How to Make Money with Chegg Tutoring and Helping Students with Homework

Remote learning has become the new norm and with that comes a myriad of opportunities to monetize from the online education niche. If you’re a teacher looking to boost your career outside of the classroom or a student, wanting to earn a few extra bucks, this article is meant for you. 

In the next few minutes, we’ll explore how you can make money with Chegg while helping others achieve academic success. 

What Is Chegg 

Chegg is an online hub that offers learning resources primarily for high school and college students in the US. Founded in 2005, it once served as a textbook rental company but has since branched out to provide other digital subscription services such as;

• Chegg Study – A collection of tools that enable students to find textbook solutions and get answers to their questions from experts (costs $14.95 per month) 
• Chegg Writing – A proprietary software that checks for plagiarism, scan for grammatical errors and proofread papers on any subject (costs $9.95 per month) 
• Chegg Prep – A large collection of decks (aka flashcards) for easy learning to help students prepare for AP exams. 
• Chegg Math Solver – An online tool designed to solve complex math problems on the go. The free plan offers 3 solutions per day while the paid plan (costs $9.95 per month) offers unlimited solutions.  
• Chegg Tutors – On-demand online tutoring in all kinds of subjects through chat and video calls. Plans are available per lesson or monthly and costs between $11 to $30. 

So basically, Chegg is like a virtual assistant that helps students get their homework done more efficiently. Interestingly, this type of online service couldn’t have come at a better time since most schools have closed down due to the virus pandemic. 

Even if there are plans to re-open, the awareness of social distancing would likely discourage students from doing study groups or having one-on-one tutoring sessions. The better and safer alternative is therefore to engage with a service like Chegg.  

Of course, even after life returns to normal (soon we hope), there are still many reasons to continue using Chegg for its convenience and resourcefulness as more students lean towards online learning. With that in mind, let’s explore how you can help others excel in their academics while creating a side income.

Become a Chegg Tutor

Tutoring on Chegg is a lot like a freelance job in which you work independently at your own hours and handle your own taxes when the time is due. It’s for anyone with a teaching background or qualified college graduates. Granted, you’re helping students with homework, not graded assignments and you’re doing so within the virtual space provided, not one-on-one. 

To apply, you would need to submit a few documents such as your diploma, student ID card, and university transcripts. You may also be required to sit for some short tests to verify your qualification. If you’re successful, you’ll hear from them within 7 days. 

Once your profile is published, students will be able to contact you for either a Live or Written lesson. Live lessons take place in a virtual classroom and use multimedia tools while written lessons let tutors respond to a question at a later time. 

Either way, the basic pay rate is calculated at $20 per hour (0.33 cents per minute) with a minimum lesson length of 5 minutes. Payments are made through PayPal on a weekly basis. 

The Pros

(1) You can teach from any part of the world as long as you have a PayPal account and other supporting documents. This is something to consider for those who like the idea of teaching while traveling or working abroad. 

(2) If your friends are interested in tutoring, refer them to Chegg using your tutor referral link and when they complete their first positively-reviewed lesson, you’ll make a $10 referral bonus. 

(3) Unlike most sites that only focus on language learning, Chegg offers a variety of classroom subjects (primarily Business, Engineering, Math, and Science) to mid/high school, college, and professional students without the need for teaching experience. That means college students can do part-time tutoring as long as they are good at certain subjects.  

The Cons 

(1) It may not be apparent at first but Chegg is very much like a marketplace where there are hundreds if not thousands of profiles similar to yours. Chances are, those with the most appeal-like high response rate and positive reviews will be favored amongst students. 

If you’re new to the platform, it may take a while for your profile to become noticeable, gain traction before you can start making a profit. 

(2) It’s not unusual for an application to be rejected due to the number of applicants and students’ compatibility. The decision is usually final unless there’s an upgrade in your teaching experience and/or educational qualifications. If Chegg doesn’t work out for you the first time, consider other ways to teach online instead. 

Become a Chegg Affiliate

Affiliate marketing is an interesting model to monetize through online referrals at a larger scale. If you’re a happy customer using any of Chegg’s services, you could recommend to others and earn a small commission doing so.

The Chegg affiliate program offers the following commissions; 

• $4 per referral for the Chegg Study subscription.
• $5 per referral for EasyBib Plus (an online tool, owned by Chegg, for citations, and grammar/plagiarism checking).
• Earn 10% from new textbook orders and 3% for returning customers (textbook rentals come with a 4 week free trial for Chegg Study so it’s a good segway to increase subscriptions to the service).

One of the best ways to promote as an affiliate marketer is to write reviews, how-tos, and compare services through blogging. Basically, your targeted audience is students who prefer to rent textbooks and are in need of help with their homework or academic papers.  

Using long-tail keywords as the foundation, you can attract these groups of readers and get them to subscribe to Chegg’s services through your affiliate links. Publishing the content on a blog will enable you to be elaborative and creative, so if you haven’t got one already, use this tool below to build a WordPress blog for free. 

The Pros 

(1) Online learning is an on-going trend and many predict this niche will continue to draw demands from students at every education level. We’re already seeing some popular search keywords that match with Chegg’s offers and this is something your blog can leverage from. 

• How to get help with algebra
• Where to buy second-hand books online
• Best ways to study for exams
• How to study for a biology exam
• How to remember things for exams
• How to get better grades in science
• Is Chegg study worth it
• Does Chegg have a free trial

The Cons 

(1) However, Chegg isn’t the only tutoring company out there. There are other competitors like SolutionInn and CourseHero entering the market and their features are almost similar, if not better than Chegg’s. 

(2) Some users actually offer their accounts for public usage which allows other students to discreetly access Chegg’s answers for free. Unfortunately, such illegal sites run rampant on the internet and are likely to attract students who aren’t interested in paying for subscriptions. Your review will thus be pointless for this group of audience. 

So, Is Chegg Worth Trying? 

From an education perspective, Chegg ticks all the boxes. It has a plethora of useful resources, covers plenty of subjects, and has an army of qualified tutors to run the show. All these qualities amalgamate and you get a strong network conducive for learning and for business to thrive. In that aspect, I think the site is definitely worth trying for teachers and students alike. 

I hope you’ve learned a thing or two from this post on how to make money with Chegg. Please leave some comments below if you’ve any questions or thoughts. Meanwhile, check out my recommended training site for more online monetizing ideas.