TTTV054: How Mike Verta Makes $60K on the side Teaching Online

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Have you ever considered sharing your talents to a wider audience than just your students? Would you like to make some extra income on the side while you sleep?

Today's episode is all about taking the idea of teaching online to another level by teaching large groups of people online and then offering a back catalogue of recorded lessons for people to download.

In fact, my guest today brings in around $60,000 each year in addition to his other jobs, just by offering online lessons to people around the world.

The best thing is, anyone can do it!

Online lessons to large groups can be created using free software like Google Hangouts (which, incidentally is what I use for my webinars), with a simple mic and camera and not a whole lot of tech know-how (please see Episode 53 and Episode 52 for beginner tech ideas).

Mike Verta has taken online learning to a next level. He has shared his skills to many many people and when he teaches his sessions are honestly providing genuine assistance to all his students in his live sessions. He has lots of experience in creating and presenting amazing sessions.

While Mike explains his pretty complex setup, don't be intimidated by feeling you have to create something quite as impressive as this when you're starting.

As a teacher you will be able to learn a heap of things by watching one or two of Mike's free videos.

Transcript

Please find a full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this page. Alternatively, click below to download a PDF. If you are an TopMusicPro Member, you can find the full video and transcript in the Member Resources Area. Not a member? See below for how you can get $50 off your membership today. 

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In this episode, you’ll learn

• How Mike got started with online teaching
• How to build an audience for online lessons
• What you need to take your online teaching to the next level
• How to make sure the resources you need are available
• How you can supplement your income using online teaching
• How to teach large groups online
• How to create passive income from your online lesson folio

Links Mentioned

• Wirecast by Telestream
• Mike Verta’s website (currently being updated)
• Mike’s YouTube Channel
• WooCommerce Plugin for WordPress

This month's sponsor

Does the idea of teaching online music lessons seem a bit daunting? Do you know what equipment and technology you need to teach a successful online lesson? Do you know how to set up and use your equipment? What about finding students? Or getting paid? Or setting up your policy? Or knowing which activities can be successful in an online lesson? Are there specific teaching tips you should use for online lessons? How about pros and cons of online teaching? Or troubleshooting when something goes wrong?

Do you ever think, "I could never teach on Skype because I'm afraid of using technology during piano lessons" or "I wish I could stop teaching so many makeup lessons", or "I'm moving soon and I don't want to leave all of my students behind!" or "I wish I had more students to fill the rest of my teaching schedule" .... then these videos are just what you have been looking for!

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Extras: 

• As a bonus, everyone who purchases access to the video below is also invited to join our exclusive Facebook group of teachers just like you where more discussion and sharing of ideas takes place and additional questions about teaching online are answered.
• A set of free quote posters for your studio or classroom is also included!

“Learn to Teach Music Lessons on Skype” will help you develop the online studio you’ve always wanted! If you want to be the most forward-thinking and trend-setting teacher on the block, if you would love to increase your client base, teaching hours, and income, and if you want to offer experiences to students that they will remember for years to come, then online teaching is just what you’ve been looking for!

Join me as I answer your burning questions about online music lessons, help you gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence you need to start teaching online lessons, and help you discover ways to expand your studio offerings, set your studio apart, and take your studio to the next level!

Click here to find out more and get $10 off the entire month of August 2016.

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Thank you for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, and I’m grateful that you’ve chosen mine.

Being a full-time teacher myself, I know how busy teachers are and how much time, effort and passion we put into our students. Sometimes, the last thing we want to do in our time off is listen to more piano teaching stuff! So, well done for using this time for self-improvement.

Whether you’re at the gym, on the bike or in the car, I know that you and your students will get lots out of what you learn in the long run. Just make sure you try out some of the ideas before they get lost in the business of your next lessons.

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How is your online piano teaching going?

Which bit of Mike's technology would you like to own? How could you explore taking your online teaching to the next level?

Full Transcript

Interviewer: Mike Verta, welcome to the show.

Mike: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Interviewer: All the way from sunny Los Angeles. It's summertime over there. Right?

Mike: Yeah, it is, always.

