5 Ways To Make Money From Home As A Musician

For some artists, touring for weeks and being away from family is easy. Not so for me.

That’s why I try to make money from music and from writing, all without leaving my house (or town).

If you’d like to explore this too, here are five tips for how to make money from home as a musician.

Updated February 7, 2020

Guitar Lessons

I have a friend who charges $20 for a half-hour guitar lesson. In other words, $40/hour. That’s insanely good.

But of course, he’s so good at teaching guitar that $40/hour is fair. He can listen to a song once and jot down the exact chords of the song.

And you don’t have to have an education background.

If you’re patient, you can play guitar well, and you’re able to break down all the parts of playing (strumming patterns, finger placement, etc), you can teach guitar.

Offer lessons at your house, charge a fair price, and you’ll be on your way. Here are some tips for getting started with guitar lessons.

Play Local Shows

This way to make money from home works if you consider “home” to be your hometown.

Unless you live in the middle of nowhere, your city or town probably has places to play shows. Even if you do live in the middle of nowhere, you can do house concerts.

Depending on your style of music, look for local venues, bars, pubs, coffee shops, farmer’s markets — all places that usually want music.

Whether or not the venue pays (which they should), you can still make a nice supplemental income playing out.

If I play a show every weekend in my local town, I could easily pull in a couple hundred bucks in compensation, door price, merch sales, and tips.

Check out Ari Herstand’s super helpful guide for accepting or rejecting gigs.

Make Music For TV/Film

This is the niche within the music industry that I’m pursuing. And I’ve landed several placements in podcasts, nonprofit films, wedding videos, and promotional content.

There’s money to be had in this market for the right musicians.

As long as we have video, those videos will need music.

Check out my comprehensive guide to getting started in sync licensing.

Jingle Writing

I know, it doesn’t sound glamorous at all. But remember that little tune that goes, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there”?

Yeah, Barry Manilow wrote that.

Now, he only got paid a flat fee of $500 for it, but surely it advanced his career.

I’ve written jingles for small businesses — it’s not something I flaunt around, but it’s actually pretty fun. Getting paid to make any kind of music is a win-win for me.

And jingle writers make an average of $10,000 per jingle (obviously depending on how big the client is).

If you want to look for jingle-writing jobs, I suggest looking on Upwork…

Upwork

Upwork is a free website that connects freelancers with clients. Choose your skill sets and you’ll be given a feed of job opps from clients looking for freelancers in your industry.

I currently get about 97% of my work from this site. It’s been amazing for me. A lot of the jobs I see are people looking for jingle writers, songwriters, people who can mix audio, blog writers, and so many others.

So, yes, you can make money from home as a musician. Why not give it a shot?