Teach Music Online in 2024 – The Ultimate Guide

Picture: Me rocking out on stage circa 2011.

For years I was involved in both teaching music online and helping run day-to-day operations of successful online music instruction websites.

I have a unique experience and insights into what kind of strategies, technology, and marketing works well for online music lessons websites (and what doesn’t!).

I’ve personally done pretty much every task and been in every role involved in starting and growing an online music teaching business: from being a teacher to a web developer and everything in between.

I’m here to help you do the same!

I’m sure that with my behind-the-scenes, first-hand experience as well as tips, support, and encouragement – you can also start your own music teaching business.

And you’ll be able to do it much faster now that you have access to all this information.

It’s definitely a dream to succeed online, especially when it comes to teaching music – but you CAN do it.

I believe if you truly want it, you’ll find a way to create your own music teaching business.

Then you’ll be amazed at how fulfilling it is to teach music to a community of students all over the world and help them master their instrument.

Continue reading to learn about my experience below.

Is Teaching Music Online For You?

5 Ways To Tell If Teaching Music Online Is A Good Way To Go

Okay, these are two main questions musicians have when brainstorming if it’s a good idea to go and start to teach online music lessons (or just stick with the good ol’ in-person lessons):

Question 1: Are there students online interested in what I teach?

Think about whether there is an online market for what you’ve got to offer.

How many students do you expect to reach worldwide?

Is what you’re teaching interesting to students from other countries, who speak different languages, etc?

Question 2: Do I have the skills needed to make it online?

It’s important to figure out if teaching music online is something you would like to get involved with in the first place.

Do you already have an idea of how to start, what (and who) you would like to teach? Are you comfortable with learning about building your site, optimization, marketing, etc?

You need to think about these two ideas BEFORE you get started and invest your time because teaching music online, although very lucrative and liberating for some, is not for everyone.

To help you get started and do a quick assessment regarding teaching music online, answer the following 5 questions.

These questions will help you decide if you’ve got what it takes to move your teaching to the online world.

1. Who are your students?

When deciding to teach music online and starting an online music business, it all comes down to the students you’d like to help and if you can do it effectively.

Are you currently teaching offline and have students you teach face-to-face?

It’s okay if you aren’t experienced in teaching in-person music classes (or even if you’re just starting out).

• Who are your ideal students?
• Where are they from?
• How old are they?

2. Which instrument do you teach?

Think about the instrument that you’re teaching.

Are there students online who would be interested in learning how to play the instrument you’re teaching?

Do a quick search online and see if there are others teaching online the same instrument.

If there are, it’s a good indicator that there is a market for you online.

3. Can you teach your instrument effectively online?

This is a biggie.

While I know most instruments can be taught online, like guitar, piano, ukulele, or drums – at the same time I’m not sure it’s true for all of them out there.

You need to make sure if you can teach your instrument effectively in an online environment.

Ask yourself this:

Can I teach my instrument over the internet?

Can I teach remotely? (for example via video or live video conference calls)

Or perhaps, it’s required for you to be physically present in the room.

If your answer is YES, if you can teach your instrument remotely, it means that you could benefit from moving to online teaching.

4. Do you have existing an online following?

Next, you should ask yourself this question:

Do I already have an online presence?

Again, if you don’t – it’s no biggie because you can get started with it and it doesn’t take too long to get going.

Of course, having an online following already is an advantage and it could help you get things rolling faster.

• Do you already have social media accounts with followers?
• Do you already have a YouTube channel where you post your music and have subscribers?
• Do you maybe have a website?
• Do you have an email list?

If you already have one or more of the above, that means you’re already in a good position and that teaching music online would be something you’d benefit from.

But if you don’t have an existing online audience, that’s okay too.

Remember:

Every single music teacher who succeeded in running an online business started from having zero people in the audience at one point.

What’s important is that you’re open to starting social media accounts.

That you’re okay with the idea of promoting yourself online as a music teacher.

If you’re okay with sharing your ideas with an online audience, often doing it for free, then starting an online music teaching business would be a good fit for you.

5. Do You Have Tech Skills And Gear To Teach Music Online?

The final question I have for you is:

Do you have the necessary tech skills to teach music online?

Now check this out: I know that most music teachers are NON-TECH SAVVY at first and THAT’S OKAY and you’ll see why below.

But if you already feel confident teaching music remotely, you have the gear and skills needed to record and/or broadcast-quality audio and video – then you’re more than ready to take things to the next level!

Again, if you’re a beginner or just don’t have any of those tech skills at the moment – don’t fret. You’re not the only one.

The good news is that you can learn and acquire those skills – I highly recommend doing so.

Teaching music can help you earn more, work less and be able to spend more time with your family.

It isn’t easy to get there, but there are shortcuts.

Answer this question:

Are you prepared to learn new things and fiddle with tech and gear?

