Her First Month Teaching Online Brought In $32 — Two Years Later She Was Making $10,000 a Month

Jade Weatherington, a single mom, had spent a decade teaching English across various websites while juggling multiple gigs and homeschooling her daughter when she discovered Outschool — a platform offering classes for kids ages 3 to 18 — in 2018. She launched two courses to start: one in arts and crafts, another called "Mastering the Five Paragraph Essay." The first month brought in just $32, but by the third month those two classes alone were generating nearly $5,000.

Seeing the potential, she quit her other teaching gigs, decided she needed to offer a class every day of the week, and expanded her course lineup. She now teaches nine writing and grammar classes on Outschool, working 10 to 12 hours a week, and nets $10,000 a month. "I would have never been able to make as much money as a regular teacher," she says.

Her growth strategy has centered on listening directly to parents: when they started asking "what's next?" after the five-paragraph essay class, she built a part two, then semester-long essay-writing courses, a version for younger kids, and one-off trial classes that let families sample her teaching before committing to a full course. She also builds relationships deliberately — thanking students directly for attending and messaging parents after each class to thank them for signing their child up — which she credits as the biggest driver of her growth, since word of mouth passes her classes from one set of parents to another.

Her advice to anyone considering the same path is to teach whatever they're genuinely passionate about, whether that's a niche literary figure or a coding skill, because kids can tell immediately if an instructor isn't into the subject — and the work is both easier and more enjoyable when it's something you'd want to teach anyway.