Teach Yoga Online & Make a Living: Complete Guide
March 6, 2021
Teach Yoga Online & Make a Living: Complete Guide
Has your yoga studio been closed due to COVID-19? Or are you thinking of starting up your own yoga business?
Then you have to stop depending on a traditional physical location and start teaching yoga online.
In this guide, you’ll learn exactly how to do that.
Let’s get started.
Why Teach Yoga Online?
Covid-19 has proved that having a physical yoga studio isn’t a sustainable solution anymore.
The best way to move forward is to go online, and there are many reasons why:
- It helps to expand your network
Moving online offers the perfect opportunity to grow your community while reaching out to millions of people around the world. Given the fact that more than half of the world’s population is using the internet on a daily basis, launching your own online yoga business, allows you to meet people at their ‘natural’ habitat.
- It offers unlimited teaching possibilities
As opposed to teaching yoga in person, teaching online offers no limitations on the number of students you can have, which makes this a great way to grow and scale your business. While in the real world a class that has 25 students is considered to be full, a live-streaming yoga session can easily accommodate 1000 or a lot more.
- It increases revenue potential
By teaching yoga online you will be able to make decent living, and earn much more than working offline.
What’s great about teaching yoga online, is that you have no rent to pay. This means that your profits are much higher than they would if you worked at a physical studio.
- It comes with greater flexibility
Apart from scalability, you also get to have greater flexibility in terms of working since you can do this on your own terms, your own hours and from the comfort of your home. Likewise, it becomes easier for your students too to access your online yoga school, as there is no commuting involved and they can be just a few clicks away from you.
Job prospects for yoga instructors are growing and it is expected that by 2028, more people will be interested in taking up yoga practice.
As an online yoga instructor, you can choose to price your lessons per hour, per class, or per membership. Creating a membership site will allow you to offer exclusive training content to loyal monthly or yearly subscribers offering different pricing options ranging from £29 to £500. There is also the possibility to offer exclusive packages that bundle up a set of videos, online courses or classes.
For a class, you may charge from £12 if you are a beginner and up to £25 if you are an experienced instructor. It’s entirely up to you to set your own pricing rates for 1:1 or group classes, but it’s important to investigate the market first, to check what your target audience is likely to pay and see what your competitors are doing.
Create a beautiful online school without any technical skills.
Coming up with your own online yoga business is easy once you figure out how to do it and craft a plan on how to get there.
To help you get started, here’s a step-by-step guide you can use:
Step #1: Gather Your Equipment
As an online yoga teacher, you will need a mat – or other essential yoga props needed for the type of yoga you practice e.g. aerial yoga.
Then of course you will need a computer/laptop with an internet connection, a video editor tool, and access to video conferencing software to conduct live classes with Zoom or Skype.
Apart from that, you will need a camera, a tripod, a microphone (preferably wireless) and some lighting equipment to record your videos. Before you invest in an HD camera, try your smartphone since these days they come with exceptionally high-quality cameras.
Step #2: Discover your teaching style
How are you going to instruct your online yoga classes? Using video is the best way to show people what you do, but have you thought about how you are going to conduct your sessions?
While there are many types of instructional videos, these are the three most popular ones when it comes to teaching yoga:
- Follow-along instruction: instruct from your mat like you would for a live studio class.
- Recorded class session: instruct through a recorded group studio session.
- Voice-over instruction: go through the workout flow as you provide instruction through a voice-over.
If you don’t know what works for you best, experiment with different styles until you find the one you are most comfortable with. Also, make sure to check your audience’s reactions and gather their feedback to see which they prefer the most.
Step #3: Build your business website
Online presence is everything when it comes to teaching yoga online. If you are serious about it, you will need to build your own website where you can share instructional videos, your business news, blog posts, or any other information that your prospective and existing students will find useful.
Step #4: Set your prices
How much will you charge for your yoga classes and how? It’s important to decide how much you want to earn as a yoga instructor early on. This should help you set up a monthly revenue goal and calculate how much you should charge individual classes.
Anywhere between £7 to £12 per hour is a respectable rate to help you get started.
However, the best way to go is through subscription or membership. With subscriptions, you give people the option to access your gated online content for an amount of money per month or year.
To make it work, consider creating different pricing tiers for beginners and advanced students. Alternatively, create package deals mixing your classes with other products you have on offer e.g. a yoga course, reiki or a pilates etc.
Step #5: Invest in marketing
Once you have everything set up, you are ready to start promoting your yoga business. While there are many clever marketing ideas that can get your business where most eyes can see it, building a sales funnel first and foremost is essential.
