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.

Make Money Playing Guitar: 20 Characteristics of a Hireable Guitar Player

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Marketing yourself as a guitar player goes deeper than just developing good chops. While it's obviously important to be able to impress with your playing ability, there are a number of other factors that an established band will look for when deciding to employ somebody from the outside.

In a sense, you're interviewing for a job, and in any good job interview, you'll be examined on a lot of things aside from your raw skills. It's the same when going into a situation where you'll be paid for you musical ability.

I'll lay out some of the "musical character qualities" you'll want to cultivate in preparation for an opportunity to make money playing guitar.

1. A genuine interest in music as opposed to an obsession with your own guitar playing. -- As a hired musician your ultimate interest should be in the music as a whole and the experience it provides the listener.

2. An ability to use your guitar to compliment a piece of music and not overpower it. -- Your guitar should be used to enhance the musical experience and properly decorate the songs you're playing without imposing too much volume or drowning out the other instruments.

3. The ability to sound big without using distortion. -- Distortion has its place, and no guitar player needs to disregard it entirely, but the really good players know to sound big without it. Take your cues here from the Edge of U2.

4. A willingness to underplay. -- The biggest problem I've run into playing in bands, groups and in live settings, is having people who constantly tend to (and want to) overplay. While you don't always have to fade into the background, it's usually the safer option. Underplay and let somebody else tell you to turn it up.

5. An understanding of how to properly utilize volume. -- This builds off of number four, and is pretty self explanatory. Though it could be thought of this way: A song can only handle so much noise and volume, so fight the urge to use too much of it too quick.

6. An understanding of the dynamics of a song. -- Musical dynamics are lost on a lot of players, though it's really important that a guitar player understand s them. Essentially, you need to know when to sound big, and when not too. Traditionally verses are settled down and choruses are amped up. It'll vary from song to song but this comes down to knowing the songs your playing and then applying number four and five above.

7. Familiarity with your own rig. -- A lot of guitar players are "gear junkies", basically owning and going through a lot of different guitars, a lot of amps, and a lot of effects. It may be just me, but this makes you less appealing than if you were settled into a setup that you've tweaked and gotten used to over the years. It'll make you appear more reliable from the first few conversations.

8. A genuine interest in other people. -- It has nothing to do with your guitar playing, but the ultimate goal of a band or entertainer is to provide an experience for a group of people. If you're not interested in those people, you're not going to be able to achieve that goal. Big smiles, and lots of non-guitar conversations with non-guitar people can be a big help here.

9. An ability to read an audience. -- You need to know what your audience is looking for. For example, in a gig where everybody is going to be sitting down, searing guitar solos might not be necessary. Also, what are the demographics of your audience? Younger, older? It's pretty normal practice to change your set list and volume levels based on these factors.

10. Restraint when it comes to "idle" jamming. -- When you're trying to get a song together as a group, there is nothing more frustrating and ultimately counterproductive than when one or two people are continuously producing idle noise with their instruments. Avoid this tendency as much as you can. I'll admit, it's tough, but make every effort to keep quiet until it's time to play. Warm up alone if you can, or with headphones and then get your patience on.

11. Willingness to receive instructions. -- Sometimes the guitarist and "front man" can be one and the same, but if you're not the guy leading the group, be willing to take instructions and constructive criticism. If it irritates you, that'll show and make you seem like a less reliable player, even if you're a great guitarist.

12. The ability to utilize effects. -- While you can overuse them (especially distortion) effects are extremely helpful, especially in a live setting. Knowing how to properly utilize them can make the difference between a good and bad song. This all has to happen ahead of time, but it's a good idea to optimize every song on the set list individually with the effects you're going to use.

13. An adaptive playing style. -- You need to have some dynamic abilities when it comes to playing style, and be able to adapt to a prospective band's gameplan and genre. If you can't move between playing styles, you're going to have a hard time fitting in.

14. Be able to make them sound better. -- A band who hires you, or a group that gives you a share of their gig money is looking for one thing out of a guitarist, and it's to have their sound improved. You're not there to showcase your great playing, you're there to make that group sound better. Make it evident that your mind is focused on that goal.

15. A habit of knowing your music ahead of time. -- This might sound pretty basic, but in my experience, almost no one makes it a point to do this. If you can listen to the songs you'll be playing and get a game plan in place even before practice, it'll serve to boost your work ethic and credibility, and improve your band's overall productivity.

16. A working knowledge of all parts of the music you'll be playing. -- A familiarity with bass, drums, piano and vocals is really important when working in a group where all those things are going on. That's not to say that you need to be able to play all those instruments, but at least learn the structure they're leaning on. Know what the count of the song is, the bass line, the melody, and just keep it in mind. The more you know, the better.

17. A personal connection. -- I still maintain that some of the most important parts of being successful as a guitarist, have little or nothing to do with your guitar at all. Keep this in mind; a lot of people can play guitar. Just about every guy on earth gives it a shot at one time or another. What makes a guitarist successful is his ability to develop a personal connection with people. This means getting to know your band and your audience and developing relationships. If you do that well, you won't have to look for opportunities to play.

18. A focus on your musical niche. -- While a wide cultural music experience is fine, you ultimately want to be good at what you do, and not "just OK" at a bunch of different things. If the rhythm guitar playing of alternative rock is really your thing, listen to music that showcases that and focus on that part of your playing. If there's an alternative group that needs a rhythm guitarist, you'll be a step ahead of the competition.

19. An understanding of the difference between rhythm and lead guitar. -- Again, this might sound basic, but you really need to get the difference and the dynamics between these two categories as they are the two main streams of today's modern guitarist. The linked number 19 title is to an extensive article I wrote on the topic.

20. Knowing when to solo, and when not to solo. -- Guitar solos can either make you look really great, or really stupid. First of all, you need to be aware that guitar soloing today isn't what it was back in the 80s. Post Kurt Cobain guitar solos are very different, and whether or not you like what he did to the guitar solo, it's something you need to be aware of. Single well placed notes and effects are the standard of our day, and basically, less is more. The lightning fast shredding of past decades of rock and roll aren't going to get you very far today, unless your name is Steve Vai or Joe Satriani.

Robert Kittleberger is the founder and editor of guitarchalk.com. You can visit the site at http://www.guitarchalk.com/ and follow Robert on Twitter @guitarchalk.