Ok, so I need someone good with numbers and money. I have had a request from a parent to do lessons for both sons at their house, and as I've not been in this scenario before its tricky for me to work out the right fee.
Normally I charge in monthly blocks of 4 (4 x 1 hour lessons per week) for lessons at mine. If I have to travel I put a £10 fee per lesson (£40) to cover fuel, travel time, income lost by travelling and setup/pack down time. E.g if the lesson starts at 4 I come at 3:45pm to lug amps, monitors and music stand in, and very often the room I need to teach is either t the back of the house, upstairs or some other place other than by the door so it always takes time to get in there.)
The parent has asked if I can discount for siblings, but I am just thinking of costs and time to me, after all its more prep material for another person.
I need to make sure I charge sufficiently as its a large proportion of time I'm out of my house that could have been used for teaching someone. 1 son wants 30 minutes and the other I feel should have an hour.
Anyone good with the maths here cos I need to get this right.
Comments
Say the parent wants lessons for the older son (13 years) at 4pm for 1 hour, and the younger one (8 years) at 5pm but for 30 minutes.
I should charge the 13 year old for what it'd be for 4 lessons plus travel, then the younger one 4 x 30 minutes without travel?
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
You are teaching for one and a half hours per session, for which you would normally charge £60 x 4 = £240.
You are travelling once per session, so that's £40 for for teaching sessions. Total £280.
Edit assuming £10 per hour, I think from other posts you charge £20 per hour so charge £80 per block child one, £40 per block child 2 plus £40 travel for the block regardless of how many
Normally you charge X for a hour-long single lesson as your place, so that's your basic lesson price without any travel (ie your time during the lesson and for prep and expertise).
Your cost for travel & setup is 10, so if you have to travel, you charge X + 10 to cover travel & setup costs.
If you travel and do 2 identical lessons you should charge 2X + 10, since you're not doing any extra travel or setup.
In this case you're actually looking at 1.5X+10 since one student only needs half an hour.
Let's say its a £120 for 4 x monthly lessons (£30 per lesson). I actually charge more than this but let's keep it somple.
To travel its £160 for 4 x monthly lessons with that £10 travel fee per lesson making it an additional £40.
With the scenario with the siblings, if the 2nd one wants 30 minutes I'd do it normally for £80 (£20 x 4 lessons).
So would I add the £80 onto the £160 making it £240?
£120 is the monthly fee, so I add £10 x 4 to each one.
Then I believe your numbers make sense there. You charge a bit more for a half hour lesson than for half of an hour's lesson too (not unreasonable).
I'd see it that you've already travelled to do the "first" lesson, so no need to charge travel for the second one. It's travel per trip that way.
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself