It may still take money to make money, doing 4 hours a week? spend 1/10 of what a full time business would on advertising. I see Google Adsense and Facebook self serve ads commonly recommended for new advertisers. They both offer first time user vouchers, sometime included as bonuses by web hosting companies.
Google was heavily advertising this $75 voucher page, with luck maybe it will still work for you.
Google has decent geographical targeting so only people within driving distance see your ads, the right keyword selection can attract the right people. Facebook ads offer "Cities with X miles of" geographical matching and detailed demographic targeting, you can show ads only to teens or parent aged people with perhaps lids mentioned as an interest on their page.
You could create a free blog offering free lesson information, Youtube videos get easy ranking on the search engines as well though this world wide publicity might be more useful if you were offering a product or membership training site. Any paid ads would generally be directed t a sales page on a site, though Adwords allows a phone number to be displayed, which can save you click costs ion some cases. It's possible you might have to spend like $12 year for a custom domain name attached to a free blog like Blogger.com to qualify as a paid ad landing page.
These days you can learn how to play guitar over the internet. Check out Mark McKenzie's guitar video lessons here: http://www.jamoramaguitar.com The videos are very easy to follow and to my surprise extremely helpful even for advanced guitar players. For beginners I would have to say this is a gold mine.
I was able to improve my skills in just under 4 weeks and I am an intermediate-to-advanced guitar player; I've been playing guitar for the past 6 years and I was on stage with my band a lot of times.
I live in New York City, I wanted to go to a pro guitar teacher but that would have cost me over $1400 per month. Good thing with this internet, $1400 it's a lot of money for me. Good luck!
I think (and it's the best practice) you should to use Free Local Classifieds.
Post your Free ad in the category related to your guitar lessons, make your title attractive to the readers, create killing message, leave your contacts and get your audience.
Try Jeanza.com for example, make sure you point your place - Google Map service is available over there.
Good luck!
I think it would be a good idea to focus on the value you offer your students rather than the price. I'd say to identify your ideal guitar student first, and then market your lessons as if you were speaking directly to him/her. It may seem simple, but I've found that this approach is much more effective because you are thinking more about what your potential students want. Additionally, if you build a website, make a form that allows them to tell you their needs up front.
Why don't you post a sign at the post office, local library, and the church(es)?
(Out of curiosity, how much would you charge per hour? You don't have to answer if you don't want to).
Hey Everyone,
I have recently started a small business off to the side giving guitar lessons. I've been giving them to kids 16 and under. I'm very good at giving lessons, I have a beautiful home studio, and I give them very inexpensively, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting more kids. Since this isn't my full time commitment or anything, I don't want to spend a lot of money, if any, on advertising. I've tried posting in the lessons area of Craigslist, that just got me a couple scammers, and I posted on the ebay classifieds. (I figured why not, someone's gotta be using them right?)
Anyway, the general area I live in is mostly elderly. There aren't many kids in my neighborhood, so flyers or posting on the neighborhood bulletin board won't do me any good, really.
So my question is, how can I reach an audience of parents looking to get inexpensive lessons for their kids each week?
