One of the most important questions when looking at a job is the pay structure and how much money you can make. Especially as a digital nomad, it’s important to know how much money will be coming in to cover your expenses and cost of living. So I will be as transparent as I can and show you exactly what the VIPKID pay is like in 2020 so you can decide for yourself if you can live off the average VIPKID salary or not. 

I personally have been working with the company for almost two years and right from the beginning, I’ve been able to make a living off of it. You can see here the crazy hours I worked while I was living in Canada.

VIPKID pay and how much you earn per hour.

Now being back in Prague though the hours are perfect and I can work a fairly normal schedule opening up from 8 am – 4 pm. But there are tons of awesome digital nomad cities around the world that are great for VIPKID teachers and even have huge communities that meet up regularly, Prague being one of them!

Anyways, that’s more about the VIPKID hours and the point of this post is to help you decide if it’s worth making the jump to online teaching and if the VIPKID paycheck can pay the bills or not and be worth it.

Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links which means that if you decide to use them we get a small commission at no cost for you. Thank you <3

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Dom teaching for VIPKID

What is the VIPKID pay like?

So over the years, the pay structure with VIPKID has changed and we want to share with you the most updated version for all new teachers and even old teachers who will be transitioning into the new pay structure.

VIPKID teachers like myself who work more full time receive more incentives and make it more worthwhile. The more you teach the more bonuses you earn. But even for someone looking to make this a side gig and earn an extra paycheck, it’s absolutely worth it.

There are a ton of factors that play into what your monthly salary will look like and we will dig into that with some photos from the VIPKID teachers portal where it breaks it all down for you.

The first thing you need to know is the fact that there is a base pay and an incentive pay that factor into your hourly wage. I would personally say that most teachers earn between $16 and $24 hourly. Myself, being with the company for roughly 2 years, make about $21 US an hour so it’s a very sustainable wage for working from home in my pyjamas teaching English to students across the world.

Teaching English online and what the hours are like.

Breakdown of the payments

So as I mentioned, there are two factors that come into play when looking at your hourly wage with VIPKID: Base pay + incentive pay = pay per 25-minute class.

Base Pay Rate: Is the pay you start out as. This is the pay you get for completing a class. Back in the day every few contracts you could get raises but now it seems like they will not be giving raises and only reward teachers who teach more.

So for now, almost all new teachers start with a base pay rate of $7.5 a class which works out to $15 an hour. Don’t worry though as with the incentives and other bonuses you will earn at least $17 an hour in the beginning. Full transparency here, I make $8.5 a class.

Finished Class Incentive: Now this gets a little more confusing because VIPKID made some weird new incentive plan to reward teachers who teach a lot. Before it was simply $2 a class (so 4$ an hour) and you would just add the $4 to your base pay and you’d have your hourly earnings.

But times have changed and the incentives are completely based on how many classes you have taught in the past (your tier) and how many classes you teach in the given month.

VIPKID new pay structure.

As you can see above, if you are a new teacher then you will be in tier 1 and then you add your extra incentive per class. The longer you teach with VIPKID and the more you teach every month, the better your hourly rate will be.

In my case, on average, I would make $8.5 + $2.1 = $10.6 per 25-minute class. So my hourly wage works out to be $10.6 x 2 = $21.2 an hour. I would say that’s slightly above the average.

VIP KID pay calculator

This calculator is an absolute game-changer when it comes to checking your VIPKID income. All you have to do is add your information in the three different categories and it will spit out how much you should make a month with your hours worked, base pay rate and finished class incentive.

If you add your tier, base pay rate, and hours worked it will spit out a number. It won’t be 100% accurate because of the extra bonuses you can make but it will give you a good idea of roughly how much you’ll make at any given month. It’s also a good tool to see how many classes you need to teach to make (X) amount of money. Give the VIPKID pay calculator a go here.

With this new system because of my tier7 and roughly 200 classes taught a month I make a whopping 15 cents an hour more! Better than nothing I guess!

Dom teaching English online.

How to receive a high hourly rate

Getting the highest possible hourly rate is obviously an important thing to strive for when applying for the job. Once you crush your interview and get a base pay rate you likely won’t be able to switch it after that.

So let’s start with some teaching props. It’s super important that your “classroom” is child friendly and looks appealing to future students. I go over all that and more in this post about teaching ESL online.

Also if you have any questions about the job or help with the interview process you can email me (Dom) and put “VIPKID support” in the headline and I will gladly help you with the whole process.

Dom explaining the VIPKID pay.

Getting started with VIP KID

Now that you’re ready to take the plunge into teaching online and getting started with VIPKID it’s time to get ready for your interview. The whole process will take one to two weeks with the interview, processing the paperwork, etc.

Once that is all done and you start working for VIPKID then the only thing you have to worry about is renewing your contract every 6 months. All you have to do is simply agree to the terms and sign a new contract. So basically once you start teaching with them then you can teach for as long as you want, assuming everything goes well! =)

It’s a fun journey joining the online teaching world and teaching ESL to little students across the world. It’s enabled me to live this digital nomad lifestyle that I’ve always wanted to live. So for that I’m very thankful with this awesome opportunity and now I hope by sharing this with you it will enable you to do the same.

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or feel free to send an email over if you want to talk privately!

Dom (& Jo)
Red White Adventures
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What it's like teaching with VIPKID
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