20 Online Jobs for Teachers to Make Extra Money

No doubt, teaching is one of the most noble, fulfilling careers you can choose. But as we know, you won’t get rich from it. Fortunately, there are now online jobs for teachers you can either do on the side, a transition job after leaving, or a passive income source.

These are jobs you can do from the comfort of your home and there are part-time and full-time positions available.

Go over this list of online jobs for teachers and find the one that’s ideal for you.

20 Online Jobs for Teachers

We’ll start this list off with a few part-time teaching jobs.

The following jobs can easily be done in the evenings after class, during the weekend throughout the school year, or even the entire school break.

It’s ideal for teachers who have daytime jobs but are looking for ways to earn extra money on the side, or those who are trying to dip their toes on work-from-home teaching jobs.

1. Answering Questions

If you’re naturally curious and love to research, you may want to answer questions in exchange for extra cash.

There are quite a few question-and-answer sites, such as Just Answer, Wonder, Maven, and Studypool (among others) that will allow you to earn as much as $4,000 a month, if you’re a doctor, lawyer, or other professional.

You can still earn money from this gig, even if you’re not a university-level professor.

But do check your expectations from some sites like Answeree (that pays in cents per answer).

To know more about the ones worthy of your time, check out this post on how to get paid to answer questions.

2. Online Adjunct Professor

If you’re a college graduate or have plenty of teaching experience, you can apply to be an online adjunct professor at a college or university, especially now that the majority of colleges and universities host online classes and allow their professors to teach them remotely.

Same with most teachers, online adjunct professors don’t earn very much, but because you can do this online, this may be a job position that appeals to you if you still want to teach but want more flexibility and dread the commute.

3. Online ESL Teacher

As a teacher and native English speaker, the transition into teaching ESL (English as a secondary language) from home should feel natural.

These online jobs for teachers are flexible, which teachers can do either part-time or full-time.

Home-based ESL teachers teach students who may be from another country, so you need a high-quality internet connection, webcam, and headset.

Sites like italki and VIPkid pay between $18 and $40 per hour. You can even teach students on your phone. See our list of companies willing to hire you as an ESL teacher.

If you are fluent in another language aside from English, you can earn even more.

4. Online Tutor

Teachers with plenty of experience teaching traditional subjects, such as mathematics, science, history, and many more may find online tutoring to be a great fit.

Depending on your expertise, you’ll be paid by the hour somewhere between $15 and $100.

Most sites require you to commit to a minimum number of hours per week to be an active tutor, which means you can also do this either as a side gig or full-time.

Almost all of these tutor sites require some teaching experience, and you’ll be responsible for your own educational materials.

Online tutoring sites also don’t normally require teaching licenses to teach general subjects, although you might be required to have teaching credentials to teach college-level or higher subjects, as well as specialized subjects (e.g., financial, business, or advanced science subjects).

Choose from the best online tutoring jobs.

5. Homeschool Consultant

More and more parents are homeschooling their kids each year, leading to more and more online jobs for teachers.

As a teacher with experience creating lesson plans, following a curriculum, and planning activities, you can help parents new to homeschooling find their footing.

Your job as a homeschool consultant will likely be seasonal, with the demand usually before the start of the school year.

The good thing about this job is that you get to dictate your consultation fees. However, there are no third-party sites that will give you leads for clients.

Instead, you’d have to look for clients and do outreach yourself.

Kris Bales, blogger at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers, uses her blog not only to share her adventures with homeschooling (they’ve been doing this since 2002) but also to post and advertise her consultancy services.

Her pricing scheme is simple: she charges $40 for every 3 lengthy, detailed e-mails filled with answers to homeschooling questions from clients.

6. Online Test Grader

If you love checking homework, reading and scoring student essays, evaluating exam papers, and so on, you’re in luck. Some schools are outsourcing the scoring part to third-party teachers.

The pay for scorers averages around $12 to $15, which isn’t that huge, but you can do this as a side gig.

