Before you rush to apply for online teaching jobs at Preply, learn what is Preply about so you can better decide whether this is an opportunity you may just let go or pursue with all your efforts.
What Is Preply About?
Preply is an online marketplace for tutors. It has a tutor jobs' page where you could find many open requests for credible teachers, who teach in various languages and subjects.
You may apply to student requests as long as you have a Preply profile with your availability and hourly teaching rate.
Preply promises to provide its tutors with marketing, flexible pricing, personalized profiles and loyalty programs.
As a marketplace for tutors, you ought to realize that you must pay attention to your profile and to your position on the search page at Preply.
You could personalize your profile here. You can add your most captivating photo, add a very engaging video and profile description.
As a beginner tutor at Preply, you might not make it to the first page of the tutor search results since you are only starting to gather loyalty points.
Conducting more lessons via Preply leads to an increased position in the search results. From its statistics, tutors who get to the first three pages have over 50% of all student requests from the platform.
More Than Language Tutoring
This fast growing education technology company started in 2012 in Kyiv, Barcelona and in Berlin.
If you browse its website, there are several taglines that will initially make you think it is a language tutoring platform.
These taglines include “Prepare to speak confidently with the best online tutors,”“Preply tutors have helped thousands of people prepare to speak confidently” and “Learn languages with expert online tutors.”
However, I found from the popular questions and answers that it offers over 100 subjects that tutors may teach at Preply. These subjects include languages, university/school subjects, and even art and hobbies.
Requirements To Meet
To apply as a tutor, you need not be a certified teacher, but they recommend that you have a teaching experience so you have more chances of attracting potential students.
Those with a teaching passion are still welcome to sign up.
An online tutor is just like any online worker, who should have a computer and a stable internet connection. To teach online, you need a webcam and a microphone.
Make sure you use the latest versions of the Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera or Safari browsers so you can use the Preply platform.
You also need to switch off any ad-blockers installed in your browser, as this might affect how the website works.
What Makes A Successful Online Preply Tutor
The student may search by availability, nationality, price or language. If the student chooses you, he will view your calendar and pick a time that will fit his schedule.
He might speak with you to ask about your skills or to arrange a personalized study plan with you.
This emphasizes the importance of ranking high in search results. There are various factors that can influence your search ranking or position.
1. Tutor Profile. Have a profile that can entice students’ attention when they search for tutors. Leave nothing blank in your profile and update all sections there.
Complete your profile by adding a clear and professional photo. Do not upload an image showing other people or even a panoramic background. Instead, use a close-up photo of yourself.
Follow Preply’s guide on how to make a good video recording to market your skills and service. Set a reasonable price for your tutorial services.
2. Availability. If possible, offer more available time slots so you could cater to more students and they can pick a time slot convenient for them.
3. Message Response Time. Whenever students send messages to you, always reply as soon as possible.
When responding to student inquiries, do not use message templates. Instead, send a personalized response to a particular student which addresses the specific needs and inquiries of that student.
4. Student Review. Try your best to create a rapport between you and the students you teach so they will give you positive reviews after their lessons. You can do this by always asking the students what their goals or needs are.
Specify the ways you can help. It is important that you use creative and strategic ways to encourage them to get the next lesson packages. You will understand more about this below.
Therefore, these are the things you should focus on if you want to promote your profile in the search results.
Other platforms may have paid programs for tutors who like to appear above other tutors’ unpaid profiles, but at Preply, you must organically work your way up to the top.
How Do I Work For Preply?
At Preply, there is no price to pay to register and get listed on its tutor’s list. It is also free to set up your calendar (to show your availability). It only collects commissions from lessons you conduct.
This video shows a walkthrough of Preply application.
From the video, you'll see that you may sign up with your email or through Facebook.
Next, fill up details about yourself. Indicate your first name, last name, country of origin, language/s spoken, subjects taught, hourly rate and phone number.
The next step is adding your profile photo, then your profile description.
Afterward, you may record your profile video. Follow the tips (at the right side of the web page) on creating your video recording. Then you may set your available time slots.
After submitting the application, tutors usually receive an email update from Preply after 5 business days. The review team needs to test your application thoroughly, paying more attention to your submitted profile.
It is common for profiles not to get approved on first submission. There are criteria taken into consideration when they review your profile photo, profile description or profile video.
Thus, it is important to follow the tips and recommendations in every step of the application/registration process.
Only fill up your profile with truthful information and do not insert or place any contact details in your profile description.
What Should I Charge For Preply?
You can set your hourly rate (from the registration process) and it will show in your profile along with your availability.
Your earnings will depend on how much you will charge per hour, how often you can tutor, and how many students you will continue to teach after the trial.
Most popular tutors earn up to $550 a week, according to Preply.
Preply will send the payment (based on the lesson duration and your hourly rate) in your Preply wallet after the student confirms his lesson. You can withdraw your money via PayPal.
Before applying as tutor at Preply, you need to understand how its payment system works because you might find this part disagreeable.
You will not get any payment for the first lesson of every student you tutor because Preply will collect 100% commission on all first lessons. Different commission rates apply for succeeding lessons.
Therefore, you must implement strategic and creative ways to encourage students to take more lessons with you.
Otherwise, they might not take any succeeding lessons from you, and your efforts on your first lesson will go wasted.
You can actually read written reviews on other websites where some people warn others not to join Preply. They find the 100% commission on first lessons unjust, and I also share the same sentiment.
Imagine giving all your best on the first lesson to give a great first impression to the student. Yet, you will not have any guarantee that this student will take more lessons with you.
Thus, you did not earn even a few cents after tutoring for an hour. You cannot teach any less than 60 minutes because the default duration of first lessons here is one hour.
After which, Preply will collect your entire hourly rate for the first lesson.
Work Schedule
All tutors at Preply should teach for 60 minutes on each of their first lessons with new students. If you are lucky to have the same student book more lessons with you, you could tutor him on your specified availability.
You can set your availability based on your preferred time and days of teaching. However, one key of attracting students is to offer more available time slots that will suit their schedules.
Benefits
I do not think there is any advantage from Preply aside from being able to apply even with no teaching certification.
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PROS
CONS
The crucial factor that makes me skip Preply is its unjust commission scheme right from the very first lesson. I believe that you should really try your best to convince a new student to come back and book more hours with you.
Some reviewers claim that getting new students at Preply is easy. Thus, if you want to pursue a Preply gig, practice the art of swaying students to book more lessons with you.
If you have the talent for teaching, why not start your own blog instead and teach what you can. Use keywords to target students who are looking for your lessons.
Grow your blog visitors by creating useful lessons and monetize your blog once visitors start to come in.
My free blogging training can help you!