Build your student base.

It’s a really long process learning an instrument and many of us, when ready, will make a transition to teaching. The main issue always lies with gaining a student base. After being a teacher myself, I know that this is something that can take years to build up. But are there any ways to help speed up the process and what can you do to change years into months when it comes to this kind of thing?

Your first stop should always be word of mouth. We all have parents, friends, family who can ask around for us and this will usually give you a few students. Try posting on social media to see if any friends would be interested in taking your classes.

Local advertising should always be an early stop as well. Think about contacting local music shops and putting a poster up. Any kind of music related business generally wants to maintain a good relationship with local musicians and they will definitely be more than happy to help you out.

Printing and handing out flyers in the local area or asking to give a free lesson in a local school can always be a great idea as well. When it comes to local advertising, there are many possibilities, you just need to find the most likely ones to work for you.

The next idea and probably the most important one would be online advertising. These days it’s very difficult to survive without some form of online presence. For example, if you’re a guitar teacher, registering for an online registry of guitar tutors should be an absolute must.

There are also great local sites that usually pick up a few students like Gumtree and Craigslist. These are always great because they don’t usually cost anything to join and post adverts.

There are also many local directories including Yellow Pages where you can post your services and business to thousands of potential clients. Another option would be newspaper directories. These are always free to use and you can post any details you like about your business on these websites as well as contact details so that students can get in touch with you.

There are also many websites like musicteacher.com these days that are geared towards providing teachers with a platform to help gain students and advertise yourself as a teacher to thousands of students. These kinds of websites will allow you to sign up as a local teacher and create a teacher profile.

This profile will then show up on searches by students and you can usually gain a good few students from this. It’s a great way to get your name out there for free which can be hard to come by these days.

A really good way to promote yourself would be to start creating content that is relevant to what you’re offering. If you’re a teacher, start creating instructional videos on YouTube.

Keep in mind that this is almost a business in itself and could take years to take off, but if you provide regular high quality content then I don’t see why there isn’t a chance for picking up students. The best part here is that with this kind of content, you could create a very steady stream of students as well as making money from the videos online.

There are also other avenues to go down when it comes to this kind of idea. Surprisingly a great way to promote your music and your business recently has been TikTok. Another would be Instagram. I’m not an expert on either but there are a lot of businesses that can help you come up with a good marketing strategy that fits your end goal with these kinds of platforms.

If you want to take a real DIY approach then there are so many ways now to create your own website and it’s easy to understand and do with YouTube tutorials. I would recommend using WordPress over some of the other website builders available. It’s more customisable and you actually learn about how the site works and is being built, but all in an easy to understand way.

Having your own website can help drive students to your website and in turn take your lessons. The only downside is: to have any kind of ranking power on Google you also need to have an understanding of SEO and how this works. It’s a big part of having a website that works and gets organic traffic from the likes of Google.

Again though, there are so many tutorials online that you can use to be able to get the hang of this. Remember that for this, you will need to buy a domain name, a hosting package, and more.

As you can see there are so many different ways in which you can promote yourself and your lessons. If you get the right balance between all of these ideas and you are patient then you’ll have lots of students, but it’s always worth keeping in mind that to build a quality student base it can take years.