Interviewer: And we're struggling through winter, which to Melburnians is always freezing cold, but nothing compared to what half the states get. Now look, I'm really interested in hearing a little bit about your story, how you started teaching, what your training was in, and what you're doing now. Can you give us a little bit of background?

Mike: In terms of teaching, I had no intention of teaching. It happened by accident. I was a working composer or I am a working composer. I've been working since I was 16, and I had joined an online forum for composers and I would post some of my work, just sketches mostly.

And right from the time I started posting work, people would ask questions. Other composers would ask questions about pretty much every aspect of writing music, about composition, the orchestration or performance techniques or studio issues, even things related to the business and all that sort of thing. And over a course of six months to a year, the questions got...there were so many of them. I just couldn't answer them anymore. I was doing that all the time in email and/or on the forum. I was spending way too much time on it.

And of course I wanted to answer, because they were asking the exact same questions that I asked when I was coming up, but you can never really get straight answers especially from professionals who are working. You always feel like there's some secret. It's like the nuclear launch codes. People won't tell you what the real truth is about business negotiations or what their tricks are when they write.

So what I did was I thought, "Okay, you know what I'll do? Is, I'll do a couple of free podcasts. I'll do a couple of podcasts and a couple of YouTube videos and I'll put them on, and this will probably take care of that." Except it went exactly the opposite way, because now people had little pieces of media they could share. So there was just more and more interest in this.

And so I informally said, "Well look, if I did a masterclass series on these various disciplines, is that something you guys would be into?" And there was a lot of interest there. So like I said, without really intending to, but having the teacher's spirit or something, I decided, "All right, let's just do this."

So I didn't have much of a game plan when I started. I knew I could talk about pretty much anything in the industry. And I thought, "How long should the classes be? An hour and a half, something like that." And I picked a price point, and then I just started. They grew in popularity pretty quickly, and now I have a really nice core group of people who come. There's more every day, pretty much.

Interviewer: And so what does the outcome look like today? How many lessons do you provide? How many students do you teach? Do you have the numbers?

Mike: What I did was with the classes, I do them live and I do them on Friday nights in Los Angeles' time. They're very informal. It's almost like a hangout, and there's a structure. There's a plan for the class. And then I take questions and the live people help shape the class, because they'll ask for more clarity on a point.

And I've done to date I think 24 or 26 classes over the course of the 4 years. So they're not regular. It's usually between gigs. And I'd say each class, I'd have to do the math. But I sell them for 30 bucks. I make them 30 bucks because I wanted to make it super cheap.

Interviewer: Bargain.

Mike: Yeah, because the way I figured it was I knew when I was studying with a professional myself, it would cost me about $125-150 an hour for a guy who had a 30 year pedigree in the business. Kids coming up, they can't afford that. That's ridiculous. And it wasn't going to be about the money. Like I said, this was all just gravy. I wasn't planning on doing it. So I figured I'll give them $30. That's near impulse buy, and just for once in the life, they'll get more than they paid for. This will just be one little piece of justice in this world.

But then if a hundred people sign up for the class and I don't do any prep really or maybe an hour. And actually the classes don't go an hour and a half. I think the shortest class I ever did was three hours. The longest one was just a couple weeks ago, it was nine hours. It was just nine hours on the air. Because I stayed on until...

Interviewer: Nine hours?

Mike: Yeah. In fact, I have a free one that's on YouTube, which is six hours.

Interviewer: Oh my goodness.

Mike: Because if that's how it's going, if people have questions, I want them answered. And if it's still staying engaging, then I'll just keep going. So it ends up being this really sick deal for people.

Interviewer: Wow.

Mike: It's packed full of information. It's super cheap. How many have been ordered? I have to check the numbers. The classes I'd say, I don't know if this is a lot. But I think right now, I think they make between maybe $50,000 or $60,000 a year in sales.

Interviewer: Sounds great. Sounds really good. The thing is that you are able to scale it. And that's why I really wanted to focus on this online teaching concept, because it is such an incredible way to scale what you're doing so you can make that kind of money.

