Search Our FAQs

A: Yes. Anyone who is 18 or above.

A:

Currently you can create as many Courses as you like on our platform. We wouldn't encourage you to do so because it would become a mess for you in the first place. 

However, you can only ever have a maximum of 5 Single-session Courses and 5 Multi-session Courses activated at any one time. Whether they are listed or unlisted Courses, doesn't matter. This means that you can have a maximum of 10 Courses in total that are "available" for booking. 

Note i: You can only activate Courses that are moderated and approved by our Team.
Note ii: Your Course does not need to be moderated and approved by our Team when you simply duplicate it and set a different price. If you also update other fields, this Course might need to go back in the moderation queue for our Team to check it.

A: If you are a native English speaker, you can update your Student's English level to the level you think they currently have. Doing so, is recorded on the Student's Profile revision log for the team to check in case a mistake was made. When the Student has a higher English level than they had previously set on their own profile, the Student will be quite happy because it opens more doors for them. The opposite, however, is a bit tricky. If you decide to downgrade their English level, please discuss this with the Student first. If the Student has a certificate which shows an English level congruent with their settings on their profile, please do not do this. If they can't prove it and you feel that having this incorrect English level on their profile is disadvantageous for the Student themselves and for other Teachers as well, then go ahead and change it.

A: Good question. We always say: do the right thing, every time. We believe that doing the right thing is to ensure that you don't trick people, that you don't scam them, that you don't write any English mistakes (use an Ai to correct your English if necessary), that you don't create low quality, not in your text, not in your videos, not in your images or thumbnails. And what about knowledge? Who are we to judge you on your knowledge of the subject you want to teach? Do we need an expert on our team for every possible subject or topic who is "more" experienced than you? We don't think so. Besides, that would be simply impossible. And what about degrees? Some teachers who have degrees are terrible teachers. Others who don't have degrees are some of the best. Therefore moderation is not a matter of knowledge or degrees. It is a matter of quality, experience, and commitment. And we agree, that is a subjective matter. But if we can't find that in your Course, it won't be approved. We are 5StarTeachers after all, not "4.9-star Teachers". So live up to it! And if it does happen that your Course can't be approved, our moderator will leave a comment for you on your Course on how to fix it.

A:

You can activate a maximum of 5 Single-session Courses and 5 Multi-session Courses at any one time. This means that you can have a maximum of 10 Courses in total that are available for booking at any one time. Some or all of these Courses can be set to "Unlisted". If you choose that option, no one will find your Courses in our listing and search pages anymore.

A Strategy
You would choose to set all your Courses to "Unlisted" if you wanted to take 100% control of your own marketing efforts. This means, that you will have to share your Course links with your potential audience, e.g. on your social accounts. It could be a useful strategy to some 5StarTeachers who are, for example famous or have become too popular on the platform.

Note i: You can only activate Courses that are moderated and approved by our Team.
Note ii: If you don't have enough "Available Sessions" for the next 30 days, all your Courses will automatically be deactivated and you will be notified of that. In that case, simply add more available Sessions and activate your Courses again at the click of a button.

A: Duplicating a Course is the easiest way to create a copy of an already approved Course. But you must select a different price. All Courses collect data so it's wise to not modify your Course but duplicate it and modify the duplicate instead. That way, you can easily do A/B testing. When you update certain fields on any approved Course, it will go back into moderation. The updated fields that will send your Course back into moderation are: - the title - the tag line - the subject - the Course type (if not Subject-only Course anymore) - the audience - the skill tags - the topic tags - the category - the English description - the English summary - any external links - any images - your own specific T&C (unless it's now blank) - your Course Intro Video

A: Of course. For some types of Courses, books are simply indispensable. If you are going to use a book to teach your Student, there are fields on your Course where you can upload a picture that "you" took of the book cover, where you can set the title and the ISBN of the book. Do mention in your description that having the book is a requirement, if you need them to own this book as well. This is a great strategy to attract more Students who are familiar with this book. Note: Uploading a picture you have taken of the a book cover and posting it here on your Course for the purpose of teaching and to encourage your Student to buy the book, is generally considered "fair use" under the copyright law.