Check out these legitimate sites that offer online test grader jobs and see if it’s something you’d like doing.

The next few ideas will focus more on full-time jobs for retired teachers, teachers who have switched careers, or teachers who aren’t currently working.

You’d be glad to know that if teaching continues to be your passion, you don’t need to give it up; you can still do these online jobs for teachers.

7. Online Proctor

If grading isn’t your thing, maybe monitoring students while they’re taking a test is a better fit for you.

Everything is making the move online, and even proctoring can now be done online as students take tests from remote locations. Your main task will be to make sure that students aren’t cheating.

After years in the classroom, you should certainly have the ability to catch students who are trying to cheat their way to higher scores.

You can browse through our list of online proctoring jobs from home.

This is one of the few online jobs for teachers that isn’t so much about teaching; rather, this deals with student behavior.

8. Lesson Plan Maker

You probably know this all too well.

You spend most of your school break creating lesson plans for the coming year, preparing for another batch of students.

If you’re interested in helping other teachers who are swamped, you can work on lesson plans on their behalf.

This position can also be called curriculum developer or teaching materials provider, but the tasks are similar: create worksheets, lesson plans, activity sheets, and other teaching materials based on specific concepts, topics, or subjects.

Payment for this job varies. You can be selling a simple worksheet for $1 a pop, but if over 5,000 people buy it, then it’s a huge payday for you.

Interested? Here’s a more comprehensive guide to earning a six-figure income selling lesson plans online.

9. Textbook Writer

Writing a textbook takes a lot of research, knowledge, and experience.

As an educator, you’d know what makes textbooks effective and what doesn’t work.

Publishers open up writing positions regularly, and more and more of these positions are remote or work-from-home jobs.

In rare cases, such as popular bloggers or influencers with a background in education, publishers may find you and offer you the job.

Here are some textbook publishers you can check out for work openings:

• Cengage
• Emerald Group Publishing
• Jones & Bartlett Learning
• McGraw-Hill Higher Education
• Oxford University Press
• Pearson Publishing
• Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group
• John Wiley and Sons
• W. Norton Company
• Wolters Kluwer

10. Educational Consultant

Education consultants can work for schools, universities, individuals, families, or textbook publishers.

Their job is a mix between a tutor and a homeschool consultant.

As an education consultant, you assess a student’s academic strengths and weaknesses, develop their talents, create tests to evaluate aptitude, and find the most appropriate school for a student’s preference, potential, and best match.

When hired by a school, educational consultants assess how students learn, find problems with existing policies, and create solutions to improve school programs, student learning, and so on.

Educational consultants for publishers review existing and pre-published textbooks and determine flaws or whether it’s time for revisions.

Requirements for this job are higher than usual; you’d have to have either a Master’s degree or a Ph.D., as well as extensive experience in the educational system. The job can be completed remotely and it could earn you up to $95,000 annually.

11. Writing Coach

Writing skills are one of the most underrated but highly valuable hard skills you can learn.

As a writing coach, your job is to help your clients develop and master their writing skills according to their goals.

For instance, you’d coach a fiction writer on developing a compelling plot, fleshing out engaging characters, and finding their personal tone and style.

By contrast, you’d coach a student on the basics of writing an essay, while you’d coach a corporate professional on writing formal letters and emails.

Much like online tutoring, you can become a full-time writing coach from the comforts of your own home.

12. Online Proofreader

Checking and correcting your students’ spelling and grammar is a skill, and you’d be glad to know that online proofreader jobs exist whhere you can get paid for this particular skill.

Proofreading is different from copy editing in that copy editing focuses on consistency, accuracy, and continuity of the document, while proofreading is all about syntax, format, punctuation, spelling, and grammar.

Thus, proofreading is normally the last step in the publishing process.

Go over our list of legitimate online proofreading jobs and see if you’re interested in doing this type of job.

13. Online Translator

You may never have thought that being bilingual or multilingual can earn you money, but thanks to our virtual economy, online translators are now in demand.