Mike: Again, it's not a full time thing. But once the class is done, people can buy it after the fact. So that's the thing. Is that I always encourage people to come to the live show, because then you can ask questions, and then it's literally one on one, especially if I'm saying, "Listen, I'm going to sit here until you're...have gotten your attention." So there's people who will make sure that they show up for the live ones. But then there's other people who, like if they live in Europe and it's always 4:00 in the morning...but then they'll buy it after the fact, and then they can watch it as many times as they want to. So it's got an evergreen product.

The first classes that I did are right now somebody's first class they just bought today. And typically then they just go down the line and end up...so it's worked out that way, and then they stack on top of each other.

Interviewer: It's great. We've had two podcasts this months by the time this one is released. And the first one was very much about getting started teaching online one on one using Skype, and FaceTime, and things. Last week was we had Mario Ajero who's a real specialist in technology for piano teachers. And so he's stepping it up a level, some of the extra technology you can use and sharing keyboards and having the sound come out of your digital piano from the other person's piano, things like that.

This is now going that extra level of, "Well here's another thing you could do. Have one live lesson for a whole group of people, record it so you can make the income from that, and then keep selling it too." Really clever.

Mike: Absolutely. And like anything else. I've done zero advertising on the classes. It's all been word of mouth. But if your content is compelling, and I can talk more about how to actually do that, but people will tell each other and will post a thing about it on forums. And so every once in a while, I'll go and check just to see what the in path was, where was the referral links coming from? And they surprise me all the time. It's like, "How did that get all the way to Russia in this bizarre niche game forum? How did that end up getting...?" But that's the beauty of everybody being connected, is you don't necessarily...your audience will find it, build it and they will come, is what we're saying.

Interviewer: So I want to rewind a little bit back into your history. I can see not less than four keyboards behind you, and a Stormtrooper mask, and a disco ball. Did you start as a pianist or with piano lessons traditionally?

Mike: I was trained classically from the time I was...I started just before I was six, and started with the goal of writing music for film. I was five when I made that decision, my life decision.

Interviewer: Really?

Mike: Yeah.

Interviewer: Wow.

Mike: And so I knew what I wanted to do. So I started training at a conservatory, which just happened to be three blocks up the street from my parents' house in Chicago where I was born. So I was actually working professionally writing jingles and commercials when I was 16.

Interviewer: Wow.

Mike: It's when I started. So I did that for a few years. Then I came out to Los Angeles to get in the business or whatever.

Interviewer: To make it, to make it big.

Mike: Yeah, right. To do it. And I got a record deal when I was young. I think I was 20 when I signed that first thing. And so I was doing albums and touring, and I was a session musician. There aren't as many of them now, but back then you could have a life as a session player. So I'd play on records, and commercials and things. And that's what I was just going to do, just continue doing that and then started doing film work.

And then along the way, something that was just a hobby of mine, which was the early days of computer visual effects and motion graphics accidently became a parallel career. That's a whole other story. But in the end, today I split my time between doing music work and doing basically every other aspect of postproduction. So I direct a lot of commercials. I do color correction work, and editing, and sound design and just lots of visual effects work.

Which I think totally in this business and in this town, maybe everywhere, however you multitask, whether it's inside your field or into related fields, I think multitasking is an artist's best trick.

Interviewer: It's a given, isn't it?

Mike: Yeah, because if one well is empty, another well is full. If this one opportunity dries up...and they have seasons. As a composer, suddenly there's a lot of work and then there's a year there isn't a lot of work. It goes up and down. I think even though we've all signed up for a life that may not have the greatest stability in it, having lots of other trees to pick fruit from can help mitigate that.

Interviewer: We'll have to put some links to some of your work in the show notes, if that's cool.

Mike: Sure. Of course.

Interviewer: I'll be fascinated to hear about it. I love composing and helping my students compose. I wonder whether your teacher had some skills in that area that drove you down that path, or were you very much self-taught?

Mike: You mean as a composer or as a teacher?

Interviewer: As a piano student, as a young boy, did your teacher encourage that stuff?

Mike: No, they hated that. Because what happened was I was studying classically and I was at a conservatory that took it very, very seriously. And all I wanted to do was change the music....