Let's Talk Business.

Most of us EFL teachers have been working in roughly the same way for years. A full schedule of classes. Evenings spent correcting writing. Weekends preparing materials. Income tied directly to hours worked - and I do have a lot to say about how underpaid teachers are, but I’ll save that for another post...

And it is true that teaching, whether in a one-to-one setting or in front of a full class, follows a model that works. But only up to a point. There are only so many hours in a day and at some stage, growth stops. Not because there are no more students, but because there is no more time or energy.

What AI changes is not the profession itself, but this constraint. It creates small shifts in how work is done. And those small shifts can open up very different ways of working.

If you are too tired of doing the same work year after year, or feel that your work should be rewarded better, or you just feel it's time for some personal growth, then this post is for you -it certainly is for me.

Starting where you are

The first change is not dramatic. You are still teaching the same students, the same classes, the same exams. But instead of correcting everything yourself, you start using AI to handle part of the process. Writing correction is usually the easiest place to begin and it has been researched quite a bit in the past few years proving its pedagogical and learning worth -you can read some of our past blog posts but I'll share some new findings here as well.

So what can you expect at this level? Students submit their work. An AI tool identifies errors and generates feedback. You review it, adjust it where needed, and focus on the parts that actually require your expertise. This will save you hours each week, literally.

The difference is not just time saved. It is how that time feels.

Instead of spending hours correcting the same types of mistakes, you spend your time explaining, guiding, and helping students improve strategically. Research shows that this kind of combination — AI feedback together with teacher input — leads to better writing outcomes than either alone, because students receive both immediate correction and meaningful guidance.

In practice, this often means you recover a few hours every week. Not enough to change your life overnight, but enough to start thinking differently about your work.

What you can do with that time

This is where things start to shift. Some teachers use that extra time to take on a few more students. This is the most straightforward step. The work is familiar, just slightly expanded.

Others start teaching outside their local context. Online platforms have made it possible to teach students from different countries, often at higher rates than local markets allow. This is not new, but what AI changes is the preparation behind it. Lesson planning, materials, and feedback become faster to produce, which makes additional hours more manageable.

Here are some platforms for you to explore for this:

1. Preply

• Global platform with students in 190+ countries
• You set your own price and schedule
  👉 Best for: building a long-term online teaching business

2. italki

• One of the largest language tutoring marketplaces
• Teachers set their own rates and teach via video 
  👉 Best for: flexible teaching + serious learners

3. Cambly

• Focus on conversational English
• Very flexible (log in and start teaching)
  👉 Best for: quick entry / low barrier

4. Lingoda

• Structured lessons + group classes
• Often used by companies and adult learners
  👉 Best for: more structured, school-like teaching

There is also a quieter shift happening among teachers who work with writing. Instead of only correcting essays for their own students, they begin offering this as a service. Exam students — especially those preparing for IELTS or Cambridge — are willing to pay for detailed feedback. With AI handling the first layer of correction, it becomes possible to review more work in less time.

This is already reflected in research showing that automated feedback increases how often students revise their writing and engage with corrections. In other words, feedback itself becomes something that can scale.

Moving beyond hourly teaching

Can we, as teachers, create a passive income stream? The first time I heard a friend talk about a side hustle he had turned into passive income, I was baffled. What a strange idea. I was used to working at full capacity, with complete focus during my teaching hours, in order to get paid. There was nothing I could do, as a teacher, to earn income in a different way… until now. And this is where AI can act as a catalyst.

Instead of teaching the same lesson multiple times, you teach it once and turn it into something reusable. Boom! A writing course. A speaking program. A set of structured lessons for a specific exam.

This is where many teachers hesitate, because creating a course used to be time-consuming. Writing materials, designing exercises, building structure — it could take weeks. AI reduces that barrier. It can help generate examples, exercises, and variations. It does not replace your expertise, but it accelerates the process.

This is how some teachers begin to move from teaching hours → building something that exists independently of their time. Even a small course, sold to a limited number of students, can change how income feels. It is no longer tied entirely to how many hours you teach that week.

We've picked here some platforms for you to explore for this:

1. Teachable

• Very beginner-friendly
• Create your own branded school, upload videos, quizzes, etc.
• Used by 150,000+ creators and businesses
  👉 Best for: teachers starting their first course

2. Kajabi

• All-in-one: courses + website + email marketing
• Includes automation, funnels, memberships 
  👉 Best for: teachers building a full online business

3. Thinkific

• Similar to Teachable but more customizable
• Good for structured courses + scaling
  👉 Best for: teachers who want more control over design

4. Udemy

• Marketplace with 80M+ learners globally
• You don’t need your own audience
  👉 Best for: testing a course idea quickly

⚠️ Trade-off: platform controls pricing and takes a large share of revenue

Becoming more specialised

At the same time, AI is making general English practice easier to access.

Students can now:

• practice conversation with AI
• get instant grammar correction
• generate exercises on demand

This does not reduce the need for teachers. But it changes where teachers are most valuable.

The strongest opportunities are in areas where:

• strategy matters
• context matters
• outcomes matter

Exam preparation is one of them. Business English is another. Academic writing is another.

In these areas, students are not just looking for practice. They are looking for someone who understands the goal and can guide them towards it. AI can support this work, but it cannot replace it. And this is where many teachers start to reposition themselves — not as general English teachers, but as specialists.

A different kind of path

Next stop: product creation.

Some of us just begin to build small tools or systems for ourselves. A way to handle writing correction more efficiently. A structured lesson planning method. A set of reusable materials. Scaling assessments.

Sometimes these remain internal. Sometimes they become something bigger.

Many educational tools start exactly this way: a teacher solving their own problem, then realising others have the same one. This is not a path everyone will take, or a path to take alone. But it is becoming more accessible, because AI reduces the technical barrier to creating and testing ideas.

What actually changes

None of this happens overnight. There is no single moment when everything shifts. Instead, it is a series of small changes that begin with a shift in mindset: becoming open to considering, testing, trying, and re-evaluating. In practice, this may look like:

• saving a few hours
• using that time differently
• trying something new
• adjusting

Over time, those changes compound. The key shift is this:

You move from a model where your income depends entirely on your hours to one where your work can extend beyond them

AI is not the goal. It is simply a tool that makes this transition easier.

Final thought

For many EFL teachers, the current model feels fixed. Classes, corrections, limited time, limited income. But it is not fixed. There are already many colleagues working differently. Teaching fewer hours, earning more, reaching more students, building things that last beyond a single lesson.

The starting point is not a big decision. It is a small change in how you work today. And what you choose to do with the time that gives you.