Starting Out
You are a pianist with years of experience in taking lessons, practicing, and performing various songs and pieces. It is a passion of yours and you feel it has been elevated above a hobby for you; however, you are looking for a profession in which to use your skills. If you find that you enjoy imparting your knowledge to other people, perhaps a profession in piano teaching is for you! If so, welcome to the community!
While perusing job listings, you may find many schools are hiring. Working for a school is a great way to start because the administrative tasks are taken care of for you. Your responsibilities will typically be to teach lessons, submit the the titles of student recital pieces, and take attendance. Meanwhile, an administrator will take care of advertising, billing, communicating and enforcing policies, displaying a professional environment, scheduling, preparing recital programs, and tax withholding*. This gives you freedom to spend your time planning your lessons and focusing on your craft. However, the rate that is charged to your students is split between you and your company. The company also will determine your rate for you. If you don't consider what your education and skill level is worth, you may be accepting a rate that is too low.*As an independent contractor, you will receive a 1099 from the school and file your own self-employment taxes. There are other important things for you to know as a contractor that I hope to talk about in a future post.
If you are able to open your own private studio in your home or by renting a local community location, such as a church, you are responsible for not only teaching, but all of the administrative tasks listed above!
When I decided to open a private studio in my apartment last year, the pandemic had started a few months prior and my husband was home while we waited for his work to reopen. He would be available to watch our small children while I taught. My model was to use Skype for online lessons and I began working on structuring my studio. This post is about how to present a professional image as a piano teacher.
Becoming an Independent Teacher
There are so many facets to starting up a business. Today's topic is how to present a professional image for your piano studio with studio documents. The resource that I use to guide me in this endeavor is a book by Dr. Beth Klingenstein called "The Independent Piano Teacher's Studio Handbook: Everything You Need to Know for a Successful Teaching Studio." I took classes with her and her handbook is about 2-inches thick and contains everything that was included in her college piano pedagogy course. It is an invaluable resource and will give you a step-by-step guide to starting your studio. I highly recommend purchasing this book.
Presenting a Professional Image with Branding
I hired a graphic designer and her price for an extended branding package was $300 that included a logo, business card, stationery, ads, product design, social media posts, and a website. I opted out of the website since I had already coded my own, so she reduced the price. She interviewed me for insight into my business goals and aesthetic preferences.
Then I received multiple logo possibilities and she included 2 revisions once I chose the one I liked.
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| Logo Design Options and Color Scheme Options |
I chose logo 1 and color scheme b. Then we revised the logo together. She drew the piano herself. I love the finished product!
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| Final Draft of Logos and Color Schemes |
The final drafts of the logo included black-and-white, ombre, light purple, dark purple, and white with a transparent background for the navigation bar on my website (see below).
Next, she designed my business cards, stationery, and ads using this logo, the color scheme, and various public domain pictures. I sent these designs to Smartpress.com, which is one of my favorite printers. They have many options for paper weight, color, and gloss. They give feedback about the clarity of the images provided and give a digital proof to review before they print. Communication is very good and the turn around time and shipping cost is reasonable.
Here are pictures of the finished printed products.
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| Welcome Card and Business Card |
I created the welcome cards specifically for my online students because I give sticker rewards. I ordered the welcome cards to be the size of a typical character sticker sheet and included that in the mail. Since I resumed in-person lessons with masks in the fall, I still send the cards with the sticker sheets after the student enrolls, and I'm also able to give more stickers and prizes as well!
My letterhead stationery is used on studio documents, such as my studio policy, calendar, and registration form.
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| Letterhead |
Below are examples of the social media and newspaper ads.
Facebook Sidebar Ad and Newspaper Ad
Sadly, my neighborhood newspaper closed the week before I was going to submit my ad. I'm considering buying an ad in a newspaper with a larger audience. I did pay for a few Facebook Ad campaigns, but I didn't receive any inquiries.
I also received a product design and mockup, however I don't currently want to order 300 t-shirts or tote bags, since all the product printing sites want bulk orders, so I haven't used this design yet.
I am very happy with my choice to order this package and I highly recommend at least having a logo designed for your private studio. If you are interested in hiring this graphic designer, please email me at jennifermeltonpiano[at]gmail.com for a referral. (I am using brackets around at to protect my email address from spam bots.)
Designing My Website
After I received my logo, I added it to the left corner of my website on the navigation bar. Coding has been a hobby of mine since I was in high school, so I coded my own home page using a Bootstrap tutorial. I am a supporter on Neocities (modeled after the mid-2000s GeoCities hosting site!) and I purchased my domain name from Google Domains. I pay Neocities $5 a month to host my site and I pay Google $1 a month for my domain.
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| Website Home Page jennifermeltonpiano.com |
I did try Google Ads to promote my website. I received 3 leads from that campaign. I am now applying SEO to my website to try to promote its listing on search engines for free. I may update about how to use SEO in the future.
Finally, my email signature contains my photo and my information, including links to my Facebook and SoundCloud. I used WiseStamp to generate the logo and Gmail is my email host.
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| Email Signature |
If you have any questions about presenting a professional image for your piano studio or if you would like to share your ideas, please post in the comments below!
