Ever wondered if you can make money playing guitar? For many people, it’s a lifelong dream to find some way to earn money exclusively from their passion. If that’s you, I’ve got good news for you. You don’t have to become a famous rock star or even a professional musician in order to earn money playing guitar. In fact, I specifically decided to leave those options out of this list.
Instead, these ways of making money playing guitar are simple, and have much lower barriers to entry. Read on to learn to how to turn your guitar playing passion into sweet, sweet money.
1. Play Paid Gigs
Think you have to be a pro to play paid gigs? Think again! You can play weddings, bars, restaurants, and other events around your local area. Most of these venues will pay you, or at the very least allow you to put out a tip jar. Sure, like anything you’ll probably have to work your way up to the better paying gigs. But the key here is just to get started. If you’re nervous, start out busking, playing open mics or at small gatherings for friends and family. You can slowly scale up to your gig of choice.
2. Become a Studio Guitarist
Okay, okay, this is the closest one on this list to becoming a professional musician. Studio guitarists come to the assistance of bands when they’re recording an album, and help add guitar parts and solos to the record.
If you want to become a studio guitarist, you’ll have to get at least better than average, and probably pretty good. How good you are will likely directly relate to how much money you can make from doing this one.
How much can you make as a studio guitarist? A truly great studio guitarist can stand to make a good chunk of change: up to $86,000 USD according to ZipRecruiter.
3. Busking
You’ve seen buskers before – they’re those guys playing guitar on the sidewalk, downtown, or in the park. Believe it or not, you can make some pretty decent money busking.
So how much money can you make from busking? Money.com even found that buskers in San Francisco were earning hourly rates that would equal upwards of $40,000 USD a year!
This is a particularly good option if you’re in a big city or large metro area. It makes sense: the more foot traffic you get, the more you stand to earn. It’s a numbers game.
4. Guitar Lessons
Are you good enough that you have the chops to teach someone else? Guitar lessons may be a great guitar side hustle for you. This is a great way to make money playing guitar if you enjoy teaching, or helping others.
The truth is, you don’t have to be a master to teach people things either. In order to teach someone something helpful, you really only need to know 10% more about a subject than they do. If you do, you’ve got enough knowledge to be helpful.
How much money can you make teaching guitar? In the United States, guitar teachers commonly charge an hourly rate somewhere between $40-80 USD.
5. Sell Albums & Records
If you’re good enough that people will pay you to perform at gigs, busk, be a studio musician, or teach them guitar, then you’re probably good enough to make an album. You don’t need to go out hassling record companies. These days, it’s easier than ever to record at home.
Simply invest in some decent home recording equipment, and then record an album and make it available for purchase on popular platforms. You can even get creative and ask people to sponsor you on Patreon or something instead. Think outside the box!
6. Flip Guitars
If you’ve been playing guitar a long time, you probably have insider knowledge on the best guitars and what they should cost. This can give you an advantage if you ever want to try your hand at flipping guitars.
Flipping is simply when you buy something at a lower price, and sell it at a higher price (for more than you paid for it). Look for crazy deals on eBay or Facebook Marketplace, and resell the new model for more than you paid for it.
If you’re new to this, start slow. You don’t want to get caught holding the bag on an expensive guitar that you end up not being able to resell!
7. Become a Luthier
Guitarists know how much maintenance goes into maintaining a quality guitar. If a guitar gets damaged, it may even need professional repairs or restoration. This is where a luthier comes in. Luthiers help maintain and fix guitars.
How much can a luthier make? Anywhere between $30,000-84,000 a year according to Glassdoor.
8. Blog About Guitar Playing
Guess what! My way to make money from my guitar skills is this very blog you’re reading right now. I’m more of an introvert, so in-person lessons aren’t really for me. Instead, I make money playing guitar by blogging about helpful tips, advice, and best practices.
In this way, I also actually end up helping more people than I could if I were giving lessons. If you like writing, this may be an option to consider. Although, more work goes into blogging than most people think, and there are a lot of guitar websites out there, so competition is something to consider before starting a guitar blog.
9. Start A Guitar YouTube Channel
Starting a guitar YouTube channel is what I’d recommend over starting a blog. YouTube is a bit more friendly toward beginners, and you may find your videos rank faster than any blog post would. For a while, I was getting a lost more views on my YouTube videos than I was on my blog.
YouTube is great for guitarists because you can record yourself teaching lessons. In this way, it’s essentially like you’re giving a guitar lessons to 100, or even 1000 people at once! Once you get 1000 subscribers, YouTube will allow you to run ads on your channel, so you can monetize your guitar playing that way.
That said, I’ve found YouTube to be hit or miss. On my own YouTube channel, some videos get thousands of views, and others get next to none. Your mileage may vary.
10. Write a Book
Finally, you can always write a book. Again, you’ll want to have decent writing chops for this. The other thing to consider when writing a guitar book is picking a specific niche. You could write on a specific style of playing, a specific technique, etc. What you don’t want to do is go to broad.
Picking a specific niche will help you find a specific audience of readers who want to know about that topic. Again, you’ll want to consider competition here. Your book will likely perform better if it’s in a niche that isn’t oversaturated.
For example, I wrote my book about buying, choosing, and maintaining a guitar. Pretty specific. It appeals to players who want to know more about how to maintain their instrument through the years.
Most guitar books focus on technique or theory, so this is a niche I thought was underserved. Also, all the stuff I dicuss is stuff that took me a decade to learn on my own, since it is scattered randomly around the internet (or rarely discussed at all). So the book is a helpful, concise resource, which readers always enjoy.
In this book I talk about
- how to choose a guitar
- what to look for in tonewoods
- guitar body styles
- how to get a good price
- whether to buy used or new
- a curated guide to the 10 best acoustic guitars for beginners
- how to choose guitar strings, and make them last 10x longer
- how to maintain your instrument for a lifetime
- caring for the fretboard
- should you use fretboard oil? how often?
- adjusting the truss rod
- flying and traveling with your instrument safely
- how to store and display your guitar safely
- caring for the fretboard
- what to learn first on guitar (fingerpicking? flatpicking? etc)
- where to learn it
- the best ways and resources to teach yourself guitar for FREE
- 30 secret hacks to unleash unstoppable guitar motivation
- how to stay in love with the instrument for the rest of your life
- much more
If you’re interested in writing a guitar book or making money playing guitar, maybe pick up my Ultimate Buyer’s and Maintenance Guide. It’ll give you a good framework to work from.