Why are Chess Lessons so overpriced?

hmm I know this is old ..but you misread someones comment about how much 50 per hour for 2000 hrs add up to ..he said half the hours are prep work that you do not have to pay for leaving 1 hr making it 1000x50= 50k  

I am a master in economics and can assist you. It is a simple matter of supply and demand. There is no demand for chess lessons, because of its embarrassing nature for both the provider and receiver, and this lack of demand means there is less supply. Since there is less supply, profit margins must be made higher, resulting in overpriced chess lessons.

I coach chess, computer programming, and math.  I am a U.S. Chess Expert/Candidate Master.  Chess coaches, like myself, need to charge a little more because we are not working 8 continuous hours in the day.  We are not working 40 regular hours with salary and benefits (health insurance, contributing to social security, 401K matching, pension, retirement fund, etc...)  Also, the pay is not steady.  The situation is similar in many other types of work.  Of course, depending on the country the coach lives in they could charge less because the cost of living is so low.  In my opinión, if you are ambitious about chess and you love the game, I don’t think these coaches on chess.com charge too much.  If I was ambitious about chess (again) I would be more than happy to get a chess coach/trainer on this platform.  Even the top players have coaches.

You can hire an Indian coach for online lessons for a cheap price of say 6$ per hour.

Try the website superprof India.

Charge what you wish and pay what you will. You don’t need to be a “master in economics” to understand supply and demand. Next...

Grandmasters have large appetites.  Women (men), wine and song - it adds up. 

To me it would make more sense to teach in groups and have tournaments with the players.

Monday Day 1

Lesson 1 taught, homework assigned.

Tuesday Day 2

Lesson 1 homework discussed, Q&A

Lesson 2 taught, homework assigned.

Wednesday Day 3

Lesson 2 homework discussed, Q&A

Lesson 3 taught, Lessons 1 and 2 review and homework assigned

Thursday Day 4

Lesson 3 homework discussed, Q&A, Lessons 1-3 review

Tournament  Day 1 starts

Friday Day 5

Tournament results, analysis, comments, Q&A

Tournament Day 2 continue

Repeat if you want weekend tournaments, winners could be encouraged to play shorter time controls. Week 2 would have new lessons based on what the coach sees from the tournaments. 

Why pay a GM 1 to 1 $100/hour where you will have to play tournaments anyway when you could do group lessons at a smaller amount per student? Everyone would have the same lessons and could be paired more equally than some online rating system. 

4 people could pay 25 each, 8 people could pay 15, Based on a 5 day schedule, that's 600 per 8 students.

At first if you have no lessons, you would have to make them. Next time, you just repeat unless there were problems. 

Or you can hope you are the next Joel Benjamin and win 12,000 for 1 year? I don't know, if I were a GM, I would rather have the guarantee 600/week. That would give 28,800/year for 1 hour of a work per workday.

More hours = mo 

But hey, GMs are GMs at chess not math or business. 100/student. This means they would need 288 students. If you are a GM and you don't have 288 students, time to rethink your marketing.

All good and worthy ideas. Market your plan and see what happens. There is more upside than down. 

@MariChola provides lessons for $5. @semchik73 and @me_ch_an provide lessons for $10. 

Most people won't work for $10 per hour. You expect a chess master to work for that little? If you can't afford a chess master, hire someone rated 300 points higher than you.

I know someone rated 1500 who wants to charge $15 per hour. Fine if he is teaching beginners, or even 1000 rated maybe. But he can't beat me at a game, so I saw no need to buy a lesson.

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