Decide if you want to work through an organization or freelance. Apply for positions as a teacher through local community colleges or go to Web sites such as Verbalplanet.com or Teachonlineenglish.com. You should have some previous experience teaching and be a native speaker in the language you want to teach. If you prefer to work as a freelancer, talk to friends who may know potential students interested in taking language classes. Post an advertisement on craigslist.com for your area, offering your services.
Check your computer's hardware and software. Skype is a free online video program to make calls to anyone in the world. You and your students must both download the software at Skype.com to talk to each other. Make several test calls with the Skype "Sound Test Service" and with your students to make sure you have a working camera, microphone and a sufficient Internet connection, and that the audio and video are clear from both ends.
Assess your students before you begin teaching. Give a language quiz to see where their skills are. EdHelper.com (a paid site for teachers) has Language Arts Mixed Reviews for grades one through eight. Find an assessment that seems to fit your students' level, email it to them, and have them send it back to you. Check the answer key to see how much they know. Ask your students areas of grammar they usually have trouble with. Use that information to design your lessons.
Design a curriculum. If you work with an organization, ask whether they provide books and materials. If you freelance, look through resources to make an outline of the topics you will teach in a chronological order. Buy some well-known resources to help you, such as "The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course" by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman, and "Teaching Phonics & Word Study in the Intermediate Grades: A Complete Sourcebook" by Wiley Blevins.
Establish a method of payment. The most common way for online teachers to get paid is PayPal. Create an account at PayPal.com, which you can link to your bank account to easily transfer money to you. Be aware that PayPal takes a small percentage as a fee. Or ask to have students pay you in cash or check.
Start class by teaching a grammar or phonetics rule. Choose a topic, such as Singular/Plural Nouns, and find information on when and how to use it properly. Share this with your students by either making a PowerPoint presentation with the information, or scanning a page from a grammar book. Email this to your students before class begins and ask them to have it available during class. Or copy and paste in an email the URL address (the one in your browser's address bar) of an online web page that explains the rule well, such as those compiled at Englishpage.com.
Give examples of the rule in use. Type up several example sentences in a Microsoft Word document and email it to your students so they can print it out or view online as you talk. You can also email pages scanned from a grammar book with examples of the rule in use, or copy and paste in an email the web address of a web page that shows examples.
Allow time for the students to practice. Use free worksheets online to copy and paste exercises into a Word document. Email it to your students and allow them to complete the practice on the computer. Skype has an option called "Screen Sharing" which allows the other person to see what you are looking at on your own computer screen. Tell your students to "Share" their screen, and you can watch them complete their practice, while providing guidance.
Assign homework. Many students learn best when they can process information on their own, and homework is an opportunity for students to practice what they just learned. Assign about 10 practice questions at a time. Use a free worksheet from a book or web page, and copy and paste practice activities into a Microsoft Word document. Email the document to your students so they can complete it and email it back to you before the next class.