If your answer is YES – then cheers! 🎉

You’re ready to become an online music teacher.

If your answer is NO, don’t let the fear of the unknown and technology stop you from getting started.

If there are students online waiting to learn from you, your duty is to serve them and help them become better musicians. They can’t do that if they can’t reach you from every corner of the world.

All things aside, you should definitely consider embarking on this online teaching journey, because it gives you options to earn more from your teaching and discover a new lifestyle with more freedom, flexibility, and exciting opportunities.

This brings us to…

4 Reasons Why You Should Teach Music Online

Moving outside of your comfort zone often feels intimidating.

After all, I’m here talking about exposing yourself to the online world, learning the latest web technologies and deep diving into the world of online business, digital marketing, and becoming an online music teacher/entrepreneur.

It’s a lot to take in – I get it.

These are 4 reasons why you should consider taking the red pill to go down the rabbit hole:

#1 Access To More Students

Teaching in a local music shop, rented practice room, in your home or by doing visits is great.

You CAN make a decent living, build a solid student base and be successful.

But, there’s a problem.

The pool of potential students is limited, and you have a limited number of work hours available in a day.

When you start teaching music online, the moment you start – your potential to reach new students is immediately multiplied by 10x, 20x or 1000x…. the sky is the limit.

When you teach music online, you get access to a lot more students than you could have ever reached before.

#2 No Location Boundaries (Teach Music All Over The World)

It’s a fact that if you teach music traditionally in a classroom, you’re limited to a certain area where you offer music lessons.

By going online, you remove all location boundaries because now you can have a lesson with a student from LA, and then the next with a student from Sweden.

Becoming location-free is powerful because we live in a big world – just imagine the possibilities.

#3 Opportunity To Earn More Money Teaching Music

When you start teaching music online, you’re adding a new source of income.

You don’t need to stop teaching offline if you start your online thing, but it’s highly possible that you might want to move towards teaching music online full-time.

There are business models and strategies that enable you to earn more while spending less time teaching, but those methods only work if you’re teaching music online.

If you go online, you can reach more students, and implement a one-to-many approach to your teaching to instantly 10x your income, without increasing work hours!

Heck – your work hours are likely to decrease so you might just as well squeeze in some fun casual gigs or just have time for yourself.

This brings us to the next point:

#4 Freedom To Organize Your Work-Life Balance As You Want

Let’s imagine you’re empowered to deep dive into starting an online music teaching business.

You do what needs to be done and a couple of years down the road it could look like this:

No fixed appointments, lessons, or things you NEED to attend.

You organize your day the way you like as you now enjoy your newly found freedom.

As an online music teaching business entrepreneur, your work week is starting to shrink to just 20 or even 10 hours per week.

You’re inspiring and helping hundreds (or even thousands!) of students all around the world to learn how to play their beloved instrument.

You’re making a change, but don’t feel exhausted.

On the contrary – you feel fulfilled and motivated to serve your audience.

You feel the love from your students.

Your income has skyrocketed to levels you couldn’t imagine with a “regular job”.

Yes – it is a dream, but I’m not making this up.

I know people who got there.

And I know it can be done.

Maybe it’s not a rule, more of an exception to be highly successful – but I believe you can achieve everything with dedication, hard work, and persistence.

So if the above life sounds good, check out the action list below and write down your answers to make a plan:

How To Choose The Right Teaching Model That Fits Your Style

I’ve been involved with online music education businesses since 2007.

Back in the day, it WAS quite an adventure because the technology and the internet were in the early stages: the resolution was 640×360, files were huge and the internet was slow.

Even though things like Zoom or Live Streams were not a thing – I could see a glimpse of the future:

Even back then, it felt it was doable to teach music through online music lessons.

Better yet, it was possible to make it a more efficient learning experience, in comparison to an in-person lesson.

Fast forward almost two decades later:

Online education is booming and all of a sudden we have – software, technology, no-code website building, and opportunities we never had before to relatively easily start doing online music lessons as a side hustle and grow it into full-blown online teaching businesses.

When it comes to teaching music online, there are different models you can implement.

It’s important to find the model of teaching that’s right for you and the one that feels comfortable.

So let’s check out your options:

6 Online Music Lessons Teaching Models + Additional Examples

One-On-One Online Music Lessons

This is a classic one-on-one in-person experience you’re probably used to but done remotely.

To do it online, you’ll be using video conferencing software like Zoom, Skype, Facetime, etc. to have online lessons with your student.

This teaching model works great and with quality gear feels almost like an in-person lesson.

The only thing you can’t do is play with your student at the same time, jamming along.

You can use teaching aids to go past this, like having students play over music backing tracks while you’re listening and providing feedback.

This teaching model is very popular and most online teachers will choose it as a starting point.

Also because of its one-on-one nature, it’s often used in online music teaching businesses as a more exclusive (and expensive) option.

