I did a couple of Ruby trainings in last 6 months for $8000/day (2 total, so it was a bit more than $30k). I wrote a book (free, 400 page) about Ruby. I do it with my partner, I'm happy to pay 20% for all unrelated stuff (organizing, filling in gaps, communicating with people, etc).
Holy cow, that is great, I had no idea that trainings paid so well. I taught a Python class for free which makes me think I could do traiinings. Was there a lot of specialized stuff in your Ruby trainings? I had figured doing that type of stuff got at best normal hourly rates. Maybe I should pursue this type of thing more.
Training speaks to the truism in consulting rates -- you can only command up to the value you deliver to the customer.
With training, you're playing one of the strongest cards: delivering value to many people at the same time, where your time required scales sub-linearly with the number of people.
Consequently, the more people, the more value to the customer, the more they can realistically pay you and still get good value for their money. Win/win.
Maybe I haven't been looking at it the right way. I had figured you either had to train in a specialized area or have a slick presentation and pitch. The office probably gets a 25% productivity boost from having coffee delivered, and that boost is worth millions, but the coffee delivery person certainly can't charge proportionately to the value added. I had figured training was about the same way: in the gigs I've seen, you get paid like a classroom instructor, which is nowhere near as much as you would get as a dev. Clearly I've been looking in the wrong places. Heh.
The coffee person can't charge proportionately because coffee delivery is oversupplied with potential vendors. Look at training that way.
You're not going to make a high rate if you're "a Python instructor", because there's quite a few of those.
You will if you're "the you Python instructor", and the customer thinks you're worth that rate, because having their people trained by you is worth the premium.
And that's where testimonials, referrals, previous track record, etc. come into play. Selling that version of you to a customer.
And granted, some of them won't ever be interested in that. They just want a Python trainer at minimum cost. But if you can afford to be choose and pass on opportunities, the higher end work is out there.
Thanks, yeah, that puts it pretty well. Having packaged course materials, videos, and a bit of celebrity status has to help too. I'm glad this is working out for some people, but it's probably not the right thing for me to be pursuing since I'm pretty low profile these days.
I follow "20 + 20 + break" approach. My father used it for 30+ years (professor of physics and CS).
It means 20 minutes of theory, 20 minutes of practice, 10-minute break. It can be 25 + 25 + 5, or something along these lines. I never do more than 25. The bottom line is that people are getting bored after more than 20 minutes of theory.
