Please visit the official VIPKID website for up-to-date information. This article is based upon my experience and the best information I have available at the moment.
So the advertisements say from $19-22 an hour. However, when you dive further into the process it is a little more complicated than that. Let me try to make sense of the way you get paid at VIPKID.
First, depending upon your interview, your qualifications, and your mock class experience, you will be offered a Base Pay Rate. This Base Pay Rate is usually between $7 and $9 per class. Aside from the Base Pay, you will receive $1 per class for any class marked “as scheduled”. You will also get a participation incentive of $.50 per class after you hit 35 classes in a month and $1 per class when you teach 45 classes in a month.
So let’s look at an example:
This teacher’s base pay is $8 and she has taught 40 classes in a month. Her base pay will be $320 ($8 x 40) plus $40 (assuming all classes were marked as scheduled) plus $20 (participation incentive) for a total of $380.
If she hits 45 classes, that will be $360 base pay ($8 x 45) plus $45 (as scheduled) plus $45 (participation incentive). That will be a total of $450.
As you can see it is worth the effort to reach the 45 classes to get the additional participation incentive! You also get paid if a student cancels class within 24 hours or does not show up at all. You can however get docked money for classes that you have to cancel within 24 hours. All of these details will be discussed later or you can find the information on the VIPKID website. There are referral bonuses if a teacher signs up using your link and several incentive bonuses are offered at different times for opening up slots in your schedule. You may also earn a bonus if a student signs up for VIPKID after taking a trial class with you. There is extra money available if a student books a class with short notice and you can also be paid to be a substitute. After teaching with VIPKID for awhile, you can also be eligible for other positions to help train other teachers and further the community.
Let me give you a clear picture of what this means to me. I was hired on at one of the higher base pay rates due to my experience teaching bilingual students in the public school system and my education. During the month of April, I was able to make $450 teaching only about an hour a day on during the week and a couple of hours on the weekend. In May, I increased my pay to $900 working mostly the same schedule until the last week of May when I was able to open up my schedule further since our school was on summer vacation. Now in June, we are only halfway through the month and I have already made $800 and I still have two weeks full of classes left to go. I will easily clear $1000 even if I have multiple cancellations.
I only work from 6am – 9am Central time and a couple of hours on Friday evening because I have a regular student who requests that time. And so far, I still have a few unfilled slots in my schedule. I’ve only been teaching with VIPKID for a few months so I am very happy with this and I plan to continue to grow my online ESL business. In particular, I would like to help other people who would like to teach at VIPKID get started. If that is you, please do not hesitate to contact me. I’d love to get you started.
