Make the Investment

Depending on how you want to run your music tutoring business, your investment will vary. You could either choose to go to your students' homes or conduct classes at your own home.

Conducting classes at your own home may require you to invest in a couple musical instruments especially because many of your students will have trouble carrying their own instruments to your own home. The investment in instruments could range anywhere from Rs.5000 to Rs.30,000.

On the other hand, if you choose to conduct classes at your students' homes, you won't have to spend money on musical instruments. However, you will have to bear the expense of travelling.

If you are conducting the class at your home or at the students' homes, you won't face the problem of location. However, if you don't have enough a room to spare in your own house and can't travel too much, you could hire a hall or a classroom in an institute. The approximate fee for a small hall would be about Rs.500 per day.

Also remember, you might have to give the students certain music books or song sheets etc. But don't worry. Depending on the fees you charge them, you can ask them to pay separately for this material.

Earn Money

You could take individual or group classes. Both, an individual or a group session would last for about one hour. If you are taking individual classes, then you will have to conduct them once a week. But a group class will have to be conducted twice a week.

When it comes to tuition fees, you can naturally charge more for individual sessions because of the special attention you will be giving to the student. The rate of a one-hour session is usually about Rs.350 to Rs.400.

You can take about 10 to 12 students in a group class and can charge each of them a monthly fee of about Rs.500 to Rs.1000 per month. The class would again last for about an hour. So you can conduct classes at multiple locations, one on each day of the week.

If you put in about 20 hours a week, you can expect to make anywhere from Rs.18,000 to Rs.25,000. And this amount takes into account your expenses on travel and investments too.

Establish Yourself

As good as the money prospects sound, you need to have a large enough clientele to make that money. And spreading the word through friends and family may not be enough.

Publicity is important especially in the initial stages where people do not know of you. Try spreading the word through handbills, banners and small classifieds in newspapers. You could also put up posters in local grocery stores. They are quite effective, as a lot of people in the neighbourhood would frequent them.

Once you have established yourself and have got yourself some good clients, you can afford to stop the publicity and let the word go around.

(With inputs from Shashilata Gupta who runs the Sadhana Nritya Sangeet Vidyalaya)