How Many Hours To Run a Music Lessons Membership Site

Alright – let’s talk about music memberships (my favorite topic!) and how many hours you realistically need to put in to run a successful membership site.

I’ve been involved with quite a few music lessons memberships over the years, as well as online membership sites that are not focused on music instruction specifically, and what I’m about to share might surprise you.

What Is A Music Lessons Membership?

In this post, I’m talking specifically about membership sites.

This means guitar memberships, piano memberships, singing lessons memberships, sax memberships, etc.

You build a website and start offering a paid service to students worldwide to access your music lessons and other instructional content.

So what is a membership site?

It’s an online business model where you run a website where people can get access to instructional materials and resources that are locked behind a paid recurring membership.

Basically, a student needs to purchase a membership to get access to members-only content inside and it’s all facilitated online via a music instructional website.

In most cases, for an online business to qualify as a membership site, there will be an auto-recurring subscription that students using the website need to sign up for and pay for on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis.

In my opinion, it’s one of the best business models for music teachers to earn more money from their teaching.

What Kind Of Content Music Teaching Memberships Include

This will actually be one of the keys to understanding how much time you need to run a music instructional membership website.

What’s typical about memberships is that there is an expectation of new content being added regularly.

The time it takes to produce this content will significantly impact the hours you need to invest on a weekly or monthly basis to run your membership.

Here are some examples of music lessons membership deliverables (content that’s published for students inside the membership and updated regularly):

• Music lessons (audio, video, text-based)
• Online music digital courses
• Learning resources (such as backing tracks for practice, sheet music, etc)
• Online group webinars and meetups
• Community activities and assignments

As you can see, there can be quite a lot of different content being offered to students as part of the membership site.

Often, more than 2 or 3 types of deliverables are included as part of the music membership site.

Action item: if you’re planning to start your online music teaching business, and looking to start a membership, a good starting point would be:

1. Define the deliverables and
2. Estimate how much time is needed to produce and upload the content to where the membership site will be hosted.

How Often Do You Add New Content To Music Membership Site

Usually, music membership websites add new content monthly, but there are memberships where new content is added weekly or even daily, and sometimes every two months, six months or so.

This factor of how often new content is expected by the students will greatly influence how much time you’ll need to invest in running your online teaching business.

Pro tip: adjust the rate you add new content in way that it works for you, keeping in mind that you don’t overwhelm your members.

Often, you’ll feel that you’re not adding enough new stuff when in reality students are not able to keep up – as they need time to practice and master the lessons you provide.

How Much Time Is Needed To Run A Music Membership Site

As I said at the beginning of this post: how much time you invest into running your music membership will be unique to your online music teaching business.

It all depends on how your membership is organized, and what you are offering to your members in terms of content, support, etc.

But I’m not going to leave you here because I hate those YouTube videos that don’t have a practical conclusion in the end.

So, in my experience you need this many hours to run a successful membership site after it’s been established and everything is running smoothly:

This Is How Many Hours You Need To Run A Music Membership

If I would really need to spill out an exact number, I would go for this estimate based on a number of factors.

You need at least 20 hours per week to successfully run a music membership site.

Again, some will spend more time and some way less (like 10 hours per month!), it depends on your experience, skills, and what your membership is all about.

As your business grows over time, you’ll be able to cut back on hours you work by outsourcing tasks and hiring team members.

Why You Should Start  A Music Membership Site

Keep in mind that when starting out, you’ll probably need to spend all your free time grinding, to get the whole thing launched.

But, there is a real possibility that as your music membership grows and you get more students inside the membership, your work hours might actually decrease.

This is because:

1. As your membership grows in the amount of content, you might get to a point where you don’t need to add new content so often.
2. Your online music teaching business will start generating profit, so you might be able to outsource some of the tasks to a VA and free up your time.

Is it worth doing? Absolutely.

Can you get more freedom and work less, while helping more students and making more money as a music teacher?

Yes, you can do it, but only if you run online music teaching business.

Are You Up For It?

Next time you’re kicking the idea of starting an online music teaching business, just think about the opportunities you can unlock for yourself (and your family!).

I think it’s realistic to set a goal to be working only 10-20 hours per week, and still run a profitable music lessons membership (after it has been launched and established of course!).

It is possible to start an online music membership site as a side hustle, most music teachers do it just like that.

The only question is: are you ready to take this entrepreneurial journey and change your life?

If you need help starting your online music teaching business, download my FREE guide below to get all the info you need:

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Hope this post answers your questions.

Write down in the comments section what is the one thing currently stopping you from starting an online music teaching business?

Wish you all the best,
Bogdan
Founder, MusicTeachingBiz.com