Starting Your Guitar Teaching Business from the Ground-Up

The idea of teaching the guitar seems to be catching on, as it’s started to become something that a lot of musicians seem to be taking up. And why not: it gives you a chance to practice and play regularly, promote music by teaching it, and of course, make some money while you’re at it.

While starting a music or a guitar-teaching business might seem easy, the fact is that it’s anything but! Whether you decide to take it up as a full-time gig, or something that supports your day job, here is how you can get a guitar-teaching business up and running from the ground-up successfully.

1. Commitment: A commitment to teach, and helping people learn is essential, because that is what you’ll be doing. You need to be at one with the idea that you’ll be a teacher, and be able to call yourself that.

2. Location: Where you decide to teach virtually determines everything that you do from this point on; make no mistake, this will be one of the most important decisions that you make. From your local school/college or community center, to studio apartments, to teaching in a space in your apartment, or giving lessons in your student’s homes – your call. There’s absolutely no harm in trying a combination of all of the above (also throw Skype lessons in the bag!) and ask your students what best fits their needs. For instance you could take an early morning class at the local college, and have a bunch of students come over to your apartment in the evening. Convert a room in your apartment into a studio so that there’s a professional-looking space there for your new business.

3. Key Questions: Identifying and assessing your aims and goals is an important step. Start off with asking yourself a few fundamental questions: what musical styles will you teach on the guitar? What will your selling point be? Who will you teach? What sort of students will you take up initially? How many students will you take up? How many hours will you put in (or be able to put in) initially? How much money do you plan on making? How will you market your business? Write these down (and any other important points that you can think of), and strategize how you’ll tackle each of these. (We’ll look at some of these points in detail in this write-up)

4. Target Market and Competition: As mentioned in the point above, it is vital to know who, and how big your market is – who exactly it is that you’ll be teaching? Are there a lot of schools and colleges in your vicinity, that offer music and guitar courses? Are there any guitar stores that might be looking for guitar teachers? Will someone in your town or city even be interested in guitar lessons? In addition, what does your competition look like? How are they advertising their business? How good is the competition doing, especially in terms of students and their marketing efforts? Do you think you’ll be able to bring in a decent number of students or teach a class that is large enough?

5. Fees: If you’ve been in the business for a while, you’ll probably have a fair bit of an idea on what sort of rates other teachers might be charging. Look at Craigslist to see what others are asking for. This will help you in determining what your rate should probably be as well. Important tip: Avoid overcharging (scare potential students away) or undercharging (underselling yourself) at all costs! Also come up with a payment (and a cancellation) policy at this point. When would students be required to pay you (monthly, weekly, etc.) and what exactly will the mode of payment be? Multiple modes of payment will be the most convenient.

6. Identity: Give your business a name, so that it has an identity that is separate from yours. Identify it has a proper, legal business by giving it a unique name, creating a logo for it (or have one created on Fiverr), determining contact information (call, email and address), and putting its location on Google Maps/Google Places.

7. Marketing and Publicity 1 – Offline: Use the likes of Fiverr or Elance to have designs for flyers and brochures developed. Once done, simply hit your local printing press to have them printed, and then be put up and distributed all across town. Make sure that this is professionally done, as your marketing will ultimately reflect upon your business. Ask people you know personally for endorsements and referrals.The aim is to get the word out.

8. Marketing and Publicity 2 – Online: A website, and a strong social media presence to back that up, is what you need for online marketing. Setting up a Facebook, Twitter, G+, Youtube and MySpace accounts will probably be as simple as going through the process of signing-up for each – make sure that you fill out all information and populate these pages properly. Also sign up for Google Places and have your new business listed on Places.

9. Website: A website will be essential to your business, no questions about it! You’ll need a website most certainly; however it is something that you might have problems setting up, especially if you haven’t done it before. Pay someone to create a professional-looking website for you – either a local company that provides such a service, or someone over Elance. Get a YourBusinessName.com domain for your website. Set up all the different sections of the website, including the Home Page, About, and Contact pages. Your charges, timings, where you teach, as well as an biography along with a professional-looking photo, all this information should be up on the website. You might want to consider outsourcing the maintenance of this website to the developers – especially SEO so that you can be found on Google.

10. Teaching: Meet up with students before you start teaching them. This is very important, as it allows you to know the specific requirements of each student, and what they might be looking to learn. It also helps build trust. If you’re having students come to you for lessons, have them sign a contract, which lists down all your policies in detail.

11. Organization: Once you start teaching – taking a class at the college or getting students to come to you – make sure that you keep note of all lessons and all financial aspects of your new business. There are plenty of PC/Mac and iPhone/tablet-based programs out there which let you maintain extensive schedules easily. Calendar (formerly iCal) for instance is a pretty great piece of software on the Mac for this purpose. It would also be a good idea to put this up on your website, preferably in a members-only part of your website which is accessible only using a login and password, provided to each one of your students.

12. Finances: Speaking of finances, tracking all earnings and expenses is imperative. Payments/fees received, refunds, missed payments, keep a track of them all. Maintain a file of all the receipts (electronically as well), which can be accessed at any point of time easily.

13. Students: Keep notes on each student. It might also be a good idea to video your sessions with the students – with their consent of course – which can then also be shared with them, and used to review their performances and identify areas where they might need to improve. It will also assist you with developing lessons tailored for each student individually. Make sure that you have your students’ consent to video tape the lessons, and also if its allowed by any school/college/institution where you might be teaching.