Do you love interacting with people from different cultures through language and online communication? Verbling for teachers is an opportunity that lets you teach in your own native language, but is it a good platform to earn some extra money outside of the classroom? Read this review to find out more.
What Is Verbling
Verbling is an online language-learning platform that allows qualified language teachers to connect with students one-on-one through live video sessions. The lesson interface takes place right on the web browser, so there’s no need to download or log into any third-party services.
Students will pick you based on your profile, resume and performance ratings left by previous students. There’re are many languages offered through this platform but the popular ones are English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Mandarin and Russian.
As a tutor, you have the ability to schedule your teaching slots months in advance and get paid on an hourly basis, anywhere between $15 to $75 per hour. Generally, the more experienced and more time you commit to tutoring, the more you’d earn.
From the earnings, Verbling takes a small amount between $1 to 3 per transfer and you also need to pay additional transfer costs depending on which payment system you use to withdraw the funds. At the end of the day, you earn about 85% of the hourly rate you’ve set. The minimum weekly cash out for PayPal is $10 and $20 for Payoneer and TransferWise.
Teaching Requirement
Like most online tutoring sites, you’ll be vetted to ensure you meet their criteria as a tutor. Here are some of the requirements that need to be fulfilled;
- You’ve got experience teaching in the past, whether it’s with young children or adults.
- You can only teach in one language that is your native language.
- You need to make a short profile video – that can be easily done with YouTube.
- Your resume should include relevant educational background and certifications (such as ACT, ESOL, and TOEFL)
- You have a passport, driver’s license, and/or government ID card to that can be used to verify your identity
- The speed of your internet should meet the operational capacity required by the Verbling teaching system.
After checking all that, you will submit the application and if your status is approved, you should hear from them in about 2 weeks’ time. Once you’ve completed and uploaded your profile, you can start to accept students for tutoring.
The Advantages of Teaching with Verbling
As with any online tutoring job, teaching on Verbling offers some perks that you can’t usually get with the traditional classroom settings.
- First, you can set your own teaching schedule and pay rate which means, you can do this as a part-time in the evening when you’re done with school. There’s no limit to the number of hours you commit.
- You can also create bulk lessons to help improve on a specific skill like public speaking or vocabulary building. Courses like these usually sell for much higher price tags and you get to retain the students for a longer period too.
- It’s a great way to supplement your income while traveling abroad as long as there’s access to a stable internet connection.
- The tutor profiling on Verbling is very thorough and professional as students can view your teaching schedule in advance and also your ratings that reflect your strength. All this information is helpful in deciding whether you’re the kind of tutor they are looking for.
- On top of that, the site comes with a 30-minute free trial booking which gives students the opportunity to ‘check you out’ before they commit for the full class.
The Downsides
Working remotely isn’t always a bed of roses so here are some potential downsides you need to be aware of if you’re planning to teach for the long term.
- If you’re reading this, I’m guessing English is likely your native language but guess what? There are a ton of tutors teaching this language too and judging at the way profiles are organized, it seems like everyone is packed into a long list. There’s no way of controlling (at least not by you) whose profile would make it to the top of the list which is usually the most visible spot.
It could be a new tutor who just joined or it could also be a tutor with higher ratings – who knows? The thing is, if people can’t view your profile, you’re less likely to teach and make money.
Some tutors have voiced out this concern on the forum, complaining that they never or hardly get inquiries or bookings from students even after months of listing on Verbling. Well, I don’t blame them because one, some languages are going to be quite competitive and two, there isn’t any feature that can boost your position in the crowded listing.
- Other competitions you’re facing is actually from sites that teach English courses using software technology instead of real human interaction. These programs can offer cheaper fees while offering more language courses through memberships. Students who are shy to interact or have a tight budget are likely to choose this route of learning instead of booking with a native tutor.
- Meanwhile, other tutoring sites use affiliate marketing and referral programs to capture more tutor enrollment and student sign-ups. These are good opportunities to earn some extra income online besides teaching alone. Yet, Verbling doesn’t seem to have any of these in their marketing strategies – I couldn’t find a link anywhere – which seems like a backward approach in today’s eLearning setting.
