10 Awesome Ways for Teachers to Earn More Money ASAP
If there is one thing that everybody knows in the education field, it is that teachers do not get paid enough money. Whether they are teaching at home, or they are teaching abroad, teachers are an undervalued profession in most places across the world.
This has led many teachers – similar to nurses – to choose other avenues of earning money alongside the teaching work. This is not always the easiest thing to do though, given that teaching can take up such a huge chunk of the day.
A passive income is always nice, but given that there is a marketplace for teachers to sell their lesson plans and their ideas, they can use the current teaching knowledge to improve their income at home. It’s always nice to make a little extra money in your free time or during the holidays, or even between jobs if your work is teaching relief.
In this article, we are going to cover 10 extra ways that as a teacher you can earn more cash while using the skills that you already have.
#1: Private Tutoring
Advertise yourself as a private tutor. It’s the most obvious option for most teachers, to take the teaching knowledge and their expertise and tutor privately.
Whether you decide to create your own lesson plans and sell these, or you want one-to-one tutoring using Skype or Zoom, you can go forward with your local community and offer to help friends and neighbors. You can post ads on so many different forms for teachers, including things like Facebook and Gumtree and even ex-pat forums online.
Look at the amount of money your competitors are charging, and try to tailor your rates to be just under theirs. When you do this, you’ll be able to tutor online.
#2: Offer Online Classes
Where possible, see if you can offer online tutoring options but not privately – as a class. If you can substitute in different schools, you can teach online full classes.
The good news here is that you don’t need much more than an Internet connection and a connection with your class. Skype is one of the most popular options but Microsoft Teams has done very well throughout the pandemic for home teaching.
If you want to teach online classes around your current teaching schedule, see how much of a difference you can make to other people.
#3: Summer School
Volunteer for summer school. There are so many summer school programs run by international schools and it’s not just schools, either. Colleges and universities often offer summertime units, and that means you could jump in with your skills and teach some of those units on a locum basis.
If you’re not already employed in a school, it’s a great way to check a school out without committing to a long-term contract for the academic year. There are also organizations that can offer exclusive summer and residential activity programs.
#4: Write Teaching Guides
Write some teaching guides. As a teacher, you’re going to want to advise new teachers coming up on what to expect when they step into their first role in a school.
If you love to write, you can self-publish easily for e-books or print, and that’s the same whether you’re writing a guide for teachers or you happen to really like fantasy fiction. Publishing your writing to print on demand and helping you to get your words out there is a fantastic goal to tick off.
It’s free to put your books up for sale, and the merchant will just charge a percentage of each sale so that you gain something and they gain something. When you have a niche that you know what you’re talking about, it’s one of the best ways to get some extra cash.
#5: Blog
Create your own blog. Along the same lines of self-publishing a guide for teachers, you could also create your own blog if you love to write.
This will help to keep your friends and family updated on your adventures as a teacher, especially if you choose to travel and teach around the world. Of course, this won’t make megabucks even if you do sign up with Amazon Associates or AdSense, but if you manage to get good traction on traffic, it’s a hobby that will pay you money.
#6: Sell Your Teaching Materials
When you start out as a teacher, other people will tell you what works for them and then you adapt those things to work for you. When this happens, you develop your own resources in your own methods of teaching others.
You can sell these! You can use online platforms to make your worksheets and your resources available for a fee, and other teachers will pay you to use them.
If you’re teaching internationally, make sure that your resources match up with the country you’re teaching in. For example, there are some countries that use kilos and centimeters over pounds and feet.
#7: Record Yourself
We talked about online classes, but have you ever considered recording video lessons to sell? Some people get more out of lectures and classes when they’re able to pause and rewind and play over and over again.
And if you record yourself teaching certain lessons, you will be able to make sure that people can buy your stuff or stream it on YouTube. Popular videos can create revenue from ads, but you usually need at least 1000 followers to be able to gain any traction.
#8: Freelance
There are a whole lot of websites out there that allow you to take on freelance teaching projects and you can do this when you are in the world.
It’s one of the best ways to be a traveling teacher because then you can hop on and ensure that you are able to teach what you need to teach to those who want to learn. It’s a great way to earn a little cash, and it can pay you to stop staying in one place!
#9: Budget
If you have savings at home, keep an eye on them to make sure that you’re earning a good interest rate. Sure, it’s not teaching for extra cash, but it is going to help you to build your money.
While you’re there, don’t forget to cancel any gym memberships or streaming services that you no longer use. One of the best ways to earn money is to stop paying for empty products.
#10: Supervise
Become an invigilator. This may be called something different where you’re from, but you can get paid to be somebody who supervises examinations.
Exams and tests are common throughout the country, so you want to make sure that you are actually able to keep an eye on the kids who are doing their tests to make sure nobody is cheating.
If you become an invigilator, you can be paid to supervise, you can earn extra experience, and it is something valuable to add to your resume. Thickening your resume with something like this is really going to help you to get noticed by other employers.
Bonus Tip!
To add more money as a teacher, you need to be paid what you are worth. Many teachers go out there and take lowball pay because they’re not sure what they are worth, but this is where you need to step in and advocate for yourself. Teaching is a difficult position. And you deserve more so make sure that you are getting the very best for yourself.
