So, you need some extra money and you’re a qualified English teacher or native English speaker and you start looking around online for some extra work sources to get some additional income in your back pocket and you come across the site Cambly. You look around the site and you think it looks good and you are intrigued to find out how it all works, if it’s any good, if it’s a scam and most importantly is it worth your time or not.
If this is you then I totally get where you’re coming from because a few years back that was exactly me. I was a bit broke and needed to find something to add to my monthly salary. I found a few sites online and like you I thought Cambly looked good. So I typed it into google and found hundreds upon thousands of ‘reviews’ from people and tutors who absolutely loved this site. I read about how amazing and easy it was to earn money and so I applied and started working for them.
Now I can tell you the truth because these hundreds of people that have written about Cambly online are only doing so to earn money. Their incredible reviews are only there as part of an affiliate scheme in which they earn money when they sign up new tutors. So of course they are going to give glowing reports about the company. They feed you a load of pros and fail to mention the cons to working with Cambly. Well I'm here to give a more realistic and honest view of the site and what you can expect when working with them.
Before I get started with my review and detailed experience of working with Cambly let's just clear up a few things. Yes, Cambly is real. Yes, you can earn money with this site. Yes, they do pay you and No, it is not a scam. Many tutors on Cambly earn enough money to pay their rent, but is it enough to actually live on and have a normal life too?
Who are Cambly and how does it work?
Cambly is an international site/app for learning English all across the globe by taking part in video calls with native or near native English speakers. They claim to help their students learn in a fully immersive way through natural speech. Their tutors (some qualified, some not) provide conversation and feedback to help improve the caller's English Language.
Chat - With this function callers put forward a call for any tutor to answer and you can speak about whatever you or they want to.
Lessons - Callers book a structured ‘lesson’ and together you study what is in this lesson plan. (created and developed by Cambly)
This site works with subscriptions. The students or callers buy X amount of minutes to use each day or week.
Of course, in order to get new customers, Cambly offers many free trials or calls. They also periodically offer this to existing customers to get them to come back again.
I worked with Cambly for around 5 or 6 months back in 2019. They were extremely easy to sign up for as a tutor (unlike other companies) and the whole process was very fast. The minute I was accepted I could start working. There was no training to complete, only a password to login to their platform and the rest you had to figure out for yourself. They paid every week as long as you met the minimum threshold and so I started taking calls and earning with them. Here are my very honest main pros and cons of working with them throughout my 5 / 6 months.
Pros of working with Cambly
You don’t need to be a qualified teacher to apply. Now obviously, I am a qualified teacher and so for me this is irrelevant but if you need to earn some extra income and are English speaking then not being qualified is a quick and easy way to start working.
Quick set up. Once accepted you only need to fill in a few details such as work schedule and bio and then you can start earning.
Talking to people all over the world and learning about different cultures. The absolute best thing for me was the range of students you get. It is very interesting, as you get to talk to people from all walks of life and because of the conversation based lesson you learn a lot about different cultures. In the same hour on Cambly I spoke to a pilot from Egypt waiting to start work, a 9 year old girl from Dubai who wanted to practise her reading, a student in China who needed English for her studies and a couple of friends in a bar in Turkey. I learnt so much from talking with students. If you like making friends and talking to people then this will be the best point for you.
Can set your own schedule. That’s right, on the platform you can easily and quickly schedule a week in advance and because Cambly works with people from all over the world there are always hours available due to time differences. For set lessons with repeat students they can book your time from your schedule and this is how the biggest earners on the site work.
Paid weekly. Payment is super easy too and done through Paypal each Monday. For me this was a great aspect of working with them because my teaching job paid monthly and with weekly pay I was able to budget and use my money more efficiently.
Cons of working with Cambly
You need to have both good internet and a good headset. I was lucky to have very good internet access, so it was easier. However the caller also needs to have it too. On the occasions that they didn’t they complained about my call. Also it is not required but extremely necessary I found, to have a headset with a microphone. I had many calls where I could not hear the caller and without a microphone they couldn’t hear me. This obviously makes any conversation extremely difficult and of course the student has paid for this call and so won’t be very happy and will leave you bad feedback. If you want to get regular students you are reliant on your feedback being good. So a good headset and microphone is a must.
Free Calls. These are the worst! I hated these calls sooooooooo much. Cambly give away free minutes to new and existing clients. So the caller isn’t paying for the call. In my experience this means that you get a lot of prank calls, that only stay on the line for 30 secs and then hang up. You will also get lots of kids or teens that don’t speak any English, that basically speak or shout in their own language and then hang up, and the ones I really hated were groups of men calling me (a pretty young lady!) and they would try to flirt with me! (Ewwwww!) Now you can as a tutor hang up, but it doesn’t look good and also you can report users but in my experience again, this limits your calls and affects your feedback rating.
Time. You spend a lot of time waiting for calls to come in. You’re online, you’re ready to answer but without the calls you don’t earn. Cambly tracks your earnings and it’s from the moment the call connects to the moment you hang up. In between calls nope and it sucks. Sometimes I was online for 2 hours and only spoke for 20 minutes.
The planned lessons are terrible. They are prepared by Cambly and the student gets to choose the lesson. As the tutor you answer the phone and get faced with a presentation that you’ve not seen before and are expected to teach it. You can opt out of teaching the lessons on your profile, but as a qualified teacher I thought this would be great for me. However I was wrong. They use bad pictures or photos in the presentation, the classes aren’t interactive in any way and you don’t get to see them beforehand.
Free talking. What do I mean by free talking? Well, if a caller does not choose a lesson they just call you and expect you to speak. They generally don’t have a clue what to speak about and so you need to be prepared to make small talk and try to find common ground to continue on with. Now I had a list of go to questions and topics but still I found some students very hard to maintain a conversation with and I found it stressful that I was expected to keep them talking, even if they were giving nothing back.
The pay. Cambly pays tutors a set rate of $0.17 USD per minute or $10.20 USD per hour which isn’t so bad if you are getting an hours pay, but all that free time waiting around kicks in and each day you could be online for 4 hours and only build up 1 hours pay.
There you have it. For me the cons far outweigh the pros and therefore after 5 months I gave it up and haven’t looked back since. It isn’t a scam and yes you absolutely can make money working with Cambly and some people really do but for me it wasn’t worth wasting my time for unguaranteed work or money. I wouldn’t ever go back to Cambly again.
I hope you have found this useful and I hope that giving a truthful review has helped someone out there. If you have any more questions just drop them in the comments section and I’ll try to help as best I can.
Thanks for reading!
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I had considered working for Cambry. Thanks for the detailed information.