher prices .
To illustrate this, let's take the second best-paid country for English teachers from the list above: Saudi Arabia. Personally, I wouldn't like to go and teach in Saudi Arabia (for reasons that I won't go into). But that doesn't mean that I can't teach Saudi Arabians.
I have done this in the past and have made some special relations with my students from this country. This new line of thinking, being able to reach students from anywhere in the world, is key to earning more money as an ESL/EFL teacher:
As an independent online teacher, you can reach any English learning market in the world while living wherever you want.
Those of us who teach English online aren't in competition with teachers who charge $5 per class. We are in competition with language schools and teachers who teach the students we want to target. And, if making money is your goal, then we want to target students who are willing to pay higher prices.
To earn more money. it all comes down to choosing the right niche. offering value to your students, and marketing your lessons.
The potential to earn what you believe is a good wage is huge. There are students out there are who desperate for a teacher like you to solve their problems and help them make the improvements that they desire. The best thing is that you don't have to leave your house, let alone your country to do this.
We don't have to settle for a low wage or have to move somewhere else to earn the money that we want to earn.
This in turn, means something really special to most teachers: we can continue doing what we love.
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