Foundations

Subscription vs. One-Off Lessons

In this lesson we'll discuss your default payment structure, and we'll weigh the pros and cons of offering lessons by subscription vs one-off payment. Plus, we'll cover how to offer flexible pricing while actually achieving greater value for your students AND better leverage of your time.

When you're first getting started teaching, it might seem like the thing to do to offer pay-as-you-go lessons, allowing each student to simply pay at the time of the lesson. On the surface, it seems to make sense, right? They're coming to you, they haven't received it yet, so they can pay you when they see you when they come to their lesson.

But in reality, the pay-as-you-go model is RIDDLED with problems for you:

All of these problems are alleviated by adopting a subscription model:

This is why ShredMentor adopted the subscription model early on, and has done so since 2009. And with so many subscription options, it's easier than ever to set one up on a number of platforms.

Determining what to charge can be a bit of a daunting task, since there's no "right" answer and it depends on:

So a few things I CAN tell you are:

That said, in the next section I'm going to show you how you can achieve the best of both worlds and offer a whole pricing SYSTEM (and a catalogue of lesson programs) to meet virtually EVERYONE's needs, both musically and financially.

Now, I can generally guarantee that the traditional model of "one 1-on-1 private lesson per week" is going to be what both YOU and your prospective students have in mind when discussing lessons, at least at first.

1-on-1 time with you should be your MOST EXPENSIVE OFFERING, PERIOD. This is exclusive access to you, and whatever other training you offer should cost less than 1-on-1 private lessons.

Now, what comes along with that, is that depending on how you price this package, this may or may not be within the range they were hoping (or even able) to pay.

I strongly advise AGAINST having private lessons be the only option you offer, because that leaves you with nothing to offer beyond "well, sorry to hear it, get back in touch if/when you can afford it!" and sending them on their way. And that doesn't help THEM at all.

Plus, it is the equivalent of sending business away, when you HAD someone looking to GIVE YOU MONEY for exactly what you offer. 

So far I've briefly mentioned the idea of "leveraging your time" a few times now, but here I'm going to clearly define what this means and why it is SO important:

Scenario A: You teach 1 student for 1 hour. You charge $100 for a lesson. 
The maximum amount you can make for that hour is $100.

Scenario B: You teach multiple students at a time in a 1 hour class. You charge $50 per class.
The maximum amount you can make for that hour is likely MUCH HIGHER. It ultimately depends on how many students you can get in that class — which, in turn, depends on your marketing and how many people you can physically fit comfortably into your teaching space. And if you were to rent a larger space, even with the cost of renting it, the number of students could be in the dozens. So just to put some numbers on it...

In scenario B, if you could fit 5 students in your space at once, you could make $250 for that hour. If you rented a space and managed to enroll 20 students, that's $1,000 you'd be making for that single hour of your time.

THAT is what I mean by leveraging your time: charge less per person, teach the same thing ONCE to several people at the same time, everyone still benefits, everyone's existing knowledge is pooled together (so students can also learn from each other as well as from you), a sense of community is built (which is impossible in 1-on-1 lessons), and you make many times as much money without spending any extra time teaching. 

Now, teaching in groups comes with LOTS of extra benefits, but it does lack certain benefits that students might get from other forms of learning, including books/written materials, and yes, 1-on-1 private lessons.

So one way to teach in groups, and STILL leverage your time AND still offer the benefits of ALL of these learning models is to PACKAGE THEM into a rotating format.

There's no single way that you "have to" package them, but as an example, keeping the leveraged time aspect prioritized and intact, here is one way you might structure one month of lessons/classes in a rotating format:

This is what I first offered in the beginning of teaching group classes with ShredMentor. I also offered a higher-priced version of this package:

Now, in order for this option to be the most appealing option, this meant that my private lessons packages needed to be more expensive for less time with me.

So, I actually determined the price for ONE lesson: $95. It was attractive because it was practically $100, but still not quite $100.

At the time, however, simply multiplying that by 4 came to nearly $400/month, which meant that (at least the way I was marketing my lessons) I would be pricing myself out of the market entirely. So I created lower, "realistic" prices for multiple-lesson monthly rates and packaged them as "bulk discounts" — basically, "the more lessons you enroll for, the more you save per lesson":

By doing this, prospective students could take one look at the group rates...

$120 for 2 1/2 hours, or
$200 for 4 1/2 hours

And then compare them to the private lesson rates...

$180 for 2 hours, or
$250 for 4 hours

...and immediately see they'd be getting more with the group classes. PLUS they'd still get a private lesson every month, so no one would ever "fall through the cracks" and everyone would get my undivided attention at least once per month.

