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Are you sure you have a problem with numbers? 45 students sounds like a -huge- amount to me. I am pretty sure my wife has had no more than 40 students (30 is her typical load, which, combined with office work, group classes, and ensembles, fills a 40 hour week). Her current tuition schedule is this:
$30 Registration fee ($45 per family)
15 lessons per semester plus group class/ensembles on saturdays
$536/30 min
$692/45 min
$920/60 min
(So a little more than $60/hr, though the school gets their cut)
Most students do one lesson a week, but a small handful do 2 45-minute lessons per week. Typical lesson is 45 minutes, which provides just over $42k in revenue with registration fees for the school year. Summer adds another $5k-$10k and gigs landed through her school contacts add another $5k-$10k on top of that. Note: this is the St Louis region which is a very low cost of living area.
Grad students she works with get:
$480/30 min
$658/45 min
$760/60 min
(Just over $50/hr, with the school taking a large cut)
I was not sure how she did summer, so I checked with her. Summer is contracted ahead of time for the entire summer at $60/hr, but the family can choose at the start of summer how many lessons they will do and which weeks. She has allowed some of them to pay cash up at start of lesson for additional lessons over summer, but is getting rid of that.
Also, one thing I forgot is that scholarship families do barter trade for their scholarships. For example, one family where the father was a professional chef made catered lunches for the teachers' meetings. Other families have done volunteer work for teacher workshops or summer camps. Obviously these types of arrangements benefit heavily from the music school affiliation, but as a private teacher you can even more flexibility in making barter arrangements.
And despite these high relative high fees and strict rules, she has had less than a 10% attrition rate year to year. She does have a couple of particular talented students that have raised her profile with their recitals and made her a lot more popular teacher.
Are you sure you have a problem with numbers? 45 students sounds like a -huge- amount to me.
Not when most of 'em are half-hour students, paying (between my old price and my new price) perhaps an average of $80 per month. (That also counts the occasional reduction in rate if someone is not going to be around and cannot possibly reschedule or otherwise make up the lesson. If I didn't offer that, I would just lose the student... which wouldn't be so bad if I always had more students waiting in the wings practically begging to get a spot in my schedule, but that rarely happens.) $4,000 per month is not enough for me... not when my costs of living (between rent, bills, food, gas, etc) are around $2,000 per month and the WONDERFUL federal government hits me for ~$2,500 every three months for estimated taxes. After that, not much is left over for savings / unexpected expenses / whatever. That four grand may cover down on everything but whatever happened to "I work my butt off and therefore deserve to be upwardly mobile"? I'd like to be living a little higher on the hog, than to be spending year after year in a dumpy rental house in a not-so-safe neighborhood in a crime-ridden city. When I leave my house for 45 minutes to go to the gym with my wife and have to think "man, I hope all of my stuff is still here when I get back", that isn't a desirable living situation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marigolds6
I am pretty sure my wife has had no more than 40 students (30 is her typical load, which, combined with office work, group classes, and ensembles, fills a 40 hour week).
I don't do any of that fancy group class or ensemble stuff, but for a one-off type of experience whenever possible. I'd love to do more ensembles, but the problems are as follows. To do an ensemble, you have to have:
1) A small group of students who want to do it. (Lots of kids don't even want to perform at all. I give them the choice of whether or not they want to perform in my recitals and lots of them don't even want to do that. Some have shied away from playing in ensembles / bands.)
2) A small group of students who are accomplished enough to be able to do it. (Playing with others is nowhere near as easy as playing by yourself. You have to be good enough to remain focused on your part and not get confused by everyone else, and when it's a small ensemble, you have to be good enough that your part contributes something significant to the ensemble. If all you know how to play is single quarter notes on the guitar, you don't have much to contribute to a rock band. This inherently weeds out most of my students because I would say that the average amount of time a student needs to be playing, before he/she is good enough to be in an ensemble / band of this type, based upon how quickly the average student progresses, is 1 1/2 - 2 years.)
3) A small group of students whose taste in music is sufficiently similar such that they'd all want to perform the same song together. (If the drummer likes jazz, the guitarist likes metal, the keyboardist likes classical, the singer likes R&B, and the bassist likes punk, those five ain't going to find common ground sufficient to put a song together as a band even if they want to play in a band and are good enough to play in a band.)
