[mesmark]

There are a whole lot of factors to think about.

What can you charge per student?
What's your overhead on a place to work out of?
How are students going to come in the door? advertising? what's the cost?
Do you have any connections to get even a few students?
What's the competition like?
How are the other schools in the area doing?
Can you supplement with other part-time jobs? universities? small schools? part-time at some bigger language school?
What's your visa like?

I opened my own place mostly because it seemed silly to just keep working for someone on year-to-year contracts endlessly, but I had decided to stay indefinitely.

I went the cheapest route possible to start a private school. I work out of a room in my house (no overhead.) There was no competiton at the time. I spent about $2k USD to start up, with advertising. I was making the same salary as working for someone else after 3 months. Later, I picked up 2 pretty decent part-time teaching jobs that made a big difference.

Additionally this was in my wife's small hometown. They know everybody and everybody knew I was opening a school. 1/2 of my initial students were word of mouth.

It has gone pretty well and I wouldn't change a thing, except it would have been good to do it sooner. However, having the teaching experience before starting out on my own was also really helpful.

7 years later, all is still good. I haven't advertised in 4 years or so and just word of mouth, plus the school's website keeps the student numbers about even.

Where are you living? (I probably should know.)