A few months ago I wrote a post about Getting Hired With VIPKID to teach English online and why I decided to become a VIPKID teacher in the first place. I just signed my second contract and I’m still getting a lot of questions about working for VIPKID and questions like, “How much money can you make with VIPKID?”. I thought it would be helpful for people who are considering becoming teachers if I shared how much money I make with VIPKID and how long it took me to get there.
See related:
How to Make Money While Traveling with VIPKid
15 Classroom Essentials For New VIPKid Teachers
Want to make some extra cash teaching adorable Chinese children online? Click the button below!
Getting Hired With VIPKID What You Need To Know
First things first, I really need to stress with you if you are considering applying to VIPKID or teaching English online to Chinese children that this is not a typical job. You are an independent contractor. You are not guaranteed a set of hours straight from the start. So, because of that, it may take awhile to build up your following and students. It took me well into my six-month contract before I was getting fully booked. I will go over that more in detail in a minute.
VIPKID Pay Scale
Also, please note that pay structure and scale varies. The pay ranges from $17-22 an hour based on experience and certificates. It can also go up or down based on how well you do on your initial mock class interview. My pay scale is somewhere around the middle. I think VIPKID prefers we do not disclose how much we make per class but I’m sure you know how to do calculations, so I will leave it there.
Pros and Cons of Working For VIPKID
I get asked all the time- do you like the job? Yes, I do like the job. I like setting my own hours. I like the freedom of working in the morning and it not taking away any time from my children and my other businesses. I’m a fan of the paycheck every month and I truly love the children I teach. They make this job fun and worth getting up in the morning.
What I don’t like are the early mornings and the late nights. To get bookings you have to make yourself available during the prime lesson times in China. As of right now I am working at VIPKID so I can actively re-invest in my businesses and make ends meet at home, and working late nights and early mornings takes away from working on my other businesses, but this is still an amazing trade-off because I’m able to stay at home with my babies and homeschool them.
I also don’t like their cancellation policy. Even if you are deathly ill and cancel your classes the day of you have to pay for every class you cancel. This isn’t a huge deal but one morning I taught a full schedule with the flu and by class six I was visibly shaking. I probably should have canceled.
How much money can you make with VIPKID?
And as I feel more comfortable paying myself from other business ventures I will scale back. Right now I am enjoying this schedule so this is what I foresee it to be for the next few months.
I got hired at the beginning of May. I didn’t make much this month. Right after I got hired I galavanted off to England and Scotland for a few weeks. I taught I think 2 total classes.
June was much better but was not seeing the bookings I was hoping for. I did, however, teach 47 classes and was over the moon at that paycheck. At the time it was a huge blessing to us.
In July I started feeling more in the flow and started getting regular students and I felt like I had hit the jackpot. It was summer in China so I opened up both nightly and morning slots and taught whatever time slots filled. I still wasn’t really fully booked at this point but still, 87 classes is pretty good.
August was about the same as July except I took a week off to travel to Turks and Caicos. Because of that, I made about the same as July so I took it for a win. More regular students and more bookings started to make it feel like it was a worthwhile side gig.
In September I finally hit the over $1,000 mark and was so so grateful. At this point, I felt like I had hit my stride, was getting fully booked at the slots I was opening and doing very little prep work before classes now.
In October I opened up way more time slots than September and the pattern of going up in payment continued.
November was my current best month yet until December where I finally broke the $2,000 a month mark as I stick with my new schedule of working quite a few classes a week.
How to Make Decent Money Working With VIPKID
Here are some tips on how to get more bookings and to make more money with VIPKID. It is a great opportunity to supplement your full-time job or your entrepreneurial pursuits.
Put your all into every class. If you show up and do a half booty job at teaching you won’t get rebooked.
Get good feedback. There is a correlation to the amount of feedback you have and to how many slots that are opened to make you a desirable teacher.
Open lots of time slots. Parents are less likely to book a teacher who has just a few feedbacks and a wide opened teacher than a teacher with lots of feedback that fills quickly. The only remedy for this is patience, patience, patience. Please know it takes most female teachers their entire first contract to see the bookings they want. Male teachers do not have this issue as there are less of them and their schedules tend to fill more quickly.
I hope this information helps you on your VIPKID journey. I’ve loved working for VIPKID. If you are exploring the option to become a VIPKID teacher, I would love to help you out and help get you hired! Check out my hiring tips here and when you’re ready, click on the button below to start!
Email me via the contact page if you have any questions! If you are already hired and are discouraged, hang in there. It gets better! I’m so glad I stuck it out.
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Comments 17
Hello, I would just like to thank you for the blog post, it was the most detailed I could find on the subject. Due to that, I am convinced I may want to start doing this as a side gig soon and I will use your referral link.
Author
You are welcome! Please let me know if you have any questions! Would love to help!
Hi Hilarye! Wow, this is very impressive! I am interest to know , is each class an hour? So the month you did 47 classes for example, is that essentially 47 hours worked?
Thanks!
Author
Hi Ashley! No each class is 25 minutes long! I work about 15-20 hours a week at VIPKid usually. Let me know if you have anymore questions!
Do you do this while on the road? If so, how do you manage getting a good internet connection?
Author
Yes, we do! We rely on our AT&T data plan with hotspot and we have a Verizon hotspot as a backup. We try to plan ahead as much as possible to make sure at least one of our plans has good coverage.
Hi! How long did the interview process take? I hear it’s extensive, yes?
I’m definitely going to apply but I don’t want to start booking sessions until March (and then hopefully making a bit of money by June or so!), so I’m trying to decide when would be the best time to get started. Thank you!
Author
The initial signup process is really quick. If you’re serious about getting hired you can be done with the process in as little as a week. You choose when to schedule the interviews so it is really up to you. You will have likely have an online interview and another practice class to complete afterward before the process is complete.
What are the hours? I homeschool as well….highschool down to third grade and a six month old….5 kids total…we are on the east coast.
Author
The hours are whatever you want to open up to work. The most heavily booked hours are early mornings on the east coast (Chinese evenings). On the weekends there are more peak hours available for the east coast evenings.
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Hi! Thanks for sharing! I see you said you typically work 15-20 hours per week. How much can you typically make within those hours once you get ramped up. I am looking to work around that so I can spend more time with my newborn daughter 🙂
Thanks!
Author
Hi Bianca! At those hours I would make about $1,000 to $1,500 a month. Right now I work it full time and make a little over $3,000
Hi Hiarye. It can be a bit difficult to find comprehensive information on the Internet regarding online teaching. And since the devil is in the details, I thank you for the helpful post!
With regard to the income you’ve mentioned in the post and the comments that follow, were those amounts pre-tax? And is it a good practice to factor in a 30% chunk of it for the IRS?
My apologies for misspelling your name, Hilarye!
Author
Those were all pre-tax. As an independent contractor you are responsible for withholding and submitting your own taxes quarterly. Yes, 30% is a good rule to practice.
Author
No worries! You weren’t the first and you won’t be the last! 🙂