Five years ago, during the height of the pandemic, I decided to activate my Preply profile and start dabbling in the world of freelance online teaching, while also working full-time, with the aid of the Preply platform. Five years later, I am still continuing to teach to students from around the world and I recently achieved having taught over 2,000 students on the Preply platform. In this post, I will share ten tips after teaching 2,000 students on Preply for new or experienced online tutors.

You may also watch a video which I created sharing these tips, which is available above. If you have not subscribed or watched my previous videos about the Preply platform, feel free to subscribe as I share regular videos whenever I get a chance.

Tip 1: Work on Your Profile

Think of your profile as your shopfront. On a crowded teaching marketplace, learners will often view dozens of tutors before they decide on one, so it makes sense to work on your profile, especially your profile photo. It is recommended that you have a bright, clear headshot where you look friendly and relaxed. Your bio also needs to say, simply and confidently, who you are, what you’re qualified to do, how you like to teach and what makes your lessons different.

Ask yourself the following questions as these will help you decide on how best to develop your profile on Preply, or another online teaching platform.

  • How many years have you been teaching and what qualifications do you have?
  • What makes you different to all the other online teachers?
  • What unique service would you like to offer potential students?
  • How much would you be willing to charge students on Preply?

Secondly, the introduction video also matters just as much, and it’s worth planning. Winging it rarely goes well, so what I like to do is write a short script which covers my experience, the kind of students that I usually work with and what they can realistically expect from lessons with me. I usually film at a place where it is quiet and well lit. I suggest placing your camera at slightly above eye-level and looking at the lens when recording. If you don’t look at the camera or your smartphone’s lens, it may appear that you are not so honest.

If you don’t have a tripod for your smartphone, I would suggest taping your phone to a music stand or wedging it between books. I recall when I first started recording videos that I was having to stack some boxes up and place my phone between books on these wobbly boxes. It worked and we all have to start somewhere I suppose in this era where we need to record an introductory video for a variety of reasons.

Finally, try to add captions or subtitles to your introductory video. One of the biggest struggles that learners have would be with listening. If you add subtitles to your video, it would make your introduction welcoming to students, regardless their level. It also makes your profile stand out compared to those profiles where tutors have done the minimal amount of work.

Tip 2: Adapt Your Trial Lessons

One of the easiest mistakes to make as an online tutor is treating all trial lessons exactly the same. Every learner arrives with a different background, a different reason for studying, and a different focus. Maybe they’re preparing for a high-stakes job interview, or perhaps taking an exam such as IELTS, or just trying to get through a casual chat without freezing. If you launch straight into the generic trial lesson, you could lose the chance to show them how you may help them as a tutor. It also demonstrates that you have spent little to no time planning or preparing the first lesson.

So, I would suggest any tutor to start before the lesson does. As soon as someone books, I usually send a friendly message along the lines of “Thank you for booking a trial lesson with me. I have a few quick questions and it would be great if you could answer them. What are you trying to achieve? What do you hope to achieve in the trial lesson? What do you find difficult in English?”. You can create a message template on Preply and send this after a few clicks rather than having to type it out after every booking.

Once you have received their answer, spend a short amount of time preparing for the first lesson, getting some material together. I usually look at LinguaHouse or ESLBrains for lesson ideas. If a student is very specific, with material being rather scarce on either of the aforementioned platforms, then I would use Claude to help me brainstorm and get some things together for the trial lesson.

Essentially, a student is likely to book lessons with you if you adapt your trial lesson for their needs. If you do the bare minimum in terms of lesson planning, then this is likely to show to your potential students.

Tip 3: Offer Something Unique

When you first start teaching, it is quite normal to focus on general English. This is even more so within the online teaching environment. Look at the vast majority of profiles on the Preply platform and you will notice that many are offering general English. However, to stand out, you will need to focus on a niche and offer something unique to potential students.

So how do you find your niche? Look for the overlap between what you’re good at, what you’ve done, what you enjoy and what people actually need. For some tutors that’s exam preparation, such as IELTS. For others it’s Business English for people working in tech, or academic writing, or intercultural communication. Once you’re clear about who you help, your message gets sharper too, and the right students can spot in seconds that you’re the tutor for them. Personally, I offer IELTS and Cambridge exam preparation as well as business communication skills.

