You’ve already been an online ESL teacher for a few years now. You know your platform inside out, your lessons run smoothly, and your students trust you. Yet bookings are inconsistent, your income isn’t reliable, algorithms bury your profile, and teaching with time differences burn you out. It is no wonder you are asking, what is next?
Here is the good news. You have the building blocks for creating a more stable pay check with diversifying your income. Your skills in lesson design, classroom management, feedback, empathy, and clear communication are assets that can open new possibilities.
A career transition whereby you add new income streams first, then move to a new role if you want to, could be a great next step for you.
This guide is for experienced online ESL teachers who want practical, low-cost options that fit around your current schedule. Each income idea shared in this guide can be tested with small experiments in 30 to 90 days. So you can find something you love doing with minimal risk.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase using these links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. You can view the full affiliate disclosure here.
Common Challenges Experienced ESL Teachers Face
Since you’re reading this post, I’m going to assume that you’re not completely satisfied with your current work situation.
There are many challenges us online teachers face. See if you relate to a few of these below:
- Burnout from overworking and undercharging: you’re working as many hours as possible with a company that pays a low rate and feels like you’re getting nowhere
- Constantly planning new lessons: for each class you’re creating new content rather than reusing and automating materials
- Lack of income or long-term security: your income stops when you stop teaching so there’s no backup plan or security. There isn’t a clear career ladder for online ESL teachers either. Yes you can work as a teacher trainer or curriculum developer for online companies, but these roles are few and far between
- Platform instability (e.g. bookings drop, policy changes): you rely 100% on a company that can change their policies, pay rates, or even cancel your classes at any time
- Wanting to create something (e.g. courses, memberships, printables): you want to create your own content but don’t know where to begin or lack the confidence to start.
We’ve all been there and experienced many of the same challenges, if not all of them.
The good news? Each of these challenges has more than one solution. Once you’re ready, you can start building your own action plan to move forward.
Career Transition Options for Experienced Online ESL Teachers
As you’re an experienced online ESL teacher, you already have a vast range of skills under your belt.
This gives you a brilliant foundation and starting point to finally branch out from online ESL companies and diversify your income streams.
Working for a company does offer great benefits:
- You can gain experience as a new teacher
- You don’t have to worry about lesson planning (most of the time)
- You don’t have to market yourself and find new students.
But the reality is that company work isn’t always stable. Policies shift, pay can change overnight, and platforms can even close suddenly, as many teachers saw during China’s 2021 Double Reduction policy.
Building additional income streams gives you extra financial security, creative freedom, and long-term career stability.
Here are seven practical income opportunities to consider:
Freelance Tutoring: Go Direct, Keep More of Your Rate
Freelance tutoring is brilliant for teachers who enjoy live lessons but want to take back control over their time, what they teach, and the rate they earn. It’s ideal if you already have some students who trust you and can share your new business via word of mouth, but don’t worry if you are starting from scratch.
Here are some tips to get started:
- Pick a niche, for example IELTS speaking, business English for tech teams, or confident teens to narrow competition and find your ideal client.
- Write a one-page offer with outcomes, not features, such as pass IELTS speaking with a band 7, or deliver clear emails at work.
- Create a simple package, for example 4 lessons at £30 to £50 per hour, with written feedback after each class.
- Offer a 15 minute level check as your free lead magnet.
One of the biggest worries freelance tutors have is where to find students. The best tip here is to focus on the platform where your students are. For example, for business professionals, focus on building relationships on LinkedIn. If you are targeting preschool kids, join relevant parenting Facebook groups where mums might hang out. Or if you are interested in teaching Chinese students, join apps such as Xiaohongshu and WeChat.
When teaching privately, you are fully responsible for every part of the business. From tech set up to lesson content, marketing students to obtaining and tracking payments. Here are some helpful tools that you might use:
- Booking and calendar: Calendly or Google Calendar
- Video: Zoom or Google Meet
- Docs and feedback: Google Docs
- Payments: Stripe, Wise, or PayPal
- Storage: Google Drive with shared folders per student
Launching a freelance tutoring business is the natural career progression most experienced online ESL teachers take. Even though it comes with additional responsibilities, many teachers feel the pros outweigh the cons, especially with increasing your hourly rate meaning you can earn significantly more with the same hours as working for an online ESL company.
