13 Best Side Hustles for Teachers to Make Extra Money: Being a teacher is incredibly rewarding, but let’s be honest – the pay isn’t always as great as it should be. That’s why so many teachers are looking for side hustles or any other part-time jobs to increase their income and achieve their financial goals.
Whether you want to pay off debt, save for a dream vacation, or even you want to switch your career to running your own business full-time, there are many fantastic money-making opportunities for teachers.
As you are a teacher, so there are incredible ways of making money from side hustles that perfectly suit you.
Maybe you want some extra money to splurge on life’s luxuries. Or perhaps you have goals of becoming an entrepreneur.
Whatever your motivations may be, these 13 fantastic side hustles prove you don’t have to be chained to your teacher’s salary. You can leverage your teaching talents, experience, and passion to supercharge your income!
Here are 13 Best Side Hustles for Teachers to Make Extra Money
- Online Teaching/Tutoring
- Teachers Pay Teachers Store
- Coaching & Consulting
- Start a YouTube Channel
- Teach on Outschool
- Become an Influencer
- Freelance Work
- Create Online Courses
- Start a Membership Site
- Sell Physical Products
- User Generated Content Creation
- Blogging
- Affiliate Marketing
1. Online Teaching/Tutoring
It should come as no surprise that online teaching and tutoring top the list of money-making side gigs for educators. As a teacher, instructing others can be the easiest job for you! Why not get paid extra to do it virtually?
There are tons of companies like VIPKID, QKids, Outschool, and more where you can easily leverage your classroom skills to teach English, math, science, test prep, and any other subject area you desire. The best part? You can earn a very respectable $20-$80+ per hour teaching from anywhere on your schedule.
2. Teachers Pay Teachers Store
If you’re already working hard to create innovative lessons, activities, and teaching materials for your students, why not get paid for all that work?
Setting up a Teachers Pay Teachers storefront allows you to sell your brilliant resources like lesson plans, worksheets, classroom decor, and more to teachers around the globe.
The brilliant part about TpT is that once you put in the upfront effort of creating your materials, they can go on generating passive income for months and years to come! No extra work is required beyond your initial investment of time. It’s like getting paid to do what you’re already doing.
3. Coaching and Consulting
With all those years of hard-earned teaching experience under your belt, you have extremely valuable knowledge and insight that others are willing to pay for.
Coaching and consulting provide an incredible side hustle allowing you to share your expertise with parents looking for academic support, teachers needing classroom management and curriculum planning guidance, students wanting an edge on standardized tests, and so much more.
Whether you offer one-on-one coaching sessions or group workshops and seminars, this side business allows you to name your own rates and operate entirely on your schedule. The world is in desperate need of talented teachers’ perspectives!
4. Start a YouTube Channel
There’s a reason why so many teachers have found wild success by starting their own YouTube channels lately. With YouTube, you can share your teaching talents and expertise with the entire world through helpful educational videos. As you build up an audience of engaged followers, the money-making opportunities become endless.
From generating advertising revenue through YouTube’s Partnership Program to scoring lucrative sponsorships and collaborations, the top teacher influencers on YouTube earn thousands per month. Not to mention, your YouTube channel provides the perfect platform for marketing other teaching products and services you might offer.
5. Teach on Outschool
Speaking of the creator economy, Outschool has emerged as an outstanding platform for entrepreneurial teachers to share their skills with students everywhere. With Outschool, you get to be the boss and teach live virtual classes or pre-recorded courses for any subject area you can dream up – from hieroglyphics to hip-hop dance.
Set your own schedule, create your own pricing, and get paid after every enrollment. No more waiting around for those monthly teacher paychecks! Outschool makes it easy to start earning nearly instantly by doing what you love most.
6. Become an Influencer
Are you a social media savvy teacher killing it on Instagram, TikTok and the latest channels? You could be sitting on a goldmine as an influencer!
By building up an engaged following of teachers, parents, students and brands in the education space, you can start earning cash money simply by promoting products and services you genuinely love and believe in.
