AWESOME
ONLINE
Music Teaching
BUSINESS PLAN
By Brent Vaartstra
©2018 Passive Income Musician
Let’s plan
your online
music
teaching
business!
Let’s plan your online music
teaching business!
Hey! My name is Brent Vaartstra. I’m a musician, author,
podcaster and entrepreneur. Like you, I love music, and that
passion caused me to pursue a career in it.
But I quickly found myself burnt out and
constantly stressed trying to hustle gigs
and students. I was living paycheck to
paycheck, and I realized there was a cap
to how much money I could make. I
was trading my time for money, and I
knew something had to change.
Fast-forward to today, and I have a
successful online music education
business that I make a full-time living
with. Best of all, I literally make money
while I sleep. Through selling eBooks,
courses, and other music education products
to my audience, I no longer trade my time for
money and make passive income online.
I want to share everything I know with you, and help you do
the same! Every great business starts with a great plan, and
I’m going to help you get started on the right foot.
If you’d like, follow along with this podcast episode where I
walk through this business plan step-by-step with you.
Let’s do this thing!
Awesome Online Music Teaching Business Plan
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Part 1
Establishing
Your Online
Music Teaching
Business Idea
Step 1: What is your “Why?” AKA,
why do you want to start an
online music teaching business?
You need to know why you want to create this business.
If you aren’t clear about that, when the going gets tough
you may forget why you started in the first place. Think of a
transformation you want or an end goal. Be specific.
This first part of your Awesome Online Music Teaching
Business Plan is all about establishing the fundamentals
of your business. These are crucial questions you are going
to need to start thinking about to get headed in the right
direction!
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Step 2: What is your unique talent?
AKA your “unfair advantage.”
Step 3: Who is your ideal customer?
AKA your “customer avatar.”
Your unique talent, or unfair advantage, is something that sets
you apart as a person, a musician, or a teacher. This is crucial to
identify because it likely will be the secret sauce to your success.
Here are some possible ideas to get you thinking:
The answer to this question should be influenced by what your
unique talent is. Your customer avatar is a very specific kind of
music student that you know you can serve best.
1. The style of music, or instrument you play.
2. Your teaching approach or system. Do you have a unique
teaching method, program, or proven success stories?
3. Teaching abilities or personality. Are you good at teaching
kids, adults, or a particular demographic? Do you have a
certain personality trait or communication skill you can use to
your advantage?
It’s important to get very specific because a key ingredient to
your success will be establishing a niche (a targeted audience).
Here are some examples:
Bad example: wants to play classical piano (too general).
Good example: Busy parent ages 30-50 who homeschools his/
her kids, wants kids to learn classical piano (beginners), wants it
to be easy to help kids learn by working on material with them.
Answer these questions:
What age range are they likely to be?
What musical level are they at (beginner, intermediate, advanced)?
What is their “Why” (hobby, career, therapy…etc.)?
What are your customer avatars “pain points?” AKA what
problems do they have that need to be solved?
What else describes your customer avatar?
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Step 4: How are you going to
offer massive value to your ideal
customers?
Step 5: What kind of premium
content can you eventually sell
to them?
In order to attract your ideal customers and convert them into fans,
you’re going to need to create free valuable content that is going
to help them. Obviously, you are going to be teaching them music
in some shape or fashion, but you need to dig deeper.
Since you are starting a business here, not a hobby, you
eventually will need to make an income. You first need to build
an audience of your ideal customers by delivering valuable free
content to them, but you also need to start with the end in
mind.
What transformation do you want them to experience? What
would be your end-goal for them (keep in mind Step 3)?
Here’s a podcast episode where I talk about different kinds of
passive income to consider as a music teacher.
These are my top suggestions:
What kind of content are you going to deliver them (ex. Music
lessons, music resources)? Try to get specific.
How are you going to deliver that content to them? Hint: think
about your strengths.
•
Affiliate products (other people’s music ed products or
resources, that you get a commission from).
•
•
•
•
Music eBooks.
Online music courses.
Membership site (courses with added lessons monthly).
