Another month and another year coming to a close. Preply sent me an end of year email that tracked some of my stats for the year, if you can believe these numbers I am in the top:

• 7% for lessons taught.

• 4% for booked trials.

• 5% for profile views.

• 18% for active students.

• 6% for total earnings.

That last one means that 94% of tutors are making less than me, that is not good news for them.

I will not be scheduling any personal time off for x-mas, I have a tradition of working on the holidays, and this year I have students from all over the world, many of which do not celebrate x-mas or do so differently. So far my schedule for next week looks a little light, but only a little.

During December I had my Super Tutor badge again and started to get enquiries and trial lessons trickling in. January 1 is when they switch to the 60% conversion to student stat (from 50%). It was looking good for me, up until yesterday, I had a student that was definitely ready to sign up and did so, however, he created a new account and booked another trial lesson because Preply had a special discount for masters degree students. Great deal for him, but for me, this unfortunately means that I taught 2 free trial lessons and only got 50% for the conversion to student, I may still squeak by, it will be close though.

Oddly enough my wife actually saw my profile in a random Preply ad on Facebook. I see it myself from time to time as well, just weird to see.

I think the new year is a good time to raise my rates a little for incoming students and finally bump my original students up as well, I only have 3 of those left, so I will probably discuss it with them and finish out the lessons they already paid for, usually that’s 1 month of lessons.

I believe I have optimized this niche about as much as is possible, I’m going to experiment a little but to make better money on Preply I suspect that I would need to change what I teach, acquire loads of certifications, or both. Probably not worth it.

The students have been great, some of the conversations have been thought provoking and informative. It’s great to see people gain confidence in their speaking so quickly with just some simple guided practice with feedback. My personal speaking skills have improved, my advanced vocabulary usage is coming back slowly, after many years of being suppressed and neglected.

Looking forward to another year of tutoring on Preply