How Tutors Get Paid to Answer Questions Online

Tutors get paid to answer questions online by packaging one specific, text-based explanation as a Paid Question and larger deliverables, such as practice-test reviews, as Custom Work. Students or parents pay through one Brillay link, and the tutor replies asynchronously, so no live session, advance booking, or minimum audience size is required. Paid Questions let a follower pay upfront to ask one private question, and you send one written reply on your own time — no live call or scheduling.

Tutors can receive payouts in 41 supported countries, without applying to a marketplace or meeting a follower minimum.

• You choose the reply window yourself — a few hours, or up to five days — so tonight's homework question gets answered between classes rather than at an hour someone had to book (how it works).

When students or parents keep coming to you with questions, separate reusable explanations from individualized help: publish the general answer, then price the specific problem, study-plan feedback, or textbook explanation. You do not need every follower to pay: the offer is for the student or parent who already wants an explanation tailored to their exact problem, while reusable answers stay free. A reusable explanation gives every student the same answer; individualized questions and larger custom tutoring deliverables are made around the problem, reasoning, or study plan of the student who asked.

If you teach a full class rather than tutoring one-to-one, see how educators handle similar requests. The practical goal is to distinguish reusable questions that belong in free content from individualized work that deserves a clear scope and price. If asking a student or parent to pay feels awkward, frame the Brillay link as the place for individualized help while keeping reusable explanations free.

How does this compare to tutoring marketplaces, live calls, and subscriptions?

Paid Questions give a student one written answer instead of a full scheduled lesson. Tutoring marketplaces usually sell live time, while monthly homework-help plans assume the family wants an ongoing package. Each model fits a different kind of request.

Wyzant's tutor-payment help center states that tutors retain 75% of their posted hourly rate and that Wyzant retains a flat 25% Platform Fee on every lesson (Wyzant support: fee structure for tutors). Wyzant's student payment policy adds a 9% service fee on top of the tutor's hourly rate on the family's side of that same lesson (Wyzant support: student payment policies).

Preply's tutor help center states that Preply charges 100% commission on every trial lesson with a new student, and between 18% and 33% of the tutor's hourly rate on all subsequent lessons depending on total hours taught (Preply Help Center: Preply commission model). Preply's help center adds that its commission rate starts at 33% for new tutors and drops to 28% after 20 hours of teaching. Preply's own worked example states that a new Preply tutor with a $10 hourly rate receives $6.70 for each non-trial lesson, while a tutor with 400 or more completed teaching hours receives $8.20 at the same $10 rate.

Chegg lists its Study Pack subscription at $19.95 per month and its Study subscription at $15.95 per month (Chegg Study), and the Chegg Study Pack product page caps that plan at 20 expert questions per month (Chegg Study Pack) — a flat monthly rate regardless of how simple or complex any single question is. Chegg's $19.95 Study Pack price divided by its published cap of 20 expert questions per month works out to about $1.00 per question at the cap, a price that assumes a family already wants 20 questions a month rather than one explanation tonight.

Brillay charges 8% when a follower pays for work, 5% on tips and goals (Brillay pricing), so a tutor prices each question individually instead of surrendering a fixed 25% share of an hourly rate or asking a family to start a subscription. On a paid Brillay work order, the tutor pays an 8% platform fee plus separate card-processing fees, with no monthly Brillay fee; compare that itemized cost with Wyzant’s published 25% tutor fee and Preply’s published commission for non-trial lessons. Preply's help center also states that the default Preply lesson duration is 50 minutes and that one lesson in a student's balance equals 50 minutes (Preply Help Center: how to schedule a lesson), so a question a tutor could answer in four typed minutes still consumes a 50-minute booking on that model.

What are students and parents actually typing?

Many students and parents send a specific request rather than asking for a full lesson: one problem they got wrong, a study-plan sanity check, a test-format question, or a course-selection decision. These asks are short and personalized, which is exactly the gap a per-question price fills.

The useful signal is already in your messages: students ask why they got one problem wrong, whether their study plan makes sense, or which course to take next. Those individualized questions are the ones a tutor can scope and price.

Common questions in tutoring comments, searches, and direct messages include:

• “Why did I get this problem wrong even though I followed the steps?”
• “Can you explain this exact question from my homework?”
• “How do I know when to use sine versus cosine on a word problem?”
• “What’s actually on the SAT math section, and how is it different from the ACT?”
• “Is there a faster way to solve this than what my textbook shows?”
• “How do I explain this to my kid? I don’t remember any of this from school.”
• “Which AP class should I take next if I want to go into engineering?”
• “Am I studying for this exam the right way, or just wasting time?”

Some are general-knowledge questions that can become a public video or post. Others depend on one student’s problem, reasoning, course sequence, or test plan. That personalization is where the line between free content and paid tutoring usually sits.

