Alejandro1 comments on low stress employment/ munchkin income thread - Less Wrong

13 [deleted] 23 July 2013 09:22PM

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Comment author: Alejandro1 24 July 2013 12:00:15AM *  9 points [-]

Smarthinking pays about $12/hr for online tutoring work, done from home. For English, this implies reading essays of high school and college students and sending feedback according to highly standardized procedures that they train you in. ("Your essay should open with a thesis statement", etc.) They also do math, science and computer tutoring, but I know less about how they work. You choose how many hours a week you want to work and which hours (e.g., Monday 10-4) but they have to be the same each week (you are allowed skip some occasionally and just not get paid from them).

With 20 hrs/week it would only give about half of your targeted income, which might be too far. But if you think you'd find tutoring easy/fun and have problems finding customers out on your own (which would obviously pay more), you might give it or another company like it a try. (ETA: I think the company keeps for itself half of what the students pay, and certainly hiring a personal tutor must be more expensive than paying for anonymous, standardized online feedback. So getting a few students to hire you for personal lessons might give you enough to get close to your target. You would have to save for the summer though.)

Comment author: gwillen 25 July 2013 02:34:14AM 7 points [-]

I'm signed up with a tutoring outfit called InstaEDU that pays $20/hr for purely online tutoring. The hours are very irregular -- tutors make first-come first-served responses to student requests. And I find that, at least in CS, the students are often rather confused, at least to start. But their money's as green as anybody else's.

Comment author: Stefie_K 24 July 2013 01:56:59PM *  7 points [-]

I work for Smarthinking (also as a writing tutor), and it only pays $12/hour if you have a Ph.D. If you have a Master's degree, $11/hour; a Bachelor's, $10/hour.

For what it's worth, they are reliable in supplying work hours, which is nice, and the work isn't bad.

ETA: Although they advertise and accept applications year-round, I have a suspicion that they hire/train new people only during the summer. I have only extremely limited data on this point (myself and one other person who both applied in the fall to be hired in May), but it seems worth mentioning as a possibility to be aware of. Alejandro1, what was your experience?

Comment author: Alejandro1 24 July 2013 04:23:07PM 1 point [-]

It was my wife who worked for them for some time she was unemployed immediately after getting her PhD. She was hired and trained in the summer, too.

Comment author: lmnop 24 July 2013 03:57:22PM *  0 points [-]

Is the pay strictly by hours or by work produced? Is it possible to make more than $10-$12/hr by e.g. reading the essays faster?