Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Part-Time Tutor Built a 3000 Monthly Side Hustle on Preply
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this idea that to build a serious side hustle, you need a highly specialised skill — coding, graphic design, copywriting. But what about just being good at something other people want to learn? Luna: You mean like tutoring? Lucas: Exactly. And not in the traditional sense of driving to a student's house after school. I'm talking about platforms like Preply — where a part-time tutor can quietly build a three-thousand-dollar-a-month side hustle without ever leaving their home office. Luna: Three thousand a month is real money. Who's doing this? Lucas: I spoke with a woman named Jenna — she's a former preschool teacher who moved into corporate training full-time but wanted a flexible second income. She started on Preply in early 2024, teaching conversational English to adults in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Within nine months, she was billing about three thousand a month, working fifteen to eighteen hours a week. Luna: Wait — she's not a native speaker? Or is she? Lucas: She's a native English speaker, but she has no formal TEFL certification. That's part of what's interesting about Preply as a platform. Unlike iTalki or some university programs, Preply doesn't require a teaching credential. They do a short test and a video introduction, and you're in. The barrier to entry is much lower. Luna: That's actually a pretty big deal. A lot of people think they need a certificate to teach online, which stops them before they start. Lucas: Right. And Jenna's story shows that with the right strategy, you can get traction without a credential. She started with her rate at fifteen dollars per hour — which is on the lower end for Preply — and took on five students in her first month. She built her profile by collecting feedback and completing the platform's 'trial lesson' process, which is heavily promoted by Preply itself. Luna: So the platform is actively sending her leads. How much does Preply take? Lucas: That's the trade-off. Preply charges a commission on each lesson, and it's a sliding scale. For new tutors, the commission is around thirty-three percent for the first few lessons with each student. So if Jenna charged fifteen dollars, she took home roughly ten. But as she taught more hours with the same students, the commission dropped — down to eighteen percent after a certain threshold. After six months, she was netting closer to twelve dollars per hour per student. Luna: So the platform incentivizes you to retain students, not just acquire new ones. Lucas: Exactly. Preply's business model rewards stability. And that's what Jenna leaned into. She focused on building long-term relationships, not churning through trial students. By month six, she had fifteen regular students, each taking one or two lessons a week. That's when she raised her rate to twenty-two dollars per hour for new students, while keeping her existing ones at their original price as a loyalty thing. Luna: That's a smart move — not alienating the base while testing higher prices on new traffic. Did her existing students ever find out she was charging more? Luna: Some did, because Preply shows your profile rate. But she explained it as a change for new students only, and none of them left. In fact, a couple of them voluntarily increased what they paid her — they said she was undercharging. Lucas: Yeah, that happens more often than people think. When you're delivering real value, clients don't want to lose you. Luna: One thing that stood out in her approach was how she handled scheduling. She didn't let students book her at all hours. She set specific windows: weekday evenings, seven to nine PM Eastern, and Saturday mornings. That consistency helped her avoid the classic side hustle trap — letting the gig bleed into every spare moment. Luna: That's the burnout part I was wondering about. Eighteen hours a week of tutoring — talking, engaging, correcting — that's mentally intense. It's not like writing code where you can listen to music. Lucas: Exactly. And Jenna told me that her biggest challenge wasn't finding students — it was maintaining energy across back to back sessions. She learned to schedule a fifteen-minute break between each lesson, and she never taught more than four hours in a row. That's what made the hustle sustainable at eighteen hours a week. Luna: So boundaries aren't just for your sanity — they're what let you keep earning consistently. Lucas: Right. And that's a lesson that applies way beyond tutoring. But let's zoom out for a second. This 'passion economy' — people monetizing skills they already have — is growing fast. Preply alone has over forty thousand tutors in a hundred and eighty countries. But the same logic applies to platforms like TakeLessons, Outschool, or even skillshare for recorded content. The key is picking the right platform for your specific strength. Luna: Right, and that's where a lot of people trip up — they try to fit their skill into a generic marketplace instead of finding the niche that values it most. Lucas: And that's exactly the kind of clarity we try to bring on this show. If we've helped you think through a career move or decision, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these episodes ad-free — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, it really does make a difference. Keeps the lights on and the ideas flowing. Lucas: Exactly. Anyway, back to Preply. One thing Jenna did that I think is replicable: she optimized her profile video. Preply's algorithm heavily weights the first impression — tutors who have a clear, friendly, well-lit video introduction get shown to more students. She filmed hers in front of a bookshelf, with natural light, and she smiled a lot. Sounds simple, but she said it doubled her trial lesson bookings compared to her first, more amateur attempt. Luna: So it's not just about price and qualifications — it's also about presentation and trust signals. Lucas: Yes. And this ties into something larger. The tutoring side hustle is often dismissed as low-status or not 'serious' compared to tech freelancing. But the numbers suggest otherwise. According to Preply's own data, the top ten percent of tutors on the platform earn over forty dollars per hour. That's not pocket change. And for someone with a full-time job, an extra three thousand a month is a whole financial cushion — maybe it covers a mortgage payment or funds a retirement account. Luna: That's a solid return on maybe ten to fifteen hours of work a week, if you're efficient. Lucas: Exactly. But let's be honest: it takes time to build. Jenna's first month she made just three hundred dollars. She almost quit. But she stuck with it, and by month nine, she was at three thousand. The platform's commission structure actually helped her in a way — because Preply takes a big cut early, tutors are incentivized to stay with the same students. That forced her to focus on retention, which is the real engine of recurring income. Luna: It's like a forced discipline. The platform aligns your behavior with long-term success. Lucas: Yeah. And I think that's a good note to end on. If you have a skill that someone might want to learn — whether it's English, math, guitar, or even Excel — there's probably a platform for it. Start with a low barrier, focus on retention, set boundaries, and raise your rates as you build proof. That's the playbook. Luna: And if you try it, let us know how it goes. We'd love to hear your story.