your journey to online teaching success 🚀

 yes! we have a 14-day free trial. 👍🏾

to make it fair on you, the trial actually doesn't start until you've created your profile, been id verified and connected to our payments processor, stripe. 

you'll also get an email a few days before the trial ends so that if you want to cancel your subscription, you can without being charged.

🎂 somos is only for teachers over 18 (we will verify your age & id).

🏦 if you’d like to sell any paid products, you’ll need to be able to connect to stripe so you can get paid!

we use ❤️ heartbeat to host teacher communities and it’s where teachers create & teach courses & classes! you’ll need: 

• 🛜 a good internet connection
  
• 🎙️ a good microphone & headset for online teaching (recommended, not essential)

🙏🏾 we ask teachers who use somos to commit to our community guidelines and terms of use & support our languages policy.

🎨 your initial profile is set up during the onboarding process when you first log in. 

🪜 simply follow the step-by-step instructions and you'll have a personal teaching website ready for marketing and connecting with students in no time!

no - and more than that - we don’t love that framing in the language learning space! 🤦🏾‍♂️

at somos, we don’t see language as a fixed construct with rigid boundaries but more like open source technology that’s constantly shaped by people, culture, experience and movement.🌷

we love it when people innovate with how they express themselves. ✊🏾

this is something to be embraced and celebrated. it’s why we’ve built a platform to help you share what you know!

as teachers on the platform, we want you to… 

• have the opportunity to share your personal stories, experiences, and credentials in a way that resonates with your students, and
  
• feel empowered to teach languages and the cultural context they operate in. 

however you have come to teach the language(s) you do, we want somos to be a place you can do so on an equal footing.

if you’d like to find out more about our approach to linguistic diversity you can read more here. 

1️⃣ you set your own rate at somos. the only limitation is that we don't allow full price classes to be charged at less than $10/class.

2️⃣ 99% of that class fee (less stripe’s payment processing fee) goes to you. 1% goes to our impact fund.

3️⃣ stripe deduct their payment processing fees from you when you make a sale. these range from 1.2%-3% + 30¢ depending on where you live.

📣 the only fee you will pay somos is your monthy/annual subscription fee. this won't change if you teach 10 classes or 1000!

the set-up 🏗

as independent sellers on somos, teachers need to set up stripe connect accounts to receive payments.

whenever you make a sale via somos 📈

• 99% (less stripe’s payment processing fee) goes straight to you.
• 1% goes to our impact fund.

as a teacher, you're in control of: 🎮

• setting your prices.
• defining your own refund policy
• creating early bird promo codes and discounts.
• managing your payout schedule from your stripe dashboard.

keep in mind: 🧠

• you're responsible for collecting and/or paying any applicable taxes (e.g., income or sales tax/VAT) in your local jurisdiction.

why is somos structured like this? 🤔

we want you to get your money quickly and with minimal processing fees.

your share of any payments heads straight to your stripe account, and you can choose whether to set your payouts to daily, weekly, or monthly. 

at somos, we never hold your money.

we recommend keeping a balance in your stripe account until your course/class starts. this helps if you need to process any refunds for students.

generally, no. we aren't a marketplace (and aren't trying to be).

our goal is to give you the perfect toolkit for you to:

✅ teach your language online
✅ market your own unique offering quickly and affordably!
✅ build long term relationship with repeat students

HOWEVER...(!) we'd encourage you to share your somos profile across diferent social media sites and will help provide you with strategies to do so effectively.

as we don't charge you anything per class or per student, a good first move would be to migrate existing students over to your somos community to help you get started.