A sales funnel is the process that can make strangers your students, and it starts with getting their attention. Sharing content on social media, driving prospects to your website, building an email list, offering a free trial or a short video sample on what you do are all great ways to get people interested.
All in all, yoga teaching success is found in the details. As your online business grows, you will figure out what works best for you and your students and make the appropriate changes to meet their needs.
Meanwhile, there are some things you can do to ensure that you are giving your best:
Tip #1: Create a YouTube channel
Retaining a YouTube channel alongside your yoga business is an awesome way to build your reputation as a yoga instructor. It can also help attract more students in the long run.
This is the case for Adriene, who managed to get over 8 million subscribers on her YouTube channel – Yoga With Adriene. And all that by offering free yoga video workouts.
Just like Adriene, you too can come up with your own yoga workouts creating a set of video tutorials with exercises that people can try out. From there, you can easily direct them to your business website to check out your exclusive classes and course content.
Tip #2: Build your own yoga community
It goes without saying that as an online yoga teacher, you will need to build and maintain a working relationship with your students. Being part of a community helps people to grow while keeping them motivated towards achieving a common goal – to become more healthy.
To make it work, consider using Instagram and Facebook, as your main communication channels. Creating a Facebook group will help you connect with your student network better and in a more sincere way while going live on Instagram at a scheduled time can help people see more of the real ‘you’.
Also, consider offering them physical products that are essential for workouts to make them feel welcome to your community. Merchandise like t-shirts that have your brand’s name on it or a slogan that means something to everyone is a great way to create a sense of belonging.
Tip #3: Try out new techniques
An excellent way to differentiate yourself from the competition is to add some variety in your yoga practice. As you grow your business, experiment with different yoga postures and offer modifications to help your students out. Also, try out different types of yoga or schedule weekly live classes to help a niche group of people overcome health-related problems e.g. those suffering with back pain or yoga for babies.
Tip #4: Listen to your students
Keeping your students happy and engaged comes as a priority. To do this, you need to constantly work on getting to know them better and discovering what they need every step of the way. Holding a Q&A session or simply asking for their feedback is a constructive way to improve your teaching ways. It also gives students the opportunity to express their opinion or make their own questions.
Tip #5: Keep learning
To stay relevant as a yoga instructor, you need to continue learning. Make your best to attend yoga festivals, retreats, conferences and events that take place all over the world.
If you can’t travel, you can always look for and join a live yoga training webinar, summit or workshop. Yoga teacher training can also be found online by many instructors. This should help you learn all there is to know about new developments in yoga practice, and give you the opportunity to talk and catch up with other yoga teachers.
On top of these activities, you also have the option to offer your knowledge to others and train your students to become yoga practitioners themselves.
Teach yoga through subscriptions
With an all-in-one platform, you can create a membership site that offers exclusive access to your yoga lessons and premium content in return for a monthly fee. This then becomes residual income.
Many yoga instructors are currently using online platforms to operate their online yoga schools and are doing great!
Yoga classes are one of the most popular and growing online course topics right now.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q.1: How to teach yoga classes online?
Create your yoga video classes using the appropriate equipment e.g. camera, microphone, and video production tool. Then choose the online learning platform that works best for you and upload your content. Finally, create a website and start teaching.
Q.2: How to teach yoga online live?
You can start teaching yoga online through YouTube Live or any other video conferencing tool such as Skype or Zoom.
Q.3: How to teach yoga online using Zoom?
Start by creating an account on Zoom. Then schedule and host a live Zoom meeting and prepare to conduct a live yoga class.
Q.4: How do yoga instructors make money online?
As a yoga instructor you can make money off your YouTube videos through the ad revenue system. Alternatively you can create your own online yoga studio or business to offer online yoga classes and courses through paid student memberships.
Q.5: Is it easy to teach yoga online?
The easiest way to teach yoga online is by creating an online course and offering yoga classes online. Building your online yoga school doesn’t require any technical or coding skills and can be done through an online learning platform.
Q.6: Do customers feel comfortable with online yoga classes?
Obviously online yoga classes are very different from traditional one-to-one classes but they come with a lot of advantages. An important one is that it allows people to avoid commuting as they are allowed to attend classes from the comfort of their own homes.
Q.7: What are the difficulties of teaching yoga online?
Not having the right tools and equipment that can help you build your online yoga studio or offer yoga classes online are the main struggles. Once you do, it becomes super easy to teach yoga online.
Q.8: How can you charge clients when teaching yoga online?
The best way to bill clients when teaching yoga online is to come up with subscription plans that give them access to exclusive yoga classes and course content. This will allow them to pay their monthly or yearly fee online through an online payment gateway such as PayPal or Stripe.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND ADVICE CONTACT PHIL
0748-110-3456