Job Discussion Forums

[currentaffairs]

I think the privates look good on paper but you can't say the 3000 USD per month is guaranteed, at least in my experience. Private students cancel, drop out, go on holiday, get busy at work, or whatever. I do believe that with some good organisation and perhaps a focus on teaching rich kids you would have a more sustainable income.. However, office workers and 20-30 somethings are very unreliable.

[Deats]

I agree privates can be really hard to deal with. It took us a couple of years before we finally snapped. We were sick of people just not showing up, cancelling 2 mins before the lesson would start etc etc. So, we made our privates pay up front per semester. The semester is about 20 weeks, so we got them to pay for 20 lessons. They had a fixed time, but if they cancelled in reasonable time (i.e. the night before or in the morning if they had an evening lesson, then we happily rescheduled the lesson. If they didn't show up or cancel in time, they lost that lesson. It was amazing how NOBODY cancelled or missed a lesson after that. Sure there was the odd occasion where we rescheduled but this also rarely happened. If you don't put your foot down with privates, they'll ruin you!

[currentaffairs]

Yes, I knew one guy in Japan who had it all sorted regarding privates. I think he taught at home and he put a lot of work into designing worksheets and flashy handouts. This effort paid off because he had around 16 private students per week showing up at his door. He made them all pay one month upfront for their lessons.

Most teachers in Japan are running around to a Starbucks 30 mins away to teach in a noisy cafe.. You end up wasting time, paying for coffee and transportation, and having to deal with unreliable students!

Building up a proper amount of private students may take 1-2 years, though.

[Deats]

Totally agreed currentaffairs. It took us 1.5 years to get to the level of privates where we had no spare time. It took a further 0.5 years to become peeved that many were missing lessons when we had a waiting list of students who wanted to study with us. Once demand outweighed supply we were in a great bargaining position to call the shots. A few didn't want to play by our rules, but we had others waiting in the wings.

[happeningthang]

[Deats]

[scot47]

Avoid any set-up where you need privates to supplement your income !

[Deats]

Avoid any set up where you can't drink beer, can't date women and the weather is +50 in the summer...

[Gamajorba]

[johnslat]

If you can't drink beer and date women in Saudi, you're running with the wrong crowd.

Regards,
John

[Gamajorba]