The good thing about this approach is that you can focus on one student at a time, providing a tremendous level of support and value.

The downside is that there is an hourly rate cap which limits your potential earnings.

Online Group Music Classes

Group lessons online are done technically the same way as one-on-one lessons.

The only difference here is that you’ll be teaching to a group of students, all at the same time.

If you’re a school or university teacher, you’re probably already comfortable teaching group lessons, and this might be an ideal teaching model for you.

Pros of this teaching model: You’re doing a one-to-many approach here, which means you can teach music to a number of students during a single lesson hour, as opposed to one-on-one lessons where you could only reach one student (and charge for a single lesson).

This means higher income potential while working less = you can earn more per hour in comparison to private lessons.

Group lessons are also popularly called Workshops and Online Camps where you can reach many students who pay for tickets to participate.

Digital Courses

I’m a huge fan of digital courses because I think that’s one of the best ways to teach music online.

This teaching model involves creating a digital course on the music topic you’re an expert in while helping students solve a specific problem to make progress on the instrument.

This model is great because once your digital course is complete, you can sell it over and over again reaching a huge number of online students.

It’s not passive income, but it can definitely 10x your income potential if done right.

It’s the ultimate one-to-many teaching model.

Creating digital courses involves a more advanced set of skills, where you need to learn how to create content, record video and audio, publish content online, etc.

Pros of this teaching model: You only do it once, and you end up with a digital product (=asset) that you can earn from in the years to come.

You can create digital courses in as little as 14 days if you’re well organized.

Digital music courses I published years ago are still selling, each and every month.

Correspondence Online Music Lessons

This is an interesting and kind of old-school teaching model from the early days of online music education.

Some online music businesses still offer it in one form or another, so it’s a sign that it can be effective and there’s a market for it.

Correspondence online music lessons are usually done via email or some kind of messaging app.

The teacher sends the student lesson materials, the student then submits assignments and questions.

The teacher responds with feedback and so on.

This model is perfect for those music teachers who are not comfortable teaching on camera live.

Also, if you’re busy with classroom students, this can be a great method to earn more money from teaching as you can do correspondence in between classes or during breaks.

The main characteristic of this teaching model is that lesson is not in real time.

The teacher responds in writing (or sometimes in audio and/or video) – usually within 24 hours or so.

This is one of those teaching models that can work for you if you don’t have time or space for live private or group classes, and also if you’re not ready to start creating digital courses.

Community-based Online Music Lessons

This kind of teaching is conducted in an online community such as in a group on social media platforms.

Public and private Facebook groups are popular places, also Viber or WhatsUp groups… and if you’re more advanced and have a website, you would offer to teach music in an online forum on your website.

This teaching model is unique because it’s community driven.

For example, you would post a song assignment that all students in a group work on together.

It’s a great way to boost social interaction between students and facilitate a fun learning experience, while at the same time enabling you as a teacher to work with more students at the same time.

Again, a great model for those with time restrictions, as you can reply to students at any time plus the community chimes in so students help and encourage each other.

Additional: Hybrid Model, Online Music Lessons Memberships, etc.

Once you go deeper down the online music teaching business path, you’ll discover there are hybrid online education models that can work great for you as a music teacher.

These models involve organizing online education using several models combined.

One of the ultimate models is an online membership:

Students pay a monthly fee to have access to you and your content. And they do it on an auto-recurring basis, just like Netflix.

If you want to start a membership, you’re most likely to offer multiple teaching models, an all-in-one-place which can consist of deliverables such as:

• Digital Courses
• Group Online Lessons
• Workshops
• Correspondence Lessons
• Private Lessons

I think this hybrid model along with Digital Courses has the highest earning potential for an online music teacher.

Now back to you, do action item #2 below and decide which teaching method you’d like to get started with:

How To Start Teaching Music Online

In this chapter, you’re going to learn how to start teaching music online. And the amazing thing is that this can be applied even if you don’t have any students yet.

So regardless if you’re just starting out with teaching music or you have years of experience and satisfied students, the approach you’re going to learn here can be applied in your online teaching music business.

If you refer to your action items #1 and #2, you’ve already defined who your students are, the instrument you’d like to teach, and established if you have an existing online audience.

These are the starting elements for you, regardless if you have or if you don’t have any students at this point.

Now, go through the following steps to create a sort of roadmap for your online music teaching business.

Identify Problems And Create Helpful Online Music Lessons

Once you know your students well, it’s time to identify their problems and offer a solution.

As you can see, finding out who your ideal students are, allows you to laser focus on creating content that helps them.

Music teachers can get carried away and offer “general music lessons” online.

Sometimes you’d see teachers offering all of this: piano, bass, and guitar lessons.

That might sometimes work with traditional in-person lessons due to low competition locally, but it almost never works in the online world.

