Increase your cash flow with these proven side gigs for music teachers and musicians.
It’s no secret that musicians and music teachers don’t make a lot of money. The hours of practicing and studying are not rewarded monetarily like other professions. Instead, the reward comes from seeing others excel.
The problem is that bills still need to be paid. Student loans have to be repaid. The cost of living keeps increasing while the paycheck does not. What can musicians and music teachers do to make sure all their living expenses are covered while pursuing what they love? The answer is a side gig.
Let’s start by talking about what a side gig is and then move on to exploring proven side hustles for extra income.
What is Meant by Side Gig?
A side gig is additional work done to complement your income from your primary job. It is a task you do on the side of your regular employment or self-employment. Other names for this kind of work are side hustle, moonlighting, and second job. Part-time, freelance, or full-time jobs help augment your income.
According to Wikipedia, a side job is an additional job done outside your normal working hours in order to supplement your income. When your primary income is inadequate to sustain a certain lifestyle, you may need to add in a side project that makes money to supplement your income.
The extra work you do outside your primary job is meant to raise your income. To generate extra income, it may be essential to work on a variety of side projects. Anything you perform for a living in addition to your regular employment counts as side work.
The goal of a side gig is to support yourself while building up your primary gig. Some ideas for bringing in extra cash include teaching music lessons, substitute teaching, and selling your products or someone else’s products online. This can help provide a full livelihood while pursuing your passions.
Everyone needs an extra income stream. Self-employment as well as most other forms of work have an upper threshold on earnings. If you are exchanging your time for money, there is a limit to how many hours you can work in a day. This means your income is capped.
There are only so many students you can teach in a day without losing your mind. Performing 8 hours a day or more is unrealistic, especially for wind players. Your chops are going to fall apart. The hands of piano players will cramp up and singers will lose their voice.
So, what type of side gig should musicians and music teachers consider? The most lucrative side gig is one that brings in passive income.
What is Passive Income?
Passive income is generated when the amount of work put into something exceeds the amount of effort necessary to maintain it. Once you build it, you do not need to be actively involved all the time in order for it to create a steady stream of extra cash.
According to Wikipedia, a passive income is one that needs little effort to obtain and keep. It is referred to as progressive passive income when the earner does not put in much effort to increase their income. To be able to work less and yet earn an income, you must first grow your side gig.
In the book, The Business of the 21st Century, Robert Kiyosaki says that assets are what he recommends building. An asset is something that generates income. The path to financial freedom is to have money working for you instead of the other way around.
The key is to focus on investing your time and money in assets, not liabilities. The key is to build up something enough that it continues as an ongoing income while you are working at your main gig. Passive income does not require you to be fully present and actively working all the time. Once you put your time in, it will begin working for you.
It’s pretty nice to be teaching all day and come home to see how many sales you’ve had while you were at work. Imagine performing at your favorite venues all weekend while sales were rolling in on the side. This is the power of passive income. You don’t always have to be actively involved in order to bring in additional income.
To learn more about assets and liabilities plus get a deeper financial education, I highly recommend reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. Income that continues to come in over and over again while you are working on something else is passive income. This is the best type of ongoing income to have that will support you for the long haul.
Is it OK to Have a Side Job?
Having a side job is not only okay, but highly advised. Even if you’re working full-time, it’s a good idea to invest your time and money in assets that can create passive income. As long as you know how to use the power of compounding to your advantage, a side hustle can lead to financial independence.
Not only will a side gig boost your income, it will also help you develop more skill sets. The rich don’t work for money, they work to learn. Seek opportunities that will give you the skills you need to succeed in the long term.
Becoming specialized in something is what everyone recommends, but it’s overrated. Your dependence on a single area of expertise grows as you become more specialized. Because of this, we have a lot of brilliant individuals who are impoverished.
Instead, focus on a variety of learning that will help you manage cash flow, create efficient systems, and even manage people well if you need to hire help. These are the three most important factors in successfully managing a side job.
After mastering your instrument or teaching full-time, you should also focus on sales and marketing. Developing good communication skills, such as writing and speaking, are usually practiced daily by teachers, but keep learning more. Good communication and negotiation skills are needed by all musicians. These are essential to your financial well-being and should not be overlooked.
