Job Discussion Forums

[saren]

What is the average hourly rate (in Istanbul) for a qualified, experienced Business English instructor teaching English to private students, and businessmen (at corporate offices, or at their homes)?

Thanks

[Sweetpig7]

average is roughly 40 TL/hour. I charged anywhere from 30 to 50 TL. I heard some people were charging 75-100, and students can be found who will pay this, but it's much more difficult to find. I started getting a lot of students when I lowered my rates to 30 TL per hour and made sure I was making enough money on this rate to pay my bills, then started asking for 40-50 lira per hour to fill the holes in my schedule.

[saren]

so 30 is the safe wage,

I assume you are talking about privates?

What rate should I ask for if I choose to work through a middle man, like a translation, consulting company, or even a language school?

[tarte tatin]

I charge more than that and my schedule is filling up nicely. I personally think 30TL per hour is way too low for one-to-one students, especially for business English. It depends on how much you need the work and other factors like travel time involved.

As for working through middle men, it depends, language schools who pay by the hour range from a miserly 15TL up to about 40 TL depending on qualifications and quality of school.

[Sweetpig7]

Yes, I'm talking about private lessons. Going through a school or a middle man will get you 30 TL per hour tops in my experience, usually 20-25 TL. After arriving in Istanbul, I went to EVERY private school in Besiktas, Taksim, Sisli/Mecidiyekoy, and Etiler and 30 TL was tops. In terms of pure middle men, I met a few who wanted to keep half of my first week's earnings, and would then turn the lessons over to me for 50TL per hour, but didn't check into this further, as I was doing well enough on my own.

That's the key, though...connections. You can make more than 30 TL, and by the time I left, I was making a VERY comfortable weekly amount with about 50% of my lessons charged at 30TL per hour and the rest 40 to 50TL (about 25 hours per week). It did take me several months to build this up, and by the time I left, 50 TL was my minimum for taking on new students. And, as the previous poster mentioned, you can charge more than this, but I don't know anyone who came to Turkey and within their first month had a schedule full of 75TL clients, no matter how qualified they were. Just find some people at whatever rate you can, do a good job, and they'll be giving your number to friends and family members in no time. As your schedule fills, you can take on higher paying students and then say to current students, "my rates have gone up because of the demand," and they will pay it if you're worth it. Also, you may offer reduced group rates once things get going. I taught a member of the management staff at ING Turkey and she soon had all of her co-workers joining up for 10 TL extra per student per hour (50 TL base).

Also, make sure you're not just looking at it as easy money...I spent a LOT of time preparing lessons, giving feedback, and using my training in ESL to the benefit of my students. This allowed me to keep many long-term students when many other traveler-teacher types were losing students after the first or second lessons. There's also a lot of satisfaction in seeing that the service you're offering is worth the high prices these students are paying.

Anyway...maybe more than you wanted to know, but thought I'd try to be helpful:-) Let me know if you have any other questions.

[saren]

Thanks for that, I will be probably need to use a middle man, because I have zero connections, do you anything about the company english select? And I'm actually not very keen on the idea of 30TL/hour, which is only 13euros, and since I was making 18euro/hour in Barcelona, I was expecting similar compensation here, after all they say Istanbul is almost as expensive as any medium sized European city, is that true? Is it that expensive? If so, I will ask for 40TL/hour in my interview

[fishmb]

In my experience, Istanbul has been cheaper than European cities.