Looking for a Part Time Job? Consider Teaching Guitar

You might be looking for a part time job for a number of reasons. Maybe you're looking for a way to supplement your main income. Maybe you don't have a job at the moment and need something to get you up and running or maybe you're looking for a career change.
Whatever your reason for looking for a part time job, in this article I will explain why you should consider teaching guitar as an alternative.

My name is Aaron and in this article I'm going to share my story on how I started teaching guitar as a teenager and more importantly, why I started teaching.

Looking for a Part-Time Job

At around 15-16 years old, everybody seems to start looking for part time or casual work. That's when all of my friends started looking for work. As you would expect for young teenagers, the type of work available usually involved working at fast food chains or stacking shelves at supermarkets. That's the type of work 16 year olds are expected to look for.

One of my close friends managed to land a job at a big fast food chain as a trainee. He worked 8 hours a week on weekends as well as extra time during school holidays. When I asked him what his hourly rate was, I was shocked to hear it was $12.14 per hour. Keep in mind that I live in Australia so that rate may seem high or low depending on what country you're from - but in Australia, it's was the minimum wage at the time. I thought he was getting a bad deal but quickly found out that it was a common rate for 16 year olds.

That means at $12.14 per hour, my friends were earning just under $100 per week working 8 hours. While they were happy with that, I definitely didn't want to give up 8 hours each weekend to earn $100.

Researching Other Options

As part time work at $12.14 per hour was out of the question, I started researching other options. As a 16 year old, it quickly became clear that there weren't many options available. Most paid work required some sort of qualification or years of experience. If you've been looking for a job you know this more than anybody else - entry level jobs seem to ask for a lot of experience. How can you build your experience if you need experience to get the job in the first place?!

Eventually I thought about teaching guitar. As a private guitar teacher you don't need to hold formal qualifications. While some students may choose a teacher based on qualifications, I quickly found that those people were in the minority.

Searching through online teacher directories revealed how much other guitar teachers were charging. The average rate was $50 per hour. While I definitely didn't have the confidence or experience to charge that rate, it told me that there is opportunity to earn far more than $12.14 per hour.

The good thing about teaching guitar is that it's easy to get started and give it a go. If you decide you don't like it, you can simply stop. In other words, you don't need to commit a lot of time and effort to give it a go.

My First Guitar Lessons

I started as a guitar teacher by simply asking around school to find anybody interested in learning guitar. I had been playing guitar for 8 years at that point so I was confident I could teach other people my age or younger.

My first two students were 16 and 13. I offered to give them 30 minute weekly lessons for $15 per week. That was a very low rate but as a brand new teacher I felt I needed to start with a low rate due to my inexperience.

Within two months I had 8 students: 4 kids under 10 and 4 teenagers. The first few lessons were difficult and looking back now I can clearly see how many mistakes I made. That's partly why I write for Live and Teach Guitar now, so I can help other teachers avoid the mistakes I made.

With 8 students per week at $15 per lesson, I was earning $120 per week. That's nothing to brag about, but when you consider I worked half the time as my friends and still earned more, it's a significant difference. Even at an incredibly low rate of $15 per lesson, I quickly earned far more than all of my friends.

My First Adult Student as a 16 Year Old Guitar Teacher

With only a couple months of experience as a teacher, I landed my first adult student. As a 16 year old, teaching an adult (he was in his 40s) was a scary thought. I was stressed that he wouldn't take me seriously because of my age and inexperience. While I was informally studying teaching methods from books at a local library, I had no qualifications and limited experience. I was worried that after the first lesson he would quit and tell people to avoid me.

While I was stressing out about whether the student would listen to me or not, I forgot one simple fact: he was a beginner and I wasn't.

This was my first major lesson as a guitar teacher:

Students care about whether you can help them - they don't care about age or qualifications

Of course I could help him - the fact that he was in his 40s had nothing to do with whether I could help him as a student. This is an important lesson for any new teacher to remember.

