Say YES to 12 months of Income as a Piano Teacher

by Kristin Yost of PianoTeacherSchool.com and Centre for Musical Minds in Texas.

How to make a consistent piano teacher income | composecreate.com

Admit it, you’re a piano teacher that teaches at least one lesson every week of the year, and you spend “summer” doing too many makeup lessons. When asked why you teach all the time, you say, “I have to make a living!” What if I told you that I have 12 months of  revenue and have 8 to 10 weeks off each year? It’s all in the strategy!

How did a predictable piano teacher income change my life?

After four years of teaching (too many) piano lessons while still trying to improve the quality of my life, I finally came to a couple conclusions that have worked great for me these past few years:

  1. I need extended time off to “recover” from the insanity that comes with my student load and its activities.
  2. Setting boundaries with my clients is wonderful – I (actually) SET them, and they RESPECT them!
  3. The year is planned 12 months in advance. This requires a lot of “front end” work, but on the back end it’s much easier to make adjustments to the outline of the year, rather than creating it as you go.
  4. I need 12 months of revenue, and a couple times a year it’s nice to have larger sums to work with.
  5. Summer should involve lessons, but private lessons need to have blocks of times in your schedule, and you need to offer SOME group classes. These groups serve as community builders for your clients, students and you, as well as offering new musical experiences and enriching time making music with others.

Take a look at how I approach tuition collection…It’s actually quite simple. Each year has three semesters: Fall and Spring are 16 weeks and Summer has two different packages to choose from. When asked about an hourly rate, I say we don’t have one – think of it like private school tuition. You are paying for teacher’s time spent with the student, but also for their time spent planning their child’s lesson, the teacher’s expertise, experience, education, professional development, etc…

We send out invoices that look like this:

Piano Teacher Income | composecreate.com

Invoices for the entire semester are sent to each family two weeks to one month before the semester tuition payment is due.

July 1 – Annual Enrollment Fee Due  (this keeps their spot reserved for fall…if unpaid, they lose their day/time preference)

August 1 – First Fall Tuition installment due OR Fall paid-in-full

September 1 – Second Fall Tuition installment due

October 1 – Third Fall Tuition installment due

November 1 – Fourth Fall Tuition installment due  (offer a promotion/discount for Spring to be paid in full early!)

December 1 – First Spring Tuition installment due  (or Spring paid-in-full)

January 1 – Second Spring Tuition installment due

February 1 – Third Spring Tuition installment due

March 1 – Fourth Spring Tuition installment due  (offer a promotion/discount for Summer to be paid in full early!)

April 1 – First Summer Tuition installment due   (if not paid on time, student loses place in your schedule for fall) or

Summer paid-in-full

May 1 – Second Summer Tuition installment due

June 1 – Third Summer Tuition installment due

Voila! Three semesters that have a set number of lessons involved so there is the same tuition amount due on the 1st of every month. Fall and Spring have 16 weeks, and you set summer according to what works for you. I recommend a camp plus a few private lessons option, and another option that has mostly private lessons with a few group lesson options. The point is to keep tuition as a set amount, that is due each month. Some months the students come more frequently, and others they don’t, but your income remains consistent.

Teachers, what piano teacher income method works for you? Don’t forget to send your questions about the business of piano teaching to Wendy. Wendy or Kristin will answer your question in a later post.

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10 thoughts on “Say YES to 12 months of Income as a Piano Teacher”

  1. I like your way of naming the tuition payments (tuition installments). Helps get away from the monthly mindset.
    I do teach year round, too. I offer 6 lessons in the summer so we can work around vacations (some students may have 2 lessons in one week). Now that I’m up to 15 students, I’ll offer a few group or even partner lessons (we work on ensemble music in the summer for a fall event).

    I like getting paid each month! And I found that students made progress during the summer, even if they didn’t get a lot of practice time in. There was no review and starting back up, which happens when you take the summers off. And more parents like the idea of summer lessons. I only have one so far who won’t be doing lessons for part of the summer, due to travel back to visit family in Asia. I’m going to come up with some alternative package for situations like that: maybe one summer tuition fee for 3 lessons and a group lessons and one for 6 lessons and a group lesson.

