How To Get Your Start Teaching Music Privately
In the arts one of the traditional ways of earning a living is by teaching. While fulltime teaching gigs are hard to come by, the private sector offers many opportunities including one-on-one lessons. The following resources should help you get started teaching independently and also help you discover new tools and platforms designed for private, one-on-one lessons. Additional resources via prior Hypebot coverage are included at the end of the post.
Free Course: Becoming A Music Teacher
Mike Johnston of Mikeslessons.com is offering a course for those getting started called Becoming A Music Teacher: The Art of Sharing Your Talent:
"In this class, Mike will teach you the art of delivering information in a concise, actionable way that makes complex ideas easily digestible. You’ll learn techniques for engaging students and presenting information in a way that holds their attention while helping them actually retain what you teach them."
"You’ll also dig into the business end of teaching. Monetizing teaching is more complex than hanging up a sign in your local guitar center – Mike will cover how to find and keep paying students."
The live version, streamed August 14, 9 am to 4 pm LA time, is free. After that on-demand access costs $49. Still sounds like a good deal but mark your calendars for the free day of learning.
3 Options For Teaching Music Online
Claire Cunningham and Chris Ott from Lessonface, about which I've previously written, look at 3 ways to offer online music lessons:
1. Live lessons over webcam
2. Creating video tutorials (e.g., YouTube videos)
3. Designing programs or apps
If you haven't considered the options, this post is a good place to start.
TakeLessons: Promote and Manage Your Music Lessons
TakeLessons connects teachers and students for music and other arts topics. It also gives both parties tools for communicating and gives teachers tools for managing their businesses.
TakeLessons lists both online and offline teachers and handles everything but streaming online lessons. For that they recommend Skype.
Though they're opening up the platform to teachers not only in all art forms but in other disciplines, their initial success was achieved with a focus on music.
This spring TakeLessons raised $7 million in VC funding, making total funding at $20 million. They've also paid teachers over $20 million and note that their backend tools have been a big part of their overall success.
More:
- LessonFace Aggregates Massive Range Of Niches For Online Music Lessons
- The ZOEN Provides Music Teachers With A New Platform For Online Lessons
- Teach Music & Make $ Online Using Bandhappy
- New Musician Revenue Stream: Teach Music Online
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) also blogs at DanceLand. Send news about music tech startups and services, DIY music biz and music marketing to: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
I actually found this indie book on Amazon to be pretty helpful for getting started in some local guitar teaching. Good lesson plans and tips.
http://www.amazon.com/How-To-Teach-Guitar-Thinking/dp/1450575234/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1406780652&sr=8-7&keywords=joe+livoti