How might you answer common homework and test-prep questions?

Answer the general version once, in public, with a short worked explanation anyone in the same course could reuse. Three examples below show the pattern: a concept question, a definition question, and a test-format question, each answered completely enough that no paid follow-up is required unless the student brings their own specific problem.

“Why do you flip the inequality sign when you multiply or divide both sides by a negative number?”

Multiplying by a negative reverses the number line’s order. For example, 2 is less than 5, but multiplying both numbers by −1 produces −2 and −5, and −2 is now the larger number. The inequality sign must reverse to keep the statement true.

“What’s the difference between mean, median, and mode, and when do I use each one?”

The mean is the average: add the values and divide by the number of values. The median is the middle value after sorting, so it is useful when extreme outliers could distort the mean. The mode is the value or category that appears most often.

“What’s actually on the SAT math section, and how is it different from the ACT?”

College Board's test-alignment documentation states that the digital SAT Math section contains 44 questions divided evenly across two 35-minute modules, for 70 minutes of math and about 1 minute 35 seconds per question. ACT's own test description states that the ACT mathematics section is 45 questions in 50 minutes, roughly 1 minute 7 seconds per question, so the ACT math section runs at a materially faster pace than the SAT's. College Board also states that the full digital SAT takes 2 hours and 14 minutes and includes a built-in Desmos graphing calculator in the Math section.

Those are general explanations worth answering once for everyone. The follow-up—“Okay, but here is my specific problem, due tomorrow”—requires individualized work and can become a paid question.

How do you turn “explain this one” into a Paid Question?

One private question, one written answer — followers pay upfront. Nothing is scheduled and nothing recurs, so it fills the gap between free public content and a full tutoring appointment.

A Brillay Paid Question is one typed question and one written reply, which suits a problem, reasoning process, or study question that can be typed or copied into the message. A parent who decides at 10pm that tonight's problem is worth $25 pays upfront by card as a guest — no Brillay account, no app, nothing standing between that decision and the question landing with you. You can still decline a request that does not fit. State the boundary before they pay: one typed question belongs in Paid Questions, while larger or file-based work belongs in Custom Work.

There is no live call or scheduling; tutors reply in writing on their own time, within the delivery window they set. A written answer instead of another call is the core pattern behind getting paid for expert advice online: a family with one bounded question may not need an hour-long appointment, but it does need an answer to that particular problem.

Possible offers include:

• “Explain where I went wrong on this exact problem” — $20–25
• A walkthrough of one incorrect practice answer — $20–25
• One SAT, ACT, or AP strategy question tied to a specific problem — $20–30
• A check of a unit or exam study plan — $25–30
• Guidance on an AP class or course sequence — $25–35
• Feedback on the reasoning in a proof, derivation, or lab conclusion — $25–35
• A parent’s question about explaining one concept to a student who is stuck — $20–30

These price ranges are Brillay editorial scoping examples reviewed in September 2026, not platform averages, market research, or earnings promises. The examples use a simple methodology: narrower questions receive lower illustrative prices, while requests requiring more review or personalized judgment receive higher illustrative prices.

Here is an illustrative US fee estimate using Brillay’s 8% platform fee for follower-paid work (tips and goals carry a 5% fee instead) and Stripe’s published standard online-card rate; actual processing fees vary by card and country. On a $15 Paid Question, Brillay's 8% platform fee takes $1.20 and Stripe's published US standard online-card rate of 2.9% plus 30 cents takes about $0.74 (Stripe pricing), leaving the tutor roughly $13.06. The same $15 billed as a Wyzant lesson would leave $11.25 before card fees, because Wyzant retains a flat 25% Platform Fee and tutors retain 75% of their posted rate.

Compared with booking a live tutoring call for one question, you can reply on your own time without coordinating calendars for an explanation that may take only a few minutes.

When does a tutoring request need more than a reply?

A tutoring request needs a larger format when it involves multiple questions, document review, annotations, a custom resource, or a recorded explanation. None of those compress into one typed reply, so they belong in a priced deliverable with its own scope, price, and delivery time rather than in a single paid question.

Unlike a Paid Question, a Brillay custom request can accept attached files from the student and return text plus files and/or a link. That makes a custom request the appropriate format for an uploaded practice test, photographed report, marked-up proof, or custom video explanation.

The table contains Brillay editorial scoping examples reviewed in September 2026, not reported sales data or guaranteed earnings. Prices increase with the size of the deliverable, while the example delivery time expands when the work involves multiple problems, annotations, or original resource creation.

Tutors set the price and choose a delivery time of up to 5 days for each custom request. A custom request remains bounded like a paid question, but its scope allows more work and file-based delivery. To keep practice-test reviews bounded, the tutor makes one custom request delivery, and anything the student raises afterwards runs through the order's support conversation under the correction and refund policy the tutor published.

