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Fitzgerald
Joined: 10 Aug 2010
Posts: 224
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 Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 5:13 pm Post subject: |
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| NorthofAmerica wrote: |
Can't believe I waited so long before coming back to this forum! So much good stuff in here!!
I arrived in Playa a few months ago with my fiancee, who's local, and originally started using elance.com to do some editing, proofreading, and ghostwriting. I thought it would be simple enough to earn 5k in pesos and draw from savings from when I was in China. We already have a house and if you are not traveling but just exercising, gaming, and hitting the beach life is cheap 
Still, I am now in my second week with ZERO earnings. Often I find jobs just to have people disappear or become all sketchy. That was this week, started with a bunch of articles to write and then the guy just disappears without funding the account. I was hired to translate some Chinese articles but after doing 1 I have been playing tag on skype to line up more work for over a week. And I spend a lot of time writing and browsing work that ultimately is unpaid labour in and of itself.
Suffice to say, it hasn't been enough to make it worth it and I am looking at teaching online but since day one I've worried about the internet connection here. We are on a wifi network in the suburbs, I thought I might just hit a cafe with a solid connection if I can line up 2-3+ hours of paid teaching at a time.
Saw an ad at Berlitz yesterday so gonna pop my head in there. I have 8+ years experience, a TEFL, and was a school manager in China so I hope to have some luck with a local school.
Will check out these links listed, thanks for all the great info and good luck to everyone!
Living in a tropical paradise and working online is a 21st century luxury that I never fail to appreciate |
I looked at Elance, but ultimately deciding against putting any time into it. So I was very interested to read about your experience. The vibe I got from my research was that you could waste a whole lot of time bidding on projects that you wouldn't get, or that would lead nowhere.
I did post a couple of gigs on Fiverr and have made $25.00 gross so far.
I am signed up with UserTesting, but haven't yet been offered a test that I'm qualified for.
I put in 1 3/4 hours at Mechanical Turk, choosing only HITs that offered 20 cents or more, and although all my HITs were approved, I made a measly $3.35. That's not much for almost 2 hours.
I looked at iWriter, and the rates seemed outrageously low. $2.43 net for writing a 500-word article?
I passed the editing / proofreading test at Scribendi, and am told that I passed and am "on the list," but I haven't been offered any assignments yet.
I have monetized my review blog through the Amazon Associates program, and I hope that will bring in some dinero.
I have looked into many other possibilities too numerous to mention, but none of those has panned out.
I was looking heavily into online teaching for a couple of months, but always had scheduling and time zone difference problems with it, and now that I am teaching full-time locally and am "on call" for sub assignments in addition to my regular schedule of classes, online teaching just isn't going to work at all for the time being.
The bottom line? Financially, $28.35 for three and a half months effort. Practically, I have come to believe that making money online / remotely is MUCH more difficult than many would have you believe, and often pays quite poorly even when you can line something up.
I'm not going to stop trying because I badly need some supplemental income, especially if I can make it in USD. $200 to 300 USD per month would meet my needs nicely. I am pulling down 12,000 pesos net from my full-time teaching job here in Queretaro, and another 1,500 pesos per month from my one private student. My rent is only 3,600 pesos per month, thank heaven. |
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NorthofAmerica
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
Posts: 187
Location: Recovering Expat
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| Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 7:11 pm Post subject: |
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Just to clarify, though this is my second week without earning anything I had been earning money before, very hit and miss though. Over 2 months I've earned about $500 dollars.
Since I had nothing else on the go there was little opportunity cost but as I said before you can spend a lot of time browsing and applying for jobs and come away with nothing.
Just called the Berlitz because they have an advertisement looking for teachers. No idea what to expect from local schools here but the receptionist was.... shall we say, a little unprofessional. 
The list of online teaching sites seems really useful. I will go through it tonight. Subtracting the cost and time for traveling locally, online teaching could be well worth it in a place where the cost of living is so much lower. I may well turn down local jobs if I can get the online work going! |
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BadBeagleBad
Joined: 23 Aug 2010
Posts: 1186
Location: 24.18105,-103.25185
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| Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 7:33 pm Post subject: |
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| There is also a Facebook group for online teaching, I think it is called Online English Teachers. There is a long list of possibilities for teaching. I have also looked into other things, and aside from User Testing where I usually earn $20 to $50 dollars a month, I haven´t found anything that pays anything even near worthwhile. The worst one was listening to recordings of customer service calls and critiqueing them. I thought I would get faster after a whole, but I didn´t and was only earning about $4US an hour. I do have a full time job as well as a local part time job, but need to get a couple of things paid for and then I can quit working all together, or just work 10 hours a week to break up the day. |
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AGoodStory
Joined: 26 Feb 2010
Posts: 738
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| Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 7:33 pm Post subject: |
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I made a measly $3.35. That's not much for almost 2 hours.