The world of influencer marketing offers endless opportunities to strike brand partnership deals, negotiate sponsorships, join affiliate programs, and more. With creativity and a knack for producing fun, engaging content, you’ll be cashing in big time on those like, shares and follows!
7. Freelance Work
One of the most flexible and lucrative ways for teachers to generate extra income is to put their valuable skills to work as freelancers. Thanks to the rise of remote work and the gig economy, there’s an extremely high demand for freelance services in areas like writing, editing, proofreading, graphic design, web design, virtual assisting, and more.
What skills do you have outside of your teaching duties that could be monetized? With a bit of hustle, you can find freelance clients and projects on platforms like Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer that will gladly pay you to put your skills to work for them around your teaching schedule.
8. Create Online Courses
Imagine taking all that knowledge in your brain and turning it into a passive income stream you can earn from over and over again. That’s exactly what teachers around the world are doing by creating and selling online courses through websites like Udemy, Coursera, and Skillshare.
While it does require an upfront investment of time to create video lessons, slide decks, worksheets, quizzes, and other course materials, the payoff comes from potentially earning money forever after that initial effort. Whether you teach creative writing, data analytics, public speaking or anything else, there’s an audience of eager students ready to enroll!
9. Start a Membership Site
A step beyond just offering a course, creating a membership website allows you to build a true community around your area of expertise while generating recurring revenue. As the site owner, you get to call the shots and give members access to resources, coaching, discussion forums, live Q&As, and anything else you can dream up – all in exchange for a monthly or annual membership fee.
Whether you provide teaching materials or a steady stream of personal/professional development content, a membership site is the ultimate way to monetize your knowledge and insights by providing massive value. Not to mention, it’s extremely rewarding to build a loyal community around your passions!
10. Sell Physical Products
You don’t have to be limited to just selling your expertise and skills – teachers are also crushing it by creating and selling physical products! If you’re the creative type, this side hustle allows you to tap into those talents by designing and selling branded merchandise like t-shirts, tote bags, mugs, stickers, posters, flashcards and more.
Thanks to the internet and easy-to-use selling platforms like Etsy and Amazon, you can run your very own e-commerce business without the hassle of holding inventory. As your products and brand grow in popularity among teachers, parents and students, those profit margins just keep on increasing!
11. User Generated Content Creation
These days, many savvy side hustlers are turning their social media skills into income by offering gigs as user-generated content (UGC) creators for brands and companies. From taking beautiful product imagery for Instagram to filming tutorial videos or writing creative product reviews, UGC services are in high demand.
This is an awesome opportunity for teachers with a knack for social media, photography, videography and creative writing. Many UGC creators earn between $100-$200 per piece of brand content they create!
12. Blogging
Have a passion for teaching that extends far beyond the classroom? Why not share it with the world through blogging? Starting a blog allows you to build an audience by sharing your teaching tips, insights, subject area knowledge, classroom ideas, and more through a steady stream of articles.
While it does take time and consistency to build up an audience, blogging provides all sorts of lucrative income avenues like paid advertising, affiliate marketing, sponsorships, and selling digital products like ebooks and courses. It can start as a side hustle but turn into your main gig over time!
13. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing deserves a spot on any list of rewarding side hustles for teachers. This income strategy involves earning a commission by promoting other companies’ products or services through your blog posts, videos, email newsletters and social media content.
The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you can monetize your audience by promoting things you truly value, while also giving your followers access to valuable resources. Many top affiliate marketers operating in the education space earn thousands per month just by sharing recommendations!
Final Thoughts
No matter which freelance services you offer, getting paid for putting your skills to work on your terms is a beautiful thing. With a bit of hustle, you can find clients on platforms like Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer to fill that income void left by your teaching salary.
There you have it – a baker’s dozen incredible money-making opportunities perfectly suited for educators looking to boost their income through side hustles and entrepreneurship! The key is finding a hustle that excites your passions, utilizes your skills, and energizes you to put in the work.
With so many fantastic options, there’s something for every interest and experience level.