And this allowed ME to reduce the amount of time planning and preparing for lessons, because it allowed me to group students together by common interests/goals, teach more broad, general topics, choose a general goal for each class, and cater the topic to each individual's needs, skill level, style, goals, etc. 

Eventually all of my classes became jam sessions rather than lectures, which provided the perfect platform to give students hands-on experience and address their specific needs in real-time. And by recording each class, I was able to provide even more value, since students could review the class endlessly and wasn't required to remember everything in order to continue to benefit from attending.

With all that in place, sometimes people still prefer to pay a premium for private lessons, so in my case, there was always an active link for those as well. 

Early on, I realized that blocking out weekly time slots for students who weren't coming every week would create a problem, so I recommend that you ONLY offer a dedicated time slot to students who are coming weekly — for everyone else, set up an automated booking link and have them book their lessons manually (more on that later in the course).

Now, with all that said, there ARE some times when an actual discount IS a good idea.

1. When a potential student shows he/she is serious, earnest, driven, available, and every other trait you'd want in a student, but simply cannot afford what you offer, it might be good to offer some percentage off (10-20%) of the price. For example, at ShredMentor, I have occasionally offered my half-hour rates for full hour lessons. This is ONLY after having a full 1-hour free consultation with the prospective student and identified that they are a student I want to work with — someone who will value what they are getting, where helping them succeed is enjoyable and I am reasonably sure that I won't regret giving them my premium offering for less than the cost I've determined is my value.

2. As a promotional tactic. However, I STRONGLY urge you not to do this routinely (e.g., every Black Friday) because people will catch on and simply wait until you have a sale to ever sign up, making it much harder for you to sign on students the rest of the year. So if/when you DO have a sale price, make sure it's absolutely RANDOM and INFREQUENT. Because even if it is random, it you have sales often, it still encourages them to think "I'll just wait until the next sale." They can't expect that sales will happen, or you will undermine your standard pricing. 

3. As an "early adopter" rate when first launching a program that will eventually be much more expensive. This is a much easier way to get people into the program, get them results and subsequently collect testimonials (and even footage if possible) to build trust later when you offer the program at full price (see the next section below).

Be extra careful not to use price as the primary motivator, because it invariably attracts the wrong types of students. 

Sometimes, for teachers and students alike, it may instead be preferable to have a hands-on, fully immersive training program that's extremely expensive (like $5,000 to $10,000). Sometimes an extremely high price can BE the selling point, as long as you're communicating the incredible value they're going to get. (And that wouldn't all be profit in most cases, since a percentage of that would simply be to pay for overhead, like renting a property or convention center space.)

A high-ticket offer like this can come in many forms, including...

Pros:

• This results in a LOT of money up front, and allows you to give your focus to just a handful of students.

• At these prices, you'll ONLY get the absolute most motivated students in your program, who, wanting the most value for their money, are likely to listen closely, participate, and cooperate. This type of offer effectively filters out a certain range of "problem student" altogether.

• This becomes an alternative to standard lessons, which in itself (especially being high-priced) can appear to be the more valuable option, which can be more appealing in some cases when (a) the student can afford it and (b) when their past experience of standard lessons has caused them to view them and their effectiveness in a negative light.

Cons:

• Students paying this kind of money EXPECT massive value, and rightfully so, which means that until that value is delivered, they effectively "own" you. So you have to be very mindful about defining your own boundaries in the way that you structure this offer.

• Extremely high prices tend to activate people's "scam" radar, so demonstrating trust is an even greater obstacle than usual for a high-ticket offer. Collecting testimonials from early adopters (possibly allowed in at introductory rates) is crucial here — and if you can get them on VIDEO praising your program, even better, because it bypasses people's distrust of fake testimonials, since it's not just a random picture and some text.

• A program like this is MUCH more involved to plan out and launch than traditional lessons.

So when a student comes to you, thinking "4 private lessons per month, once a week" is what they're looking for, and finds that they can't afford it, you'll not only have several other options immediately on hand to offer as a more affordable alternative —  you'll have a well-thought-out SYSTEM of training programs, which in itself will be much more impressive than the generic, one-size-fits-all private lesson package that everyone else offers. 

They'll see what you have and think, "Wow! They've really thought this through!" and that in itself instills them with confidence in your ability to help them.

AND you'll have an option for every price point - and solutions to help people the way they want without selling yourself short, and at the same time be able to minimize the hours you spend teaching every week. 

If you have a question, simply hit the "Contact Support" button to reach out to our team.

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