Take your guitar teaching online

Teaching guitar or any musical instrument has really not changed in hundreds of years. Students typically find a local teacher, book in a lesson and meet the teacher face to face once a week. Well this model is changing and changing fast. In the 90s our social life was something we did primarily in person. Today we mostly socialize online via Facebook etc. Learning online is only just starting but it will become the norm in the next 5 years or so. You only have to look at how much the Internet has already impacted on our lives. I believe the only thing slowly down online lessons from exploding is the technology and people's general confidence. Skype and Google video are good enough now on most computers but not all but it won't be long before its 99% reliable. Teachers who I speak say they are not sure how to teach an online lesson so this presents a confidence issue. Students are keen to try but they just don't know where to find the reliable online teachers. There is still a trust issue which I am sure we will work out very soon. I have successfully been teaching online since 2009 and I am now helping other teachers to do the same. If you are looking to take your teaching online please feel free to email me. g4guitar1@gmail.com

How much do your students spend on learning guitar?

Your average student will spend $1000 or more this year on learning guitar. Your students knows this is money well spent because your lessons will in fact saved them possibly hundreds of wasted hours spent in inefficient practice methods. As an experienced guitarist you can help your students avoid the mistakes you made. So how about you? Are you studying teaching? Business? Marketing? Are you investing in your education to avoid expensive mistakes or to increase you income and efficiency? When I started teaching back in the 80's my teaching methods were based on what I had learnt from my own teachers. This included guitar teachers, drum teachers, school teachers, football coaches as well as my parents and family members. I was a teenager at the time and had spent my life being coached so I was an expert right? The sad truth is that once I left school my education came to a halt and this happens to most of us. We think because we can play guitar we can teach it and even worse we believe we are natural born business people. My family were in business so I definitely had an advantage but once I left home my education stopped and it wasn't until I found my business in serious financial trouble that I began to seek out coaches. Let me tell you this made all the difference. Like our students we need to always be learning and seeking out coaches. Self taught teachers are like self taught guitar students. A select few manage to succeed (usually the hard way) but most fail. 95% of small businesses fail but those who have a coach or mentor tend to be in the 5% who succeed. I think as teachers we owe it to our students to be continually learning and this means investing in successful coaches.

Teaching guitar using a system.

Guitar teachers tend to fall into two camps. Those who teach using a system and those who do not. I belong to those who use a system of teaching guitar but it wasn't always the case. For over a decade I would teach each student by asking them what they were interested in and then filling in the gaps. This definitely works for those teachers with years of experience but for the most part it pales in comparison to using a system. The reason a system of teaching guitar is so effective is because it is usually based on a proven strategy. The idea of any system is to have a reliable series of steps that when taken give a consistent result. The beauty of a system is it can be improved upon. Once I started teaching via a system I began to see consistent results from my students and each small improvement to the system meant an improvement in student results. You might then ask why teachers would operate without system. In short it's because creating and developing a system takes time. Time that most teachers do not have. I took 2 years off to create and design my system initially and even then it was only half completed. It then took another year of actually teaching and tweaking to get it right. I am still making small improvements but only as required.
www.g4guitarmethod.com

Our guitar students want results.

This might seem like an obvious statement but I have witnessed on many occasions teachers who make form good friendships with their students yet they fail to get results. It is easy to get off track in a lesson an find yourself talking about unrelated subjects. It's also possible to over look the fact that your students are not practicing enough. As teachers we justify it by believing that it's up to the student to do their guitar practice. The fact is when your students don't practice they fail which means you in turn have failed as a teacher. It's important to remember that your students are not paying you to be their friend. Friendship should always be an add on to good teaching and good teaching is measured in terms of results.

How to find guitar students on the Internet via niches

Teaching guitar is really about niches compared to most instruments. Think about how many different music styles have been explored and even founded on guitar. When I think of its cousin violin the two seem on almost opposite poles. Guitar really does not belong primarily to any one style whereas violin belongs mostly (not exclusively) to classical music. This means that when it comes to marketing your brand of guitar lessons online you should seek out your niche or niches. For instance I am a fan of Steve Lukather like many others but I am also a big fan of Dave Gilmour. By combining the two I have found a niche. The Lukather/Gilmour niche. I could narrow it even further of course by focusing a certain aspect of their guitar playing like honing in on Gilmour's song writing rather than just his general playing. There are an endless number of niches and if you start with the ones that excite you and make some YouTube videos your audience will find you

Why every guitar teacher should have a blog.

I have been writing separate blogs for guitar students and guitar teachers for some years. I must admit I was in two minds going on and off blogging for the first few years. I couldn't really see any value in it. I first begun to change my opinion when I went through a phase of daily blogging and then stopped due to travel. In the following days I received messages from guitar students telling me they missed my blogs. Around the same time I found the stats section on my blogger account and was shocked to see that I was getting up to 500 people a day reading my various blogs with the total number of hits just shy of 100,000. I couldn't really explain it nor did I understand what it meant but what hit me was the fact that I had an audience and that was worth something. If you teach guitar And want to establish a voice blogging is a worthwhile exercise. Blogging is a good option because it's easy. I use an App on my iPod called BlogPress and it allows me to post quickly and easily anytime. So instead of doing nothing when I am sitting on a train or waiting at an airport I can write a blog. Plus you never know when an idea for a blog will come.

Your ideal guitar student

When you first begin teaching you are basically happy to teach anyone. I remember the excitement of enrolling new students in those early days and thinking that I was going to be fully booked in no time. I would enroll 2 to 3 new students a week mostly due to the fact that I had experience in sales. I did eventually fill my schedule but many of my students weren't practicing and I soon found myself feeling like a failure. The problem was I had been accepting anyone and trying to please everyone.

Successful teachers are clear about what their ideal student looks like. They can describe them in detail and as a result all their students will fit or be close to this description. But I should make it clear that they don't turn away students who aren't ideal. They simply have standards that students have to meet and their strength is communicating those standards and ensuring their students live up to them. If not that's when they politely recommend another teacher.

http://www.g4guitarmethod.com