Curriculum Development: Create Lessons and Assessments for Schools and Apps
Another income option for experienced online ESL teachers, is to create lessons for fellow teachers to use in their online classes.
All freelance teachers need educational material to teach their students with. Many teachers utilise pre-made curriculums to help lower their prep time. Popular curriculums for teaching children include Abridge Academy and Crystal Clear.
This income stream is best for teachers who are creative and enjoy building lesson material. It’s especially great if you have an understanding of English language levels e.g. CEFR levels and can create progressive material that builds from lesson to lesson.
Here are some things you might create if you focused on developing lessons for other teachers:
- Lesson plans, worksheets, slide decks, audio scripts
- Quiz items and reading passages
- Scope and sequence for a term
- Teacher guides with notes and timings
In terms of income, most curriculums are packaged into a subscription format. So when a teacher signs up to access your curriculum, they pay a monthly or annual subscription. It also isn’t limited to 1 person per product. Multiple teachers can purchase and use your lesson materials at the same time.
As an example, let’s say you charge $9 per month for your subscription. If 10 people signed up, that’s $90 income every month. If 100 teachers subscribed, that’s $900 additional income each month they remained subscribed.
Like with teaching, it’s a good idea to focus on building a curriculum for a specific niche or subject area e.g. phonics, creative writing, or a core curriculum in line with the Cambridge exams. This helps you target your marketing towards your ideal audience and understand their needs better.
Digital Product Creation: Sell Worksheets, Lesson Packs, and Mini Courses
Digital product creation is similar to building lessons. But instead of needing to build out a full curriculum, you can focus on smaller products to be sold individually or packaged together.
Teachers who have their own rewards, props, games, lessons, etc, can build a secondary income stream by selling the content they create for their own classes to other teachers.
Here are some product ideas that you could sell:
- Educational printables
- Pre-recorded phonics course
- Pack of 5 lessons on pets
- Set of 10 printable rewards.
Just like with selling a curriculum, digital products can generate residual income. What this means is that you spend time to create the product once, but can sell it again and again with no limits.
It’s a good idea to not focus on creating printables that you are interested in, but to complete some market research first. See what’s already selling on sites such as Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. What products are in demand? What support do online ESL teachers need? Then, from your research, you can spend time creating products people actually want, rather than what you want to make.
Following this tip will help ensure you aren’t wasting your time creating products nobody will buy and can generate an income sooner.
YouTube or Video-Based Teaching: Build an Audience and Earn from Evergreen Content
Starting a YouTube channel is a great secondary income to teaching ESL online, and could, in the future, even replace your income.
As you’re already confident on camera teaching English, it’s a great transferable skill to create pre-recorded videos and/or live videos for YouTube.
Many online ESL teachers create a YouTube channel. It could be to support other teachers, create educational videos for a larger student audience, or in a completely different niche focusing on your interests e.g. crocheting or drawing on an Ipad.
The key to running a successful YouTube channel is to focus on a particular audience and what their needs are.
Covering the three niches from earlier, this is what that could look like:
- An audience with other teachers: they might want to learn about different online tools they could use to improve their lessons e.g. Quizlet, Wordwall, or Genially.
- An audience of kids: perhaps you are focusing on children aged 3-6 learning ESL and parents want educational, fun videos that entertain their children whilst improving their language skills e.g. singing nursery rhymes, sharing vocabulary, or simple games such as “can you find?” or “what colour is it?”
- An audience focused on crochet: people might want to learn how to crochet and what they need to get started. You might make videos like which hooks you need for different threads, how to complete a double stitch, or how to make a simple square.
Channels that post consistently and also research what their audience is searching for, are quicker to reach monetization. There are multiple ways you can monetize a YouTube channel which includes:
- YouTube ads: this is where ads are shown within your videos by YouTube. To qualify for YouTube ads, you need 1000 subscribers and either 4000 hours of watch time in the last year or 1 million short views in the last 90 days (correct as of 2025)
- Affiliate Marketing: this is where you recommend other people products and are paid a commission for anyone who makes a purchase via your unique affiliate link that you have shared
- Sponsored Posts: companies can pay money to be mentioned in a video, or have a video created about their products. The larger your audience, the more money you can charge for sponsored content
- Your own products and/or services: underneath each YouTube video, you are able to share a description and can include links to your related products or services that you offer.
