Homeschool teachers play a vital role in ensuring that every child receives a well-rounded, high-quality education. You’ll dramatically improve the quality of life of children who either aren't able to attend school in person or need additional educational support.
What's more, homeschool teaching is a varied and interesting career. Every day will be different as you help children overcome unique challenges and develop their creative, logical and social skills.
There’s more to a career than just your salary. However, you might be surprised by just how much you can earn as a homeschool teacher, especially if you have an entrepreneurial spirit. In addition to your standard teaching fees, there are several ways you can create add-on services and additional income streams.
7 Tried-and-Tested Ways to Maximize Your Homeschool Teacher Salary
Each of these seven methods allows you to earn additional money from the skills, know-how and resources you already have. Some require more time and effort than others, while some are more lucrative than others. However, they are all viable ways to increase your homeschool teacher salary.
1. Teach Multiple Children at the Same Time
Some children may require one-to-one attention due to more complex educational needs. Others may live in more isolated locations that mean it's impossible for them to share classes.
That said, many families may be interested in small group classes for their children in exchange for a reasonable discount on your rate. By teaching three or four children at a time, you could simultaneously offer parents more affordable prices while increasing your hourly income.
This model can also provide you with greater financial security and stability. If one child drops out, you can still maintain the class and soften the financial hit. Similarly, if one of your students is off sick for the week, you won't have to cancel all your classes.
2. Offer Premium Services
While our first technique involves offering a lower-value but more profitable service, this method involves creating a higher-value service that's priced to match. The services you can offer will depend on your skill sets and resources. However, your options could include:
- Foreign language classes, e.g. Japanese or Arabic
- Early morning and weekend classes
- The use of specialist teaching equipment, e.g. software designed to help children with dyslexia improve their reading skills
3. Create Homeschooling Add-Ons
Learning doesn't just happen in the classroom, or in this case, in the home. You can create a range of additional services, such as trips to museums to supplement history or natural science classes, visits to see plays performed in the theater or educational day trips to the local forest to support your biology classes.
Your aim here is to supplement your students’ education with valuable activities while also increasing your per-child and per-family income.
It's up to you whether you charge more, less or the same rate for these add-ons as you do for your teaching. Our recommendation is that you carefully evaluate how much time you need to spend preparing for them, as well as the additional value they offer for your students and their families.
4. Sell Digital Versions of Your Teaching Materials
You no doubt have a large collection of teaching resources that you've made yourself, from exercise sheets and quizzes to homework activities and learner-friendly explanations of algebra 101.
Since you've already invested time and effort in creating this, why not maximize their value by selling digital versions online to other teachers? Websites such as Teachers Pay Teachers give you an easy way to sell your resources and boost your home teaching salary.
This is the easiest option on our list, but it can be surprisingly profitable. You're unlikely to see a major salary increase in the first month, but it can generate additional income for years to come.
5. Monetize a Blog with Homeschooling Tips
Unlike our last tip, this one requires a significant upfront investment of time and money. However, it can be worth the effort.
Parents who are homeschooling, along with other homeschool teachers, will often turn to the web for suggestions on everything from creating a balanced curriculum to explaining Pythagoras’ theorem. And you, as an experienced and qualified homeschool teacher, can be a voice of expertise.
Becoming a blogger or social media influencer isn't easy. You’ll have to spend time creating and promoting blog posts. Despite that, the income from ads can be a valuable addition to your homeschool teacher salary.
6. Create a Monetized YouTube Channel with Homeschooling Activities and Homework
If you're comfortable teaching through a screen, why not create and publish mini-lessons on YouTube?
Recording, editing, publishing and promoting videos can be time-consuming, but YouTube offers an easy way to monetize your content. Plus, you might also get inbound queries for online classes, making it a win-win situation.
7. Raise Your Rates
The most effective way to improve your homeschool teacher salary is to ensure that you raise your rates on an annual basis by at least the same amount as inflation. Raising rates can be off-putting, especially if you suffer from imposter syndrome or simply know that the families you work with will struggle to pay more. However, your teaching costs and experience level increase every year, and you deserve to be compensated accordingly.
There are several potential ways to raise your rates:
Raise Rates for New Students
Some homeschool teachers prefer to only charge new students their higher rates. This method works well if you have a steady stream of new clients.
Increase Rates for Current Students
If you've been teaching the same children for a long time, then at some point you will need to raise your rates. Wait at least a year before doing so, and don't raise rates during the school year, otherwise families may feel trapped into continuing with your services. Instead, let families know at the end of the school year that your new rate will apply from September onwards.
Attract Higher-Paying Homeschooling Work with an Impressive Resume
As a homeschool teacher, you have plenty of things to do: creating lesson plans and resources, marking homework, meeting with parents and guardians and marketing your services. Drafting an excellent resume could seem like a waste of time that could be better spent teaching.
However, a polished and professional homeschool teaching resume will help you attract new and potentially higher-paying clients, whether they’re families or teaching agencies. Your resume needs to highlight your teaching skills, qualifications and experiences. It should also be visually attractive and easy to read for humans and machines alike.
Fortunately, it takes less time than you might think to write a compelling resume. Our resume templates for homeschool teachers will help you get started. You can use our resume builder to help you customize them to your professional background. It will suggest the ideal structure based on your experience, along with recruiter-approved phrasing for homeschool teaching skill sets.
You can craft your resume in just ten minutes, so build your resume now.