Kim and Violin Stars

Hello everyone! For my first post I would like to introduce myself and Violin Stars to you. My name is Kim. I am 23 years old and I have been playing and teaching the violin for 6 years. Playing the violin is not just a hobby for me, it is my greatest passion! I absolutely love to play and I also really enjoy teaching others how to play.

Well, during the summer of 2008 I overpracticed for a concert and injured my right shoulder. I normally spend the whole summer practicing for at least 4 hours a day, but that year my shoulder hurt so badly that I was forced to take the whole summer off from playing! I was not very happy about that, and I wasn't sure what to do with myself. I was so used to practicing everyday!

So that was when the idea formed for Violin Stars. I thought to myself "wouldn't it be cool to start an online practice group for beginning violinists?" I live in a small town with several other experienced violin teachers. So even though I love to teach, it's not easy for me to compete with the other older teachers who have been teaching here for a long time. So I decided to find students online! I set up the Violin Stars website, created some lessons, and then started looking for people to teach. Craigslist was my main way of finding people. Within a month I had around 100 students!

In the beginning I offered all of the lessons for free. I had a blast doing it! My students would email me recordings of their playing, or post videos on youtube and then I would listen to their playing and offer suggestions. The program worked amazingly well! My online students were learning how to play with correct technique and best of all - they sounded great!

The program continued to grow and grow, until I eventually couldn't keep up with it anymore! I was teaching so many people for free that it was taking up all of my free time and it was also beginning to cut into my work time. So in an effort to keep the program going, I added donation buttons to the website and encouraged people to give even a few dollars each to help me with all of the work and expenses. A few people did give back, but most did not. And so even though I enjoyed doing it, I eventually had to discontinue the program so that I could spend more time working on my violin dvd course.

It was sad to let everyone go, but I just couldn't keep up anymore, and being a young person, I do have to focus on earning a living as well. As soon as I introduced the DVD course on eBay it took off! I have sold hundreds of them in less than a year, and I often have trouble keeping up! I sell the DVDs on the Violin Stars site as well, but right now the majority of my business comes from eBay. I still offer lots of free stuff on the Violin Stars site (and am currently working on adding much more!) and I'm also working on more DVDs!

I'm also hoping to start a beginning orchestra this fall called the 'Violin Stars String Orchestra'. That will be for local people, so if you live in western WA you could join us!

For more information about Violin Stars please visit us at www.violinstars.com