Music Teachers Toolkit
Welcome to the Music Teacher's Toolkit
Below is a list of resources the will help you start and promote a music teaching business online.
Please note that this is a living, breathing page. What does that mean? It means that this isn't everything. I wanted to get something up quick for you so you could take some action on the blog post.
So, stay tuned because I will be adding more resources to it as I find them. Bookmark this page for reference and watch your email inbox for updates.
Questions? Suggestions?
If you have a question about anything related to starting or promoting a music teaching business OR if you would like me to add something below, send me an email here and let me know.
How To Get Started
Udemy – Here's a super affordable course on Udemy the teaches you how to start and run your own music teaching business. Click here to check it out.
Skillshare – This is a more general course on how to get started teaching online.
Or this might be a faster all in one way to get rolling…
Teachable – They provide a place for you to host and sell your courses online and have a beginners course that walks you through setting up a teaching business.
Booking And Payments
PayPal – Probably the simplest way to start.
Square (All In One) – I know barbers, musicians, personal trainers, etc who use Square Appointments to simultaneously schedule and collect payments. Pretty slick if you want to collect payments up front.
Giving Lessons
Live Video
Skype – The old standby and pretty well known. You'll both need accounts to get rolling.
Hangouts – Solid choice and since its a Google product there is some YouTube integration perks. You'll both need accounts.
Zoom – The best option in my opinion. Some of my clients were using it, then I saw some marketers using, THEN I TRIED IT. Now I love it. It is super ea to get rolling. Basically, you start or schedule a meeting and send your client a link that they click on to begin. You don't have to worry about them having to figure out Hangouts or Skype or have an account. Just send a link and bam, your live. They also have some handy recording features that you could use to record lessons for added value to your student OR as and upsell.
Recorded + Screenshare
Screencast-o-matic – I've been using this for all the videos you see on this site and for all my client work. Works great and even with a free tier, it is very affordable.
Loom – Haven't used it myself but I like to give you a few options if possible. In online marketing circles, it gets recommended a lot so it must.
All In One Options:
These are sort of a trade-off. You get a streamlined interface and will be exposed to a larger, built-in audience. But you need to share some of the profit and there may be restrictions on where else you can teach online (like YouTube).
If you don't care about any of that and want to keep it simple, thee are great options.
Coming Soon – I know there are some music lesson specific sites, I just need to find them. Stay tuned.
Equipment
You probably have everything you need and you can get pretty fancy with your equipment (mixers, etc). But simpler is better in my opinion.
Laptop, desktop, tablet, or phone – Self-explanatory.
Camera – you can use whatever your current device has or upgrade to one of the sweet live streaming camera set-ups that are available.
Microphone – again you can use whatever your device has but if you want to kick it up a notch, the Apogee MiC works awesome for phones and tablets.
File Sharing
You might need to send audio files, share videos and/or documents with students. Here are some options:
Google Drive – Its free, its universal, it good. Both you and your client will need a gmail account.
Screencast-o-matic – I use this tool every day. It is great for showing and narrating lessons, reports, and critiques. You just record, upload and send a link.
There are other like Dropbox and Box as well.
Create a Website
WordPress – Every one of my sites is on WordPress. You can do pretty much anything with WordPress. Collect emails, start a blog, add plugins to sell your music or play your tunes. Oh and did you know 24% of websites on the entire web (yep, the ENTIRE WEB) is running on WordPress? Sites like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Just saying.
Elegant Themes – I’ve been using Elegant Themes for a few years. They are incredibly well-designed, are updated all the time, and there are a lot of designs to choose from.
Teachable – You could skip the website and use a platform like Teachable to host all your lessons website.
Host your WordPress site:
SiteGround – At the beginning of 2017 I switched all my websites to SiteGround. I love them. I cut my hosting fees by 2/3. Nice and organized dashboard on the back end. And they have awesome support. I experienced this first hand because after 10 years online, I have a ton of cyber junk (old sites, unused email servers, broken this, broken that, etc). They helped make the switch pretty smooth.
Build An Email List
An email list is one the to top assets your business will ever have. This is one of the primary ways you are going to stay in touch with your students and automate certain aspects of your marketing to save time.
Mailchimp – I use a few different services but this is the email service I use for Musicgoat and with a bunch of clients. Very solid. Its free to get started and very solid all around.
ConvertKit – My favorite email service and the one I moved to for this site a few years ago. Very clean interface and very visual to help build out funnels quickly.
Advertise
There are almost an endless amount of ways to advertise online and off so this section will be growing.
Your existing network – Make a list of all your contacts online and off. Call, text, email or take them to lunch and tell them what you are doing. Ask “Who do you know that might be looking for [your instrument or course] lessons?”
YouTube ( with TubeBuddy) – Create simple instruction videos to show what you know and give people an idea of how your are to work with. Then share these videos with freinds and on social networks (make sure you have a link to your website in the description and mention it in the video).
And if you plan on using YouTube, TubeBuddy is super handy optimization tools that will save you a ton of time and help make sure your videos and channel are optimized to get more viewers, capture subscribers, and more. They have a feature filled free tier. If you do any YouTube Marketing you’ll see the value instantly. Try it and you’ll see. Its a no-brainer!
Google AdWords – You can blow a ton of money really fast using AdWords but if you know what you are doing, you can get students pretty cheap especially if you focal locally and/or regionally. I know because I do it for a piano instruction client of mine.
If you want to try it. Send me an email here with “AdWords Help” in the first line. AdWords is one of my main sources of income and I've been working with it for over 10 years. I'd be glad to give you few pointers and tell you how you can get some ads for free.
Music Teacher Marketing Course – For the good measure, here's a marketing course I found specific to Music Teacher Marketing.
See also Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more. I skipped those for now. Why? To make a long story short, I went with the above to give you some options where people are going and “actively” looking for instruction. People do not specifically go to Facebook, Twitter and those other to learn how to play music. There are strategies for using them but they are beyond the scope of this resource for now.
Additional Resources
I went around and found a bunch of decent blog posts and articles covering the topic:
Questions? Suggestions?
If you have a question about anything related to starting or promoting a music teaching business OR if you would like me to add something below, send me an email here and let me know.