I have put some bands together before, but it's difficult to keep them going when students quit and leave all over the place. I have a picture of the first band I put together, consisting of students, at a recital in 2010. Only one of those four kids was still a student of mine by the time next year's big recital rolled around... and only one who left had a legitimate excuse (he moved away). The one who remained lasted maybe a month or two beyond the next recital before his father pulled him out of lessons (and switched him to another teacher because he thought I wasn't a good match for his son - look, pops, if your son would actually PRACTICE what I give him, he'd make some improvement! The fact that he hasn't improved is not MY fault, when HE is the one not trying! I've got him working on songs he wants to work on, and technique assignments that will make him better at playing what he wants to play! What more do you want?!) <- You can see the frustration, I'm sure!
I could accept students quitting and leaving if it was my fault. Let's face it - if a student leaves because of me and I know it, I have the opportunity to improve what I do and how I do it so as not to repeat that same mistake. If I determine that it wasn't a mistake, that's my choice. But the thing is, I would say that only maybe 2% of the students I've ever lost have said anything about it being my fault in any way. The huge majority of them just leave because they feel like leaving.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marigolds6
Her current tuition schedule is this:
$30 Registration fee ($45 per family)
15 lessons per semester plus group class/ensembles on saturdays
$536/30 min
$692/45 min
$920/60 min
(So a little more than $60/hr, though the school gets their cut)
First of all, what school?
Second of all, why the registration fee? (I charge a bit of an up-front fee as well, but it's just to cover down on the cost of the books. Therefore, it varies from student to student depending upon what books I choose for that student.)
Third of all, if I told my prospective students that they would have to come up with that much money up front to pay for a large block of lessons, I'd never have any students. This is the land where people will wait until the first of the month to pay me (despite how my payment policy is "pay for the upcoming month on the last lesson date of the current month"... they'll give me some excuse like "I forgot" when they know darn well when payment is due... then they'll say "I'll bring it by tomorrow" and it never happens... they're just trying to throw me off the scent of the fact that they cannot pay the tuition until their next paycheck comes in)........ OR they will give me a check when I'm collecting checks but it will be post-dated for the first of the month... and this is for a month of lessons at $84. I'm looking at one such check right now... which I got on Saturday but cannot deposit until tomorrow (one week later). They can say what they want to about this area having such a great median income... yeah... evidently, I don't get many of THOSE families as clients.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marigolds6
Most students do one lesson a week, but a small handful do 2 45-minute lessons per week. Typical lesson is 45 minutes, which provides just over $42k in revenue with registration fees for the school year. Summer adds another $5k-$10k and gigs landed through her school contacts add another $5k-$10k on top of that. Note: this is the St Louis region which is a very low cost of living area.
Maybe, but I imagine that an area surrounding a large city like that has its affluent suburbs. Is that where y'all are located?
I rarely do 45-minute lessons. Maybe it's because I'm very efficient, but I don't see the point in turning a lesson into a glorified practice session. Those bore me to death, they tend to bore the students to death, and the last thing I need is for one more negative of any kind to creep into the mix. That could be enough to make the student quit. I have found that most of my students do just fine with a half hour... I have the occasional 45-minute student (and every now and then, to make up missed lesson time, I can extend a lesson to 45 minutes and have it be productive) and nearly all of my adults do an hour lesson each week. However, I did have one lady earlier this year who did a half hour lesson every day. I'd take a whole schedule full of her. She practiced 1-2 hours a day and learned, in five weeks, what most average students would take 1 1/2 years to learn.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marigolds6
I was not sure how she did summer, so I checked with her. Summer is contracted ahead of time for the entire summer at $60/hr, but the family can choose at the start of summer how many lessons they will do and which weeks. She has allowed some of them to pay cash up at start of lesson for additional lessons over summer, but is getting rid of that.
It's nice that she has the ability to do that. What allows her the clout to do such a thing?