Building a YouTube channel can be a lot of fun, but it does require consistent posting and dedication to grow your channel. If you start by posting twice a week, try to maintain that posting schedule and it will help build your channel faster.
Blogging: Rank for Niche ESL Topics and Turn Traffic into Income
Starting a blog is another great way to generate residual income. Just like building a YouTube channel, a blog is not limited to one form of income. You can generate the same types of income as a YouTube channel on your own website, minus the YouTube ads. Instead, you can sign up to an ad network such as Mediavine or Raptive, once you blog reaches the required traffic, and earn ad income that way.
If you enjoy writing and are willing to put in the time to grow a blog, this can be a really rewarding career choice that can lead to multiple, diverse income streams.
A quick note that just “starting a blog” does not guarantee you’ll earn any money. Blogs need to be built properly and are actually about supporting your audience not about your personal day-to-day life.
To monetise a blog, you need a domain name, hosting provider, and to start a site on WordPress.org. You need to consider who you want to help and how you want to help them. Don’t just pick any topic, we’re talking a good 12-36 months until you earn an income via your blog, so ensure it’s a topic you are interested in and willing to write about long-term.
As an example, this post you’re reading now is a blog post, and is on my website, supporting people to start and succeed with their career teaching ESL online. I also have my main website / blog focused on helping parents teach their young kids ESL at home through stories and play (you can take a peek here if you want a second example).
If you are interested in finding out more about starting a blog, here is a free course I have taken myself that is extremely helpful. I have taken quite a lot of blogging courses over the years, and this one is the most thorough and affordable – it’s free!
If this moves a little too fast and you want a bit more detail with complete step-by-step instructions, video demonstrations, and information to help your blog posts actually get found in search engines, then take a look at this membership.
I’m actually a member myself, even though I have been blogging for years now. But I have found Diane’s membership invaluable and super affordable too for what she has to share!
Affiliate Marketing: Recommend Useful Tools You Trust
I mentioned affiliate marketing a little earlier in the post when discussing YouTube. It’s a great way to make a side income without the need to create your own products or offer services.
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is where you promote a product or service from another company to your audience. You sign up to their affiliate program and receive a unique affiliate link, which you then share. This is a trackable link, so that if anyone clicks your link and then makes a purchase, the company can track that purchase back to you. As a thank you for sharing their products or services, they provide you with a commission for every sale made via your link.
Thousands of companies offer an affiliate program from Amazon (not the best paying) to Reading Eggs. Even here at theOET, I run an affiliate program. Anyone who signs up to my program gains access to their own dashboard to access the unique affiliate links, track clicks, and see any upcoming payments. Each product I include in my affiliate program offers affiliates 50% commission. So if I have a product that costs $10, if you shared it with your audience and they made a purchase via your link, I would earn $5 from the sale and you would receive $5 commission.
An extra concept to be aware of is that there are multiple affiliate programs you can join where you can earn a regular, monthly commission. These are often for subscription products. Using my own business as an example, I offer an affiliate program for my membership for families learning ESL, the Print and Play Club. Affiliates still earn 50% per sale, but instead of a one-time payment, affiliates are paid monthly for the duration that buyer remains a member.
Now not all affiliate programs offer a decent rate. I mentioned earlier that Amazon isn’t the best paid. Often commissions are on the low end of 1-10% depending on the product. However, Amazon is a globally recognized company, and therefore many people apply to the program to share their links.
The best way to choose affiliate programs is to think about your audience. Do you have a large social media following of parents? Have you launched a YouTube channel focused on teachers? Do you have a blog teaching people how to crochet?
Once you know your niche, you can then use a search engine to find relevant programs to apply to.
For example, on my site, teachers are often looking for TEFL qualification recommendations. I could then search online TEFL + Affiliate Program, and sites that offer a TEFL and affiliate program will show up. I could then apply to join the program, and, if accepted, share my unique affiliate link within my blog post.
