Zhu Wei, an English teacher from China who started his own online tutoring company in 2015,has now made nearly $2 million in the midst of the country’s flourishing English-teaching market.
Zhu’s live streaming course includes nine two-hour lessons for 799 yuan ($116) per student.
But after 2,330 people registered for courses online, Zhu raked in 1.86 million yuan ($270,000).
Zhu and his team were able to build five more courses, including languages in Korean and Japanese, earning 11 million yuan ($1.6 million).
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“A teacher’s income is expected to exceed 20 million yuan,” Zhu told China Daily. “I could not believe it until I myself achieved that goal.”
Compare that with a teacher at an elite Shanghai public school who earns 10,000 yuan ($1,449) per month, and a teacher at a private school earning 30,000 yuan ($4,347) a month.
A public school teacher in the U.S. earns about 394,000 yuan ($57,000) a year, while the highest-paid public school teachers in the world are working in Luxembourg, where they make 545,000 yuan ($79,000) annually.
Before Zhu ventured into the world of online education, he was a teacher for 10 years at the New Oriental Education and Technology Group, a top private educational service, and he was an English teacher at a public school prior to that.
According to Shanghaiist, Zhu isn’t the first person to come up with live-streaming his classes for profit.
South Korean math teacher Cha Kil-yong has become a famous multimillionaire with Hagwon, his after school cramming sessions, which prepares students for their college entrance exams.
About 300,000 students take his online classes, priced at $39 for 20 hours. Cha’s business strategy has earned him a whopping 55 million yuan ($8 million) per year, making him one of the highest-paid teachers in the world.