That’s because you can find music teachers who specialize in any imaginable genre, sub-genre, or even playing technique.

And everyone wants to go to study with a specialist.

So once you have identified your ideal students, it’s time to identify their problem areas.

Make a list of specific problems they face when learning the instrument.

What do they struggle with the most?

These will be your guidelines for creating content, which brings us to the next step in serving your audience online.

Help Students Make Progress, For Real

This is the fun part – creating content.

But not just any music content.

You’ll be creating specific content and lessons that are laser-focused on helping your students with their common problems.

When I say content, what I mean is: creating lessons, courses, programs, workshops, posts, articles – different kinds of digital content accessible to your students over the internet.

You see, if you can help your students get results, develop new skills on the instrument and achieve their goals – well, you did your job well and they are going to LOVE you for it!

When Starting From Zero Audience

If you’re in a situation where you have zero online followers or you’re even just starting out as a music teacher – then you should start building your audience first.

Remember that it takes time to build your following.

The key is being consistent with it.

If you’re consistent, you choose the right teaching model for you, and you’re attracting the right people – you’ll start seeing your numbers increase.

What If You Already Have An Audience?

This is a perfect situation when starting an online music teaching business.

If you already have an audience that’s engaged and interested in your online lessons, then all you have to do is continue building the audience while working on your online business infrastructure and initial launch offer.

You’ll pick a date to launch and then get to build what you have envisioned to be your online music teaching business.

You need to define your offer and make it available for students to buy.

When everything is ready, which means having a website, an offer, and systems in place: you invite your followers to buy your first online product.

This product can be private one-on-one lessons, transcriptions, digital courses, or even access to members-only content on your site.

Whatever the offer is, it’s time to make it available to your audience to test out the waters and see if there’s an interest.

You’ll learn a lot from this initial launch, things like:

• Are students who follow you online ready to buy from you?
• Are your followers interested in your offer?
• How many of them are ready to take the next step in the online relationship?
• Is the audience matching your ideal student, or is it too broad?
• How many sales will you make over the course of the initial launch?
• At which price point are students willing to buy?

…and so much more.

I’m a strong advocate of building an email list from day 1 if you decide that you want to make money teaching music online.

I’m not saying social media and other platforms are worse, but email marketing is still the #1 way to make an impact and promote your products.

In case of email marketing, you should aim to have at least 400-1000 people on the email list before launching.

That way you can gather some data and analyze the performance.

How To Succeed In Teaching Online (And Not Get Overwhelmed)

I know, you’re a musician and probably haven’t really spent that much time studying digital marketing, online business and tech that powers websites.

That’s okay.

I know a lot of musicians who went from knowing nothing to running successful online music teaching businesses in just a few years.

You just got to be open to learning all this stuff as you go.

You have to be aware that creating an ad that you’re giving one-on-one classes via Zoom isn’t going to help you achieve that dream of having students from all over the world and leveraging the one-to-many teaching model, not to mention earning while you sleep (just imaging checking your account in the morning with 5 sales overnight).

To achieve that, you need to build your own online music teaching business.

As someone who has helped multiple music teaching businesses over the course of my career in the digital world, and had a chance to witness those dreams come true, I’m offering you my VIP tips to help you get started and more importantly, succeed in teaching online.

1. Start A Website From Day 1

Build a website, get it online as soon as you start thinking about teaching music online.

That’s very important and the sooner you do it the better for you in the long run.

You don’t need to be super-techy to build a website nowadays. You can do it without writing a single line of code!

Look into it and get instructions on how to build a website, but do it as soon as possible.

Make sure you own your content and platform for teaching, as this will be the base for your future business development and growth.

2. Create The Initial Offer To Teach Music Online

Once your website is up and running, create an initial offer.

This is something you’d be offering to your audience and potential students.

It can be free or paid.

The goal is to come up with a simple offer that your audience seeks and ideal students would enjoy taking part in.

Remember:

At first, you don’t have to sell anything. Especially if you don’t have your audience yet. Your offer can be as simple as offering private Zoom lessons.

Or perhaps ask students to sign up for your mailing list.

An offer can be a way to help you get started and check if there is interest in the paid offers you would create in the future.

3. Promote Your Offer Online

Take this offer and use it as an excuse to start promoting it online in order to build your audience.

Digital marketing is something you’ll be learning when going up the levels of online music teaching entrepreneurship.

When I say promoting I don’t mean spamming social media with: Take my online music lessons. Contact me now for a quote.

Instead, you should learn about different ways to use both organic and paid reach to get your offer to online users. This will also include creating content and interacting with online users using your website primarily but also email marketing, social networks, etc.

Have prompts to get the offer as a next step, if your audience is ready.

At this point, your website should be focused on building an email list.

Even if no one buys your paid product, it’s important to start building your email list as soon as possible.

