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MyPocketSkill Review Summary
MyPocketSkill offers tutoring, coaching, and other work for young people in the UK aged between 13-22 years. No qualifications are required, and pay is between £5-£15 per 45-minute lesson depending on your age, level, and the task required. Hours are flexible and jobs can be done online or in-person.
| Pay (per 45-minute lesson): | £5-£15 |
| Location requirements: | UK, online and in-person |
| Qualifications required: | No |
| Teaching certificate required? | No |
| Tutoring experience required? | No |
| Applicant age: | 13-22 years |
| Class type: | 1v1 |
| Hours (per week): | Flexible part-time |
MyPocketSkill Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Opportunity for under-18s to earn money and gain experience
- Quick and easy application process
- Range of work tasks available, not just tutoring and coaching
- Legitimate and well-backed business showing good growth
Cons:
- Only for those aged 13-22 years
- Must live in the UK
- Still a relatively young company, with only a few user reviews available
- Can be hard to secure tasks due to competition on the platform
Is MyPocketSkill Legit and Safe?
MyPocketSkill is a legitimate online employability website that was created by digital tech and finance specialists Matthew Harker and Zara Ransley in 2017. Registered on Companies House and operating out of the UK from Brighton, this online platform has seen month-on-month growth of 20%, with almost 80,000 users as of 2023.
The company’s legitimacy is reinforced by having attracted £1.2 million of investment to date, and being recognized as a finalist by the 2019 Europas Awards, the 2020 Great British Entrepreneur Awards, and winner of the 2021 Global Female FinTech Competition.
What Is MyPocketSkill?
MyPocketSkill is a social impact organization with a mission to financially empower Generation Z (13-22 year-olds in this case), by connecting them with opportunities to earn money beyond traditional work routes, gain paid experience and employability skills, and learn positive habits for financial independence through educational videos and setting savings goals.
MyPocketSkill jobs include:
- Tutoring:
- Mathematics
- English
- Science
- History
- Geography
- Art
- Languages
- Coaching:
- Music
- Dance
- Sports
- Social media
- IT Digital Design
- Photography
- Research
- Business/admin.
- Retail, hospitality and events help
- Pet sitting and dog walking
- Babysitting
- Outdoors
- Delivery rounds
- Other
In this video, two students describe some of the work they have gained through MyPocketSkill:
MyPocketSkill Payment Information
MyPocketSkill pay rates vary depending on the age, level, and type of task being carried out.
There are 6 MyPocketSkill levels, and you rise through them by being booked and re-booked by customers, receiving positive feedback, and completing a certain number of hours. Due to minimum wage regulations, those aged 18 and over will automatically start on Level 2, while HE students can begin at Level 4 (with a valid university email address):
| CATEGORY | LEVEL 1 | LEVEL 2 | LEVEL 3 | LEVEL 4 | LEVEL 5 | LEVEL 6 |
| Tutoring | £5/45mins | £6.50/45mins | £8/45mins | £9.50/45mins | £11/45mins | £15/45mins |
| Music coaching | £5/45mins | £6.50/45mins | £8/45mins | £9.50/45mins | £11/45mins | £15/45mins |
| Dance coaching | £5/45mins | £6.50/45mins | £8/45mins | £9.50/45mins | £11/45mins | £15/45mins |
| Sports coaching | £5/45mins | £6.50/45mins | £8/45mins | £9.50/45mins | £11/45mins | £15/45mins |
| IT digital design | £7.50/hr | £10/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Social Media | £7.50/hr | £10/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Photography | £7.50/hr | £10/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Research | £7.50/hr | £10/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Business / Admin | £7.50/hr | £10/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Babysitting | £6.50/hr | £7.25/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Pet Sitting | £6.50/hr | £7.25/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Dog Walking | £6.50/hr | £7.25/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Events Help | £6.50/hr | £7.25/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Hospitality | £6.50/hr | £7.25/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Outdoors | £6.50/hr | £7.25/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Retail | £6.50/hr | £7.25/hr | – | – | – | – |
| Other | £6.50/hr | £7.25/hr | – | – | – | – |
Upon completion of a task, payments are transferred to an eWallet on MyPocketSkill, where you can save your earnings or request payout to a bank account (this has to be done by a parent/guardian for those under 18 years), which will take a few days.
MyPocketSkill Hours
MyPocketSkills tutoring and coaching sessions last 45 minutes and can be delivered online via Zoom video conferencing or in-person. Other tasks are booked for an hour.
MyPocketSkill Requirements
MyPocketSkill applicants must be aged between 13-22 years and live in the UK. No other qualifications are required.
Here is a short recruitment video for MyPocketSkill:
MyPocketSkill Application Process
- Complete the MyPocketSkill sign up form with your:
- Confirm your email address
- Enter your physical address and mobile phone number
- Pick the tasks you wish to offer
- Enter the profile validation SMS code (sent to mobile number provided)
- Add a profile picture, the name of your school or college, and a personal description, e.g. “I’m Tilly, studying for A-levels in Maths, English and Photography. I’m musical, with Grade 8 in piano, and creative. I also have babysitting experience and am DBS checked. I’m signing up to offer tutoring in Maths and English, piano lessons, help with social media and digital design and occasional babysitting.”
- You will then be taken to your MyPocketSkill dashboard, where you can book your 15-minute Zoom onboarding call:
Matching available tasks are suggested on your dashboard, or you can ‘Browse more’:
MyPocketSkill Reviews – What Is It Like Working for MyPocketSkill?
Being a relatively young company, there are not a huge number of MyPocketSkill job reviews available yet. Only two are submitted to Glassdoor (at the time of writing), both offering a 4* rating, with positive comments about the experience gained and ease of finding clients and downsides including the rate of pay, inability to contact clients outside of the platform, and restrictive session times:
- Advantages:
- “Very easy to find clients. So far all of them have reached out to me rather than me having to search for them. Great for young people and beginners without experience to get started. They take an extremely small commission which is really worth it.
- Great way to gain experience.”
- Disadvantages:
- “You can’t contact your clients outside the app. Sessions can only be booked in 45 minute blocks.
- Don’t get paid very much.”
More experiences can be gleaned from the MyPocketSkill Trustpilot page. Most of the reviews here are suspiciously over-the-top and one-sided (as if they had been requested by the company), however, this one at least admits that it can take time to secure clients on the platform though they enjoy the flexibility it offers:
- “I love working on mypocketskills it makes me feel like my own boss. I loving getting to know different people and helping where I can.
Taking a gap year I wasn’t how I would earn money without being contracted to ridiculous hours and maintaining time for myself to do the things I had plan to do this year but with the ability to work remotely and chose how much work I take on per month has been great.
It does take time to get clients but once you start you’ll be on a roll!
I have loved being a social media manager and tutor and can’t wait to take on more clients.”
The only really negative (2*) tutor review currently was left before MyPocketSkill’s payment structure was updated, though they similarly warn that jobs can be hard to come by due to the amount of competition on the platform:
- “…the site is also massively over saturated with tutors compared to people needing tutoring and because of the lower prices of some of the young participants it can be hard to find jobs”
Conclusion – Is MyPocketSkill Good for Online Tutoring?
For those under 18, MyPocketSkill offers a rare opportunity to gain paid tutoring experience. The company’s mission is laudable, and there are a range of additional tasks to supplement your income with. As the application process is quick and simple and costs nothing, there is no harm in completing a profile to try and find work, despite there being some competition on the platform. However, those who are 18 or over can find higher-paid tutoring jobs elsewhere.
You can apply through this MyPocketSkill application form. For those strong in maths, Mathnasium also recruits from age 16+.