A:

Oure Teachers are the heart of our platform and we want them to be in control as much as possible of who can book their Courses. 

Therefore our Teachers can set their own audience requirements on their Courses as follows:
1. a required minimum English level,
2. a required Student level, and
3. a required gender

Any Student who does not meet any of these requirements, cannot book your Course.

Why is this so?
To avoid disappointment and to keep it fair. 

Minimum English level
By default the minimum English level set on every Course is "Beginner" but you, the Teacher, can change it as you like. If the Student can't speak your native language and can't speak English at a level that you require for this Course, that would be a serious problem if we allowed that. We want to avoid this at all costs.

Student level
By default the Student level is set to "adult". If you want to teach under 18s (kids), you must upload a valid Certificate of Good Conduct (CGC) on your Teacher profile and have it approved by our team. Your CGC is kept private but the Student will see a check mark so they understand that we have approved your CGC. Your CGC must be issued within the last 6 months as of the current date.

Say you wanted to specifically teach Students of a particular Student Level e.g. Primary 6 because you want to teach them English in preparation for their English Secondary School Interview, that should be possible. When you set it to be this level, only Students who have set that level on their profile will be able to book your Course.

Gender
By default the gender for your Course is set to "any" but let's say that you only wanted to teach "female" Students, you'd then set it to "female any". Then Students who are males, cannot access or book your Course. And if you only wanted to teach people from the LGB community, you'd set it to LGB.
Explore all options on our platform.

We strongly believe that no one should be forced to teach people of a particular gender, accept any English level or Student level. And conversely, no one should be forced to learn from a Teacher if they do not agree with them based on gender, language, degrees, expertise, ideologies, skills or abilities. We built this platform for it to be ethical and fair. And that's how it should be if we want you to have the happiest and best possible experience in learning, improving and growing.

 

A: Yes, you can. And you probably should. When you are logged in as an approved 5StarTeacher, go to your "Available Courses" and click the "Request This" button for a Course, it will automatically create a Request for you and bring you to the Request update page where you should modify a few settings. Make sure to create a GREAT Request title. For example: "Help me learn English for becoming a cabin crew". The Student level and the minimum English level is automatically set to match your Course. Once you set your Request to "Ready to go!", it will go live (published) and your Course will be connected to your Request so that Students can find your Course here as well and book it if they are interested. When a Student sees a Request in which they are interested, they can 'star' that Request and once you connect your Course to that Request, everyone who has 'starred' this Request will be notified via email. Note i: every Request is anonymous and can't be updated once it has been published.

A:

To avoid disappointment on both sides, we introduced the "accepted commitments" select options. From experience as Teachers, we often made the mistake to expect our Students to have a high commitment towards their Course but it turned out that they didn't have that kind of commitment (because we never asked them). So we were often very disappointed and so were our Students. 

Students who agree to a "casual" commitment are not likely to be coachable or willing to be pushed to work harder, follow through or improve by their Teacher or Coach. Their goals or intentions are not bad, just different. So to have both sides on the same page from the start, these "Accepted Commitments" will show the Student what level of commitment the Teacher expects from the Student. And this should result in a long lasting Teacher-Student relationship which is beneficial for both parties. You can set multiple "Accepted Commitments" as a strategy to reach a larger audience if you are willing to accept these commitments. During the Course booking, Students will need to select one of your "Accepted Commitments" in order to book this Course with you successfully.

Good to know: Students can search Courses based on the "Accepted Commitments"

A:

Since this is an online platform, we refer to the "Classroom Option" as the video call method.

You have to set at least 1 "Classroom Option" on every Course that you activate.
Use a "Classroom Option" that you are familiar with and love using.

Currently you can choose from the following:
- Zoom,
- FaceTime,
- macOS Screen Sharing,
- Google Meet,
- MS Teams, and
- StreamYard.

When a Student books your Course, they can only select 1 Classroom Option from the ones you have set.
You can choose to share your screen sharing but our recommendation for "screen sharing" is Zoom.
Note that you, the Teacher, must have a paid subscription with Zoom in order to teach 1-hour Sessions. You can set multiple "Classroom Options" as a strategy to reach a larger audience if you are willing to use these Classroom Options.

