learn to teach English
Learn to teach English site map link


How to organize and manage student payments

How to get paid for teaching English ?

You have several options to be able to receive money for your English lessons which go from bank transfer payments to Paypal.

Getting paid via Paypal.
If you have a Paypal account, then students can pay you either from their Paypal account directly, or by using their credit card even if they don't have a paypal account.
[ Paypal also processes direct credit-card payments for you ]

Bank transfer payments.
The student transfers money from his bank account to yours

International payment services.
Western Union and Moneygram are just two international money transfer companies where you can receive money to your bank account and the student doesn't even need a bank account, he just goes to one of the transfer points and pays the money there.

Post Office
The student can go to a post office and send the money to you via the post office services

When should students pay you

This is really up to you and the student and there are various options.
Consider the fact that your students will be in other countries than you are so the ideal situation is either to get them to pay you monthly, or for every 10, 15 or 20 lessons
Obviously, you get the student to pay you in advance.

PROBLEM ! Student missed some lessons

The biggest problem with getting paid by the student isn't the actual getting paid, but getting the student to maintain the timetable that they paid for.

Say a student has paid you 8 lessons in advance for 1 month of lessons, twice weekly, and you charge 10 Euro per lesson so the student hat paid you 80 Euro.
The student does the 2 lessons in each the first and second week, misses the 2 lessons in the third week, and then does the last 2 lessons in the fourth week.
So the student has missed 2 lessons he had paid for.
What now ?
Do you charge him 2 lessons less the next month ?
Do you offer him the option of doing those lessons in the next month as extra lessons to the 8 standard ones ?
Does the student just lose those lessons ?
The answer is none of the above and in hour 3 hour course to teach you how to teach English we explain exactly what to do and how not to lose payments, nor have to teach extra hours.

Also, in this scenario, there is another problem to consider.
If you have other students, and you have them all planned into your weekly calendar, and say you teach four lessons to 4 separate skype students from 4 in the afternoon to 8 pm, and the 5 pm student cancels his lesson half an hour before the lesson should start.
Now you not only risk losing the money for that lesson, but worse still, you have a hole in your lesson plan and it's too late to fill it in or move another student into that hole.

And this will happen to you time and time again, not because student don't like your English lessons, but because they have their own problems.
Students will miss planned lessons because : they get the flu, they are tired, they get invited to a party, they forget, and another million factors.

So, how do you juggle the whole situation in such a way that you do not lose money nor your time AND the student feels that he is getting a fair deal ?
This is a science all to itself.

Solution to getting paid all the time

Coming up with the perfect strategy for solving the above problem is not easy, and it has taken us years to fine tune the whole concept, and today we have the best all-round solution which is easy to implement, and both you and the student can make it work. And the hell if we're going to explain it here for free, because it really is one of the most important concepts of teaching students and not only via Skype, but it also applies to any type of teaching whether private lessons at your home or at the student's home, or even for language schools.

During our Learn to Teach English course we explain this method to you and it will probably be one of the most useful aspects of teaching English that you will ever learn.