If you do consider affiliate marketing as an additional source of income, make sure you participate ethically and genuinely. Don’t share just anything with your audience in the hope of making a sale. Make sure you share products or services that you have or would personally use yourself, and that benefit your audience too.
Virtual Assistant for Education Businesses: Earn with Admin and Tech Skills
Becoming a virtual assistant (VA) is an excellent next step for many online ESL teachers. You’re already organised, familiar with digital tools, comfortable juggling different tasks, and skilled at communicating with people, all of which make you a strong fit for VA work.
A VA supports other businesses behind the scenes, helping them stay organised and efficient. Tasks can vary depending on the client but often include:
- Inbox and customer support for coaches or tutors
- Uploading lessons and formatting web pages
- Managing online communities or Facebook groups
- Hosting webinars or supporting live events
- Light video editing and blog formatting
- CRM updates or basic tech admin
Depending on your location, knowledge, and experience, VA’s can earn between $20-60 per hour. Lower rates are usually for those just entering the profession or for VA’s who offer more generalised services such as admin support.
You can achieve a higher rate per hour by specialising or being an expert in a particular field e.g. Pinterest management, Kajabi set up, or SEO for food bloggers.
No two days as a VA are the same and it can be a great way to develop new skills, build professional relationships, and keep your work interesting.
It’s also a really good fit alongside your teaching hours, with many VAs able to specify when they will work for each client, rather than having to work in fixed “peak” hours as per teaching ESL online.
Choosing the Right Path for You
It’s ok if you aren’t sure what to do next, or are torn between a few different options. Hopefully the next section will help you brainstorm what interests you the most and is in line with your skillset.
Here are some tasks you can do to help you pick just one additional income stream for now. You can always add another source of income at a later date, but it’s best to pick only one at a time until you’ve monetised it and then can focus on building the next one:
- Skills and strengths audit
- What do students praise you for?
- What feels easy and gives you energy?
- What drains you after a long day?
- Market check in 60 minutes
- Search demand for your topic
- Have 10 short conversations with ideal buyers
- Review 3 competitor offers and spot gaps
- Income and time model
- Target monthly income and hours per week
- Set pricing after researching the current market
- Check your break-even point, for example how many packages you need to sell
- Risk and runway
- Time and money you can invest for 90 days
- Backup plan if one path is slow and you need money quickly
- Learning plan
- One short course or book
- One mentor or peer group
- One practice project you will finish
You can also try out this GPT that will ask you questions about your experience, skills, interests, and available time, to help narrow down which path is a good fit for you to start with.
Your Next Steps: A Simple 30-Day Action Plan
To help you on your journey to building a secondary source of income, with the potential to take over your online ESL teaching career, here are some actionable steps to take over the next month.
Week 1
- Choose one path
- Define a clear offer and one ideal client (if relevant)
- Research and plan the basic tools that you might need for your business e.g. WordPress, YouTube channel, Canva for graphics, Stripe of payment processing, etc
- Write a one-page plan: goals, tasks, and deadlines
Week 2
- Create a minimum viable product or sample, for example a free mini lesson or a worksheet pack
- Build a simple landing page with a clear call to action
- Ask 10 people for feedback and make small improvements
Week 3
- Publish and promote your offer
- Send 20 outreach messages with a helpful note, not a hard sell
- Post 3 useful tips on social media or in groups where your audience is active
Week 4
- Deliver to your first clients or customers
- Collect testimonials
- Refine pricing and package names
- Plan the next month based on what worked
Basic admin
- Track income and expenses from day one
- Set aside tax as you earn
- Keep contracts short and clear, plain language is fine
- Respect privacy rules, store data securely, and only collect what you need
As an experienced online ESL teacher, you don’t have to rely solely on companies to make a living. There are countless ways to expand your income, gain independence, and rediscover your love of teaching.
Each option takes time and commitment, there’s no such thing as overnight success. But if you start small and stay consistent, you can build a career that’s stable, flexible, and fully aligned with your lifestyle.
Build a teaching career that fits your life, protects your income, and reignites your passion for education.Which career transition interests you the most?
Share your thoughts in the comments.
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