Finally, you may discover that teaching specialist lessons more rewarding rather than teaching grammar or vocabulary based around a coursebook. Personally, I find the lesson planning less exhaustive when teaching specialist courses, with much of my material sourced from LinguaHouse or ESLBrains. This makes me able to recycle lesson material with multiple students while also focusing on student needs.

Tip 4: Set a Rate That Reflects Your Experience and Qualifications

Whenever you start out as an online English teacher, it is tempting to set your hourly rate as low as possible. You may decide to do this for a variety fo reasons but it is potentially reducing your potential. If you have invested your very own time and money time into English teaching, then I would recommend that you consider charging a rate that reflects your qualifications as well as your experience.

As my father always says, if you underprice yourself, it is harder to raise your price from that. So, if you are offering something unique, then I would recommend that you charge an hourly rate that is commesurate to your experience as well as your qualifications. Having said that, it becomes somewhat apparent that if you are offering general English, charging a rate outside the radius of such learner expectation would then become less than desirable, thus becoming rather difficult to charge more than what would be expected. So, as I explained in my previous tip, focus on offering something unique and different to everyone else.

Nonetheless, look at your profile and consider what would be a suitable hourly rate considering your personal circumstances. I understand that everyone’s situation is different but we can all agree that if you undersell yourself, you are setting yourself up for a struggle when you decide to charge a rate that is commesurate to your own personal situation.

Tip 5: Send Messages to Potential Students with Automatic Prompts

One thing that I have noticed while on the Preply platform is that tutors receive automatic notifications whenever a potential student views a tutor’s profile. Therefore, I would recommend anyone in such a situation to save a template, which is quite simple and use it to quickly and effectively respond to any interest or should someone view your profile.

To speed up the process of sending out messages to potential students, I would recommend Preply tutors to install their application on your smartphone. It syncs up to your profile and then you can also access the templates on your phone too. If you end up being rather slow at sending messages to students, they may move on to another tutor.

In fact, I use the following message for potential students when I get an automatic notification from Preply:

Hello [Student Name],

Thank you for showing interest in my lessons! If you’re interested in experiencing what it’s like to learn with me, I’d like to invite you to book a trial lesson.

During this session, I will evaluate your current level and gain a better understanding of your learning needs. Additionally, you’ll have the chance to get to know me and my teaching style.

After our trial lesson, I will create a personalized learning plan tailored specifically to your needs. This way, you’ll be able to decide if you’d like to continue your learning journey with me.

I have been teaching for over 19 years now with 8 years of this online with a variety of students. Many of my online students have examinations that they wish to pass or work and require improvement with their business communication. When you join my learning journey, you will also join a community on Google Classroom where I share lesson material and you can ask questions.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’m excited to meet you and start working towards achieving your language learning goals!

Warm regards,

Martin 😊

I actually have quite a range of messages ready to send depending on the context, not just for potential students so it always makes sense to customise and use messages that are best suited for your use with Preply (i.e., trial lessons, post-trial lessons, etc.).

Tip 6: Request Student Reviews

The next tip that I have for anyone on Preply is related to gaining trust and recognition for the work you do on the platform, which is gaining student reviews. Essentially, potential students will first look at your profile description, watch your video, as well as look at recent student reviews. So, it makes sense to seek reviews from your current students. Students scroll past many tutors’ profiles before deciding who they wish to book.

From my experience, waiting for reviews to come through from students rarely works. Even students who are genuinely happy with your lessons tend to give it no thought. Therefore, it’s far more effective to ask politely and at the right moment for a review from your student. I would recommend that once you’ve built up rapport with a student, around 10 lessons, would make sense for such a request.

I like to frame a student review by explaining that I have enjoyed teaching them and hope that they have enjoyed their lessons on Preply. At this point, I like to explain that I would like to improve and if they have any suggestions for future lessons from their recommendations. Then I finally ask them to review my profile and this makes it somewhat more natural rather than pushing your student to review with no context provided.

Tip 7: Keep a Physical Notebook and Pen During Class

This tip is probably one of the most important and widely missed when teaching online, or even in a physical classroom to be honest, especially as everything is available digitally. Essentially, when you are in an online classroom, it’s tempting to do everything on the screen with virtual notes, split screens, and the chat box. However, keeping an old-fashioned notebook and pen by your keyboard is still one of the best things you can do for your online lessons. Sometimes, my typing is slower than my shorthand and I usually have my own way of noting down pronunciation slips, grammatical mistakes, as well as weird wording choicing. Also, I don’t particularly want my student to hear my clicking of my keyboard while they are talking English as it can be quite off putting, hence the reason for a physical notebook and pen.

