Our Editorial Team

How we work

TeachEnglishOnline.org is a small editorial team. Every guide goes through a contributor → editor → fact-check pipeline before publishing, and we revisit each major article at least once a year to update platform information, prices and policy changes.

We are not affiliated with any TEFL provider, certification body or teaching platform. Where an article mentions specific products, see our affiliate disclosure.

Editorial standards

• Primary sources first. Pay rates and platform requirements come from the providers themselves — not from older blog posts.
• Teacher-tested. Lesson activities, classroom setups and tools are tried in real lessons before we publish.
• Transparent updates. Each guide shows a "last reviewed" date. Material changes get a changelog at the bottom of the page.
• No paid placement in core guides. Sponsored content — when it exists — is clearly labelled.

Contributors

Our regular contributors are working online English teachers with classroom experience across kids, adults, business and exam-prep niches. They write the practical sections of guides — equipment picks, classroom techniques, what platforms are really like to work for — based on lessons they actually deliver.

Want to contribute?

We accept pitches from teachers with verifiable online teaching experience (1+ year minimum) and a track record of clear writing. We pay flat fees per accepted article and credit you in the byline.

To pitch, email [email protected] with:

1. A short bio and certification details.
2. Two or three article ideas (one-paragraph each).
3. A link to something you've written before, if available.

Our publication cycle

We work in 4-week cycles rather than reactive publishing. Each cycle:

• Week 1: Topic selection and contributor briefs. New topics come from reader emails, search-trend data and gaps in our existing coverage.
• Week 2: Drafting. Contributors write from their own teaching experience plus verified primary sources.
• Week 3: Editorial review, fact-checking against current platform documentation and pay-rate data.
• Week 4: Publication, internal cross-linking, sitemap update. Quarterly review of older guides also happens in week 4.

This is intentionally slower than the SEO-content-mill cadence. The trade-off is fewer articles per year, but each one is substantially more reliable.

Contributor guidelines

If you want to write for us, here's what we look for and what we pay.

What we look for

• Verifiable online teaching experience. 1+ year minimum, with a profile, blog, podcast appearance or other public footprint we can check.
• A specific niche or angle. "I teach business English to Korean managers" is more interesting to readers than "I teach English online."
• Willingness to share real numbers. Pay rates, student counts, time investments — anonymised if you prefer, but specific. Articles with concrete numbers outperform vague ones by a wide margin.
• Clear writing. We edit, but we can't rescue text that needs to be rewritten from scratch.
• Willingness to update the piece annually when industry conditions shift. This is part of writing for us, not a one-time gig.

What we pay

Flat fees per accepted article, paid on publication. Rates vary with length and complexity (a 1,500-word "how to handle X" pays less than a 3,500-word original-data investigation). For the first pitch we accept from you, expect a rate in the lower end of our scale; if your work performs well and you write more for us, we adjust upward.

What we don't accept

• AI-generated drafts dressed up as original writing. We use AI for drafting; we won't pay for it.
• Articles primarily designed to drive affiliate revenue ("Top 10 platforms" written by someone employed by one of those platforms).
• Generic, evergreen-but-empty content ("5 Tips for Better Lessons"). We want specific.
• Plagiarised work, content with undisclosed AI sections, or anything we've already covered.

The pitch process

1. Email [email protected] with subject line "Pitch — [your topic in 8 words]".
2. Include 2–3 article ideas, one paragraph each, plus a link to your existing work and a one-line bio.
3. If we're interested, we reply within 5–10 business days with one of: (a) "Yes, go ahead with idea N at our rate of X", (b) "Maybe — can you tighten the angle?", or (c) "Not for us this time, with brief reasons".
4. You write a first draft within 3–4 weeks. We edit and may request revisions.
5. Publication, payment, byline. You retain the right to republish a shorter excerpt on your own site or LinkedIn with a link back.

How we test claims

For different types of content we use different verification approaches:

• Pay rates and commission structures: Cross-checked against the platform's current public documentation plus at least two recent teacher reports. Where the public doc and teacher reports disagree, we say so.
• Equipment recommendations: The contributor and at least one other team member must have used the product in actual teaching. We don't recommend gear from spec sheets alone.
• Lesson activities and techniques: Tested in real online lessons by working teachers, ideally across multiple student types, before publication.
• Certification course costs: Verified against the provider's website on publication day; flagged for re-verification quarterly.
• Industry trends and statistics: Sourced where possible from primary publications (Statista, British Council, EF, government education ministries). We cite the source in-line.

Corrections policy

Found an error or something out of date? Email us or use the contact form. Our corrections process:

• We acknowledge receipt within 1–2 business days.
• For factual errors (wrong pay rate, broken external link, outdated platform policy): typically fixed within a week. A short correction note is added to the article.
• For substantive errors (a recommendation that's no longer right because a platform changed materially): we may rewrite sections, with a visible "updated" note explaining what changed and why.
• We don't silently delete articles to look better. If something is too outdated to fix, we publish a clear retraction notice.

Conflicts of interest

Editorial team members and regular contributors disclose any financial relationship with platforms or providers they write about. If a contributor has been paid by a TEFL provider in the last 12 months, they don't write our comparisons of TEFL providers. If a team member teaches on a specific platform as their main income source, they don't lead our comparison coverage of that platform. These disclosures stay internal but inform who we assign what.