How To Make BIG Money Teaching Guitar

Are you having a hard time making money as a guitar teacher? Are financial struggles in your guitar teaching business holding you back from living a freer lifestyle? Are you cynical toward the idea of making a great living by teaching guitar?

Truth is, making big money ($100k and above per year) in your guitar teaching business is a very obtainable goal, even though the reality is such that most guitar teachers have not achieved such levels of success. After earning very little money in their businesses, over time many guitar teachers start to doubt their abilities to make a living through teaching guitar.

In order to help you get started toward reaching your financial goals as a guitar teacher, I want to show you why most guitar teachers have a hard time making money with guitar lessons. After reading the list below, you will be able to avoid the costly mistakes that other people make while teaching guitar. By knowing what NOT to do as a guitar teacher, you can make much faster progress toward making a lot more money with guitar lessons.

You do not have a specific strategy that will get you from your current financial situation to earning $100k+ with guitar teaching.

Guitar teachers who earn 6 figures or more each year have not built their businesses through 'luck'. They have achieved their success through investing many hours to test and implement many specific strategies. Unfortunately, most guitar teachers do not take the time to create effective systems to grow their guitar teaching businesses. Instead, they simply copy what they think is working for other teachers in their local area. The downfall of this approach is that the other guitar teachers are almost always in the same exact financial position of making very little money! If you want to truly earn a good living from teaching music, you must learn from someone who is a highly successful guitar teacher and who can show you the proven methods to make money in your guitar teaching business.

You consider one on one guitar lessons to be the #1 method for teaching guitar.

It is true that one on one guitar lessons can be great in some cases; however it is not true that teaching guitar in this manner is the only way to get great results for your students. Additionally, this approach is very limiting to your potential to make a lot more money teaching guitar. In order to earn A LOT of money in your guitar teaching business, you need to combine one on one lessons with group classes and other unique teaching formats. This will not only make you more money, but will also help your guitar students to reach their goals much faster than if they were taking one on one lessons only.

You get in the way of your own progress.

When thinking of ways to make money in their guitar teaching businesses, most guitar teachers usually think about 3 things:

The price of their guitar lessons.How many hours they spend teaching each week.How many guitar students they have.

If these are the only 3 factors you are using when thinking of ways to increase your guitar teaching income, you are greatly reducing your potential for financial growth. These factors are important; however they are only a small part of the big picture when it comes to making money teaching guitar. The truth is, you can MASSIVELY increase your yearly income from guitar teaching without raising the rates of your lessons or teaching more hours in the week.

You are not sure how to fully understand your guitar students' unique personal needs.

Most guitar teachers do not understand that teaching guitar is based around meeting the emotional needs of your students first. In order to reach high levels of success as a guitar teacher, it is essential that you learn how to directly communicate the following points with your guitar students:

You are 100% dedicated to helping them achieve the best results in their guitar playing.You understand the struggles that they are experiencing with guitar and have had to deal with them yourself.You sincerely care about their success with guitar, and are totally committed to helping them succeed.

When you build strong connections with your guitar students (and follow up on giving them the results you promised), your students will become very loyal to you. As a result, they will continue guitar lessons with you for years, and will help you make much more money.

You are not currently implementing a solid teaching policy.

If you have never taken the time to create your own guitar teaching policy, or if you do not enforce your current policy, you are probably experiencing many negative issues with your students. Some of these issues include the following:

Not having a teaching policy (and enforcing it) creates the perception that you are a very 'relaxed' teacher and do not take lessons seriously. As a result, your students will 'walk all over you' by not showing up to lessons on time, not paying when they are supposed to, or frequently asking to reschedule.
As an effect of point #1, your guitar students will not practice enough to make significant progress.You will need to put out a great deal of extra effort to contact students, ask for late payments and teach make-up lessons (on your own, unpaid time). This will become frustrating very quickly.

The bottom line is that you need to implement a solid guitar teaching policy in order for your students to take guitar lessons seriously and make a lot of progress in their guitar playing.

You do not charge enough for guitar lessons.

Most guitar teachers think that by lowering the price of guitar lessons they will be able to get the attention of more prospective guitar students. In reality they are merely making less money per student. Additionally, this approach is a mistake for the following two reasons:

When you charge less for your guitar lessons, your prospective guitar students will perceive your guitar teaching to be lower quality. Fact is, many people would LOVE to pay more money in order to get the best quality guitar instruction.
If you are charging a higher price for guitar lessons, your guitar students will naturally feel a need to get the most out of their investment. Your students will feel more motivated to practice, listen during lessons, and become great guitar players. If you charge less for guitar lessons, you are taking away a huge natural advantage from your students that can help them get all they can while working together with you.

The most successful guitar teachers do not lower their teaching rates in order to get the attention of new guitar students. These teachers focus on building 'higher value' while working to constantly improve their guitar teaching skills. By doing this, they overwhelm their guitar students with value and benefits that no other guitar teacher can match. This makes their teaching rates seem much 'lower' by comparison.

You don't get paid for every single week of the year (including days when you are sick or on vacation).

Many guitar players experience great frustration due to the fact that they do not get paid for every single week of the year... whether their guitar students show up or not. In most cases, guitar teachers think that they must either take unpaid time off or teach guitar lessons more often. However, these two options are NOT the only choices you have. In fact, it is possible to take PAID time off while also delivering great guitar teaching material to your guitar students. If done right, your students will be more than willing to pay you good money for days when you are not even there teaching them in person (yes, you read that right!).

You don't know how to consistently turn your guitar students into really great guitar players.

If you do not know how to help your guitar students achieve everything they want with guitar on a consistent basis, they will not recommend you to other potential guitar students. The most highly successful guitar teachers (who earn 6 figures +) maintain a reputation for getting great results for their guitar students. This is an important component to their success, and is what helps them to quickly expand their guitar teaching business. This is why, in my guitar teacher improvement program I spend a lot of time training members how to help their students progress in the fastest way possible

You have no reliable methods for keeping your students for long periods of time.

The primary focus of most guitar teachers is on 'how to find new guitar students'. In their efforts to get new students, these teachers often lose focus of keeping the students they already have. If your students are not staying with you for two years or more, this is a sign that you are struggling to keep students.

The key to maintaining your guitar teaching business is to increase your student 'retention rate' (how long students continue taking lessons with you). Once you know how to keep your students for longer periods of time, you will not need to keep finding new students just to replace the ones who have left in order to return to the same level of income. This will allow you to grow your guitar teaching business steadily without having to constantly worry about losing money due to decreasing student numbers.

You are not sure how to promote your guitar teaching business and get students on a consistent basis.

Most guitar teachers tend to use the same method for attracting new guitar students (whether it works or not). Once this method stops working, they end up running out of guitar students, and do not know how to find new ones. Unfortunately, these guitar teachers generally have poor marketing strategies that do not promote their teaching business very well. The most successful guitar teachers have many different overlapping strategies working for them all at the same time that provide them with a continual stream of new guitar students.

If you identified with some of the problems I have discussed, you have become aware of some of the biggest areas you need to improve in order to earn more money as a guitar teacher. Once you have taken the time to implement the points talked about in this article, you will experience significant growth in your guitar teaching business.

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a professional guitar teacher, composer, and the guitarist in the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He shows guitar teachers how to become highly successful with his guitar teaching program. Visit tomhess.net to receive additional free guitar teaching tips and to learn how to attract guitar students.