Is Verbling Worth Your Time?
Verbling as a teaching platform provides you with a free online space to broadcast your expertise. Those who clocked in more hours generally make more money. I’ve seen a few tutors who’d delivered more than 2K lessons over the span of 4 years. If the average pay is $50 per hour, this tutor would have made close to 100K! It’s an impressive figure even as a side-income.
But get this – Verbling doesn’t automatically assign students for you. It’s not like you just log in and there will be a class of eager students waiting. Becoming an online tutor is very much like freelancing – you need to do a lot of hustling, promoting yourself and let people know what you can do to help with their language skills.
That’s why I think it’s crucial to create a website/blog which can offer more flexibility in sharing your portfolio. Remember the YouTube introduction video you make for Verbling? Well, you can create more of that, embed them on your site to boost the reader’s engagement.
You will also have your own personal space to blog about teaching experiences, review products/services related to your field (here’s where joining affiliate or referral programs will come in handy) and when your audience is big enough, you may even launch your own online course someday.
How about that for an online tutoring career, uh? 🙂
Surviving on a single paycheck from a traditional teaching profession can be very challenging nowadays. There never seems to be an end to putting in more hours in order to get paid – whether it’s online or offline tutoring.
That’s why starting a teaching blog can make all the difference in your career because it helps to diversify income streams, provide better work-life balance and also challenge you to do things outside of your comfort zone.
The effect is not immediate, but if you start now, the outcome is likely to be more positive in several years to come. To make things easier, you don’t need to be tech-savvy to do all these. Simply use the WordPress builder down below to launch your first-ever teaching website in less than a minute.
This seems like a great way to make a little extra money, but I am sure there are lots of people signing up to teach English as you say. It is a shame that you cannot use a second language if you are fluent in that as well. But if you put in the work, I think you might have a shot.
Just wondering, is it possible to create a website and promote outside of Verbling?
Great thinking outside of the box, Travis. That’s exactly what freelance teachers should be doing instead of relying 100% on marketplace traffic. Most education platforms will provide a tutor link which I think is underutilized by many. For example, Udemy lets tutors promote on their own sites and pays more for your own referred students.
Verbling sounds like a great option for teachers to earn extra cash. My stepbrother and his wife do this part-time and have had success with it. I’m not sure though if it’s Verbling or another platform they use for teaching.
The biggest downside you mentioned seems to be the overwhelming number of people interested in teaching English. Are there any other platforms out there? Maybe one that is less competitive?
The internet is literally a virtual classroom and I think competition is pretty common everywhere right now. I’ve outlined some interesting platforms for English learning online courses if you wish to check out. I think the key here is to find a program that’s easy to use, have high student traffic and pays you reasonably well. The rest will depend on how you build an interesting portfolio to attract more sign-ups or trial classes.
So if I don’t have any teaching experience, but English is my native language, where else can I tutor online?
Unfortunately Donny, most sites will want some teaching experience before you join their sites. I think it’s for validation purposes and also it helps to boost the tutors’ profiles for selection. A good place you can start without teaching experience is getting trained to teach through certification. Check out My TEFL – it lets you teach and travel at the same time.
With Verbling, teachers can earn extra income from home using their skills to teach language skills to a global market and help more students practice language skills with native language teachers. You made a great point in marketing as I believe that is necessary to get jobs online nowadays. It may be something teachers aren’t used to doing, but I think it’s doable for the kind of opportunity it provides.
I’ve been considering teaching English to others in foreign countries as a potential online career. After learning what you’ve shared here, I might hold off on joining. For one, I have never tutored before and if they need some teaching experience, then I guess I would be disqualified anyway.
For people who have never done any kind of teaching before, are there any ways to get involved in teaching English online besides Verbling?
Hi Robert, if you like interacting with people from different cultures, you may want to check out My TEFL. It doesn’t require you to have any teaching experience prior and will even supplement you with that through their placement programs. Hope this helps.
I think it’s great that Verbling lets teachers set their own rates and teaching hours they want to commit. It’s just a shame Verbling doesn’t have an affiliate or referral marketing program (like other English learning sites) because I think that could draw so much more traffic to their platform and that would mean more potential students for tutors.