I don't know it it helps this discussion. Here is my teacher path.
I started in education as an IBM employee in an education center (AS/400).
Then, I've been en freelance teacher for IBM. In 2000, I moved to
Java training and joined an associate.
We went to our local Sun Education center ans Siemens Education Center (Brussels). They agreed to subcontract us Java courses.
We rarely went further than 200Km away from Brussels to teach.
Now we took some distance from these education centers (market went down also since 11/9) and most of our business is done direct for local customers, half coaching and half more classic "courses".
We hired few instructors (and fired them...).
We are now 5 (2 associates, 2 employees instructors, 1 admin).
I found out that the best relationships I had with customers are the relationships that last. Currently, our star customer has around 150 Java developers and we are his exclusive Java training provider. We train them about anything they need (Classic course +
Ant,
JUnit,
JDBC, Struts, GoF,
Tomcat Admin,...). We regularly propose them new intresting stuff they need. We coach some of their team that need it.
But we have never managed to organize open class sessions (as IBM or Sun do). We only organize private sessions (tailor made) for one customer at once. Most of time, it's at customer's site.
It's probably painful to organize open-classes when you are alone, especially if you want to specialize on one subject (and write a book about it, for example) and travel from city to city (where you are unknown...). If I was obliged to do that, I would probably delegate the marketing of it to local professionals (as education centers... who knows the local Java education customers) and give up some %. An agreement with a large organization as Sun or IBM could help. But I fear you have to spend a lot of time to convice each local education center (even from the same brand, event with agreement with the top management), to do active advertising for your course event.
Most examples I know, either:
- build a company focused on both training and consultancy (in a local area)
- try to be famous (and alone) and travel from conference to conference (+ do some consultancy to eat...).
Hope this helps.
John.