5 Ways To Make More Money Teaching Dance

If you’re a freelance dance instructor or studio owner, the best way to make more money is to make sure your dance lessons are the best around. Teaching well is not the same as dancing well, they are different skills. If you’ve decided to make your living teaching dance, it will be well worth investing time and effort in becoming the best teacher you possibly can. If you strive for excellence in your teaching, it will be reflected in your bank account!

1. Know Each Student Personally

When a student comes into your class, make sure you learn their name as quickly as you can. After class or whenever you can spare some time early on, talk to them one on one and learn their story. Where are they from? Why have they decided to learn to dance? What are some of the challenges they’ve faced in that goal? What do they do for a living? Learning more about each individual is extremely powerful. Each person you teach is unique, and will respond to instruction, corrections and dance opportunities (like performing) differently. If you can predict what some of their reactions are going to be by getting to know them, not only will you forge a more personal relationship based on trust, but you’ll be able to make your interactions with them much more personal, which will lead to better retention, which will lead to… more income!

2. Listen and Acknowledge

Over the course of my teaching career, something interesting happened. In classes or on private lessons I spoke less, and less, and less. Over time, teaching became much more about closely observing what was happening in front of me, and listening to my student carefully whenever they had a question or concern.

Hearing what my student was saying became very important, so that I could effectively address their exact concern. Also, whenever they had a win or accomplished a difficult movement, or just originated any communication to me, I made sure to acknowledge it. This was very important, as it made them feel heard and also feel that they were special and worth listening to.

This may be a small point, but it is very important. I feel that it affected my bottom line more than any other point. It was just as simple as caring about them, listening to them, and acknowledging what they had to say.

3. Confidence Equals Certainty

In the dance industry, there is no more effective confidence builder than certainty in your craft. Confidence comes from knowledge. You won’t suffer much from imposter syndrome if you know your stuff, and know that you know.

Knowledge of your craft is different than your ability to dance. When we talk about “knowledge” we are talking about the mental understanding of dance technique. If you struggle with confidence, my advice would be to seek out the most knowledgeable mentor or teacher that you can find. This might take some time, it can be challenging to find someone who really knows their stuff and can help you. Push through until you find someone you click with.

Continue to take lessons. Invest in private lessons, they are an investment in your career and well worth it. For my entire career, I took at least one private lesson a week. Everything I spent on my dance training paid for itself many times over.

4. Plan, Plan, Plan!

This may be a cliché, but it’s important to plan each lesson you teach. Warning: if you teach each lesson as a “one off”, then your lessons will not create an organized chain that will move the student forward in a coherent manner towards a known goal.

And they will sense that.

If you don’t put effort into organizing your lessons into a chain of information that moves the student along from one level to the next, your student’s learning will be chaotic to some extent.

Planning lessons gives you the outline of what you expect the students to learn in a given amount of time, and also clarifies what goals are to be reached in that time. You can go over the goals with them both directly which shows that you have gone the extra mile in planning their lesson, and indirectly in the way that you teach.

Your teaching will be more direct, clear and efficient with good planning.

Students know when you’ve gone over and above what you’ve promised. And that will be reflected in your bottom line.

5. Put The Future There

It’s important to refer to the future often when you teach. What this means is that when you communicate to your class, that you tie what you are doing in the moment to the future.

For example, if you are giving a correction, you might say how it will improve their performance in an upcoming show. If you are ending off class and commending them on how well they did, remind them that you are excited for the upcoming adult social next week. This helps remind students of your upcoming events and increase your attendance. And helps you to get students signed up for the next thing, which helps you earn more in your teaching!

Always end every class by promoting an upcoming event or the next class. Even if it’s just to remind them to tell their parents that student photos are next week, you will make your life much easier by putting the future there!

How do you make more money teaching dance? By improving your students’ experience! And that means more students, more lessons, and more money for you!

Our courses on making money teaching dance are coming soon. Until then get on the list for real dance data that will increase your joy, fulfillment, and income from dance!