what do you charge for teaching?

teaching the use of flash in data reporting

[httpwebwitch]

Here's an interesting twist to my everyday freelance activities:

I've been asked to visit a local web dev company and deliver a whole-day symposium on the uses of Flash in data reporting and dynamic content to a group of developers and designers. These are ASP programmers and HTML jockeys who want to start using Flash. I have a lot of experience with combining Actionscript and PHP to produce dynamic graphing and data reporting solutions, and I'm sure I can give them a nice introduction to the subject.

What do I charge for that?
They are suggesting $40/hour, and that's $40CDN. That seems a little shallow to me, I was thinking more like $100/hour.

Advice, anyone? Who here has done this? and what is the "going rate"?

[coopster]

We do this quite often, same exact situation you are describing here. We charge a packaged training price rather than by the hour. There is a lot of prep time up front getting the agenda and materials (handouts, presentation, etc.) together before you even start the actual training. You may also need to consider travel and any other expenses. Just some thoughts to keep in mind as you move forward with your endeavor.

Oh yeah, one more thing, be prepared to get work from the client even after the training is completed. We often find that companies have the best intentions to "get it done ourselves" after learning from consultants with expertise in the area, however, they often realize that outsourcing to specialists is often more cost effective.

Best regards!

[httpwebwitch]

Thanks coopster, for your advice.

So, I should consider that even though I'm giving away "tricks and tips" that I use to earn a living, this company will henceforth esteem me as an "expert", and yes, it will probably lead to development contracts in the future.

Maybe the right way to charge for this is to figure out the time it will take to prepare the course materials, plus the actual time spent in person doing the presentation, and apply my regular Flash development rate for the total time spent. I'll be talking to them later this morning to negotiate my price and discuss the curriculum.

Thanks,
httpwebwitch

[fwordboy]

We recently had similar flash training day at work - not quite as advanced as what you are proposing, more just intermediate-to-advanced actionscripting, and the trainer charged £400(UK) for the day.

[httpwebwitch]

that sounds about right. I suggested a half-day (4 hours) for $400 CDN, which is approx £200.