Did you know that the practice of yoga began around 3000 BCE in South Asia? It was first introduced in the U.S. in 1863. Since the 1930s, yoga has really become part of the mainstream culture in the States.
Today, yoga instructors are sought out for their ability to help others stabilize and control their physical and mental state using traditional techniques. But since COVID-19, yoga professionals have struggled to keep their yoga studios busy daily. This is because many people have become accustomed to working out at home and practicing hobbies like yoga in their own time.
This is why yoga practitioners have started to teach yoga online. That’s right. You can now teach yoga online from anywhere in the world. All you have to do is sign up for an online yoga teaching platform and start your classes.
There are also a few simple but impressive strategies you can use when starting to teach yoga online. But we’ll get to that in a bit. For now, let’s first look at why you should think about starting to teach yoga online.
Why Should You Consider Teaching Yoga Online?
Offering online yoga classes is a good idea for many reasons. And we’ll get to that in a bit. But the main reason you should teach yoga online is the flexibility it gives you and your students.
Remember when we had stringent times and schedules for in-person fitness or cooking classes? Those days were difficult because students had to work around the set class time and build in other factors like time for commuting to the studio. But today, the internet has given us so much flexibility. And that’s a really good thing for instructors looking to make money by teaching online!
Other than flexibility, here are a few more reasons you should teach yoga online.
You get to:
- Host live and on-demand classes: Using an online teaching platform, you can schedule and host live classes with students. In addition, most online teaching software also allows you to host a virtual video library which yoga students can access at any time for a fee. These live and self-paced classes help you manage your time better and make money from more than one class at a time.
- Have multiple revenue streams: Speaking of making money effectively, online yoga classes can also help you have several revenue streams. How? Well, you can offer monthly memberships to students, which gives you recurring revenue. You can also sell yoga courses online for a once-off fee. Other items that can be sold once-off include physical merchandise (with some online teaching platforms) and digital downloads like guides and eBooks about yoga.
- Get recurring revenue: We spoke a bit about memberships, and this is really where your strength will lie. By having subscribers, you can be sure they will be back each week or month for more yoga classes. Recurring memberships are also a great advantage because it allows you to build long-term relationships with your students.
- Have a larger geographic footprint: By teaching yoga online, you are able to become available to thousands of people, as opposed to being restricted to only your neighborhood. You can target anyone around the world and receive global payments via your yoga teaching software. It’s so simple to do and so easy to get paid.
- Build a community: The last benefit, probably one of the most significant, is that you can build a community with your students online. That’s right. If you choose to teach yoga online, you can quickly start chatting with an individual student or multiple customers and keep the conversation going. This is a key part of building relationships and retaining customers.
6 Strategies to Teach Yoga Online the Right Way
Now that we’ve seen exactly why you should consider teaching yoga online let’s dive into those strategies that can help you get your online yoga studio up and running optimally.
1. Choose your yoga niche
The first strategy you should look at is choosing the right yoga niche for you. This may sound unnecessary, but there are a few reasons why you should choose a niche:
- Your prospective customers get to understand exactly what yoga service you offer.
- Your target market becomes narrower and more specific.
- Your business has direction from day one.
So, how do you make your yoga service more specific and different from others out there?
You can start by asking yourself some key questions:
- Do I have a unique yoga offering right now?
- Can I make my offering more niche?
- Are there any specific target audiences I want to focus on? (e.g., kids, pregnant women, etc.)
- Do I want to focus on a particular style of yoga?
- Do I want to offer beginner, intermediate, and expert courses?
As you can see, these questions start to fine-tune your yoga practice and help you gain direction before you launch your online yoga business. The next step is to focus on your digital tools.
2. Sign up for an online yoga teaching tool
Once you have your yoga niche, the next step is to understand how you will teach yoga online. The easiest way? Invest in an online yoga teaching platform.
What is an online teaching platform?
It is software designed for instructors, teachers, creators, and entrepreneurs to easily empower them to teach their passion online.
These online teaching platforms are designed to help you build courses, host live classes, create a website, manage memberships and payments, converse with customers, and even sell merchandise. And that’s not all – these features all work within one platform, so your entire business operation can be managed from just one tab.
It almost sounds too good to be true. But it isn’t because online teaching platforms are there to take away the time-consuming tasks from your day. When you can automate and integrate – why not, right?
Here are eight things you should use your online teaching platform for:
- Build a website
- Build and sell online yoga courses
- Host and schedule live yoga classes
- Sell physical and digital merchandise
- Chat with customers
- Market to customers
- Get reports and analytics
- Get auto-payments generated
We recommend investing in an online yoga teaching platform as well as a few others that can help you along the way:
- Google Workspace
- Grammarly
- Freshbooks
- DocuSign
For more detail on these and more online teaching tools, check out this blog post.