The payment greatly varies depending on how many languages you know and how rare these languages are. For instance, there are probably more bilingual Spanish–English speakers than there are bilingual Farsi–English speakers, so Farsi–English speakers may be paid more hourly.

Consider these highly-rated companies offering online translation jobs.

The next items aren’t jobs but rather ways to earn passive income.

Unlike the jobs listed above wherein you are paid for services rendered right after completion or within a month, “jobs” that allow you to earn passive income don’t work that way.

Instead, you’ll have to do the work for weeks, months, or even years without pay and implement various monetization techniques for blogging or ebook writing and only if you succeed can you earn some cash.

The upside to these kinds of jobs is that once money starts pouring in, there’s a good chance it won’t stop anymore.

14. eBook Writer

There’s money to be made with ebook writing, especially if you have a unique voice, story to tell, or specialization to share. You can even expand your earnings by turning this ebook into an audiobook, or taking part in speaking engagements.

Don’t want to publish under your name?

You can also ghost-write an ebook for someone else and earn around 2 to 10 cents per word.

15. Voice Coach and Instructor of Musical Instruments (Guitars, Drums, etc.)

Music teachers, rejoice!

You can stay at home and still be able to use your craft to help kids improve their singing chops.

If you’ve been teaching kids how to play the piano, guitars, drums or other musical instruments in a school setting for years, you can also switch online and do it completely remote.

If you don’t want to teach, but you have a voice with character, maybe voice-over or voice-acting gigs are a better fit.

16. Test Scorer

You’d probably had thousands of papers, quizzes and exams scored throughout your career, but did you know that you can do this as a side hustle?

You do need to have a bachelor’s degree to apply for these jobs. Check out sites like Measurement, Inc., Pearson, or ETS if you’re interested.

Do note that this kind of online job for teachers is somewhat seasonal. This is because it’s likely that you’ll be scoring standardized tests, which students take in the spring or fall.

17. Online Moderator

The job of an online moderator is very similar to that of a traditional teacher.

As an online moderator, you’re assigned to oversee a group of people (just like your students in a class). You’ll respond to questions, address complaints, conduct surveys, make the engagement of the entire group come alive, and most important, you de-escalate situations that require a referee.

Where do you get these online moderator jobs, you ask? Check here for a list of companies.

Pay is okay, at $15 to $30 an hour, depending on your skills and the company you decide to work for.

18. Social Media Jobs

The job of a social media manager is similar to online moderators, except the space you’ll be moderating is within a particular social media platform like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter/X, and so on.

There are several types of social media jobs you can try – all of them are easy to learn.

Pay for social media jobs vary depending on the role, but the skills needed are mostly the same. Do you have what it takes? This guide should help you decide if your skills are perfect for a social media job.

19. Online Dating Consultant

Maybe in your past life as an educator you also served the hat of a guidance counselor or advisor.

If you did, and you helped young adults navigate their dating problems and relationship dilemmas, then you might enjoy a career as an online dating consultant.

No, you won’t dictate who people should pick or swipe. Instead, you’ll be guiding them make better choices when it comes to dating, relationships, intimacy and communications.

If this sounds interesting to you, learn more about it here. These kinds of consultants earn somewhere between $50 and $100 an hour. Experienced consultants with big-named clients have rates that start at $300/hour.

20. Life Coach

As a teacher, you’ve guided young minds throughout their developments. You’ve helped kids who had fears of speaking in public thrive in making speeches by the time they’ve graduated. You’ve turned easily-frustrated kids into strong-minded teens.

If this sounds like you, you may also have a career in life coaching.

Life coaches earn between $12 and $150 an hour. The best thing about life coaching is you can accept as many clients as your schedule permits – and this job can be done completely online.

What’s the best online job for teachers?

Teaching has always been thought of as a noble profession, but it doesn’t mean you’d say no to making bank if possible.

These online jobs can pave the way to the freedom you’ve been looking for to get out of the 8-to-5 rat race, enable you to work completely from home, or bulk up your retirement fund significantly.