Have you ever experienced a long week of teaching and have had little to no money to go out and relax? Or perhaps your paycheck is less than desirable and you struggle just to pay your bills? We have all experienced this at one point or another. Try to relax and discover 13 practical ways music educators earn extra money in their free time.

1. Sell Your Class Content

You already work hard creating lesson plans and preparing instructional materials. Why don’t you make money by doing something you have to do anyway? Sell your class content to other teachers and generate some income. You make money and help others gain a greater understanding of your lesson.

Music Educators Earn Extra Money

The biggest online market site for educators is Teachers Pay Teachers. Teachers Pay Teachers provides educators with the opportunity to sell their lessons, instructional materials, and other resources to teachers. Starting is simple and supplemental income is possible with quality submissions. You can refine your submission skills by reading up on advice provided by experienced sellers on the site.

2. Tutor Online and In Person

Teachers regularly tutor their classroom students as part of their full-time job. Why not put those specialized skills to work to help you earn money and assist other students that could use your help? You may choose to start by locally advertising your services and letting other educational professionals know that you are accepting students who need help.

Communicating with principals, educational coordinators, and websites, like Thumbtack, about who you are and how you plan to help students in need may result in valuable referrals. Opportunities exist across the span of subject areas. Joining service chains like Sylvan and other tutoring companies can also help you find students without much effort on your part. Sites such as Chegg Tutors and Tutor.com are additional resources for finding students.

3. Teach/Sell Online Courses

The online instruction market is full of opportunities. Many school systems are offering students an opportunity to take an online course to get ahead, catch up, replace or simply enhance and supplement their on-campus class schedules.

Individuals outside of school are also taking courses to hone their skills in business, professional, educational or personal reasons. There is no limit to what age you have to be to take online courses. To teach these courses you must be able to bring some sort of value to the student, in any discipline. Generally, there is not a degree requirement and the other publication requirements are minimal.

This is a great royalty-based approach to earn money. In most cases, the majority of the work is done ahead of time and money slowly starts flow in over the course of time. The more you continue to add value to your courses and strategically market them, the greater potential for continued profits.

There are a variety of companies that will help you market and find your students. These include Skill Share, Udemy, Udacity, Lynda, General Assemb.ly, and Course Birdie. Each share in the course profits of the courses that are sold.

4. Freelance with Fiverr

Most teachers have gifts beyond the classroom. If you are interested in selling your services over the internet with these talents you can make some quick money with Fiverr. Such gigs would include musicians, designers, developers, writers, video editors, voiceover artists, virtual assistants and web analysts. Essentially if you have a talent that you can sell as a service, you can probably sell it on Fiverr.

5. Write an Ebook

Writing an EBook will take time, research and can be laborious, however, can be quite rewarding once everything is said and done. It would be smart to choose a topic that you are familiar with and have a fair amount of knowledge about the topic.

The more in-depth your ebook tends to be the quicker it will be to develop. You can avoid the stresses of the big publishers by self-publishing with tools such as Gumroad or Create Space. You can sell your EBook on Amazon or include it as a free educational resource within one of your courses for sale.

6. Become a Test Scorer

If you can stand grading papers in your free time then being a test scorer might be for you. Some school districts outsource their testing needs. ETS, Pearson and other companies are available to fulfill these requests.

7. Blog

Blogging can be rewarding because you can write about what you are passionate about and make money. Finding the right niche is one of the more important components, fortunately, education is a hot topic for many readers. Teachers can also write for other organizations such as the NY Times Education section, The Atlantic, Teach Thought, Edutopia, Ed Week and some many more professional organizations.

There is a variety of easy to create tools for websites that you can place your blog on. Some services are free and others are paid. My experience is that free is always nice, however, the freedom of customization and profit potential is limited since you do not truly own the web space. Whereas with a paid website, profit potential and site customization is possible. Possible website builders include WordPress.com (free), WordPress.org (paid), Wix, Squarespace, Google Sites and Godaddy.com.

You can make money by attracting traffic to read your stories and selling advertisements or services and products. Do this by using social media to direct traffic to your monetized site. Examples of social media to direct traffic to your site would include Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, Snapchat, Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit, to name a few.

8. Write Curriculum

Teachers have the option to get find ways of earning extra money in-house, through their district or from dedicated the curriculum companies such as Shmoop or Pearson. Having experienced several years of teaching under your belt helps make this opportunity a worth wild venture. Taking part in an extracurricular job like this may even provide you the resources to refine your educational planning skills.

9. Teach at a Community College

For those teachers who live close to a community college adding a class or two may be a great way to earn extra income and keep you connected to the education community. Generally, the minimum standards are similar to teaching in a public school setting. Obtaining the specific credentials and creating a reputation of achievement should put you in a position to obtain a community college teaching position.

Music Educators Earn Extra Money

Private schools, as well as online universities, provide opportunities for part-time instructors. Popular for-profit online universities include organizations such as American National University, Colorado Technical University, and the University of Phoenix.

10. Coach

One of the traditional jobs that teachers often fill to earn a supplemental income is to become a coach in a local area school or in the commercial world. One example of this would include being a life coach. Often this position is laborious and ends up being a low paying option. Despite the pay, many teachers find coaching to be morally rewarding.

11. Be a Virtual Assistant

There are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of businessmen and women who need extra help and are willing to pay for that help. The great thing about being a virtual assistant is that you can do it from the comfort of your own home. Hired tasks include data entry but can vary dramatically. Virtual assistant job platforms include Fancy Hands, Time Etc, EaHelp, and Red Butler.

12. Be a Real Estate Agent Part-Time

Becoming a part-time real estate agent can bring a serious amount of money if you are well trained and the area is primed for sales. On average real estate agents make anywhere from 1% to 7 % commissions on property sold. That means if you sell a $500,000 piece of property with a 3% commission you make $15,000. Not a bad payday. Don’t get me wrong this part-time job involves a lot of preparation work and strong gut but it can be totally worth the effort.

13. Earn a Post Graduate Degree

The education world offers additional pay for earning post-graduate degrees. The difference in pay between a bachelors and masters degree could be higher than $20,000. Earning an additional degree is an investment that will last the rest of your life.



If going back to college meets your fancy be sure to research the grant, scholarship and internship opportunities are available. Nothing is better than going back to school with all expenses.

I hope that these 13 practical ways music educators earn extra money blog post provide a few ideas for helping to ease the stresses of financial burdens. For more supplemental employment ideas check out our sister site at www.jobs4pay.org.

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Music educators have a special calling to meet the needs of students. Glimpse into the continuing tale of as he breaks down the barriers facing music education in The Music Educator Blog. Read about Bill’s personal story of life, love, and music here.