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Yikes! Now that's scary!
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Fitzgerald
Joined: 10 Aug 2010
Posts: 224
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| Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 7:53 pm Post subject: |
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| NorthofAmerica wrote: |
Just to clarify, though this is my second week without earning anything I had been earning money before, very hit and miss though. Over 2 months I've earned about $500 dollars.
Since I had nothing else on the go there was little opportunity cost but as I said before you can spend a lot of time browsing and applying for jobs and come away with nothing.
Just called the Berlitz because they have an advertisement looking for teachers. No idea what to expect from local schools here but the receptionist was.... shall we say, a little unprofessional.
The list of online teaching sites seems really useful. I will go through it tonight. Subtracting the cost and time for traveling locally, online teaching could be well worth it in a place where the cost of living is so much lower. I may well turn down local jobs if I can get the online work going! |
$500 for two months is not too bad, but I think I'm allergic to the bid sites in general, because of the high level of effort involved simply in playing that field. Fiverr is a touch more appealing because once your Gigs are posted, there they are. I guess I'd rather advertise than bid. |
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Fitzgerald
Joined: 10 Aug 2010
Posts: 224
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| Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 7:59 pm Post subject: |
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| BadBeagleBad wrote: |
| There is also a Facebook group for online teaching, I think it is called Online English Teachers. There is a long list of possibilities for teaching. I have also looked into other things, and aside from User Testing where I usually earn $20 to $50 dollars a month, I haven´t found anything that pays anything even near worthwhile. The worst one was listening to recordings of customer service calls and critiqueing them. I thought I would get faster after a whole, but I didn´t and was only earning about $4US an hour. I do have a full time job as well as a local part time job, but need to get a couple of things paid for and then I can quit working all together, or just work 10 hours a week to break up the day. |
I continue to be hopeful about UserTesting, so I am glad to hear that you make some money off it.
As you say, there are just so many sketchy sites that offer bottom-of-the-barrel compensation. It is discouraging.
This list on "Online English Teaching Companies" is also a helpful one:
http://www.goodairlanguage.com/teaching-english-online-2/ |
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Fitzgerald
Joined: 10 Aug 2010
Posts: 224
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| Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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| AGoodStory wrote: |
Yikes! Now that's scary! |
It's globalization. On all these sites, you are competing with applicants from India and the Philippines, and no matter how low you are willing to go on price, they will go lower.
Even this phase is temporary, though. Many of the HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) on Mechanical Turk will be fully performable by computers within a few years. In fact, some Mechanical Turk results are being used to TRAIN computers to do Mechanical Turk-type work.
Computer-generated writing already exists and is used for press releases. Since all that content purchasers at Elance, Fiverr, iWriter, etc., are REALLY looking for is SEO-massaged filler, there is no reason why a computer can't write that as well as many of the barely literate "writers" who currently throng those sites.
Will Uber drivers eventually be replaced by driverless cars? Why not? Domino's Pizza just began experimenting with driverless delivery vehicles.
Wherever higher-paying workers can be replaced by lower-paying workers, they will be. Wherever lower-paying workers can be replaced by machines, they will be. It is the relentless logic of the market.
Marx once pointed out that employers had to at least pay workers enough to keep themselves alive (barely) and to reproduce in order for there to be a next generation of workers. That's not even true anymore. Now your staying alive is solely your problem. And there may not be much of a "next generation of workers."
To shift the analysis to another great economist, David Ricardo: In the past, there have certainly always been middlemen and rentiers to grab large parts of the money in circulation. What is astonishing with the Internet is how middlemen and rentiers - Google, Uber, Facebook, Ebay, Amazon, Netflix, ad infinitum - make virtually ALL the money. This brings us to the reductio ad absurdum that there is less and less money offered for producing "content" and more and more money offered for distributing content.
Well, there's my academic rant for the day! |
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NorthofAmerica
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
Posts: 187
Location: Recovering Expat
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| Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 3:17 am Post subject: |
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Went gangbusters on some of the online teaching links. Probably applied for about a dozen.
Just interviewed with a Taiwanese online school, good platform, professional interview, and maybe some opportunities to write curriculum and deliver higher level classes.
Downside is that the pay is about 10.50US/hr and schedule means teaching on weekends. They liked my demo and said I had a week to finish other interviews before I decide. I have some more interviews with Japanese companies and even a Canadian one. If you have a certificate and the experience definitely just get applying. I may have Russian interview too. Timezones are the biggest problem, wish I was on a beach in Thailand instead of Playa haha
I also began an account with buddyschool where I see people teaching for advertised rates of 10-30/hr. After joining I see that the platform takes some off the top of the advertised rate and has a small charge per month. Also, I have no idea if they have a teaching platform or just a site to meet and then go onto skype or something. You buy credits and pay through the site. Could be something if you have a solid set of materials available and can generate enough traffic to offset the costs.