Having an email list ensures you have contacts of those who are potentially interested in becoming your students in the future.

This will give you a head start when launching your online music teaching business.

Focusing On The Opportunity To Teach Music Online

As long as you’re genuine in helping your potential students online, you post helpful content, and build a good relationship with your audience – you’re bound to make progress and grow your audience over time.

Think of it as an amazing opportunity to not only focus on online teaching but to reach students from around the world.

If you have students who want to learn music, in particular those who want to learn through online music lessons, you are able to teach students all over the world. Inside your own music studio, you can quickly grab your guitar or bass, sit at the piano, turn on Zoom and the virtual music lesson can begin.

There is no need for your classes to be limited to a geographical region, because when you create online music lessons, when you create video lessons, or simply host classes online, you instantly reach so many students who want to learn music.

7 Gear Essentials You Need to Have In Your Studio

The music business has changed so much.

Musicians before needed to be discovered, signed to a label, and get a record deal in order to have any chance of seeing the inside of a music recording studio.

Today, musicians have full-fledged recording studios in their bedrooms and can self-publish and have success on their own.

As an online music teacher, you should start looking into building a capable home music studio where you’ll be creating content, hosting lessons, recording, and video shooting content, etc.

Don’t worry, because the technology is so powerful today – you can do it on any budget.

Sometimes, even just a smartphone can be enough to get started.

As an online music teacher and future business owner, you should have a space to work in comfortably.

When teaching offline, you might be used to just bringing your instrument over.

But when going online, you need to use technology to capture the audio and video so that you can create content for the music lessons.

Here’s a list of must-have music lessons studio equipment to teach online:

Audio Interface To Capture Your Sound

You’ll need an audio interface which you’ll use to record high-quality audio of your instrument.

The number of needed channels on your audio interface varies depending on the instrument you teach, but for most, single-channel USB interfaces that you can hook up to your computer will do the job.

Of course, if you’re a drummer, look into getting an audio interface that can capture all the drum mics you have on your kit.

The audio interface will hook up to a computer usually via USB and allow you to record the audio of your playing.

Microphone For Recording Audio

You’ll need a solid microphone for your online music lessons studio to capture the sound of your instrument (or voice).

You’ll use one or more microphones to capture your voice, vocals as well as the instrument you play (if the microphone is needed).

Some instruments like keyboards can hook up directly into the audio interface used for recording.

Webcam For Online Music Lessons

A decent-quality web camera is needed to teach music lessons online, do live workshops, and classes via Zoom, Skype, Facetime, etc.

A web camera is often built into the desktop or laptop computer.

If not, you’ll need to get a USB web camera to have the ability to record video and interact with the students in a live web conferencing environment.

Computer

You’ll need a decent computer to hook up all the gear to.

It can be a desktop computer, a laptop, or even a powerful tablet.

Your work computer will need to perform the following tasks:

• Audio production
• Video production
• Live streaming / Video conferencing
• Internet / Office work

Video Camera For Lessons & Courses

This is the next step.

As an online music teaching business owner, especially as you start creating content – you’ll need the ability to record high-quality videos of your playing.

You’ll need a video camera for your studio.

This can range from using a smartphone, and DSLR cameras to camcorders and professional gear to capture high-quality videos.

Pro tip: Get a decent camera and learn how to self-record videos in your studio.

This will be one of the game changers for you when running an online music business, especially when you move on to higher levels and get traction.

Video Background For Shooting Music Lessons Online

You need a professional-looking background when shooting video content.

No one wants to see a mess, so you should have a corner in your studio where you have a good-looking angle for shooting videos.

A functional background can be anything from “music room setup and gear”, to a blank wall.

I like to use muslin pop-out video backgrounds, so that I can shoot videos anywhere, even on the go.

Lights To Make The Videos Pop

Next, we have lights.

If you plan to shoot videos as a part of your lessons or digital courses, or you want to take Zoom calls to another level – then it’s worth investing in a set of video lights.

A couple of lights will do just fine to make your videos way better-looking.

It’s one of the best investments you can make in order to improve the quality of your videos.

Misc Gear That Comes In Handy

When you become an online music lessons creator, you’ll quickly learn that it’s important to have less friction as possible when creating content.

It will come in handy to have gear that speeds up the process and makes it less stressful.

So for example, if you’re on a budget you can prop a camera on a stack of books – but you can also invest in a proper video camera stand.

Getting a proper stand will allow you to quickly go from an idea to actually shooting a lesson’s video/audio.

So any accessories like instrument stands, additional cables, batteries, and chargers, stands for camera/background/lights, and other devices (like a video monitor hooked up to a camera or a big disk drive for storing recorded videos) are all good additions to your online music studio for teaching.

Finally, you’ll need a bunch of software for your computer.

The software will range from Digital Audio Workstation software to capture audio, to video editing software and plugins to enhance the sound and picture, all the way to notation software to create lesson resources.