Good to know:
Students can search Courses based on these Classroom Options.

A:

Yes, you can offer a Course free of charge but only for a limited number of times.

On the Course edit page, add your own coupon code in the field "Free Course Coupon Code". This works only for Single-session Courses.

Case:
Imagine you've set a coupon code on your Single-session Course. Your coupon code must be a string of characters without spaces. You activate this Course and then promote it in your social circles with a link to the Course and the coupon code. A potential customer saw your social post and decides to click the link. They arrive at your Course page and there they click the "Book now" button which sends them to the Course booking page. There they have to "click the plus icon", at the top right of the page, to enter the coupon code you posted. When they finalise the booking process, as per usual, there will be no payment and their Course becomes immediately active. They can now book a Session for this Course by booking one of your Available Sessions.

Note i: The Student can book this Course for free only once. If they bought this Course before and paid for it, they can still book this one for free using the correct coupon code.
Note ii: if you don't want to offer this Course anymore for free, simply edit your Course and remove the "Free Course Coupon Code".

A: Added Value posts or AV posts, are very similar to articles or blog posts you see on the Internet but this time they contain 5-star value because they are created by a 5StarTeacher. Yay! Each approved 5StarTeacher can create 12 of those in a year. They function similar to the Course creation so that you can set a video, maximum 4 translations, downloadable files and also audio bits that play right in the AV post. The Added Value Video is a regular YouTube video link from your own YouTube account and needs to fulfil a few requirements. AV posts are publicly available, searchable via our AV post listing pages and will be picked up by search engines. You can (and should) attach a Course of yours that you wish to push. It will show up as a Course Ad. Pretty cool, huh? Note i: if you add a downloadable file, you can check how many people have actually downloaded your file so far. To do so: click the "?" to the right of the download button. Note ii: The downloadable file is very handy if you are mentioning "a free download" in your YouTube video. You know, when YouTubers say things like "Click the link in the description below to download the free file."

A:

Absolutely!

Case:
Imagine you are a money managing expert and you have created a spreadsheet that is rather complex but super useful and that you believe all your Students would want. In such a case you would upload that file which becomes immediately available for download once the Student bought that specific Course, i.e. paid in full.

Look for "course files" on the Course edit page.
You can easily use this as a marketing strategy and attract many people to buy your Course.

A:

Yes you can and you should!

We built a 100% transparent feature for you to cooperate with Influencers so that you can get exposure in their circles, i.e. a market in which you currently have no connections. You don't need to be the marketing expert. Let others do that for you and focus on what you do best, that's our suggestion.

Here are the steps: 

1. Find yourself an Influencer and negotiate their reward. 5StarTeachers will not interfere in your negotiations with them or dictate how much they should be paid or what they should get. That is totally up to the both of you.
2. Edit your Course and find the field "Coupon Codes from Influencers". There are 2 values you have to enter: the first is the agreed upon Coupon Code, the second is the email address of the Influencer, in this order. Both the Coupon Code and the Influencer's email address are never shown on the Course or anywhere on the platform.
3. Save your Course, it automatically becomes "unlisted" which means that only people with the link can see it. And if they are a registered Student, they can book it IF they book it with the correct coupon code from the Influencer. 
4. Suppose they booked it correctly, both the Teacher and the Influencer get an email that it was successfully booked. 
5. And when the Teacher decides to take the Course offline (deactivate), the Influencer gets notified of this as well. And therefore this is 100% transparent to both the Teacher and Influencer.
6. Explain this to your Influencer and we are sure they'll love it because it's so easy.

 

Good to know about Coupon Codes from Influencers

Courses can have multiple influencer email addresses and coupon codes.

If you had set a Free Course Coupon Code to offer Students a free Single-session Course and you add Coupon Codes from Influencers, your Free Course Coupon Code will be removed automatically.

