Teaching English online

[firecracker]

Hi. I'm new to this group. I'm married to a Filipina and living in Spain. We're planning to move over to the Philippines in next 2/3yrs and build a house in my wife's province. I'm an English teacher by trade and I was wondering if any of you teach English online from the Philippines and do you make enough to get by?

[craftbeerlover]

5 hours ago, firecracker said:

Hi. I'm new to this group. I'm married to a Filipina and living in Spain. We're planning to move over to the Philippines in next 2/3yrs and build a house in my wife's province. I'm an English teacher by trade and I was wondering if any of you teach English online from the Philippines and do you make enough to get by?

Yes you can.  I have a good buddy that taught English, first to students from China, then students from Japan.  If I remember correctly he made about 10 - 20 dollars an hour. 

[Mike J]

Welcome to the forum Firecracker.  I, like most on the forum, am retired but I am sure you will receive additional positive replies to your question.  You will probably want to apply for a 13A visa (married to a Philippine citizen) which allows you to work here.

[Jollygoodfellow]

7 hours ago, firecracker said:

Hi. I'm new to this group. I'm married to a Filipina and living in Spain. We're planning to move over to the Philippines in next 2/3yrs and build a house in my wife's province. I'm an English teacher by trade and I was wondering if any of you teach English online from the Philippines and do you make enough to get by?

Yes, you can make a living teaching English online.   Someone I know who passed away this year was doing so for years. He built up his reputation and was sort after. He would only teach adults. He was making between 80K to 100K pesos a month. He taught someone else I knew how to do the same thing and he did OK but decided to move back to the US for whatever reason.

But here's your problem. The Internet has improved in leaps and bounds in the cities but you mentioned building a house in the province so you would have to make sure you have good internet and perhaps a backup source. Depending on where you are will be a factor in if you can teach online.

[Sea Turtle]

8 hours ago, firecracker said:

Hi. I'm new to this group. I'm married to a Filipina and living in Spain. We're planning to move over to the Philippines in next 2/3yrs and build a house in my wife's province. I'm an English teacher by trade and I was wondering if any of you teach English online from the Philippines and do you make enough to get by?

If your planning to get paid in the Philippines peso and have a real business it matters what type of visa you will have.  If your wife is still a Philippines citizen,  suggest you look into 13a visa.  It gives you the right to work (and pay taxes... haha)

Make sure your wife has title for the land you will build on.  The way the land titles work can be crazy sometimes.

 

[hk blues]

I teach English online here. 

If you are going to work for a reputable company you'll need to have a visa type that allows you to work because they'll require a TIN (tax number) and the BIR will not issue this if you aren't allowed to work here.  That said, there are some less reputable companies who likely don't care about such detail but I'd be wary of such a practice for all sorts of reasons. 

I work for a Japanese company based here with Japanese Students.  I don't earn anything like the amounts previously mentioned here though, but I am not paid the "native speaker" rate which is my choice.  An honest answer to your question about earning enough to get by would be - who knows?  I don't know how you will live here but based on the figures previously mentioned then it would be possible but on my numbers - no.  I assume you'd probably want to work for a company that pays a native rate but I'm pretty sure it's competitive and would take some time to build up enough students to get to those numbers.  Also, many do pay a higher hourly rate but I'm not sure how many hours you'd actually work.  An example would be a Belgian guy I vaguely know who was getting about $7 an hour but this was for evening work only.  I don't want to work nights so choose to accept much lower pay. 

A final point - you will need a very reliable internet and power supply or you'll quickly run into trouble.  Online language companies tend not to be at all sympathetic to power/internet issues.  

[firecracker]

Thanks for the feedback so far. I'm looking to get the 13a visa. My wife is from a small town in Ilocos Sur so it's not isolated. In fact I was there last month staying with her family and they had really fast internet which is why we decided to finally start preparing to move over. I'd be looking to teach around 25 hours a week like I do now but online. 

[hk blues]

3 hours ago, firecracker said:

Thanks for the feedback so far. I'm looking to get the 13a visa. My wife is from a small town in Ilocos Sur so it's not isolated. In fact I was there last month staying with her family and they had really fast internet which is why we decided to finally start preparing to move over. I'd be looking to teach around 25 hours a week like I do now but online. 

Just my tuppence on the 13a - It's often easier to get it before you come here.  If you get it when here you'll have to go through the process twice as the 1st year is probationary but if you get it outside it's permanent from Day 1. I did mine in Hong Kong. 

[Huggybearman]

Until a few months ago I used to do online teaching for a Japanese company, teaching mainly Japanese and Taiwanese students. I did it off and on for about 3 years. They have very flexible work patterns. Each lesson was 25 minutes and there were two rates, $3US for standby lessons which, as a native speaker was as many as you like and nearly $9US for booked lessons. It took a while to build up regular students who would book lessons in advance. Although I was doing it for fun really, I just used to do three lessons in the morning and two in the evening. It was good money for really little effort. You do need a reliable internet and a backup power supply as the penalties for no shows or disconnections are quite draconian!

[Lee]

Seem to recall on another forum there was a guy who taught English online to Chinese students. Having reliable internet was important, but he also mentioned having to fit up a space so that background noises such as car traffic, karaoke, rooster crowing, etc couldn't be heard by his students.