There’s an old saying in suburban America, “everyone and their brother plays the guitar”. Actually, this is pretty much true. Guitar is one of the most popular instruments in the country, and the entire world. And while many, many people do play the guitar – many don’t really know how, or what they’re doing when they pick one up.

This means there are literally thousands of people, in your own community, who would love to be better at playing the guitar; and if you’re one of the people who can do it well – you can make money teaching guitar lessons! Becoming even a part-time guitar teacher isn’t easy – finding students, building structure, and delivering satisfaction are all part of the equation. Take a look at this short list of tips on launching your next par-time or full-time career move: guitar teacher!

Attracting Students

Attracting people in your local community to you as students isn’t effortless, but it isn’t impossible either. If you don’t work for a “music school” or other major outlet that has teachers on-staff – you can charge a lot less than they do per lesson, and still make more money for yourself. You see, the music shops and schools take a big cut from what a teacher makes per lesson. When you don’t have to pay them, you can charge students less than they do, while still keeping more for yourself.

Start by creating ads in your local newspaper, and putting up flyers around town that advertise the years of experience you have – as well as the low price-per-lesson you offer. Make sure to add a sense of urgency using language like “act fast – limited spots left!” You’ll begin to see phone calls and email come in.

Building Structure – the Key to Teaching

Depending on if you’ve ever taught anything before, you probably already know – it’s a lot more than just getting together and talking about the subject at hand each week. Teaching anything, and especially music, requires a structure and focus that brings a steady progress to your students – and ultimately to you as well.

Start by using your best estimate of where a student should be after 3 – 6 months of lessons, and build all of your steps from square one to that point. If it’s a single piece of music, that’s great. If it’s just being able to play X amount of chords and scales – that’s good too. Either way, you have to set some success measurement metrics that will help people understand what they’re working towards – and ultimately what they’re paying for.

Creating Customer Satisfaction – Getting Referrals

A big part of teaching guitar lessons is giving your students a venue to show off what they’ve learned in your class. A great way to do this is to schedule some recitals and performances at a local public space like a school or community center. The satisfaction that comes from this fruition of the lessons will benefit you equally as you’ll naturally get referrals from your satisfied students when their friends want to study guitar as they have. It’s important however for you to set yourself up for success with this approach by creating some standard practice items to help legitimize your business to the outside onlooker.

These are things like a website, social media pages, forums, and other online spaces where people can review your lessons. Also consider giving out some custom printed business cards to your students that they can help distribute to their friends. All of this will help someone who’s never heard of you understand your quality right off the bat.

Just Get Started

With any small business, the absolute best thing you can do is to simply stop putting of the launch effort is to get started. No matter where your business goes success wise, if you don’t invest too much money – you have nowhere to go but up. Consider what you have to lose if you never take the time to just get started! Launch yourself into the world of being a community music teacher one step at a time – you’ll end up making money, and having a whole lot of fun doing it!