AmazingTalker
Price:
From around $10 per 50-minute class
Summary
AmazingTalker is an italki and Verbling competitor that lets you book classes with language teachers and academic tutors of your choice. It has a lot of attractive features for students, but teachers complain about high commission rates and lack of support. It boasts a 3% acceptance rate for teachers and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. If you’re not happy with your class, they’ll rebook you another one for free. There are lots of teachers to choose from, or you can also use their AI Matching Service to find a tutor. The teachers’ profiles include videos, reviews, and their résumé. However, AmazingTalker doesn’t seem a great choice for teachers. It charges English and Japanese teachers astonishingly high commission rates of up to 30%. While these rates fall as teachers earn more through the site, they have to make $1,500 a month before the commission reaches levels comparable to italki and Verbling. Making it worse, there’s an additional 8% fee for payment processing and tax that all teachers have to pay, no matter what language they teach. There have also been complaints on Reddit from teachers claiming to have been harassed by students and fellow teachers. However, we cannot corroborate these. Given all this, we’d recommend trying italki (review) or Verbling (review) first. Alternatively, check out our guide to the best platforms for online language classes.
This is just wrong on so many levels. One-side review from someone who couldn’t figure out how things work, and too lazy to actually invest their time to figure it out. Young entitled American?
If you worked 76 hours, the your fees would’ve been reduced about 15%. At 180 hours, fees are ZERO.
Never sign up on the AmazingTalker platform, you will waste time and earn almost nothing.
My opinion as a teacher on AmazingTalker: The worst platform I know. I have never seen a platform as bad, disrespectful of its teachers and as greedy as the AmazingTalker teaching platform. The fees are way too high. Including all the fees charged by Amazing Talker, it is at least 40% of the amount of the lessons that you charge your students. They recommend charging $15 per 50-minute lesson and they take 40% of this $15, so you don’t have much left. In addition, they charge $25 for any money transfer to your bank account.
Transfers are paid in the form of AT credit. A credit is worth $1. If you request a bank transfer on the 2nd of the current month, you will receive your money on the 15th. Time for them to invest your money and make it grow. In the meantime, you are starving because you need this money and there is no way to speed up the payment.
In addition, AT offers new teachers to take a mentor, this mentor who is none other than a teacher who has more experience than you is normally there to help you increase your income on the platform by giving you advice. It is true that you need advice because the website and the AT system are extremely complicated to understand. You will spend hours or even days understanding how it works. As I told you, the mentor you are going to choose is there to supposedly accompany you. This is actually not the case at all. He only sends a few messages where you will find useless advice for you and it must take him 5 minutes a day at most. This mentor receives 3% of your monthly income. You are the one who pays the 3%.
As for customer support for students or teachers (the name is redundant because there is no human support), only a robot/AI stupidly answers you what it was told to say.
The worst thing is that AmazingTalker is similar to modern slavery. To communicate with potential future students, there is a matching system. AmazingTalker’s algorithms put you in touch with a student if you match the latter’s wishes. The problem is that several teachers receive this match. The first one who responds gets the contact and can communicate with the student. You have to react very quickly, in just a few seconds. It’s very stressful. The matches are sent at any time of the day or night on your computer and on the AT application that you have to install on your phone. At night I sleep, I don’t care about these numerous notifications that I receive at all hours. The problem is that if you don’t respond to notifications, you get backlisted very quickly and you will receive much less matches.
I worked 76 hours last month, I only received 457 USD in income – 25 USD in fees for the bank transfer, which is a pittance.
In short, the time you will spend creating your profile, the time you will spend messaging potential future students who very rarely register, all this expenditure of time and energy is absolutely not worth registering on this platform. I closed my account and I hope they go bankrupt one day.