What other Brillay tools can tutors use?

Beyond Paid Questions and Custom Work, the same Brillay link can carry Personalized Videos for exam pep talks and acceptance messages, Goals for funding teaching equipment, Tips for thanks with nothing owed in return, and Brand Collaboration Inquiries for education-company sponsorship requests.

Personalized Videos sit on the same link and are switched on the moment a student milestone is worth selling. For tutors, suitable moments include a pep talk before an exam, a congratulatory college-acceptance clip, or a graduation message.

Goals let supporters contribute toward a stated goal, while you choose whether the progress caption reads as an exact amount or a percentage. For a tutor, that goal might be a drawing tablet for clearer worked examples, a document camera, or a new practice-test bank. A target such as “$210 of $500 raised for a new problem bank” identifies the resource the support will fund.

Tips let followers send a one-time thank-you, with nothing for you to deliver and no membership for them to join. Brand Collaboration Inquiries is a “Work with Me” form on your Brillay page that collects a brand’s budget, timeline, and deliverables into a separate brand inbox. Brillay's pricing page states that brand inquiries are free and that a connected Stripe account is required for paid widgets. One Brillay link can show Paid Questions, Personalized Videos, Custom Work, Tips, Goals, and Brand Collaboration Inquiries. Creators set prices and delivery times for the three request-based offers; followers pay upfront on tips and goals, and Brand Collaboration Inquiries takes no payment.

How can tutors explain concepts without doing assignments for students?

State the boundary inside the offer description itself: you will explain the concept, method, or reasoning behind a problem, but you will not complete or submit graded work on the student's behalf. Publishing that line up front lets you decline anything that crosses it without renegotiating scope case by case.

The International Center for Academic Integrity states that, across Don McCabe's original research and subsequent follow-up studies, more than 60 percent of university students freely admit to cheating in some form, which is why a written scope matters more than assumed good intentions. The same International Center for Academic Integrity page reports that Don McCabe's surveys of more than 70,000 high school students at over 24 U.S. high schools found 64% admitted cheating on a test, 58% admitted plagiarism, and 95% said they participated in some form of cheating (ICAI: facts and statistics).

Institutional rules define the same line. The Harvard College Honor Code states that students must honestly represent their work and must not present another person's work as their own or give or obtain unauthorized assistance.

A concise boundary can read:

I’ll explain the method, identify where your reasoning went wrong, and help you understand the next step. I won’t complete or submit graded work for you.

If a request crosses that boundary, you can decline it. This keeps the offer focused on teaching rather than impersonating the student or producing work for submission.

How do you set up paid tutoring questions?

Turn on Paid Questions for the “explain this problem” messages you already receive, then add one custom request for a larger deliverable such as a practice-test review. Leave Personalized Videos available for exam pep talks, acceptance messages, and graduation congratulations.

Put the link wherever students already find you, including your profile bio, pinned comments, and video descriptions. The next personalized question can then arrive with a defined price and scope instead of becoming another open-ended unpaid message.

Worked through, a $30 practice-test review leaves roughly $26.43: Brillay's 8% fee takes $2.40 and Stripe's published 2.9% plus 30 cents US online-card rate takes about $1.17; tips and goals carry a 5% Brillay fee instead. Create your free Brillay link and price the two offers: nothing has to be built in advance, because what the family pays for is the explanation of the problem they bring you.

Frequently asked questions

Won’t this help students cheat on graded work?

Not if you define and enforce an academic-integrity boundary. Offer explanations, feedback, worked examples, and method guidance rather than completing or submitting a student’s graded assignment. You can decline any request outside your stated scope.

Do I need a certain number of followers to charge for tutoring help?

There is no follower minimum and no application to pass, so a tutor with 400 followers and a tutor with 40,000 run Paid Questions and Custom Work on exactly the same terms.

What is the difference between a Paid Question and a custom request?

A Paid Question is one typed question answered with one written reply inside the window you set. A custom request is a larger priced deliverable that can accept a student’s attached file and return a written note, files, and/or a link.

How does per-question pricing compare with Wyzant or Chegg?

Wyzant retains a flat 25% Platform Fee and tutors keep 75% of their posted hourly rate, and Chegg sells its Study Pack at $19.95 per month capped at 20 expert questions (Chegg Study and Chegg Study Pack). Brillay has an 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work and 5% on tips and goals, with the tutor setting each question's own price.

How much should I charge for a tutoring question?

Start around $20 for one clearly typed problem and charge more—often $25–35—when you must review reasoning, compare course options, or give personalized study advice. You set the price. Brillay has a small platform fee when a follower pays for work, with separate card-processing fees.

Create your free Brillay page and turn the next “can you explain this” into a priced question.