My Favorite Way To Make Money From Home
Listen, I fully believe that there are a lot of ways to go about raising great kids, but when my husband and I had kids, we chose for me to stay at home with them because we really value being the primary influence in their lives. I’ll be totally honest, even though that was a big priority for us, we weren’t exactly in a place financially where we could live comfortably solely off of my husband’s income. So, instead of sacrificing one of our biggest values, we decided to get scrappy. Let me tell you, if it can make you money from home, I’ve done it. This mama knows how to hustle. One day I’ll entertain you with a long list of ideas for how to make money while you raise little humans full time, but for today I just want to talk about the one that has been my favorite so far.
Ready? Drumroll…
The side-hustle that has stolen the show for me is teaching for VIPKID. Now, for clarity purposes, I am not being paid to say this. This is just one mama wanting to help another mama out. For no particular reason, I walked into this whole VIPKID thing very skeptical. First of all, while I don’t hate mornings, I’m also not voluntarily waking up before 7:00am. Secondly, I don’t have any formal teaching experience and wasn’t clear on how this whole set up was going to work. And third, I heard it can take a while before you’re even able to make any decent money with it.
So, now that I’m 2 months in and loving it, I wanted to give you the details so you can know if it might be a good fit for you too. So first, a brief summary: VIPKID is a platform that allows people in the United States to teach english to kids in China. The lessons are 1-on-1 and the material you have to cover is supplied to you via power point. You run through the power point with the student and help them grasp the information. Each class is 25-28 minutes long. Now for some details:
The only qualification I am aware you must have is a bachelors degree. It does not have to be in teaching. I have music business & entrepreneurship degrees which clearly have nothing to do with being an educator.
I think they also value some sort of experience teaching children, but considering you’re raising one, I feel like that’s got to count for something. I talked about how I’ve tutored kids before (which I did wayyyyyy back in high school) and how I “homeschool” my kids. They’re 1 and 3, so when I say homeschool, I mean I teach them things. Sometimes you’ve gotta upsell, y’all!
You teach when it’s convenient for your students in Beijing. This means the hours take some getting used to, but if you can adjust, it’s actually quite ideal for mom-life. You’re able to open up your schedule for classes anytime between 7:30pm-8:30am (central time). This means you can teach after the kids go to bed or before they get up in the morning! Woohoo! You can open as many or as few time slots as you want, all in half-hour increments.
Ready for some real transparancy? Let’s dive into numbers. As of right now, VIPKID pays you a set amount per class and then will tag on an extra dollar or two per class for certain incentives - namely, being on time to your class and teaching a reasonable number of classes in a month. All in all, I make $10/class, which means $20/hour. I heard that it can take some time to build up a student base, and that’s true. I started teaching halfway through February and in those two weeks I only made $50. But as students begin to take your class, you’ll begin to get good ratings and many times students will rebook with you again. My booking rate increased quickly and in March I made over $500. This month, if I teach an average of 4 classes each day (only 2 hours of work) I should make $1200. So far I’m averaging more than that, so I may see it be a little bit higher. I’ll add this is all before taxes, so you will want to take that in to account. With our household schedule, I teach almost all of my classes in the morning between 6am-9am because Bobby is home in the mornings and able to do breakfast with the kids. Obviously, you may have different times that work for your household, but it’s nice to know that it’s as flexible as you need it to be.
You can do this on-the-go. In fact, I know a lot of VIPKID teachers who are singles wanting to travel the world and this is how they fund it. They travel from country to country and just teach from wherever they are. All it takes is a few simple props that you can get from the dollar store and an internet connection. This also means that if you take a family vacation, you don’t have to stop making money! We have a few trips planned this year and I fully expect to teach during them, because the only thing better than making money from home is making money at the beach.
Lastly, I want you to know that this is really fun. $1200/month is not earth shattering, but it certainly makes a difference. In many cases, it’s as much as you’d be bringing home from a career after you account for daycare cost. I’ve done things from home that make more than this, but not anything that is this flexible, this reliable, and this fun. Honestly, I look forward to my classes every day (even at 5:15am when my alarm goes off). The kids are a riot and starting my day out by laughing and playing with them is awesome. I have a few regulars who I absolutely adore and who I would straight up adopt as my own if I could.
For me, contributing to our family financially is more deeply rooted than just a way to experience some financial relief. Being able to contribute money to our household gives me a sense of self-worth that I value. So, no matter your reason, if you’re like me and want to make some money from home without having to sacrifice the other things in life that are important to you, I recommend checking out VIPKID. I am certainly glad that I did.