5 Passive Income Ideas For Music Teachers

Okay, before I start, some people will say there is no such thing as passive income.

I would disagree! 🙅‍♂️

I’m very much into creating passive income streams, and from my experience, it’s perfectly achievable.

There is no better feeling than waking up in the morning and seeing all the payment notifications in your inbox without doing anything.

There are quite a few opportunities for music teachers to create passive income and earn money doing, well – nothing (there’s a catch, though – read more below).

In this post, I’ll focus on ways you can create passive income as a music teacher by doing work only once.

After the work is done, what you have created will continue to make money for you in months or years, with little to no further investment needed from your end.

To qualify as passive income, you’ll need to do the work and invest your time only once.

There are other ways to make money as a music teacher, but I want to focus on passive income ideas for music teachers only in this post.

So let’s get started!

1. Create a Digital Course

This is my first recommendation to music teachers looking to set up new passive income streams. 

Think about a music topic you’d like to teach and record a digital course. 

You can teach the exact course you teach your offline students and create a digital version of it.

When I say digital course, the course is accessible online via computer, smartphone, or tablet. 

The format of the course will depend on the topic you’re teaching, your music teaching style, and the ways you sell the course online.

The best way to earn the most from your digital course is to have your own website where you teach music online. 

You’ll then make this digital music course available for purchase on your website.

Students can enroll in the course at any time and go through the materials at their own pace. 

You choose if you want to make yourself available for student questions (possibly for an extra charge to students) or have the course completely self-paced.

As I mentioned, you can deliver the course in various formats, here are just some examples:

• Video music courses
• E-book music courses
• Hybrid courses that include both video, text, and other learning resources

A format that would not work for creating passive income would be:

• Music course that is delivered live via Zoom

In this case, the music teacher needs to host this course live over Zoom.

Pro tip: host a music course live ONCE, record all the live sessions, and edit them in the video editing software to create a digital course.

As you can see, there are ways to do the work once and then earn money from the course you have created as passive income.

2. Sell A Music Course On Udemy

This is a truly passive income.

I’ve done it myself, and I currently have five bass guitar courses published on Udemy.

Now more than five years from publishing, these courses are still generating passive income every month with zero work from my end! It’s awesome.

There are steps you need to take to set up this passive income for music teachers:

• Record a digital course
• Apply for a Teacher Account on Udemy
• Upload your music course to Udemy
• Get approved
• Earn a passive income from teaching music

Important: a course on Udemy is different from a course you might sell on your website. 

For example, all courses on Udemy are video-based.

This means if you’re uncomfortable on camera, or don’t have the gear to shoot music courses at home (like having a proper background for filming music courses), then you will not be able to publish courses on Udemy.

This is because there are strict guidelines on the course delivery format and quality when it comes to being a music instructor on Udemy.

If you seek to set up passive income as a music teacher, you should definitely learn how to create digital courses and invest in the equipment needed.

When it comes to Udemy courses, you need to make yourself available to students’ questions; however, if you create an excellent course that answers all the possible questions, you won’t need to get involved much further down the line.

Pro tip: create a plan to publish new courses regularly. The more courses you have in your Udemy catalog, the higher the passive income will be. 

3. Create Courses For Skillshare

Skillshare is another platform where you can publish music courses and earn passive income.

Pretty much everything I shared about Udemy applies to Skillshare.

The course needs to be in video format, and you need to get approved and everything.

The only significant difference here is how you get paid.

While Udemy has different commissions for different types of sales, Skillshare is an entirely different model.

With Skillshare, you get paid for “watch hours” students get for watching materials in your courses.

A profit pool is shared among the creators on the platform based on the student watch hours and other details.

Here you can read more about how Skillshare pays instructors.

Having this in mind, if you want to upload and publish music courses on Skillshare, you should look into ways to maximize your profit. 

I won’t get more in-depth about that because it’s out of the scope of this post, but here’s a quick tip for you.

Pro tip: create genuinely exceptional and high-quality music courses students will enjoy taking and where they can achieve their goals. This will increase watch hours and of course, your earnings.

4. Sell Music Transcriptions & Tabs

Image by wirestock on Freepik

This model works great for those music teachers who also have their audience as performing artists. 

For example, this is a great passive income idea for a solo guitarist looking to create another income stream.

If you have a YouTube channel or any social media account where you post your original music, and there are musician fans who would like to learn your songs, you have proof that this passive income stream would work.

I’ll take the example of a shred guitarist posting cool videos of original music performances on Youtube.

To create passive income, you can do the following:

1. Build a musician/music teacher website
2. Transcribe your original music 
3. Sell transcriptions/tabs on your website

Your customers will watch a video on Youtube, and those who want to learn how to play the song can purchase a transcription (and maybe even a short lesson that goes along with it?) from you.

Great passive income, as you do the work only once.

I recommend having your own site and not using 3rd party platforms to sell your stuff, but even if you don’t have a website, you can sell your add-on transcriptions and tabs by using services like Gumroad and similar.

But, if you’re seriously into starting an online music teaching business and creating passive income streams, build your own music teaching website to control your business infrastructure and maximize profits.

5. Sell Music Backing Tracks

Image by pvproductions on Freepik

You’re probably good at creating music backing tracks as a music teacher.

Why not turn it into a passive income stream?

To create this passive income stream, you must start creating high-quality practice backing tracks for the instrument you’re teaching (or others if you want!).

Backing tracks can be for exercise, learning different music pieces, or your original songs.

Make sure you have the right to sell those, but other than that – great passive income stream that you can grow over time.

Again, the best place to sell your stuff should always be your own music teaching website.

The hub of your future online music teaching business.

Things You Need To Know When Creating Passive Income Stream As A Music Teacher

Image by pvproductions on Freepik

You need to work on your skills to make yourself stand out from other music teachers online.

This means that you’ll probably need to learn a thing or two about online marketing for music teachers.

Also, you’ll need to learn about audio/video production at home to shoot high-quality digital music courses.

You’ll need to learn how to create your own website, sell products, etc.

Then you need to understand that passive income involves a (massive) amount of work upfront. 

It takes a while for a passive income source to start earning and bringing in consistent profits over time.

For any passive income idea to work, you need to be consistent. 

You can’t produce one course and expect great results.

You can’t be selling one transcription or a single backing track and expect returns.

The key to passive income success for music teachers in consistently creating new content!

Alright, I hope this post helps to spark some ideas for things you can do to create passive income for yourself.

What are the things you tried before or would like to try out as a music teacher to create a passive income stream?

Share your ideas in the comments below.

All the best,
Bogdan
Founder, MusicTeachingBiz.com

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