Teaching English in Japan outside of a school

I'm trying to understand all the options for teaching English in Japan and I'm wondering what the potential is to teach online? Lessons via telephone or Skype are an option I believe, is there anyone out there who has sustained themselves through this method and are there any recognised agencies that will handle this kind of teaching?

What about face-to-face teaching as a private tutor?

Or is it just not workable outside of a school environment?

I know a woman who teaches English on Italki full-time. She makes way more than a lot of real (not eikaiwa) teachers in Japan and probably puts in less hours. Then she has many years of teaching experience and qualifications under her belt. It�fs not hard for her to find new students and in fact she has to turn them down. Just about anyone can attempt this and it�fs not hard to make some money using something like Italki, the problem is that there are probably as many teachers trying to do this as there are students, so most people flock to teachers like my friend despite the fact that her lessons cost like 700% more.

You could try it, but unless you give your prospective students some reason to choose you over every other Tom, Dick, or Harry who had the same idea you are probably looking at a sub-part-time wage. I see people on that site charging less than $5 an hour and still struggling to get a few lessons a week.

Did you say �gin Japan,�h meaning you physically living in Japan and teaching online? Agencies will not sponsor you for a visa, so you�fd have to have a resident status on your own.

General rule of thumb: if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Yes, you can do it, and I know of one company that provides that kind of thing (skype lessons), but whether it is enough to sustain yourself in Japan is another story. I do know a couple of people that offer private lessons, but they were doing it a few hours a week - not serious money. By the time they accounted for the time between lessons and the number of slots they could fill in a week, even at Y3,000 per hour it was never more than a secondary income for them (maybe Y1.5M a year for the person that was doing it "full time".)
Also, a lot of people get free lessons via conversation meet-ups. A group I know of was set up aiming for 10-12 people but they got close to 70.
Other related questions would be around what knowledge you have of running a business like this if you were doing it yourself (and the tedium of collecting fees), or are you simply after working for an agency and being on a wage?

Thanks for the replies, guys! I have some thinking to do!