An online guitar teaching test identifies the most common reasons why guitar teachers struggle with building a successful guitar teaching business.

Chicago, IL -- (ReleaseWire) -- 06/01/2010 -- An online survey conducted by a guitar teacher trainer Tom Hess identifies the reasons why most guitar teachers do not become successful and do not create a lot of highly advanced guitar students.

Hess states: "After training hundreds of guitar teachers how to teach guitar effectively and having studied the responses of thousands more music teachers to my free online surveys, I know that most guitar instructors repeatedly make the same kinds of mistakes in their guitar teaching." He adds, "Most guitar teachers are very passionate about helping students. Unfortunately, the mistakes they make in their teaching methods prevent their students from reaching their musical potential and stop the teachers themselves from earning a lot of money. "

After analyzing the responses of guitar teachers who have taken Hess' online survey, the following were identified as the most common reasons why guitar teachers struggle with becoming highly successful.

- Not having a large number of dedicated and loyal guitar students. Word of mouth can be one of the most powerful tools for attracting new guitar students. However, in order for it to be truly effective, the students spreading the word must be extremely loyal and dedicated to their teacher. The stronger the bond of loyalty between the guitar teacher and his students, the more referrals will come through word of mouth. Hess says: "It is not enough for a teacher to simply show new things to a student or to teach them about guitar only. It is critical to tap into the student's emotional needs that made them want to play guitar in the first place. When a teacher learns how to do this, his students will become extremely loyal." He adds, "Many guitar teachers think that their job is only to teach music or guitar. Fact is, their job is to teach people. Because guitar teachers make this mistake, most of their students never develop a deep sense of loyalty to them."

- Teaching only private one-on-one lessons. Most guitar teachers and guitar students believe that one-on-one lessons are the best way to learn guitar. "This myth is one of the main reasons why many guitar teachers do not have a lot of really good students and why most do not earn even $50,000 per year, let alone $100,000 or more", says Hess. The reality is that guitar students can greatly benefit by studying guitar in various group formats in addition to one-on-one lessons. Certain skills such as learning to play with others and learning from other musicians cannot be achieved with private lessons only. "When students learn in a group, one of the many benefits is that they end up pushing themselves harder as they notice the other students getting better. Certainly there is a lot a student can learn in private lessons, but it's a big mistake to intentionally avoid teaching in other formats", says Hess. In addition to helping guitar players in unique ways, teaching more than one student every hour has the potential to dramatically increase a teacher's hourly rate and multiply their annual income several times.

- Not understanding the difference between working on the teaching business and working in it. Most guitar teachers are so caught up in the daily work of teaching music lessons that almost no time is left to market their business to get more guitar students, analyze their teaching methods or do something for their existing students in order to increase the bond of student-teacher loyalty. Hess says: "Because guitar teachers typically struggle with earning a high level of income, they are often stressed out about getting the next student to sign up for lessons and do not have the time or energy to think about all the ways they can potentially enhance the lesson experience for their existing students".

- Trying to teach from fixed guitar method books or courses. "Teaching guitar is much more about teaching people than it is about teaching music", says Hess. Cookie cutter programs or lessons that claim to be suited for everyone are not going to be successful with a large number of students. This is why most guitar teachers who teach guitar based on such a system almost never create truly amazing guitar players.

- Not learning how to become a more effective guitar teacher. Being a good musician, or even having an advanced music degree, does not make one a great guitar teacher. If one's goal is to teach hundreds of students to really play well and to make a huge amount of money doing so, it is necessary to learn the art and science of how to turn guitar students into great musicians and how to build a thriving guitar teaching business.

Tom Hess' free online http://tomhess.net" href="http://tomhess.net">http://tomhess.net>" href="http://tomhess.net/TeachingStrengthsAndWeaknesses.aspx">guitar teaching test is available at http://tomhess.net" href="http://tomhess.net">http://tomhess.net>>