What do you think is a fair amount for a 2100 to charge ~1400s for lessons?

Well, that's the basic idea. I'm not really sure where to draw the line, I just don't generally like the idea of being punished for someone else's lack of responsibility, that suddenly I have to become charitable because someone else wasn't being wise. I would think the person who wasn't being wise is the more deserving of the punishment.

Asymetrical information is a hinderance to capitalism. Supporting situations where one side may take advantage of this asymetrical information is not being pro-capitalist, but rather ignorance of what free markets are all about.

And... supporting the other two scenarios is just insane.

I can know what free markets are all about whilst not deciding to go along with it, so you can't make that logical jump, EricFleet. Again, I'm not entirely sure of how guilty one should feel about taking advantage of things, and what I would do in a real world situation, but in any case I've made known my general concerns in previous posts.

"And... supporting the other two scenarios is just insane."

Well, we'll see if I want to be insane or not! I think at that point it becomes more of a philosophical issue than an economics issue.

A 2050 trainer would be descent enough at least in gathering training materials for a 2500 player. But i doubt 1600 or even a 1700 can be relied upon as a trainer even if sufficiently educated. I'm sorry, but this is just my opinion. I remembered very well how confident i was with my chess understanding reaching this level, and looking looking through some annotations of mine during this period, i realized now how naive and clueless i was. My impression is that players of this level is primarily dominated by dogmas, but chess is far too complex game to be sealed in a jar. I don't have a lot of experience as a chess coach/trainer/instructor, but once i had been the lone trainor of an U12 young girl for several months. She was very talented, and our preparations finally paid off as she bagged the bronze medal during 2013 Asean Age Group Championship, U12 Standard, tying in score with the gold medalist. However, during our training sessions i noticed how she keeps on rehearsing concepts that were actually not relevant to the demands of a particular position. For example, she opened with the English Opening, and keeps on doing things such as exchanging her dark-squared bishop for the knight at f6, playing queenside expansion with a3 and b4 etc. Of course these ideas are pretty standard, but i had to keep on repeating telling her that she must also take critical look at the differences and changes on various positions. I asked her why she keeps on doing these, and i traced the problem from the 'hard-on' (sorry, i'm lost for words) instruction of her dad and former coach who first introduced her the opening. My point is simply that to give a more meaningful instruction, a trainer must be able to play good chess to his/her student to diagnose what are his/her defects in an efficient manner. Every game is unique and reach in ideas. I doubt a 1600 or even 1700 rated player can illuminate these things properly without jeopardizing the natural talents and creativeness of his/her student. But again this is just my opinion.

Yes interesting comment by perseus... have to approach girls and boys very differently. Girls love concepts and sound play, while Boys are more likely to attack and try sacrifice the house by themselves. And I agree that a 1600-1700 player will teach bad habits to lower rated players (just look at the NM trainers on ths site), however they can also accelerate learning for beginners. When the student reaches a level to get a better coach, they will have to un-learn some things, but this is not a difficult task for the human brain.

Of course you can pay less, but it's about value for money, not just price.

Cheap coaches will be cheap because they can't fill their hours.

i pay $70 per hour, my coach is the best player in MN

It depends on your cost of living and what you consider a fair rate for your prospective students. Or, from an econimcs perspective, it depends on the opportunity cost involved: if you spent an hour working in your chosen field, assuming its not professional chess, how much could you reasonably expect to make.

Personally, since its one-on-one teaching where you presumably know something about the economic situation of your pupils (or their parents), I would use a sliding scale based on what they can reasonably pay.

For one or two exceptional students who are just getting by (or whose parents are), I would charge nothing, refrain from using the term 'lessons,' and not set precise blocks of time for those sessions.

For the rest, if $15-$20 an hour would cover your expense with enough left over to equal what you'd make doing something else, then I would set the rate in that range.

Though untitled, you are still an expert player who can teach valuable lessons to intermediate and beginner players. But above the $20 per hour rate, you are approaching the rates that some titled players charge.

fair is fairy.  

depends on the amount of work and stuff.  besides the danny's sicilians course, never taken lessons.  recall the words "control" "squares" and "theory" being used at some pt.  learned a lot of stuff, seriously, planswise in addition to some concrete theory, which I'm still learning.  you can learn a lot of stuff from the resources around you.  activate your pieces...employ the right strategies... see the right tactics = success.  if it only were so simple.  anyways, lessons should highlight what you're doing very well and what you are doing very wrong and build you toward chess happiness, coach should ensure test subject omega is not destroying themselves with their moves. improvement step by step.  getting student's to review their own games and find enjoyment doing so.

i know a certain pub in philadelphia where a few 2400 players (the great rufus, mr. beard, and the other one) hang out and the lessons i would get there are free, bring a few chess books, get a drink and talk chess, play a few blitz games.  in fact i will do that later this week.