Work on them constantly by taking online courses and reading books. Your skill sets will be compounded, making your side gig even more lucrative. Once you build the machine, the passive income will keep flowing with just maintenance.
What is the Best Side Gig?
The best side gigs are assets that create passive income. Start by earning a regular income online as a side hustle to take advantage of inexpensive startup and administrative costs (liabilities). Build it mostly with sweat equity until it reaches a point where only maintenance is needed.
This is the best type of side income for busy musicians and music teachers to build over time. Create assets that generate passive income instead of exchanging dollars for hours that put a ceiling on your earnings.
Best Side Gigs for Busy Musicians and Music Teachers
Here are a few of the best side gigs for busy music teachers and musicians that are proven to generate passive income.
1. Sell on Amazon
Learning how to sell is a key component to increasing your income. The Proven Amazon Course will help you learn how to sell in the largest online marketplace in the world. Amazon is now in virtually every country, creating more opportunities than ever before. Once you have mastered the skill sets needed for selling physical products on Amazon, you can then develop your own products to sell consistently.
Once I learned how to sell digital products on my own website, I knew that I needed to learn ecommerce. This has taught me more about how to run a business than a business course ever could. I have since developed and trademarked my own brand and become a coach.
If you already have a brand, it needs a strong presence on Amazon. The best way to become a household brand name is to get your products in front of as many people as possible. Amazon is the place to be to develop raving fans faster.
Start-up costs are low. Most of your money should be geared towards buying inventory that will make you money. The Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program makes it easy to scale by allowing Amazon to fulfill customer orders instead of shipping out individual orders yourself. They also provide customer service freeing up your time to sell more inventory.
The Proven Amazon Course teaches you exactly how to do it all. Consider it your core curriculum for everything you need to know about selling on Amazon.
Even musicians and music teachers can make a living selling on Amazon part-time or full-time with this straightforward, simple, and proven step-by-step guide. This powerhouse collection of courses is everything you need to know to improve your cash flow now. It starts at $29 a month, but you definitely want to check the current price options.
2. Sell on Your Own Website
A website is a piece of lucrative internet real-estate. This is an asset that can generate multiple streams of income in a variety of ways. Your risk is reduced because you are diversifying your income.
It does not take much money to start and maintain, but it does require significant work up front. Once you get the ball rolling, it will continue to bring in income through a variety of ways. More importantly, once you have traffic coming to your site, you can point that traffic to wherever you want them to go.
Do you remember the conversation earlier about the importance of developing marketing skill sets? Creating and maintaining a website is a great way to learn as you go. What you end up with is an asset that brings in passive income through ad revenue, affiliate marketing, and selling your own digital products.
Once you learn how to blog, which is really content marketing, then you have traffic that you can direct anywhere. That traffic can even be directed to products you sell on Amazon and double dip through both affiliate commissions and sales revenue.
This is what I do currently, but I wouldn’t know how to do this without building both sales and marketing skill sets first. What’s even better is that neither side gig requires you to have a lot of contact with customers which makes it perfect for introverts.
Having your own Shopify store is great too (I love mine!), but you still need to do content marketing to bring customers in. A Shopify store and a website can be used to sell both physical and digital products.
If you already have a private teaching studio or a band, having an online presence is an absolute necessity. The internet is where people go first to find your brand. Music classroom teachers and band, orchestra, or choir directors can sell materials they have developed on their site. In fact, you can send students to your website as part of their assignments.
The Bottom Line
Here is the bottom line. No matter what path you choose, if you put the time and effort in first, it will start working for you, even when you walk away. Focus all your energy on developing side gigs that generate passive income.
Side Gigs Summary
You don’t have to give up pursuing your dreams in order to pay off student loan debt and improve cash flow. Developing alternative income streams through side gigs will solve your money problems.
To increase your revenue, you must learn both marketing and selling abilities. Both skill sets can be learned by selling on Amazon and blogging. I highly recommend selecting only one to focus on first before adding another asset to your portfolio.
Your chosen side gig could be your new part-time job. One day, you may want it to become your main gig, but retain the part-time working hours. That can easily be done by freeing up your time to become business owners with multiple sources of passive monthly income.