Case:

You have a "listed" Single-session Course that you offer at the regular price of USD 100. To work together with an influencer, you "duplicate" this Course and set the Course price on the duplicate to USD 50, for example. You add the Influencer's email address and the agreed upon coupon code and save it. This Course duplicate is now exactly the same except that it is now available at USD 50. It is also "unlisted" and only bookable with the coupon code from the Influencer. When the Influencer can successfully influence people in their circles to book and buy your Course via the link and the coupon code, they have now bought the Course at a 50% discount because everyone else is paying USD 100. 

The reason why you should duplicate your Course, is so that you can always compare the data between the two Courses, the one with the coupon code and the one without, or in case you just wanted to try out a different price for a specific Course without coupon code or influencer. We wanted our Teachers to be able to keep their Course data to analyse their marketing efforts at any time so they can adjust based on data.

 

A:

Sure.

Case:
Imagine you are a native Spanish speaker and so is your Student and let's say you are an expert in finance. You can choose to teach in Spanish, of course. Why not?

Case:
Imagine you wanted to teach French to Students whose mother tongue is Japanese. That should be possible. But do make sure to set a "required minimum English level" on your Course to ensure your Japanese Student can communicate with you in case they can't express themselves enough in French. There must always be a common language for you to communicate with your Students. And as a 5StarTeacher, this is YOUR responsibility.

Good to know:
When Students sign up on our platform, they must set their own English level.
Also, you can add up to 4 language translations of your Course description on your Course page to attract Students who speak those languages. Another great marketing strategy.

A:

Case Student:
Imagine you are the mother of an 8-year-old girl and you want your daughter to learn English but ONLY from a "female" native English teacher. That should be possible and so in order to make that possible, we have to ask you, the Teacher, for your biological gender.

Case Teacher:
Imagine you are a female Teacher and you only wanted to teach "women". That should be possible too and so in order to make that possible, you can set a required gender on your Courses so that only people with that gender can see and buy your Course. This way, you can't be disappointed. We believe that is but fair and provides REAL value for both the Student and the Teacher.

Note: We do not explicitly show anyone's gender on the platform, it's only used through search filters.

A:

Sure.

We want you, the Teacher, to have full control about who can see and book your Courses and a lot more features that will help you create your own strategy, your own audience and niche market in this marketplace so that you can stand out and teach the people you really love teaching.

Why would you be forced to teach people you don't like? To us, that doesn't make any sense.
Let's change that, shall we?

A:

Good question!

Our platform allows each Teacher to create different marketing strategies for each Course. The first and foremost thing is to create each Course with 5-star content: a great Course Introduction Video, description, title, tag line, tags, images, video thumbnail, etc.

Besides that, you can:

1. Create a Course Request from your own Course
2. Create an Added Value article and connect your Course to that so it will show up as an "ad" on the AV article.
3. Provide a downloadable Course file. Then, once they pay, they can instantly download that file.
4. In your Course description mention that you create specific tailor-made files for your Students when they buy the Course. Examples are: "audio recordings", "voice recordings", "downloadable files" e.g. code, calculations, spreadsheets, etc.
5. In your Course description mention that "you" take the notes for your Student. Then, they can just watch, interact with you and review their notes any time after their Session.
6. Use the default required settings for your audience so that you target the largest audience possible: Student level, English level, gender, etc.
7. Set your required commitment to all commitments
8. Set your classroom options to the most popular ones e.g. Zoom, Google Meet, MS Teams, etc.
9. Work together with Influencers: set the Influencer's coupon code and their email on your Course (these are never shown to anyone) They will do the marketing for you in return for an agreed deal you have with them.
10. Provide a Single-session Course free of charge: set "your own coupon code" in order to do that. Then market this Course with the coupon code in your circles.

A:

1. show us that you are a teacher at heart
2. show us that you truly care
3. show us that you are passionate about the things you want to teach, coach or advise on
4. show us that you have substantial experience in the field of what you want to teach, coach or advise on
5. be at least 18 years old
6. have at least a lower-intermediate English level
7. have a Linkedin profile (private info)
8. your bank details to receive payments (private info)
9. your phone number (private info)
10. add a quality profile picture
11. add a quality Personal Introduction Video (PIV)
12. add a quality Course Introduction Video (CIV)

Note: To teach under 18s (kids), you must have a Certificate of Good Conduct (CGC) issued by your local Police within the last 6 months. (private info)