There is both free and paid software available for every purpose so you don’t necessarily need a big budget to get started.

Build Your Dream Online Music Lessons Studio

As a future online music business owner, you should set a goal to have a functional music studio setup that’s specially designed for your purpose – to teach music.

Most online music business owners (even big-name ones!), usually just have these studios set up in their homes and don’t rent a dedicated and expensive space in an office building or local music studio.

This studio essentially becomes your home office, and you can always start on a budget, and upgrade the studio as your business picks up and grows.

If you’re a technophobe, well – try to work on it.

It’s very difficult to succeed in the online music teaching world if your content has poor audio quality and low-resolution pixelated videos.

This stuff is necessary, and once you learn ins and outs you’ll see that you don’t need to be a professional videographer or audio engineer to record high-quality content at home, alone. In your own home studio equipped for online teaching.

How To Show Potential Students You’re A Good Music Teacher

Now that you’re confident that teaching online is something you want to start with, let’s see how you can get more students for your online music teaching business.

The thing is, going online can bring you success and earnings you might have never thought were possible.

When you start running your own online music teaching business, everything changes.

Financial and time freedom start to look achievable, but I got to be frank: it’s hard work.

Not everyone makes it.

But, you can have success if you do the right things.

If you have the drive.

If you have what it takes.

And if you want it, you should try to get it.

You’ll never know of your possible reach and impact on students around the world you might have had if you have never tried.

Here’s my 3-step formula you can follow:

Step 1: Establish Expertise

You need to work on establishing yourself as a go-to teacher for ———- (fill in the blank).

It doesn’t matter if you play the guitar, violin, piano, or flute, if you teach singing or teach music to children…

To do this you need to post your content online.

Post lessons, videos, host lives on social media – whatever interactive format you choose to teach music online.

You need to be present and prove to your audience that you know your stuff and that you’re a professional.

Even if you’re the best music teacher out there, it doesn’t help to say it – you need to provide an example.

People need to learn it for themselves. To build a relationship with you, to start trusting you.

You want people to consume your music lessons online, and resources about music, and to find them helpful. Build trust by owning everything you do, going always one step beyond.

Step 2: Help Students Make Progress On The Instrument

The next step is to simply: teach and be professional.

Help students make progress on the instrument.

Help your students solve problems that were holding them back.

Help them achieve their goals.

The thing is you really need to be a good teacher to succeed online.

But that doesn’t mean you need to be a virtuoso.

You can teach music to beginners only and still be a good music teacher.

But you need to help your students get the results they seek – that’ll be the essence of your future music teaching business.

Students need to learn and make progress with your help.

Step 3: Showcase Results And Progress Students Are Making With Stories, Evidence And Real Testimonials

The final step is to get feedback from your students.

Ask them for testimonials about the experience they had studying music with you.

Have them share their story and what they learned.

Because you’ll need evidence that proves your online music teaching is effective.

So you need positive reviews, testimonials, videos – anything you can get that demonstrates you’re a good music teacher and that your students are getting results with your help.

The testimonials need to be genuine. Don’t ever think that “fake it ‘till you make it” is a good idea. Don’t do it!

Students’ comments, reviews, and testimonials are going to be a trigger for future students to at least learn more about you and your teaching style, and probably to try out learning with you.

Just look at my review section for this bass course:

I’m sure a bunch of new students signed up just because they’ve seen these five-star reviews.

Turn On The Loop Pedal

What I shared above is a highly effective formula that powers an online music teaching business.

Once you implement it, it just builds up and helps you grow your business over time.

You can’t really stop at any of the mentioned implementation points.

The way elements are aligned will make or break your business – so be careful.

How To Increase Chances Of Success When Teaching Music Online

There’s one thing you can do to 10x your chances of success.

If you do this, it’s like turning up the mid knob on a guitar amp. You cut through the (online) noise with a knife.

This is how you do it:

Find your niche and be specific with who you serve

Let’s do an exercise.

Write down the answer to the following question:

Who are you and who do you serve?

Possible answer: I teach guitar.

Better answer: I teach acoustic guitar.

Even better answer: I teach acoustic blues guitar lessons.

See what I did there?

I’ve started out with a very broad topic, and a very competitive one, and I’ve narrowed it down. This helps you:

• Narrow down your competition
• Specialize in one specific topic to teach music online
• Become an expert (= become a go-to guy or gal for learning _______(add your niche))
• Target your audience with more success

This is why finding your niche is important.

It might feel contrary to your instinct which is probably to go for a wide reach, but the more specific you are with who you serve, the better.

Where Can You Teach Music Online And Make Money

There are a number of ways how you can facilitate teaching music online to make money.

Did you notice that I often use this expression: online music teaching business?

I always call it a business because that’s what it is – an online business.

Each and every one of you is a unique music teacher.