My first, and also only 'training' was when a bored 1900 happened to be observing the game I was playing, while waiting for the tourney round to end. I had a winning endgame, a very basic rook and pawn ending, that I wound up drawing.

After it was over, he asked why I played the move I did  and showed the simple (in hindsight) way to win that ending. I guess he sort of acted as a mentor - occasionally he would go over a game with me, or play an unrated game we would discuss afterward. It didn't make me a chess wizard, obviously, nor did it have much initial impact in concrete terms.

Over time, the mentoring, the encouragement to study well annotated games, to not jump from one opening to the next, and the odd tidbit of chess wisdom did help over time. I would say I was close to just above beginner strength then. The big thing was he encouraged the continual enjoyment of the game of chess as rewarding in and of itself.

Definitely he did not do any harm to my chess development. Many positives. He charged nothing for it (later I played board 3, or 4, depending on strength at the time of the tourney, on the same team he played board 1 on in league play). I think a stronger class B or A player could do much more help than harm for a beginner to very weak intermediate (class D and below). There is a lot to be said for having a stronger peer providge some nuggets of wisdom and encouragement along the way (as well as useful feedback).

This is informal, no charge mentoring I'm referring to - not coaching. There is a difference.

Well, you are just lucky.

As already mentioned by some posters : without specifying some moral system, there is nothing "fair". I guess we can reasonably agree that if you force you students at gunpoint to sign for $1k/hour it is not "fair", but if they offer you the same amount freely, you need some moral criterion to say it is not "fair".

Besides, being 1900, 2100, or 2800 and any titles is not very different for teaching 1400s, even if the parents who pay (a) don't know it or (b) know it but want to show off to other parents (or even themselves) that their coach is the best.

As for the marketing strategy, assuming you do it for fun so that you do not need to book your schedule, you should set your prices at the upper range. Once you get one student it all fits into place : if you are a good coach you will be recommended, with little regard to the price you ask for or exactly how good you are, so that you can take other recruits. The downside, of course, is that you will not get clients very soon so that it is not a dependable way of winning bread, but if you are doing it for the experience rather than for money it is the way to go.

I did this for science courses (math/physics), used to charge €20/h - $25/h or something - then realized I could charge up to €50/h when targetting the right audience (ie the rich people who think that because they are paying top price they are getting top quality without having even shopped around - I was decent, but I know that better teachers were paid less).

Considering the amount of free learning resources online I find it surprising that someone without a GM title can charge 10 dollars/hour. 

Why on earth do you think it takes a GM to teach a 1400 player to play better? That is like saying it takes the Nascar champion to teach a 16 old student driver how to drive. I could make a list a mile long like that. In fact the GM could be a poor teacher and maybe even have trouble relating to a 1400 player. Great ability does not mean a great teacher. 300 plus rating points over the intended target is good enough. Few people in the US work as teachers of anything for $10 an hour.

Are you implying that an 8th grader is a better teacher for a 4th grader than an actual qualified adult teacher ? I don't think so. The 8th grader can teach the 4th grader but you don't see parents hiring 8th graders as tutors for their children. 

Quite to the contrary, peer tutoring is proving highly effective.

If you are interested in the research, see:

http://www.nea.org/tools/35542.htm

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00138870#page-1

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/22029

http://www.fau.edu/CLASS/CRLA/Level_Three/Educational_Outcomes_of_Tutoring_A_Meta-analysis_of_Findings.pdf

I wouldnt take anything until you get better in teaching and chess...

I'm just starting out as a coach and charge 2.75 ($1 first time) to analyze a persons game at my club ($5.50 for a hour lesson) and they get there money back if there not happy (I want them to tell me why tho that way there not just taking a lesson and running off) for now I'm only taking in players between 800-1199 USCF but I'll do the analyzing for anyone lower rated than me (no I don't charge to do a post mortem lol) I'm rated 1628 USCF

P.S. Is what I'm doing a good way to start off ?