Deliberate practice planning, supply budgets, project cost maths, print pricing and warm honest guides on blocks, critique, showing work and finding your people — type your creative question and get a straight, encouraging answer in seconds, with real numbers you can act on. The full detailed report costs less than a coffee: $2.95.
17 toolsFree instant local answers≈ one coffee ($2.95) for the full reportNo sign-up · No spam · Educational
Teaching Your Craft: The Honest Income Reality Check
Teaching your craft looks like simple maths — a rate, some students, a few hours — but the honest version has a second half that most first-time teachers never count. Every hour in front of students carries prep, materials, admin and often travel, and those hours are unpaid unless you price them in. This calculator runs the full equation with your numbers: how many students you would teach, the price per student, sessions per week, the weeks you would genuinely teach in a year, your expense percentage and your prep time per session. You get the gross income, the expenses, the net, the real hours including prep, and the effective hourly rate — the number that tells you whether teaching is a healthy income stream, a break-even passion, or a way of paying to work harder. The verdict is encouraging about teaching as a learning engine, and honest about the price, group size and prep levers that make the difference.
⚡ Free instant check
Model what teaching your skill actually pays — gross income, expenses, and the honest effective hourly rate once prep and unpaid time are counted.
❓ Teaching Your Craft: Income Reality Check — FAQ
Why is my effective hourly rate lower than my teaching rate?
Because every teaching hour carries unpaid companions: prep, materials, admin and travel. A $50 session rate with an hour of prep each time is really $25 an hour before expenses. Pricing deliberately — or filling groups — is how teachers make the effective rate match the headline.
Is group teaching or private teaching more profitable?
Group teaching usually wins on effective rate: six students at $25 for the same hour is a different business from one private student at $60. The calculator shows both shapes — and the honest answer also depends on how much individual attention your craft genuinely needs.
How many weeks a year do teachers actually teach?
Fewer than the calendar suggests: school terms, holidays, exam seasons and your own creative work typically leave 35-45 teaching weeks a year. Using 52 in the maths inflates the income by a third or more — the calculator defaults to honest weeks and lets you adjust.
Every tool answers instantly from our own knowledge and calculators — no AI wait, no account.
Honest maths and warm plain guidance for the whole creative life: how you practise, what you spend, how you price
the work, and how you keep going through blocks, droughts, tough critiques and big decisions. This site is
encouraging without hype — it never promises income, fame or talent, because the only honest promise is that the
work itself gets easier with a plan. Nothing you type is stored. Want the deeper, personalised version? Each has a
$2.95 full report.