I can tell you that in this area, there are no teachers of any kind that I've ever heard of who structure their pricing and scheduling like that. This area is saturated with amateurs. There are two music lesson "studios" in town, and they're both fairly pathetic. One of them has a universally negative reputation and only hooks students and teachers temporarily via "bait and switch" advertising tricks (ya know how many students I have who USED to go to that place?! LOTS!)... heaven only knows how much longer they'll survive. The other studio has a better reputation but I got an inside look at how it operated, three years ago when the owner was after me to buy it (she wanted to retire). Running at near-capacity with two additional teachers (plus the owner as a teacher), with lesson prices being more structured than mine but approximately equal to mine, it would have LOST money had the owner not taught lessons at the studio. It was a labor of love, for sure. Mathematically, I couldn't have made money buying that studio so I didn't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marigolds6
Also, one thing I forgot is that scholarship families do barter trade for their scholarships. For example, one family where the father was a professional chef made catered lunches for the teachers' meetings. Other families have done volunteer work for teacher workshops or summer camps. Obviously these types of arrangements benefit heavily from the music school affiliation, but as a private teacher you can even more flexibility in making barter arrangements.
I've done that occasionally, and I will admit, I have given some consideration to putting more barter into my pricing. However, barter doesn't pay the bills. The only barter that'd benefit me in any way would be if I told someone "okay, go out and buy me $84 worth of groceries from this list and bring them as payment" or "take my truck out and fill it up, and I'll call that your lesson tuition". The benefit might be that I could shield those transactions from taxes (after all, if no money changes hands, what's to tax? Then again, who knows how our IRS would still find a way to get you )... but it'd be a hassle, I imagine. And I'd still have to have SOME of my families pay me with money, so that I could pay the other bills that require money.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marigolds6
And despite these high relative high fees and strict rules, she has had less than a 10% attrition rate year to year. She does have a couple of particular talented students that have raised her profile with their recitals and made her a lot more popular teacher.
Must be nice. But again I ask - does she focus only on affluent areas? Also, you said she's affiliated with a school. That's a level of freedom I'm not sure I'm ready to give up. A friend of mine swears by this government program on the military base that our city feeds, saying that it pays for racquetball lessons for a bunch of kids and he gets all of these students and blah blah blah blah... okay, but the program also takes a substantial cut of his tuition. Even if he has complete autonomy beyond that, it wouldn't be a situation I'd want. I had that type of situation when I first started out - I was teaching through a studio and they sent me students in exchange for a cut of the take - and I didn't like it. After a while it seemed like they were merely resting on their laurels, watching me funnel hundreds of dollars into the studio every month.
. . .
I could accept students quitting and leaving if it was my fault. Let's face it - if a student leaves because of me and I know it, I have the opportunity to improve what I do and how I do it so as not to repeat that same mistake. If I determine that it wasn't a mistake, that's my choice. But the thing is, I would say that only maybe 2% of the students I've ever lost have said anything about it being my fault in any way. The huge majority of them just leave because they feel like leaving.
. . .
I've done that occasionally, and I will admit, I have given some consideration to putting more barter into my pricing. However, barter doesn't pay the bills. The only barter that'd benefit me in any way would be if I told someone "okay, go out and buy me $84 worth of groceries from this list and bring them as payment" or "take my truck out and fill it up, and I'll call that your lesson tuition". The benefit might be that I could shield those transactions from taxes (after all, if no money changes hands, what's to tax? Then again, who knows how our IRS would still find a way to get you )...
First, the taxes:
If your bartering involves the work you do for a living, then yes, you have to pay taxes on the value of the service.
Students leaving:
That will always be a risk when the service you provide is an "extra." A lot of people try music lessons, then find it isn't really what they want to do. It isn't for everyone.
Making a living:
You are frustrated because your chosen career is not providing enough income for your desired lifestyle. Maybe you could do something higher-paying and teach music on the side, to motivated students only.
I am not a music teacher but aren't these complaints the nature of the beast?
I took violin lessons for six months this year. When I decided to go back to school, yes, I quit the lessons. They are expensive. One lesson costs nearly one credit (granted this is community college). Just one lesson. I was going weekly.
Although no lonher taking lessons, I am committed. I practice at least every other day on top of school, work, my house and my kids. I continue to work the book my teacher had me working. I take my violin on vacation to continue my practice schedule. I maintain my instrument, change the strings and assign myself both challenging pieces to improve, and pleasure pieces, on top of, naturally, warmup exercises such as scales and arpeggios and the like. I am continuing vibrato and full stop practices which my teacher had started me on.
