How I Made Tinder My Side Hustle In Poland

The apps that connect people can also be used as a source of income. When it comes to apps like Tinder, the thought that’d strike any decently dirty mind is sex for money. I am a man, so I may have anywhere between 0% and 0.001% chance that a woman would pay me to get laid. So, there dies your anticipated answer. Kaboom!

This happened more than half a decade ago in Warsaw, Poland. I am an Indian living and working in Poland. I was quite stubborn about not using online dating apps to find a date, despite being 100% introverted. I knew I had very little chance to meet someone out in public.

Poland is an eastern European country where the dating culture starts and ends in nightclubs. Girls and boys, men and women, love dancing and drinking on the weekends. There is also a plethora of dance clubs for various age groups, beginning with high school students.

I didn’t feel compelled to go to dancing clubs because I am an introvert. In clubs, there will be people. And I hate people. All introverts do. There’s loud music, dancing, and picking up women. Listen, introverts hate loud, ball-shattering music.

Listen more. Dancing and picking up women are forms of expression that involve people. Wait, did you hear forms of expression and people? I bet you did. So, going to a club for an introvert is like running a full marathon without any prior training. Well, I am being a bit exaggerative here. It’s actually not that bad. We just don’t function like extroverts.

So, naturally, I started using Tinder. Poland is another country where English is not spoken prevalently. People speak Polish here. It’s a very interesting language. Most ex-pats find it almost impossible to learn, but I cracked its code somehow.

Polish people pay to learn English in Poland. Language schools mint handsome profits teaching group classes to both kids and adults. The reason why I had come to Poland had been to pursue research studies in biology. After finishing my project, I decided to quit science and research for good. I hung up my biological boots and started teaching English. It has been a very fruitful journey so far. I’ve met and taught hundreds of Polish kids, teens, and adults.

As I was only intending to date a woman seriously to have a relationship and not for a quick hookup, my profile description on Tinder had what I did for a living and that I wasn’t looking for a one-night stand.

Among a few other matches, I also had a match with an older lady. We were chatting online a bit, and then I realized she was also looking for an English teacher to improve her English. The genesis of a new business idea. I offered to teach her, and she was my first ever Tinder client.

We met at her place or at a cafe twice a week. At the time, the market rate for English teachers was about $15 an hour. Not bad at all. It’s the equivalent of 60 Polish zł. Teaching came naturally to me as my mom used to be a teacher as well.

When you do your job well, referrals through word-of-mouth can be both your weapon and your poison, when you suck at what you’re doing. I got my second Tinder client within two months after I began teaching my first. Meanwhile, I was also getting matches from other similar women that were looking to learn English.

At one point, I had to quit one of my day jobs to accommodate all my Tinder clients. In my heydays, I was giving lessons to 10 Tinder clients once or twice a week. As an introverted teacher, I’ve always preferred one-on-one teaching to teaching groups of kids or adults. So, I naturally gravitated towards the former way of teaching.

I never thought, even in my wildest dreams, that Tinder would become my source for a side hustle. While I was also lucky to get a few romantic encounters, a walk down memory lane to those times always brings a smile at how destiny had an unusual plan for me through Tinder — the hookup app, mostly.

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