Music resources (backing tracks, software, apps…etc.).
List some of your passive income product ideas. Make sure they
solve the problems of your customer avatar.
Here are the ones I recommend. Choose at least one:
•
•
•
•
Blog posts
Podcast episodes
Videos (YouTube, Vimeo…etc.)
Other
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Part 2
Validating and
Marketing Your
Online Music
Teaching Business
Now that you have some important details worked out about
what your online music teaching business is and who you
want to serve, it’s time to test it.
In this section of your business plan, you’re going to ask
yourself important questions to help you decide if people will
want what you are going to offer. If the answer is yes, you’ll
start establishing how you are going to market to them.
Step 6: Is there anyone else doing
exactly what you want to do?
IF YES: don’t worry, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing! It shows
there is already an audience in place for you to reach. Write
them down here, and research everything they do.
Business name
Website URL
What are you going to bring to the table that is different from
what they offer? Remember your “unfair advantage.”
IF NO: is there anything similar but not exactly the same that you
can find? If so list them here.
Business name
Website URL
If you can’t find anything similar, you will need to validate your
business idea. The danger is that there may not be a demand for
what you want to offer, but this isn’t necessarily true. List below
any evidence you can find that validates your music ed business.
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Step 7: How are you going to drive traffic
to your music education content?
Step 8: How are you going to build your
community?
If you build it, they will come, right?
Once you have an audience who are consuming your content,
you need to get them into your community. Yes, social media is
great and you should build that up. But hands down the best
way to build your community is through your mailing list.
Wrong.
You could spend many hours creating great content that has
the potential to change your target audiences’ lives, but if you
don’t market it, they may never get to use it.
Here are a few ideas to get you thinking:
1. Social media (Facebook, Twitter…etc.)
2. Facebook Groups (don’t be spammy).
3. Guest blogging (post on other blogs and get links back to
yours)
4. Guest on podcasts (find podcasts related to your musical niche)
5. YouTube collaborations (guest on other YouTube channels)
6. SEO (search engine optimization).
List the ways you plan on marketing your free content. If you
have specific groups, blogs, podcasts, and channels in mind,
write them down.
To learn more about building a powerful mailing list of music
students, listen to this podcast episode.
Outside of giving away awesome free music content that fans
will want to stay up to date on, the best way to get people onto
your list is with a lead magnet. A lead magnet is simply a free
giveaway in exchange for their email address.
Here are a few examples that I give away on my jazz education
website:
•
•
•
•
The Ultimate Jazz Guide to Practicing (pdf download)
Learn Jazz Standards the Smart Way (pdf download)
The Ultimate Ear Training Blueprint (video mini-course)
Accelerate Your Jazz Skills (video mini-course)
What kind of lead magnet will you offer your audience? Think of
what would be a quick win for them.
How often will you email your list to keep them up to date with
your new content (See Step 9)?
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Step 9: How often will you publish
new free content?
In order to become a respected music education resource,
you need to build up a library of great content. But more
importantly, you need to be coming out with new content
consistently. I suggest publishing at least one piece of new
content per week.
Write below how often you plan on publishing new content.
Make sure you can commit to it!
Step 10: Given everything you
have established so far about your
online music education business,
how would you describe it?
At this point, you should have a good idea about what your
business is, who you are going to serve, how you are going to
make an income, and how you are going to market it.
Now I want you to create your 1-2 sentence elevator pitch. The
idea is you can sum up your business quickly and concisely.
For example, my elevator pitch for my online jazz education
business is:
“Learn Jazz Standards is a blog, a podcast, and videos all geared
towards you becoming a better jazz musician. It is for musicians
who want to learn how to play jazz and perform it with others.”
Write your elevator pitch below.
When will you get started? Set a specific date.
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Time to take action!
Hope this was helpful and I can’t be more excited for you as you enter into your
journey to become a passive income musician!
I’m here to help you along the way, so make sure you subscribe to the podcast
on iTunes or wherever you like to listen to podcasts and keep your eye on your
inbox for new episodes.
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