Your offers and how you make money online from your teaching will almost always be very different.

What works for one person, doesn’t work for someone else.

Below I’ll list several ways how you can make money from teaching music online:

Online Music Lessons via Zoom

You can start offering one-on-one online music lessons to your students via Zoom.

Students will sign up for lessons via your website, social media, or any other outlet you use to reach them.

Then you use Zoom software to meet up with the student and host online lessons.

Websites For Teaching Online Music Lessons

There are online platforms where you can register as a music teacher and then students who are already registered on the website can get lessons from you.

This could be a good option if you have zero people in your audience and you want to reach students on those specific platforms.

You’ll be using Zoom or Skype software for the lessons.

Fiver Gigs For Musicians

You can offer anything on Fiver, it’s another one of the popular platforms music teachers use to earn extra income online.

As a musician, you can offer different services on Fiver such as:

• Private online music lessons
• Transcribing music
• Recording music and session work
• Music theory coaching
• Shooting music video performances
• Composing

…and many more gigs that you can take part in as a musician and music teacher.

Facebook Groups For Music Lessons

You can start a Facebook Group and offer your online lessons there.

Usually, this is a good tactic for building your audience, as you need a place to promote your free and paid content anyway.

Word Of Mouth

If you teach music in a classroom you know that majority of your students come to you after getting a referral from another student.

Good thing is that word of mouth works online too.

Once you start helping students and building your audience, more and more students will approach you when they hear from their musician friends that you’re a good music teacher.

Publish Udemy Music Courses

Udemy is a great place to publish digital music courses and earn money teaching music.

Udemy has millions of students on their platform and they will promote the music course that you publish on their platform for free.

This is a great passive income stream as well, as once the course is published, there is little to no work involved.

When you teach music online, you significantly increase your reach, as you get to teach music to students around the world.

Check out the reach of my Udemy courses:

Picture: map of students taking my music courses on Udemy – 82 countries and 29 languages!

Even though I haven’t published a new course on Udemy in many years, I still get new students every day.

Skillshare For Music Teachers

This is yet another place to publish your digital music course and make money while you teach online.

Skillshare has a different compensation model for teachers in comparison to Udemy but otherwise works pretty much the same.

Lots of music teachers publish their courses both on Udemy and Skillshare for the biggest reach and earnings.

Make sure to read the terms of use and all the rules for publishing on these platforms before you post your content – you need to be aware of all the fine print and legal stuff.

Online Music Instructional Website Jobs

Another way to make money teaching music online is to start collaborating with established online music instructional websites.

Look for their ads where they are looking for teachers and content creators to join their team.

This is one of the best ways to get started, so keep an eye out for this kind of gig.

Usually, commissions are better than the ones you’d get from publishing courses on other 3rd party platforms and you’ll most likely get training and support which is even more valuable.

Marketplace Platforms For Musicians

There are many other marketplace-style online lesson platforms where you can start selling your products.

When I say products what I mean is: private lessons, digital courses, and everything else you’d like to offer as a music teacher to make money online.

Each platform will feature a unique set of requirements, commission structure, and rules to follow.

The above are all the different ways you can start teaching online to make extra income.

But there is one ultimate way to do it.

One that has the highest earning potential of them all, read on to learn what it is.

The Best Strategy For Life-Changing Results (For Music Teachers)

Teaching music online via 3rd party platforms, where you get a percentage of the earnings is a good way to get started.

It’s great for creating additional online income streams and building digital assets.

But there is one thing you can do that can completely change your life:

Start Your Own Online Music Teaching Business

Making money while you teach music online on third-party platforms has the potential to earn a steady income for you.

But to truly make it in the online world as a music teacher and to reach your full potential, becoming an online entrepreneur and starting your own music teaching business is the way to go.

If you do this, you’re setting yourself up for success that goes way beyond any occasional private lessons or gigs.

It will be incredibly hard to do it.

It must be – otherwise everyone would be doing it.

But if you start your own online music teaching business, you can achieve things you never thought were possible.

I’ve seen it time and time again – it’s possible and you can do it with hard work and dedication.

In my opinion – so worth giving it your best shot, because if you succeed… your life will never be the same.

This is what happens when you start online music teaching business (and you’re good at it):

Work on your own terms

Life achievement number one: You work on your own terms, you become your own boss.

Suddenly you have more time to spend with your family.

No more missed important moments with your loved ones.

You dictate when and how long you will be working – you make up your work hours.

Suddenly, you’ll start to feel more creative, inspired, and less stressed.

Earn More While You Teach Music Online

Teaching offline or working for an employer puts a limit on what you can earn.

Usually, it’s defined by your hourly rate or salary.

When you start your own thing, and because it’s online: limits on your potential earnings suddenly disappear.

The earning potential increases.

Again, I know.

It’s hard to run your own business, build your audience, and have success.

