As music teacher, you can either teach privately in your house or in students’ homes, or you can teach in a music store or school—both have upsides and downsides. If you teach in your home or students’ homes, the upside is you can keep all of the money you charge to the student. Since you have no expenses like rent, a receptionist, or newspaper and postcard advertising, you do not have to pay out a percentage to overhead costs. There are also downsides of teaching in your home or your students’ homes.

It can be hard to keep your schedule constantly full with new students. Getting a full schedule can be difficult and expensive if you have to run classified ads or small newspaper ads. Even if you are a good, well-liked teacher, it can take a long time for referrals and word of mouth to fill your schedule. If you are driving to students’ houses, you also have to factor in the driving time between students, which limits the amount of teaching you can actually do.

The other downside of teaching on your own can be the difficulty in enforcing your attendance and payment policies. No one likes being a collection agent. It can be difficult to concentrate on your teaching while trying to keep track of who owes money and to make sure you are paid.

If you are teaching on your own, it can also be difficult to enforce your teaching policies and have your time respected. For example, if a student tells you they are going to Disney World for the next two weeks, it can be difficult to still make them pay for their lesson time. Many students will refuse to pay for those missed lessons because they will think: “I’m not getting my lesson so why should I pay?”

Chances are, you can’t book another student in that lesson time for just 2 weeks, so if you don’t charge the student in Disney World, you have just lost 2 weeks of pay. If that scenario happens a couple of times per month, it can greatly reduce your earnings.

Now, let’s look at teaching at a music school. The downside is you don’t get paid as much per student. So, the pay per student to the teacher is lower because of rent, advertising, receptionists, and other expenses. The upside can be having a consistently full schedule of students each day. Being paid less per student but having 10 or 11 students in a day will mean you earn more overall. Also, the majority of our teachers’ schedules stay full year-round, unlike most private teachers that may lose more than half their students during the summer months. Working in a music school will help provide dependable income year-round.

Another upside to teaching at our music school is that you do not have any collections hassles. You only have to focus on the teaching. Also, our music school provides a professional educational environment that is stimulating to the students. It is also free from distractions found in a home such as ringing phones or doorbells, TVs, and noisy family members.

Those are the general differences between teaching on your own and teaching in a music school or store.

We offer two recitals each year for our students. We handle all of the planning and cover the entire cost of the recitals. Everything from the recital programs to the sound system at the venue. We take care of all of it so you don't have to.