How To Make Money Online as a Stay-At-Home Mom

Hey there! It’s Allyson from OnlineTeacherAllyson.com – where Stay-at-Home Moms and Dads learn how to teach online so they can earn an income at home with their children. I’ve been teaching online since 2019 and have been earning an income as a Stay-at-Home Mom doing this and I get asked a lot “How exactly do you make this happen?” “How can I be a Stay-at-Home Mom or Dad and earn an income?” “I want to stay home.” “Daycare’s too expensive.” “I want something for me.”

Whatever your reason for wanting to teach at home online, I’ve got you.

I go into all the information and questions to ask below, but if you’d rather watch you can find it below:

How I found Online Teaching

So I wanted to teach online because I am a teacher by trade I went to college to learn how to be a teacher. But, then I had my son and I didn’t want to leave him, but we needed that extra income. So that’s when I found stay-at-home teaching, online teaching, and it’s been a dream come true for me. We’ve actually been able to pay off a credit card bill because of it. We’re working on the car payment and my student loans. We’re on track in a couple of years to be completely debt free!

So one of the biggest questions I get asked is “How exactly do I make this work?” So there’s a couple of questions to ask yourself:

Question #1

First ask yourself what do you want to teach? Here’s some ways you can narrow it down:

– What do you have expertise in?

– What are you really good at?

– What are you passionate about?

– What do you already teach people how to do?

Take a minute and think about that because there’s so many things. You’re good at so many things! I know that you are an expert at something.

Question #2

Now the next thing I ask is what you’re an expert in – does this tailor best to adults or for children? If you’re saying “I’m an expert at woodworking.” Great! Here’s my next question: Do you want to teach adults? If the answer is no then I want you to go back and I want you to brainstorm some more, and I want you to figure out what you’re an expert in that you could teach children or vice versa.

So I love teaching children that is where my sweet spot is. So when I say “Hey I am really great at cooking with my knife skills.” I’m really not but “I’m really not great at knife skills.” but I would not teach children. I would not teach like, first and second graders, knife skills, right? So I went back to the drawing board and I decided that “Hey, I really like to teach arts and crafts.” I thought of some arts and crafts that I was good at and would enjoy teaching to others.

You can see a bracelet here. I actually taught this on Outschool. I taught how to make friendship bracelets. We did a camp for a couple of summers and they learned three different bracelet styles and it was a lot of fun. So here’s your two questions you’ve asked so far: What am I an expert in and does it align with what I want to teach?

Question #3

Now that you have that covered, here’s my next question. Question number three: Do I want to create my lessons or do I want them created for me?

This affects where you teach because some platforms will have lessons ready made for you and others will not. So, what am I an expert in, who do I want to teach, and do those align – are they buddies – and do I want to create lessons?

It’s not as hard as you think. Don’t let that intimidate you just because you think it’s hard and you don’t know how to do it. You can do it! Those platforms that require lesson planning usually have something to help you with it.

So, to recap, what am I an expert in, who do I want to teach, do I want to create lesson plans?

Question #4

And your fourth question is “When do I want to teach?

So I’ve taught on several different platforms during my time as an online teacher. Some of them are VIPKid, GoGoKid, Cambly, and Outschool. I’m teaching on some platforms now that I don’t want to mention only because it does require a degree and I advertise that no experience is required soIwant to stick with that.I want to stick with platforms that don’t require any formal education educational experience in order to teach. If you got it that’s great! We’ll talk later but, for today’s video no experience is required.

Best Hours for Teaching

So when I taught VIPKid and GoGoKid the hours were very specific. They cater to learners in China and I had to be up at like four, five, six in the morning available for classes because of the time change. That worked for me. My son was asleep.

Outschool

Outschool – they cater to kids in the United States. So if you want more of a typical schedule of kids at school or kids on summer break that’s where you probably want to look. And Cambly – this is much more flexible. Cambly is much more flexible with your hours. They have students everywhere! On Cambly I have taught students from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and UAE – just kind of those Middle Eastern countries. But it’s not specific to those areas, they are much more global.

GoGoKid and VIPKid

GoGoKid is not around anymore so don’t go looking at GoGoKid because there were some laws that changed in China that caused them to close their doors.

VIPKid is struggling to get on their feet after those laws changed in China, so there’s not really a ton of classes available there. I know from experience – I’ve still been opening slots just to kind of study for you guys.

I know I’ve thrown a lot out there so let’s regroup really quickly.

What am I an expert in?
Who do I want to teach?
Do I want to create lessons?
What time of day do I want to teach?

Let’s Get a Running Start

Keep in mind as you’re getting started you may have to teach some undesirable times. So when I was getting started on VIPKid I pulled some all-nighters. It was rough, especially as a Mom. I know, I get it, but I only pulled two or three of them. Then, I got a good group of students that followed me to the hours I was more willing to teach: five, six, seven o’clock in the morning. So keep in mind that in order to really make money you might have to make some sacrifices in the very beginning.

Same thing with any job, right? You have to make sacrifices whether you’re at work and you take some assignments you don’t love, or whether you’re at home and you’re spending extra time learning how to do it. Some sacrifices need to be made and this is the same. Even though it is a stay-at-home remote job with a lot more flexibility, because you are an independent contractor so you technically work for yourself, it does still require sacrifices – like anything else, right?

Which Online Teaching Platform Should I Call Home?

If you’re very visual like I am, I have created a flowchart for you. It is completely free and it’s going to walk you through those four decisions – those four decisions that we made to help you find the best platform or the best place to teach for you. Whether that is a platform like VIPKid, or Cambly, or Outschool. Or, if you’re teaching completely independently, which has some more logistical background stuff, but if you are savvy and you’re willing to try, go for it! Keep me in touch and let me know how it’s going!

So if you head on over to OnlineTeacherAllyson.com/platform that will get you the free flow chart. It is one page. It’ll take two minutes of your time. That’ll give you a great starting point of where to start your application while you start setting up your background and making sure your tech is ready to go.

There’s really not much to the background and tech but, stay tuned because I have those videos and those episodes in the works as well.

Keep in touch!

So there you have it! I hope that this was informative! If you have any questions feel free to leave it in the comments or send me a message and let me know. I would love to hear where else I can go to help you. I want to see you succeed! It just brings me joy and fills my cup. So once again, OnlineTeacherAllyson.com/platform will help you decide where you can start teaching. Next week I’m going to get into the nitty gritty and I’m going to tell you exactly how much I’ve made, so you can know how much you can make, and how much you can expect to earn from this as well! That’s all for now. I hope you learned something. Chat soon!