Thoughts on Verbling?

[eng87]

Hello everyone,

Just a question. I am very interested in teaching online. I was wondering if any of you wonderful ESL teachers have ever had experience teaching through this website? If not, what do you know about it? I've done plenty of research but want to get human feedback!

Thanks!

 

[emsr2d2]

I've never heard of it or used it. I don't tend to visit websites simply because they're mentioned in a post (sometimes posts are written simply to drive traffic to a site) so I can't comment on it any further.

 

[J&K Tutoring]

In my experience, teaching on-line is pretty hit-or-miss. I came to feel I spent too much time preparing and not enough time in contact (getting paid) to justify my effort. Perhaps that's just me. If you have a talent for promotion and selling, you can sell anything and make more money than by teaching on-line.

Teaching English on-line sounds like an easy way to make money in your spare time- too easy. Lots of people have the same idea as you, so competition drives pricing down. I'm with emsr2d2- I didn't go to the site- don't care to- so it's entirely possible I'm way off base. I tend to think these sites are more or less all alike. The real money is to be made from selling advertisements on sites such as the one you mentioned.

Maybe you just want someone far away to talk to. This kind of activity is a good way to have a chat and help someone at the same time- nothing wrong with that- though I strongly urge you to be careful- there are people on the 'other end' who may have very different motives! I had one 'prospective student' who seemed rather to have something to sell (I didn't stick around to find out).

I don't mean to discourage you; I'm simply sharing my experience/outlook.

Bottom line: If you have the time to spare, give it a try. You have nothing to lose. If it doesn't work out, you can always try another site, or find another way to help others.

 

[Tdol]

There are lots of these sites around at the moment. A few years ago, many teachers were setting up their own sites, but many of these have since closed- it is hard to drum up trade as an individual. I guess that there are too many of these central point for teachers and students sites at the moment, so the market is likely to be fairly volatile.

I don't know this one. However, I would recommend taking some of the statistics that many give out with a pinch of salt. They talk of having 500,000 members, which sounds like a lot. We have a similar number on this forum, and we prune ancient dead accounts, but you will see the same names cropping up regularly- the number of active/highly active members is always much lower than the numbers that sign up. In our case, many sign up and don't go near the forum- they head off to do some tests or something. In their case, I am sure that people will sign up and then not subscribe. The question to ask is how many active members they have, and in the area of English as they offer 35 languages at present. They're charging an average of 15 dollars an hour- how much goes to the teacher? If you look at the benefits they're offering staff, they're likely to be taking a fair chunk: https://www.verbling.com/jobs