Also have looked italki, similar setup. And there is some cafetalk one.
Long story short, there are teaching jobs online and people, mostly Asian, willing to pay you for them! |
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AGoodStory
Joined: 26 Feb 2010
Posts: 738
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| Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 10:46 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for the report, NorthofAmerica!  Be sure to let us know how this works out for you.
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jimpellow
Joined: 12 Oct 2007
Posts: 913
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| Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2016 5:52 am Post subject: |
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I wanted to resurrect this thread as my wonderful year in Colombia will be coming to an end soon. I was hoping to return to Merida for six months until I can return to Colombia on a new visa.
I had to quit my online jobs in Merida. The group class using Adobe Connect was horrific and the Skype based school was not so happy with time. I am back with both of the schools and don't want to repeat the past frustrations.
Has anything changed in the last year in terms of options? The feedback I get from students who have had teachers based in Mexico, and a couple friends there is that it is still a roll of the dice for a trouble free class.
Thank you |
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BadBeagleBad
Joined: 23 Aug 2010
Posts: 1186
Location: 24.18105,-103.25185
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| Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2016 10:23 pm Post subject: |
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| jimpellow wrote: |
Has anything changed in the last year in terms of options? The feedback I get from students who have had teachers based in Mexico, and a couple friends there is that it is still a roll of the dice for a trouble free class.
Thank you |
Mexico is a big country and there are lots of options for internet. depending on where you live. I have been working online for over 5 years, both in Mexico City and a small town, almost entirely without Internet problems. I have had more problems with power outages. |
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LarssonCrew
Joined: 06 Jun 2009
Posts: 1308
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| Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2016 11:32 pm Post subject: |
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Hey guys, thought I would chime in here.
Before I begin I'm not in Mexico, never been , blah blah.
I'm currently in the UK and I had just had to have my retina reattached and a ton of other stuff related to my eyes done in surgery.
Anyways so for 4-5 months I'll be in the UK before I eventually head back to Asia to work. In the meantime I didn't want to mope about so signed up for a few schools.
First one is dadaABC, which teaches kids.I do 3 hours a day [6-9 Beijing time] 6 days a week, generally I earn about $60 a day through it, it pays just over $20 an hour. If you don't have a student [my schedule is now full] they pay half for you to sit infront of a computer incase they do need you.
This month I'll be pulling in around $1500 from them. They were also really chill with me needing so many appointments.
The other one I use is talk915. I literally could fill 14 hours a day for 7 days a week if I needed. I generally do an hour before my dada and 1 or 2 hours after. They pay $11.50 an hour but they are cheeky and class 2 x 25 minute classes as 50 minutes, so only actually pay about $10.
I do about 100 classes a month there [1 class = 25 minutes] and make about $600 from them.
In a good month I should therefore pull in about $2000 for 5 hours a day x 6 days, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more.
If it was only talk I was working for I would be miserable, doing 50 hours a week for $300 is grim, but I use dada as my 'base' and 'top up' with talk for however much I need.
I estimate after a slowish start that I'll have made around $10000 in the 5 1/2 months between starting and heading to China. Bare in mind I had 3 weeks off for surgery and 2 weeks off for Chinese new year so realistically more like 4 months.
Any questions let me know. And no, I'm not affiliated with any of them. |
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jimpellow
Joined: 12 Oct 2007
Posts: 913
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| Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2016 4:33 am Post subject: |
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Nice input. There is money to be made online. I sort of think that is often the best way to go in many countries, compared to teaching long hours in a school for Third World pay and most likely autocratic management. The biggest obstacles are having sufficient Internet, the potential visa issue and putting in the effort and research to find the schools.
More and more of the ESL industry is moving online and presents more options for teachers as well as those with an entrepreneurial spirit. |
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Jultime
Joined: 25 Jun 2014
Posts: 113
Location: Mexico
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| Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2016 8:10 pm Post subject: |
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I applied to OpenEnglish...they don't want me. Guess they don't like my availability since I'm already working 32 hours a week at a language school.
Anyone know what happened to Fitzgerald? Haven't seen him online in ages. |
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Guy Courchesne
Joined: 10 Mar 2003
Posts: 9650
Location: Mexico City
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 2:49 am Post subject: |
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| Jultime wrote: |
I applied to OpenEnglish...they don't want me. Guess they don't like my availability since I'm already working 32 hours a week at a language school.
Anyone know what happened to Fitzgerald? Haven't seen him online in ages. |
He's around...keeping busy with work |
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