During the feedback stage, I tend to refer to my notebook while also sharing on a shared document with the student. So if a student has uttered something but has made a grammatical mistake, I can quickly share this with the student and a more appropriate form when getting the student correct themselves. Yet, there might be a better way for the student to record such feedback and getting them to write themselves definitely has some credit.

The students who make the most progress over a shorter period are the ones that have their own physical notebook and pen for their lessons. I have noticed that they have started writing down things that I am saying during their lesson as well as what has been shared on a shared document online. This is great to see, particularly on how invasive digitalisation of all content has become. I guess I am rather old fashioned and prefer, despite teaching lessons online.

Tip 8: Provide Asynchronous & Self-Study Materials

The synchronous lesson is probably one of the most valuable for students as this is when they have a chance to interact in English with spontaneous conversation, pronunciation work, and that back-and-forth that only happens with another person. However, if you are spending twenty minutes of a live lesson watching a student read or go through a grammar worksheet, it perhaps isn’t as valuable for their time or money. So, I like to offer something more for the students to complete outside of the lesson.

These asynchronous tasks could include students reading news articles, memorising vocabulary from the lesson, watching a podcast episode, or completing a grammar exercise. They help students build momentum and take a bit of ownership over their own progress. Essentially, you are flipping the classroom, getting students to complete some self-study material from sites such as LinguaHouse or ESLBrains, and then focusing on the topic that they have possibly self-studied by discussing conversation questions with them. You have already provided students with the topic and the language that they need in advance, and they are already primed for conversation during the live lesson.

There’s more to it than just using class time well, though. Structured homework like this changes how students see you. You stop being just a conversation partner and become something closer to a guide who is with them for their whole learning journey. That mix of independent prep and focused, interactive lessons tends to speed up progress, keeps motivation going between sessions, and offers students an additional reason to stick around.

Tip 9: Collect Direct Contact Details and Note Key Dates

Preply is a wonderful platform where you are able to message your students, but relying entirely on this platform could leave you exposed when things go wrong. It is not uncommon for either you or your student to have connectivity issues with Preply, so I always like to request for a student’s email. Essentially, when a student books a trial lesson with me, I like to share a Student’s Needs Analysis with the use of Google Forms and within this survey I ask students to share their email as well as their birthday.

However, there is more to this than just having a backup in case things go wrong. For example, I add their birthday into my calendar and set a notification to remind a day before their special day and then send a personal message to wish them well. Even if they have moved on and are no longer taking lessons. It is perhaps something that not many online tutors remember, so if you can go the extra mile, it shows that you care and also develops rapport. On top of this, I send an anonymous email to all my past and present students at the end of the year to wish them well for the following year.

None of this is really about technology. It’s about students feeling remembered and looked after, which is exactly what keeps them coming back, even after a period away. So, this is something that I would definitely recommend incorporating when teaching on Preply.

Tip 10: Maintain a Healthy Work-Life Balance

Teaching on Preply offers tutors some amount of flexibility, but at the same time, this makes it easy to lose the line between work and everything else. When your classroom is in your home, it is tempting to fill your calendar up with back-to-back lessons or answer student messages at all hours. Furthermore, the teaching profession, whether online or in-person, is very intense where you are dealing with individuals constantly, so it is important to draw boundaries. One person I spoke with in the past mentioned when they were working from home, they would change clothes from their work attire (i.e., a shirt and tie) to something more casual to draw a clear distinction within their home environment.

It is easy to try to have back-to-back lessons, but the most I can do is perhaps four lessons before I start to lose focus and need to get away from my screen, otherwise screen fatigue starts to creep in. Thus, I would recommend building in breaks into your day and protect your time that is away from all digital devices. You could get up, stretch, go for a walk, or do something with your hands that has nothing to do with your computer. It also helps to set real working hours and actually take your days off, rather than leaving them open through the week “just in case”. That’s what gives you room to switch off, and it’s usually what stands between you and burnout.

All of this ends up benefiting your students too. When you turn up to a lesson well-rested and you would then be able to teach it with more patience and energy. Looking after yourself isn’t a luxury and it is part of what keeps you good at it. So, go away for a few days and return feeling better, much like what I did in the video above.