  2. I began using a flat monthly fee in Sep 2010 when I moved to Montreal and began Montrose Music Studio. It is based on an average rate of 3.6 hours per month. This applies any month when there iwll be 3-5 lessons. A month with only 2 lessons is charged by the hour.
    It works pretty well and simplifies our billing a little bit (Every month is the same). Parents are generally happy with it though when they have a slow month with less lessons, they tend to forget the months when they had 5!

    Thanks for this article, I found your insight and experience helpful!
    J

  3. What do you do if the new students enroll after a semester begins? Or you simply do not accept any new students once a semester begins? How do you handle the tuition payment for these students?

    Thanks.

  4. I started charging students an annual tuition fee a few years ago. Students have the option of paying all at once in the fall. Or they submit 9 equal payments by checks post-dated September through May. I also charge a registration fee in the summer/early fall. I offer no discounts or adjustments for families or for early or lump sum payments. I do not like spending a lot of time book-keeping, and even with the use of automated invoicing system, I like to keep things simple. Although some parents balked a little with the change at first, and found the post-dated check payment system unusual, I have not had any significant resistance. New students simply understand that this is the way I operate, and they are free to look elsewhere if it doesn’t suit them. This system ensures that all students have paid for the entire year up front, and (hopefully) encourages a greater level of commitment. If students start in the middle of the year, I simply charge the registration fee and prorate tuition accordingly. I only teach 33-34 weeks per year since my husband also works on an academic calendar and we travel a lot in the summer and at Christmas. Most of my students don’t mind since their families also travel in the summer. I do offer “pay as you go” lessons in the summer for those who want them. In any case, this system could be tweaked for those who teach year round. Hope this gives someone food for thought or a little nudge to move towards an “annual” approach to assessing and collecting payment. I’m so glad I did, and it was an empowering act which made me more confident in setting and standing by my policies. I feel less “taken over” by accounting activities which I did not enjoy, and have more energy and mental resources for my students and doing the things I l0ve!

  5. I pro-rate the tuition amount depending on how many lessons they have missed in the year. I make the “difference” due or subtract the difference (depending on how the pro-rating works out) in the first month so that the remaining months are all the same tuition rate as everyone else.

  6. I will add your line to my phone script, Kristin!
    “When asked about an hourly rate, I say we don’t have one” and adding the following as clarification: “You are paying for teacher’s time spent with the student, but also for their time spent planning their child’s lesson, the teacher’s expertise, experience, education, professional development, etc…”
    Excellent reply. Lately, I have caught myself stating an hourly rate, which is NOT good to do.
    I have been on the Fall/Winter/Summer sem. system for many years, but want to move this now to a 12-mo a year income, as asking for semester payments is getting tougher (and hard for me to spread out over 5 months!!) and Summer takes a beating and usually falls apart. Especially want to do the entire July payment as the annual enrollment fee.
    Question: Does enrollment fee (since it’s high) cover ALL of their books for the year

  7. This plan is great and I am in the process of implementing it. But, living in New England, I’m having trouble with the idea of charging for THREE months of summer lessons and worry that parents will have trouble with this concept as well. Here in New England there are only “two” months of summer, so I am afraid that parents will get confused by this system. Also there is no “winter” semester, and we definitely have a winter here. Does anyone else here have thoughts about this? I was thinking to remedy situation of maybe inserting a small, one-month “Winter Session” in between Fall and Spring, like they do at colleges. Any thoughts?

  8. Such great comments and questions on here! Our enrollment fee covers the cost of all of the music and recitals throughout the year. Additional festival/judged events are not included, but parents don’t seem to mind paying for those. The important thing for me personally is to have income 12 months out of the year. It becomes difficult when there are only 9 months of income and 12 months of expenses, even though saving is of course important and essential in my life. I am unmarried and rely solely on piano teaching as my full-time career and how I support myself financially…My brain likes steady paychecks!

    Re: Prorating. We do pro-rate based on the week of entry into the semester…as an example, say a student enters the third week of the Spring semester. We would simply deduct the 3 weeks worth of tuition from their invoice and bill them for the remaining 13 weeks. I would hate to see anyone turn away busines!

    Julie – I would just have longer Fall/Winter semesters and Spring/Summer. Don’t be afraid to get creative and figure out what works best for YOU. 🙂

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