TeachMeTo: Attractive Coaching Marketplace

What is TeachMeTo?

TeachMeTo is a young coaching platform that specializes in pickleball, tennis, golf and surfing.

How it works:

Coaches fill out a short form, saying what they teach and how they can be reached. The site will then set up an onboarding call, walking coaches through the process of setting up a profile, determining their schedule and setting their rates.

TeachMeTo review:

TeachMeTo is a fairly unique and attractive coaching platform for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it focuses on fairly unusual but popular sports.

The site doesn’t expect coaches to be professional athletes, nor to necessarily have previous coaching experience. However, coaches are expected to be clear about how long they’ve been playing and their skill level. They are also expected to respond promptly to lesson requests.

Coaches decide where to hold their lessons. However, TeachMeTo encourages them to provide equipment since most — about 80% — of the site’s customers are beginners and may not have invested in the appropriate gear.

Notably, coaches can also teach group lessons. They’ll generally earn 133% of their hourly pay for a lesson with two students and 166% of pay for lessons involving three or more students. About one-third of lessons are with groups.

Cancellations

TeachMeTo asks coaches to provide at least 24 to 48 hours of notice if they need to cancel for a personal reason so that the site can reschedule with the client or find them a new instructor.

Clients can also reschedule. However, if a client doesn’t show up for a scheduled session, coaches are asked to wait for 20 minutes. At that point, they’re paid for the full session.

Fees & Commissions

The site levies a 20% commission on top of coach pay and collects a $100 registration fee for each new customer. So, if a new customer wants to book a coach who charges $50 an hour, theoretically the first lesson price will be $160. The coach’s $50, plus 20% ($10), plus the new customer fee. But the site sometimes discounts first lessons, taking a lower registration fee. Coaches always get the rate they set.

However, the site emphasizes “lesson packs,” which provide steep discounts for multiple sessions. The “discount” is really amortizing the $100 registration fee over a longer stretch. So, with a 10-lesson pack, the consumer’s rate drops to just $70 — $50 to the coach and $20 to TeachMeTo. (That’s the 20% commission and the $100 registration fee broken into $10 for each of the first 10 lessons.)

Coach pay

Coaches are paid within 48 hours of completing a lesson via Dots. Dots allows workers to be paid through a variety of means including direct deposit, Venmo and PayPal.

What we like

Three-quarters of the site’s customers buy lesson packs of 3 to 10 lessons. That allows coaches to establish long-lasting relationships with clients and earn more money. Once you’ve completed three lessons with the same client, the site gives you a $10 bonus for each subsequent lesson.

The site also encourages reviews and tipping after each lesson. The site says about 15% of clients tip.

Getting paid immediately following a lesson is also a nice feature.

And TeachMeTo provides both liability and damage insurance to protect coaches from loss.

Recommendations

We like this site and it operates in every state, plus the District of Columbia. If you want to sign up to coach, you can click here.

TeachMeTo, however, does not offer coaching in some traditional sports like basketball, baseball, soccer and la crosse. If you want to coach those sports, check out Athletes Untapped or CoachUp.

What their coaches say

While the site is too young to have earned coach reviews on Indeed and Glassdoor, we spoke to two coaches, who both love the platform.

Jack Duxin, a pickleball instructor in Manhattan, says he earns about $50 an hour and roughly $2,000 a month during the summer season.

8/15/2023