The Accidental Guitar Guru Raking in $250K a Month

Justin Sandercoe is an 🇦🇺 Australian guitarist who accidentally built one of the most popular online guitar learning platforms in the world: JustinGuitar.com

Justin has played with famous musicians like Katie Melua over the years. But back in 2003 he was teaching private guitar lessons 🎸 out of his London home to make extra money.

To support his students, he created JustinGuitar and started posting free video lessons (first version of the site).

In 2006, he moved his lessons over to YouTube – here’s an early, blurry video – which helped him reach a wider audience…

His channel grew steadily, and he now has 1.6 million subscribers 📈

I first came across Justin’s story via a tweet from John Bardos…

• ​​What’s the best way to stand out as a creator?

John estimated that Justin is earning more than $100k per month from various online income streams 🤑

In addition to the free YouTube lessons (monetized with the usual YT ads), Justin sells books, DVDs, mobile apps, courses and merch.

And get this…

If you sign up for a free account on SensorTower, they estimate that the Justin Guitar Lessons & Songs app alone did $200,000 in revenue last month 🤯

Combine that with all his other revenue streams, and Justin could well be earning more than $250,000 per month online.

Not bad for someone whose peak level of success in the traditional music industry was, as he puts it, “touring as a sideman… for a long time.”

But that’s the beauty of the internet: it opens up all kinds of opportunities for people to earn a living.

As always though, it took Justin years and years of work to get to where he is now. He has posted more than 1100 videos on his channel, and his early website and videos show you how small and rugged he started.

But my #1 takeaway here: I doubt anyone would consider Justin to be the best guitarist in the world, but many people would consider him to be the best guitar teacher in the world.

Likewise, many of the best sports coaches were never great players of that sport themselves.

What’s something you’re quite good at or know a lot about? 🤔

Could you teach that online?

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