3. Record your yoga session videos
When you’ve decided on your yoga practice niche and digital tools, it’s time to start thinking about content. As an online business owner, you will need multiple pieces of content for each course that you create. Content should be divided into the following categories:
- Live yoga class content: Start to plan what yoga topics you will cover over the course of your live classes.
- On-demand yoga course content: Create content for each yoga course. This can be a series of videos mixed with some posts, blogs, guides, or whitepapers.
- Digital downloads content: Plan and write a few nutritional guides, yoga resources, and more. These can be sold as separate products or incorporated into your online yoga courses.
- Website & blog content: Once you have your yoga course content up and running, you must focus on your business’s marketing aspect. Marketing content includes your web pages and blog posts. This must be updated and added consistently to help achieve your search engine optimization goals.
- Email marketing content: Email is a very effective way to communicate with your clients and prospects. Try to write emails with fresh content and interesting topics, and include tips and discount codes. Emails should be sent at least once a month, but every two weeks is better.
- Social media content: The last type is content for your social media profiles. You must have content unique to each platform that resonates with the right people at the right time and place.
Try creating a marketing calendar with all your content creation components in one space. This way, it’s easy to stick to a schedule and create timeous pieces consistently.
4. Pick your monetization model and pricing
When your content calendar is set, you’ll know what type of yoga courses and classes you’ll offer customers. This is the first step to knowing how your services and products will be priced.
The most common monetization models used are:
SVOD – subscription-based video on demand
This is where a customer pays you a recurring (most of the time, monthly) fee to gain access to your content. This is the model that some streaming giants such as Netflix and Hulu use.
TVOD – transactional video on demand
This is where a customer will pay you a once-off fee for one yoga course or one yoga class. This is used when you have merchandise, apparel, or digital downloads to sell.
AVOD – advert-based video on demand
Here, you don’t take payment for your yoga video. Instead, you will place ads before, during, or after your yoga practice video. This works in the same way videos on a YouTube channel does.
The SVOD model is always recommended because it means that you will have recurring revenue from one customer. It guarantees revenue each month and allows you to build relationships with those customers in the long run.
Each membership can be priced using one price. Alternatively, you can use tiered pricing plans (think of a silver, gold, and platinum pricing model). This is a nice way of giving prospective customers the choice of purchasing a high or low-end yoga practice solution from you.
5. Market your online yoga studio
Alright, now that you have your yoga courses built, your website ready to go, and your pricing models set – it’s time to go to market!
A large chunk of your time will go toward marketing your online yoga studio to others. You should focus on the following channels to ensure that your marketing efforts are reaching your target audience at the right place and at the right time:
- Market on social media channels like Instagram
- Become a member of online yoga forums and spread the word about your practice
- Promote your blog and post on it often
- Use Google AdWords and social media advertising to boost your brand awareness
- Use email marketing to promote your yoga products and services
Once you have a few customers, you can create referral programs to generate more interest and sales. It’s also a good idea to generate discount codes and coupons for clients via email. It may prompt them to sign up for more than what they were expecting.
6. Build your yoga community
There will come a time when you teach yoga online daily, and your customers will feel comfortable and content with your services. When that time comes, you will be in a position to start focusing on your community of customers.
Each customer will already be interested in what you do. So, the strategy is simple: Embrace that!
Start to build a community that can speak to each other and, more importantly, relate to each other. You must be able to keep the conversation going and let your students know that talking about their wellness goals and reaching out for help is a good thing. This way, they start to see you as the go-to person for advice. But they also see value in their fellow students. Once you have this relationship with your customers, they will unlikely jump to another yoga practitioner.
Teach Yoga Online and Make Money From it in 2023
And those are the six strategies we have to help you teach yoga online simply yet effectively. It’s vital to remember that no one yoga instructor’s experience will be exactly the same as another.
But these strategies are a good starting point for anyone looking to teach yoga online. All you have to do is trust your digital tools and make the beautiful content you are passionate about.
And if you need help learning more about those digital tools, why not reach out to us at Mastera? We have a modern and adaptive video experience platform that is designed to help you teach yoga online with little to no complexity. Our online teaching platform takes care of operational tasks so that you can focus on what you do best – teach yoga online!
We believe that your business should be set up with scalability in mind, and that’s why our platform has such flexible pricing plans, templates, and payment processing. We’re all about letting our clients be simple and take ownership of their online yoga studio. If that sounds good to you, schedule a demo with us today.
Co-Founder, Gleantap & Mastera