A teacher would be better, and I may he teaching myself bad habits and so on...yes, I have heard all this before. But I am not losing sleep worrying about upcoming tryouts to break into the Boston Symphony Orchestra and frankly, neither are most of your students. It isn't still a beautiful thing that some people want to at least explore an instrument, to the degree of their own interest? I think it is.
Music lessons are expensive. It is what it is. They may not seem so to a teacher who is trying to support herself on them, and I get that. But no, they are not generally required anywhere and yes, they are pricey and no, not every student is cut out for what is really quite a bit of work, particularly good, consistent practicing.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are people who will budget for them but they will never take them, or music, as seriously as a teacher would. Isn't that natural? Are you seriously vested in every other person's creative interest? This is a very personal thing. Each persons commitment will vary. And some people will have no interest in playing an instrument at all. This is just how the world works.
A music teacher who pays $10,000 in taxes has nothing to complain about. You need pretty serious income to have to pay $10,000 in estimated taxes each year.
A music teacher who pays $10,000 in taxes has nothing to complain about. You need pretty serious income to have to pay $10,000 in estimated taxes each year.
This thread is several years old, but a self employed person pays 15.3% of their income straight off the top for FICA, before even considering income taxes. You could probably hit $10k in overall taxes with less than $40k income.
I am thinking about giving private music lessons, and it's been interesting and helpful reading through this thread. I'm trying to decide if it is something that I could get into and be successful at. I have a degree from a well known school of music and years of professional experience performing. I don't think it would bother me too much if the student did not want to practice, and I am pretty easy going and wouldn't mind doing whatever the student wanted to work on. I'd prefer it if the student was serious, but understand that not everyone is taking lessons to become a pro - it's more of an extra curricular activity that parents invest in so that their kids have a well rounded education and have something positive to be involved with and keep them busy.
The thing I am concerned about is how entertaining you have to be with kids. I taught a couple of kids years ago when I was in college and they quit because they got bored and I couldn't figure out how to keep them interested. I know this is something I would need to work on to teach kids successfully. I have this image in my mind that I have to be some sort of clown or goofball to keep kids interested and entertained in the lesson, but I may be overthinking it and making a mountain out of a mole hill. I wanted to ask what other private music teachers do to keep kids entertained and if they find it's necessary to be a goofball, etc.
The other thing I am wondering is whether I should focus my efforts on teaching at private music academies or music stores (or both of course). Do music teachers who teach at the private academies find that they have enough students to make ends meet, or do you need to teach at multiple places and stores to have enough students?
Finally I am curious about how seasonal teaching students privately can be. I've heard that there is an ebb and flow, usually revolving around and depending on the school year calendar and summer vacation, and was wondering if somebody could paint a picture of what that ebb and flow usually looks like for a typical private music teacher.
Glad to find this thread about private music teachers. I'm a string player with two university degrees in violin performance/conducting minor and some doctoral work in composition. Teaching privately for decades, and also taught in a Montessori program, several public school systems and a Suzuki program in a private college. I'm also an instrument dealer and have three published books on Amazon on string pedagogy. And AFM member in several cities where I had orchestra contracts, lots of orchestral playing, chamber music, pickup gigs, weddings, etc. Some conducting also, and contest adjudication.
Below are a couple of responses to the OP. Sounds like there are a lot of talented, experienced teachers in this forum and I'm just here to learn, not necessarily to give advice. With private teaching, if you don't have a well thought out lesson policy and stick with it, people will run over you like road kill. They are, understandably, concerned about themselves and not with teacher, so you have to set boundaries at the start.
1. No shows/no calls: I have a strict lesson policy about this. (Copies of the policy available online, emailed at start of lessons, and hard copy given when they start, which must be signed). NO MAKE UPS WITHOUT 24 HOUR NOTICE. And lesson fees are due "at the first lesson of the month or on or before the 6th, whichever comes first." Thus, if they don't show up you don't care because you've already been paid.
2. I do not give lessons on credit. No fee, then no lesson, not even one. I have read stories of private teachers who let students delay payments for as much as several months.
3. I ask, in the policy, that students not take a lesson if they have anything communicable. Send them home if they do.
So happy to find this forum.
Last edited by KaraZetterberg153; 04-26-2018 at 03:33 AM..
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)... but it'd be a hassle, I imagine. And I'd still have to have SOME of my families pay me with money, so that I could pay the other bills that require money.
