How bad can you actually be at chess and still make a living teaching it?

I recently saw this outragous GothamChess short video:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IMfzTrXO5c4

He claims anyone who can teach total beginners can make 100k a year from privately teaching chess in NYC. One of the pogchamps people says "you have to be good at it though", and Levy answers "No, you could." and he knows how bad that individual is at chess.

So what's the reality actually?

I've heard respectable people say around 1800-1900 FIDE would be the minimum to teach beginners because you have to be strong to teach fundamentals and get people to really achieve some results for their $... That sounded reasonable... I've seen some posts where 1600s chesscom (which I guess is like 1400 FIDE or something?) get absolutely destroyed here on the forum for daring to say they want to coach/teach because they are "so terrible" and would look clumsy moving the pieces around the board and it would be pathetic, and so on.. lol...

I am especially curious because I am a professional music teacher (pianist) and after 12 years of teaching, I have had only a handful of intermediate students and 80% beginners cuz that's just my style.. meaning I'm not one of those fancy academy trained classical piano teachers but I teach Beatles, basic music theory, piano fundementals etc.. so my cliental is naturally kids and "adult improvers/beginners" in music... Which got me thinking like why do you actually need to be good at something to teach complete beginners? The only reason I have students at the moment is because people are basically less interested in the old school type piano teacher that is extremely strict and makes them want to quit So they find a chill teacher like me and enjoy it

So was really thinking if anyways the way I make a living is teaching beginners -something- and I'm quite good at it and mostly enjoy it... could chess be another thing?

Or would the kids just pass my rating within a couple of lessons and fire me...?

Thoughts?...

I would be extremely surprised if an honest player that isn't very good could make any significant money teaching anywhere. Unless the parents just want someone to watch their child for a few hours and are just treating it as childcare.

That's what I thought! So basically GothamChess is just competely talking nonsense yes? Did you see the vid?

I mean I realize I'm probably naïve believing this man... on the other hand... it's kindof intriguing cuz he specifically adresses a person who is like 1000 or idk

I did a search. Looks like $35/hour is on offer at the bottom end. I'll let you work out how you turn that in to $100,000/year.

I'm strong enough to teach beginners and would be comfortable going over games with players maybe up to 1200 OTB (US Chess Regular). I would not feel comfortable charging enough money to make anything near $100,000 a year with working around 40 hours a week.

Someone that doesn't care how well they can train someone in chess might be able to charge enough to do it and find people that are willing to pay it. As mentioned, I very seriously doubt it's possible, or very easy, but could be wrong.

Also, with Self Employment taxes and other expenses, $100,000 is probably more like 60-70 a year, without any other benefits.

I haven't seen the video, but maybe he knows people willing to throw that much money at someone, regardless of quality or outcomes.

well this is interesting to me on an anthropological level.. you always hear of people making lots of $ in the USA... you never know how true it is then suddenly that video pops... i'm like maybe their economy is just... awesome?.. it's hard to seperate myth from reality

Maybe in New York City a sub-1600 could get away with charging $50/hour to teach chess to total beginners. But would there be enough demand to fill a 40-hour work week? Outside of NYC, that's awfully pricey ...

I'll teach beginners how to play chess for free (including what 99% of people don't teach you when you start to play)