It’s a big commitment, a big responsibility, and sometimes more added stress as you try to juggle between creating content, responding to students, managing the server (or hiring someone to do it), recording, editing, etc.

It’s a lot of work and you gradually take over different roles in your business.

You’re not only a teacher, but you also handle everything else (or manage a team that will do the work for you).

But, just imagine you go through this difficult phase.

Just imagine you manage to overcome all those first steps that have a tendency to discourage even the most enthusiastic wanna-be entrepreneurs.

Imagine you start getting your first students as your online music teaching business slowly takes off.

You earn your first $1,000.

Then you aim for $10,000 as your next big milestone.

Then you get to the stage where your business is established and growing.

It’s a good place to be which results in the following.

Life achievement number two: Financial freedom

For most people, it doesn’t take much to have “financial freedom”, in a way that you can live your normal life without the additional stress of paying the next bill.

But there are more important values and perks you get as a music teaching business owner:

Spend More Time With Your Family And Friends

From all of the above, I think this is truly the most valuable thing you can achieve by teaching music online:

Not having work hours.

Music teachers usually start their own businesses as a side hustle.

Over time as their business grows, they are able to quit their day job and do their online thing full time.

The moment they achieve that is the one that changes everything.

Being able to spend more time with your loved one is the most important thing in the world.

Even if you don’t achieve any of your financial dreams, what if you can simply replace a regular job and fixed-hours work with your flexible online business?

What if you can earn the same, but work less and spend more time with your family and friends?

Just imagine not having to miss any of your kid’s school plays or games.

Just imagine having coffee with your friend at 10 am on a Wednesday in a local cafe.

Or planning to go on holiday in two weeks without having to notify anyone or ask for permission.

And the best thing?

Your business keeps going while you do all those life things that are important to you.

As you proudly watch your kid in a play, you might see your email notification going off as you gain new students or sell more online lessons/courses.

For me, that has been the biggest achievement that I’ve been able to get for me and my family.

To replace an exhausting full-time job with one where I have more freedom and work on my own terms.

If my daughter wants to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game after lunch, I can always say YES.

I think that should be everyone’s goal when starting online music teaching business.

To create a business that helps you enjoy your life more.

Is this only a dream?

I’ve been involved with online music teaching businesses for more than 15 years now, and the simple truth is:

It’s difficult to get started.

Achieving this dream is not always easy and doable.

For most, it’s going to be too difficult to achieve earnings of 6 or 7 figures with their online business.

Most will not be able to attain such success.

However, even replacing your daytime job or doing what you love can be a perfect motivation for you to get involved and start your teaching career online.

Rather than focusing on getting rich quickly, when starting your online music teaching business, focus on these goals instead:

• Build an online audience that cares for you
• Help hundreds and thousands of students online
• Become successful and run an online music teaching business
• Quit your full-time job
• Do the job you love and feel passionate about
• Grow your business and start hiring other people
• Have more time to spend with your family and friends
• Take a well-deserved holiday when you want (and need) it

Just A Few More Things I Want To Share…

I hope that this guide has helped you learn more about the current state of things when it comes to starting and running online music teaching business.

Online education is booming and the industry is estimated to reach USD 645 Billion in market size by 2030 (source: Straits Research).

Online music education is super-popular today and there are many successful music teachers and instructional websites that are offering a complete online learning experience.

People seem to prefer the comfort of having an option to take music lessons and get quality instruction no matter where they live, whenever they can fit it into their busy schedule.

So if you were thinking of doing something online, now is the best time to do it.

Launch your website.

Start building your audience.

Find out what your future online music business looks like, and just go for it.

Even as a side hustle, with zero investment – you can get started today, and if you stick with it, you have a chance.

From my experience, it takes anywhere from 1 to 4 years to build your music lessons business.

If you feel this could be right for you, my advice would be not to waste too much time – rather make a decision and act on it.

It might feel too complicated, even intimidating… especially if you’re starting from zero.

When it’s difficult, just think of how much you can achieve if you take small steps every week.

People usually see just the tip of the iceberg when talking about success.

But you, a music teacher, must know what it takes to get good.

All the practice hours that go into building the chops on the instrument.

Learning the theory.

Performing music and improvising.

First steps that always sound so terrible.

The same goes for starting an online business.

You can take small steps, and be “playing your first songs” sooner than later.

If you have guidance and tips along the way… someone to share all the shortcuts and ideas, well – it makes the whole thing doable.

Faster.

To make sure you don’t miss any of my tips for starting and growing online music teaching business, become an MTB reader, and get useful info delivered straight to your inbox.

Action Step 1

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Action Step 2

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If you haven’t already, download this guide for free and get instant access to action items and fillable sheets! 👇

 I’m looking forward to seeing where you’ll go and what you’ll do next when it comes to teaching music online.

Regards,

Bogdan