At the end of the first lesson when he asked how much it cost, I sheepishly replied it was $15. He laughed and said that was too low and handed me $30. For a 16 year old, $30 was a lot of money for 30 minutes work, so I was shocked. But the student continued to pay me $30 every week and was happy with his lessons.

The lesson here is that any doubts you have about how much you're worth may not be accurate.

8 Months Later

Eight months after I started teaching guitar, my friend told me he got a pay rise. He was ecstatic that he received a 50c pay rise. So instead of $12.14 per hour, he would be earning $12.64. He also managed to gain more shifts and from memory it was about 14 per week. So he would be earning $170 per week.

By that time I had gained more students and had a total of 12 students per week. After my first adult student, it built up my confidence and I raised my rate from $15 to $20 per half hour. So I was earning a total of $240 per week. I was still working less than half the time as him yet I was still earning far more per week.

The reason I'm comparing what I earned vs my friend isn't to brag - it's to highlight the difference between the two career options.

With a part time job, your rate and hours are set by your employer. You may receive pay rises over time, but the best you can hope for may be a 5% increase. My friend's 50c pay rise was a 4.1% pay rise.

When you work on your own, you set your own rate and you manage your own hours. I increased my rate from $15 to $20 in my first year as a teacher. That's equivalent to a 33% pay rise.

Hopefully it's clear how significantly different the two careers are. As a 16 year old I managed to earn significantly more than my friends while still keeping my total hours low.

10 Years Later

After I finished school I continued to teach guitar while studying at University. While my friends were earning $20-30 per hour with their part time jobs, I was earning $60 per hour as a guitar teacher. My University course was funded by my guitar lessons and I was fortunate enough to leave University without any debts. If you're in the USA, that might be a startling statement as I hear it's common for people to leave University in debt.

I've been teaching guitar for well over 10 years now and I still earn more per hour than my friends with their full time jobs. Most of my friends earn $30-40 per hour while I still earn $60 per hour. I want to make this point clear because teaching guitar can take you as far as you want to go. If you want to teach for a while until you find another career, that works. If you want to teach full time, that works too. Or if you're like me, you might like the idea of teaching part time at a high hourly rate so you can have more time for other things.

The point here is that when most people think about getting a part time job, they don't fully consider alternatives. If you think of teaching guitar as just another part time job, that's not giving you an accurate picture. As you have seen with my story, it's not just another job option.

How I Can Help You

If you do decide to teach guitar as an alternative to getting a part time job, I can help you out. Live and Teach Guitar was created to give guitar teachers all the tools, resources, advice and strategies needed to succeed.

To give you an idea how we can help you, here are a few resources we usually recommend to new teachers to get started:

12 week Business Fundamentals Course - this course spells out exactly what to do to start your own guitar teaching business. It covers everything from setting a competitive rate, targeting and attracting students, promoting yourself and more. If there was one thing you could do to give yourself the best advantage as a guitar teacher, it would be to complete this course.
Guitar Lesson Plans - one of the challenges I faced as a new guitar teacher was to come up with appropriate materials to use in lessons. While you could teach out of a book, it's not going to give you the flexibility needed. We have literally hundreds of lesson plans, worksheets and exercises ready for you to print off and give to your students. Each lesson plan also includes a guide on how to teach the topic. So you will be able to avoid all the mistakes I experienced as a new teacher.
Set up a website - if you're wondering what the best marketing method is to attract new students, it's having your own effective website. Members can set up their own website and I can even help you customize it to your needs. There's no extra costs to set up a website and you get support along the way.
Teaching Guides & Courses - playing guitar is only one side to being a teacher. You also need to know how to teach. Our Teaching Guides and Courses will explain important teaching techniques and methods to help you quickly become an effective teacher.
Personal Support - this is possibly the biggest benefit our members receive. If at any point you experience difficulties with a student, need help promoting yourself or any other problem, you can email me for advice and support. There's no other service available with our level of support at such a low cost.

Whether you decide to start teaching guitar or not should depend on your own personal goals and ambitions. If you do want to get started, becoming a Live and Teach Guitar Member will give you the best advantage possible.

Good luck with whatever path you decide to take and I hope my story has helped clarify what option is best for you.