How to Make a Living from Teaching Guitar

Teaching guitar for a living is a great opportunity to make your own hours, control your own income, and have creative freedom. However, relying on teaching for your sole source of income will take a great deal of hard work and strategy. You’ll need to advertise extensively, focus on attracting long-term students, consider different teaching formats, and create a systemized program to be able to make a living teaching guitar.

Part 1

Part 1 of 3:

Advertising Your Services

1
Get a professional logo. This will make a huge difference—it will set you apart from the competition and show that you are serious about teaching. If you have graphic design skills, you can make one yourself, or you could outsource the project on a website like Fiverr.
- Your logo should reflect the nature of your business—you could incorporate elements such as your name, parts of the guitar, or musical notes.
2
Advertise year-round, even during the slow summer months. If you want to make a living by teaching guitar, you’ll have to work extra hard at finding students—especially when you first start out. Advertise consistently—put up posters with your logo and information, talk to potential students, hand out business cards, and post about your services on social media.^{[1]XResearch source}
- Put up posters or fliers at community message boards and local music stores.
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Create a website and some social media accounts for your business, such as a YouTube channel, an Instagram account, and a Facebook page. Post content such as videos, tips, and special deals to gain followers and reach a wider audience.
Special deals will draw in students and help boost your income. Try offering discounts for a certain month, free first lessons, or perks for signing up.^{[2]XResearch source}
5
Find a niche or a way to set yourself apart from other instructors. Focus on what you can do that will make potential students pick you over your competitor. Specialize in an area and really develop your talent. People want to know what exactly you’ll teach them.
- For example, if you teach highly trained classical guitar, focus on advertising that. Don’t advertise rock and jazz as well if you aren’t fully trained in those areas. This will help attract students who really want to learn this niche and are seeking a specialized professional.
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Part 2

Part 2 of 3:

Building Your Teaching Business

1
Set your lesson prices. Research other guitar teachers in your area and see how much they charge. Once you find out what the going rate is, make your rates competitive. You could charge the same or slightly less at first.
- The average price of a guitar lesson is between $20-40 USD for thirty minutes.
- You’ll likely start off teaching thirty-minute lessons until your students advance enough to handle forty-five minutes. Once you increase the length of your lessons, you should raise the price accordingly.
- As demand for your lessons grows, you can raise your rate.
2
Set a goal for your yearly income. Decide how much money you'd like to make per year from teaching guitar. Divide your annual goal by the rate you're starting off with to find the approximate number of lessons you’ll need to give to meet your goal.
- For example, to make $20,000 a year charging $40 an hour, you need to give 500 lessons in a year, or about 42 lessons a month.
- If you choose to teach group lessons, take that into account. Group lessons mean more payments for the same amount of time.
When a student doesn’t show up, you lose both money and time. Charging in advance or requiring a fee for skipping—unless they’ve arranged an absence with you in advance—means students will be less likely to skip and you’ll still get paid for your time either way.
4
Retain your students for a long time. The longer you teach a student, the more trust and commitment you build, and the more likely the student is to stay with you. You should focus more energy on retaining your students throughout your career rather than constantly recruiting a revolving door of new students.^{[3]XResearch source}
- Develop a healthy, personal relationship with your students—get to know them and personalize their lessons based on their favorite songs and musicians.
- At lessons, don’t just start in with teaching right away. Take a moment to ask a student how they’re doing and how their week was. This conversation shouldn’t last more than a minute or two, but showing interest in your student’s wellbeing will help them trust you and connect to you.
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Part 3

Part 3 of 3:

Teaching Lessons and Earning Income

1
Create a systemized program. Don’t spend all of your time outside of lessons making fully personalized lesson plans—instead, set up a lesson plan system and tailor it to your students as you learn more about them.^{[4]XResearch source}
- Have a library of materials such as chord handouts, songs, commonly used scale sheets, blank chord grids, and a set of fallback lessons.^{[5]XResearch source}
- Organize your system based on skill level.
2
Help your students see progress quickly. Teach your students some tips and tricks at the beginning to help them see progress early on. This will encourage them and give them the confidence to keep taking lessons.^{[6]XResearch source}
- For example, you could teach students basic scales so they can practice making up solo parts.
- You could also teach them a famous riff or the chords to their favorite song. Think of songs and riffs that people would play in a guitar store while checking out the guitars—songs that sound cool, but are deceptively easy.
3
Teach group lessons to make the most out your time. Group classes will cut down your hours and help you earn more money. A good group size is about eight people—with this number, you can make some extra money by charging per student, and you’ll still be able to give each student some one-on-one instruction.^{[7]XResearch source}
- Group lessons usually last forty minutes to an hour. Depending on the age range of your students, you may want to adjust the time for their attention span. Younger children tend to need breaks or shorter lessons.
- This style of class has a very different dynamic and may take some experience to master. Students may move along at different paces and become frustrated. Group classes generally work best for beginner or intermediate skill levels.
4
Arrange performances or recitals to motivate students. Putting together a recital is a great way to motivate students, give them a goal to work towards, and reward them for their efforts. It also lets parents see what they’ve been paying for.
- Tell the students about the recital several months in advance. Give them one or two songs to prepare and perform at the recital and consistently work on those songs with them.
- Invite your students’ families and tell students they can bring friends and extended family as well.
- Prepare some refreshments or ask parents to contribute some refreshments such as cookies and fruit beforehand.
- School auditoriums, churches, and senior centers are great location options for a recital.
5
Teach online to expand your reach to potential customers. If you’re having a hard time finding students in your area, try teaching through Skype. You can also use Skype when you take vacations or travel to maintain your current client base.^{[8]XResearch source}
- Many guitar teachers feel like they can’t take a break or travel, so this is a great option to utilize.
6
Consider ways to supplement your income. One downside to a career in teaching guitar is its unpredictability. Sometimes factors such as lesson cancellation, student turnover, and holiday lulls may mean that your income fluctuates from month to month. Start thinking of ways to supplement your income.
- One option is to pre-record your lessons and then post them online and sell access to them. This will give you passive income and if it works, it will cut down the amount of time you’ll spend giving live lessons during the week.^{[9]XResearch source}
- You could also look for a part-time job as a contract guitar teacher at a school or college.
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Expert Q&A

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Question
What should a guitar teacher teach?
Michael Papenburg
Professional Guitarist
Michael Papenburg is a Professional Guitarist based in the San Francisco Bay Area with over 35 years of teaching and performing experience. He specializes in rock, alternative, slide guitar, blues, funk, country, and folk. Michael has played with Bay Area local artists including Matadore, The Jerry Hannan Band, Matt Nathanson, Brittany Shane, and Orange. Michael currently plays lead guitar for Petty Theft, a tribute to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Michael Papenburg
Professional Guitarist
Expert Answer
Keep your students' skill level in mind when you're giving a lesson. When you're teaching, it's all about trying to remember what it's like to not know anything about the guitar. Instead of diving right into music theory and very detailed advice, explain the basics clearly and simply, and give them time to absorb the information. Also, try to offer generalized tips. Instead of talking about one song, you might say, "Here's a technique that's utilized in a number of songs, and here's an example of it."
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What about copyright licenses?
Community Answer
If you are just teaching the songs to your students you don't have to worry about copyright issues.
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What kind of qualifications do I need to become a guitar teacher?
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The only qualification you really need is being good at playing the guitar. You don't need any official certifications to offer lessons to others.
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