You didn’t move across
the world to be underpaid
and afraid to quit, right?
The English teaching industry runs on a quiet lie: that the school is doing you the favour. It isn’t. It’s renting out your labour and keeping most of the money.
No spam. No TEFL sales funnel. One email at a time — only when it’s worth your inbox.
The lie you were sold
The industry isn’t built for you. It’s built to keep you cheap.
The internet is drowning in courses that sell the dream: get certified, move abroad, teach English, live the adventure. What almost none of them sell is the part that actually pays — how to build your own income once you land.
That’s not an accident. The whole machine depends on a steady supply of cheap, compliant teachers. Language centres don’t need empowered operators who set their own rates. They need staff who show up, smile, and don’t ask what the student is really paying.
Empowered teachers are competitors. So the one skill that would set you free — running your own teaching business — is the one thing the industry will never teach you.
The trap
The lies they tell you to keep you in line.
Almost every trapped teacher I’ve met was held there by the same handful of lies. Here they are, out loud.
- Quit and we’ll cancel your visa. You’ll be deported. In many countries your legal status is more yours than they let on. Fear is cheaper than fair pay — so they sell you the fear.
- Teaching privately is illegal. You’ll get caught. Often it’s a grey area, not a crime — and “grey” is exactly the place they don’t want you looking.
- You’re lucky to even have this job. Lucky? They billed your student two to three times what they pay you, then called it a gift.
- The contract is there to protect you. Read it again. The non-compete protects them. The “training bond” protects them. The notice period protects them.
- You’d never get students on your own. You are the product they’re selling. You always could. They just needed you not to notice.
The math they hope you never do
Same hours. Same you. Wildly different pay.
What the school pays you
$10–15/hr
What your student actually pays
$30–50/hr
A focused niche, direct
$40–80/hr
The gap isn’t a mystery. It’s the school’s cut — a tax you pay for the legal right to be in the country. Cut out the middleman and you don’t suddenly work more hours. You just stop handing away most of the money.
Why I’m building this
I stopped asking permission.
I quit my first teaching contract three months in. Everyone told me the same thing: you’ll lose your visa, you’ll be on the next flight home. I wasn’t.
I went private instead. Found my own students. Set my own rates. Did the paperwork nobody said I was allowed to touch. A year later, one of the contracts I’d kept — on my terms — became my visa sponsor. I filed my taxes. I did it properly. Nobody deported me. Nobody even blinked.
The only thing standing between me and that life was the fear the school had spent months quietly installing. That was it. That was the whole wall.
I’m building Private English Teaching because I wish it had existed when I was twenty-five and scared.
What this actually is
This isn’t another TEFL certificate.
You don’t need another qualification. You need the part nobody sells you: the business. Here’s a taste of what lands in your inbox.
- How to pick a niche that pays $40+/hour instead of fighting over $12 general-English gigs.
- How to price so a full schedule doesn’t mean forty exhausting hours a week.
- How to get private students directly — without begging a platform for scraps and handing over 30%.
- How to stay legal: what your visa actually permits, and how to structure things so you sleep at night.
- How to keep students for years, not weeks — so you stop starting from zero every term.
- How to think like the owner of a business, because that’s quietly what you’ve become.
Before you talk yourself out of it
The questions you’re already asking.
Isn’t teaching privately illegal?
Sometimes. Often it’s a grey area, not a crime — and the specifics depend entirely on your country and your visa. I’ll show you where the lines actually are, so you can decide with facts instead of the fear your school handed you. What I won’t do is pretend the risk is zero, or that it’s as terrifying as they told you.
Can you guarantee I’ll earn more?
No. Anyone who guarantees your income is lying to you. What I can tell you is this: the ceiling on a salaried teaching job is set by someone else. The ceiling on your own business is set by you. Which one you actually reach is on you — and that’s the honest deal.
Will you try to sell me something?
Eventually, yes. I’m building a business, not running a charity, and I’d rather say so than pretend the emails are a public service. The deal: the free stuff will be worth more than most paid courses. If I ever sell something, it’ll be because it’s better than the free stuff — and by then you’ll already know if my thinking is worth paying for.
Why are you so blunt about all this?
Because polite is how you got here. The industry has a financial interest in keeping you comfortable, grateful, and a little bit afraid. I don’t. I’d rather annoy you into a better income than flatter you into another year of the same contract.
It’s time for you to
be a teacherpreneur.
Free. No spam. Leave whenever — but you won’t want to.