Many of you know that you can put announcements on your studio website. (After logging in, click Home -> My Studio Website -> Studio News / Announcements).

Up until now, announcements have always been sorted chronologically. But we have had so many requests from teachers wanting to be able to change the order of the announcements manually, that we have now made that possible!

When you add or edit an announcement, there is now a “Sort Order” option. Just enter a number. Higher numbers will cause the announcement to display higher in the list than other announcements, regardless of the date. If no sort order is specified, then they will continue being sorted chronologically.

We hope you all enjoy this new little feature!

One of the most important benefits of Music Teachers Helper (MTH) is that students can look up information at their convenience: they can look up online when their next lesson is, what they did in their last lesson, what their payment situation is–and if you wish, they can look up alternative lesson times in case they need to schedule a makeup.

At this time of year, teachers are scheduling lessons for the fall, and MTH can make that much easier. Who hasn’t had to play phone tag or use multiple emails to schedule a lesson?

I’ve tried a few different approaches with MTH. One was to create events on the calendar that were global, open to all, showing when there were available lesson times. This had the benefit of being easily accessible to students, but the drawback was that most students didn’t need this information very often, and it cluttered up their own calendar, making it harder to view their own lesson information.

What I do now (though we would all appreciate hearing from you about your own experiments–just add a comment at the end of this post) involves a fictitious student named “Just Visiting.”  It works well both for new students trying to schedule a first lesson, and for existing students needing to reschedule. (more…)

The August 2007 Referral Contest is half over! Remember that whoever refers the most teachers during the month of August will get a one year free subscription to Music Teacher’s Helper! (Even if the teachers you refer only sign up for a free plan or a free trial!).

Who’s Winning?

The teacher with the most referrals so far has had 3 (three) friends sign up, so if you can beat that you’re well on your way to being the winner!

Also, remember that even if you don’t win the one year free contest, you’ll still get one month free for every teacher you refer who becomes a paying subscriber by the end of September.

Referral Ideas

In addition to email, here are some other ways you (more…)

There are several teachers who, when they sign up for Music Teacher’s Helper, already have their own studio website, or at least own the domain name for their website. And because Music Teacher’s Helper gives them their own studio website, teachers are often faced with a choice of whether to use one or the other, or both. Take a look at our FAQ for some ways to help make the decision on which website to use:

www.musicteachershelper.com/faq#already-have-website

If you decide to get rid of your old website, but you’d like to keep your domain name (ie. www.yourname.com), you can (more…)

Well, there’s certainly a lively discussion going on in the comments for Finding Students For You, about online services matching music students with teachers. At first I was just going to let it be, but then I realized that it may be informative for many of us to learn first-hand from some of you out there who have had experiences with student leads from the online student-teacher matching services.

The lively discussion that’s going on is mainly about whether some services are using individual teachers’ addresses in advertising their general service, and whether that’s legitimate. I’d like to address that a little, and also tell you of a strange email I received today as a result of an online teacher listing.

But first, tell us–has any of you gained students from an online service? How did it work for you? Clearly, matching up a student and a teacher is good for both. Increasingly, people are finding each other through online services, so matching music students and teachers probably has good potential. If you have used online services of this kind, have you found it worth any costs or hassles you had to deal with? Or did you sign up for services and receive no students? Let us know with a comment below. Perhaps you’ve heard about student experiences in using the services as well.

The use or abuse of teacher information for the benefit of an online matching service is a concern, but the bigger issue is whether these services are providing real help to both teachers and students. Let us hear from you, to balance our picture.

In the mean time, let me tell you about the strange email I received today! (more…)