3 Tutoring Platforms to Get Experience Before Starting Your Own Accent Coaching Business.

If you’re ready to start teaching but aren’t sure where to find your first students, here are a few options that can help you get practice while you work toward building your own independent client base.

I've complied a short list of websites that can help you find students and get the experience that you need to start your own accent and pronunciation training business.

The biggest advantage of signing up and teaching on these tutoring websites is that they will assist with the marketing and business related issues. They will help you find students, collect payment, and deal with any customer service issues that may come up. 

The downside is that most tutoring platforms retain a portion of your session fee, but I think it’s a fair trade-off when you’re just starting out. They also have some restrictive policies.  Your visibility often depends on keeping your rates incredibly low (like $10 a session low!), you can’t directly contact your own students, and they can remove or limit your account without any warning.

If you’d like to see exactly how to transition off tutoring platforms and start attracting your own students, watch my free workshop: How to Get Off Teaching Platforms and Offer Your Own Accent Training Service

But if you are just starting out, the platforms can be a wonderful way to get experience and build your confidence.

Here are my top picks.

Wyzant:

This is a great option for getting started. They have a strong customer support team to help you get set up and they offer assistance if you have a technical problem.  You can teach full-time or just supplement your current income with part-time work.

As far as negatives, Wyzant has been know to be overly strict with certain policies and some teachers have complained that their accounts were deleted unfairly, but if you follow their policies carefully, you should be fine.

You need to be based in in the US to use this platform so if you live somewhere else, you’ll need to find a different option.

First Tutors: 

If you live in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa or the UK, (but not the US!) you may want to consider First Tutors.

Like Wyzant, you can teach face-to-face or online.  With First Tutors however, you will have a bit more flexibility and more responsibility with the business stuff.

Once they find a student for you, you deal with them yourself. However, they are very efficient in helping you find the right students, using a thorough process of background and security checks.

Preply:

This site focuses specifically on learning languages, accents, and pronunciation, so can be a great place to start, because you have exactly the skills that students are looking for.  You set your own rate, and Preply takes a commission from each session.  According to their website:  "Preply takes a commission fee from your lessons to bring in more students from around the globe, develop an easy-to-use video tool and learning materials for your lessons. We provide free training webinars and multilingual customer support to guide you along every step of your tutoring journey."

Some instructors get early experience on these tutoring platforms, but the real growth happens once you learn to work with students independently and that’s what I teach in my Foundations certification program.

Feeling excited and ready to start teaching?

I hope so! 

But remember—your end goal doesn’t have to be staying on a tutoring platform.

Platforms are a good way to get your feet wet, but they’re designed to keep you dependent. When you learn how to attract students directly, everything changes...you keep your full session rate (no platform fees or commissions), and complete freedom over your pricing, schedule, and teaching style.

I’ve helped hundreds of teachers make that shift and you can absolutely do it too.
Take a look inside the Foundations program to see how simple this next step can be.