7 Flexible Side Jobs for Teachers to Earn Extra Money
Someone’s already told you “must be nice, you get summers off” this year. Probably more than once.
I’ve never taught a class, so I can’t relate to the rest of it — the parent emails, the grading that follows you home every night. What I can do is tell you straight which side jobs for teachers are actually worth an hour you don’t have, and which ones are just extra work with a nicer name.
TL;DR: The best second jobs for teachers don’t ask you to build a new skill from scratch. Selling resources and online tutoring have the lowest barrier to entry. Freelance and curriculum work pay better per hour but take longer to build. Anything asking for money upfront before you’ve made a cent isn’t on this list for a reason.
1. Sell your lesson plans as digital resources
Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) is the obvious one — upload worksheets, units, or slide decks you’ve already made, and other teachers buy them. Here’s the part that doesn’t get said enough: “free” is almost never free. TPT’s basic seller account has a one-time, non-refundable setup fee, and it only pays out just over half of what you sell. The premium tier costs an annual subscription on top — but pays out a much bigger share per sale with lower transaction fees. (Yes, I checked. The “free” account isn’t really a starting point, it’s a demo of what you’d get if you paid.)
If your worksheets look like everyone else’s worksheets, this one’s a hard sell — literally. It only works if your materials would take another teacher longer to make than to buy.
2. Tutor Online — One of the Better Remote Second Jobs for Teachers
Outschool is the platform that comes up most for teachers specifically, since it doesn’t require formal certification — just subject knowledge and the ability to run an engaging class. Listing costs nothing upfront, a genuinely free starting point for once. Outschool takes a straightforward cut of every enrollment and pays out the rest.
It’s not the cost that gets you here, it’s the consistency: you’re competing with a global pool of educators, and enrollments come from steady listing, not one class posted and forgotten about. It’s still one of the more realistic remote second jobs for teachers, since the whole thing happens on a screen. If you’d rather stay phone-only, this isn’t the one for you — the side jobs you can actually run from just your phone are a different list, and tutoring platforms really do want a laptop and a decent camera.
3. Freelance write or take curriculum contracts
If live teaching over a webcam isn’t your version of a good evening, the same expertise works just as well written down. Teachers write constantly — lesson plans, parent emails, rubrics, reports. That’s a transferable skill most people never think to sell. WeAreTeachers pays for guest posts if you want to start with something teacher-native, and Edutopia takes pitches from pre-K–12 educators across any subject if you’d rather write for a bigger education audience — neither pays like a second income, but both are real. If you are interested in knowing others ways to earn extra money . I’ve written about that too in 8 Passive Income Jobs For Beginners.
Neither one requires a portfolio to pitch — Edutopia says so outright, first-time writers welcome. The real catch is pace and odds, not access: they turn down plenty of good pitches simply because of volume, and pay per piece won’t replace a paycheck. Treat this as a slow-building credibility project, not quick cash.
4. Summer School: The Simplest Answer to How To Make more money as a Teacher
If you’d rather stay inside a system you already know than pitch anyone on anything, this is the honest answer to “how do teachers make money in the summer”: your own district likely runs summer school, credit recovery, or enrichment programs and needs certified teachers to staff them. You already know the paperwork. Applying usually just means asking your district’s HR office.
The honest catch — this is the option that looks easiest on paper and burns people out fastest, since it’s the same job wearing a different hat, with none of the break summer was supposed to be.
5. Score standardized tests for Pearson or ETS
If you’d rather get paid by a company than pitch one, testing season is its own quiet hiring window. Pearson and ETS both bring on remote scorers every year — grading AP exams, state assessments, English-proficiency tests, all against a fixed rubric someone else already wrote. No pitching. No client. Just you, a rubric, and several hundred essays.
Most listings want a bachelor’s degree. Teaching experience usually moves you to the front of the line.
The catch is timing, not effort. Hiring windows follow the testing calendar — mostly February through July. And scorers who’ve done it say the same thing: it gets repetitive fast, the same item over and over against the same rubric. Fine if that doesn’t bother you.
6. Offer local test prep or tutoring
Not everything on this list has to run through a platform. SAT, ACT, and state-test prep stay in steady demand, and word-of-mouth through your own school community often fills a schedule faster than any marketplace listing does. You set the rate. You keep all of it — no platform taking a cut before you see it.
The one thing worth thinking through first is whether you actually want your school life and your side income mixing. Some teachers are perfectly fine tutoring a colleague’s kid or a neighbor’s teenager. Others would rather keep a cleaner line between the two, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.
7. Run workshops or consult for parents and homeschoolers
Saved for last on purpose, since it’s the most people-facing option here and won’t fit everyone. Your classroom experience is worth something to parents figuring out homework routines, school readiness, or homeschool planning entirely on their own. It usually starts small — one workshop through a local parent group or homeschool co-op — and can grow into recurring sessions if there’s real demand.
If public speaking drains you more than it energizes you, this is the one to leave alone. Nothing about a good side job should feel like a second version of the parts of teaching you already find exhausting.
What I’d actually try first
If you’ve already got decent lesson materials sitting on your laptop, start with #1 — the work’s done, you’re just packaging it. If you’d rather use your evenings live instead of building a product, #2 fits more naturally.
Most “how to make money as a teacher” advice online assumes you have hours to spare. You don’t. So whichever of these side hustles for teachers you pick, treat the first month as a test, not a launch. There’s no perfect starting point — there’s just the point where you start, messily, and fix as you go. Better that than another entry in a notes app you never open again.
FAQ
Do I need a teaching certificate to tutor online? No, most platforms ask for subject knowledge and a background check, not a teaching license. Requirements vary by platform, so check the specific one before you apply.
Can I get in trouble at school for having a side job? Most districts don’t restrict side income as long as it doesn’t create a conflict of interest or interfere with your contract hours. Check your contract for exclusivity clauses before you start, since this varies by district.
Is selling lesson plans actually worth the seller fee? It depends on how much you already have to sell. A backlog of materials from past years makes the fee a small cost against work you’ve already done. Building everything from scratch just to sell it is a much worse trade.
How can I find a side job as a teacher? Start by picking the type of work you want, then check job boards like Indeed for openings. TPT and Outschool both have straightforward sign-up flows if you’d rather sell or teach directly. And don’t skip your own coworkers — the faculty lounge still knows about openings before any job board does.
What are some side jobs I can do from home during the summer? Tutoring, selling resources, and freelance writing all run entirely from home. Summer school and local test prep don’t — those get you out of the house, if that’s actually what you want out of the break.
What’s the easiest side job for teachers with almost no free time? Selling existing resources (#1). The work’s already done, and listing takes an evening. Live tutoring needs a recurring time block, which is the harder thing to find during the school year.
Pick one. Actually try it for a month before deciding it’s not working. The lesson plans already sitting in your folder are doing less for you there than they would anywhere else.