Creating an online yoga business can be exciting, especially if you’ve already built a strong in-person community. But, even if you’re starting from scratch, there are many benefits to moving your business online. In this article, we’ll review the starter pack for how to start an online yoga business.
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Benefits of Teaching Yoga Online
One of the major appeals of yoga is the connection we find with ourselves on the mat and with each other in our yoga communities. Online yoga instruction allows you to make that community even bigger, reaching a global audience.
Additionally, your students aren’t beholden to a particular class schedule or location and can access their favorite yoga instructors (ideally, you and yours) right from home. Beyond building meaningful connections, you can boost sales and generate passive income through online yoga classes.
Whether that’s a live session students can join or a pre-recorded class, you’ll be able to work from wherever you are while still hitting or even exceeding your numbers.
Technology You Need to Grow Your Online Yoga Business
When you’re teaching yoga online, you don’t have to invest in top-tier cameras, microphones, or lighting. You can go far with some quality basics. Thankfully, most smartphones have good-quality recording options, so you can start there. You’ll also want a tripod to make hands-free recording easier.
As far as lighting goes, you can use tried and true hacks like positioning your mat in front of a well-lit window during the day for that natural light glow. If you’re filming at night, you may want to invest in a ring light attachment so that your video quality is clear despite the dark.
When you’re ready to level up your equipment, you can spring for a wireless microphone, video editing software, royalty-free music, and more professional lighting.
Tips to Start Teaching Yoga Online
To start teaching yoga online, there are six important tips to consider, from choosing your niche to investing in marketing. Let’s dive into how these strategies work to grow your online business and make your online yoga studio more appealing to potential students.
Choose a Yoga Niche
When you’re starting an online yoga business, you want to ensure that what you’re offering is unique to set you apart from competitors. Having a niche, or something that you excel at within the yoga world, will help you stand out.
To determine your area of expertise, identify your ideal student. Is that someone who’s very busy and on the go? Pregnant people? Beginners? Once you’ve established who you’re catering to, you can offer online yoga classes and design your branding with them in mind.
By tailoring your services to your specific audience, your online yoga studio is more likely to reach the people you want as students who can eventually become ambassadors for your brand.
Build a Yoga Brand
Building a yoga brand is important in order to differentiate yourself from other yoga studios, making your services distinct and valuable. Having a memorable brand will help you attract customers both for your aesthetics (who doesn’t love an eye-catching logo?) and because your brand exemplifies what you value.
Students who share the core values of your brand will return again and again, and they’ll spread the word about your online yoga business for you. By developing a dynamic, clear branding strategy, you’ll become more recognizable and boost sales.
Create a Yoga Studio Website
Your website is integral to your branding, especially if you’re trying to build an online yoga business. This website essentially serves as your storefront, where students will come to learn more about your online yoga classes, your prices, and any other merchandise you sell.
Ensuring your website looks professional will help you gain the trust of prospective students and establish you as an authority in the yoga industry. That means having a consistent color scheme, logo, and typography.
Create a Business Model and Pricing
How do you decide what value your online yoga classes have? This is a question many struggle with when starting an online yoga business.
Thankfully, there are some simple templates that can help you streamline your options for generating revenue. You can charge your students for your online materials in two ways: Transactional Video On Demand (TVOD) or Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD).
TVOD is most useful when you have a singular course or webinar you’d like to make available to students for a fee. You can either give students unlimited access to the video or allow them to rent it for a specific period. The benefit of this online model is that you can often charge a higher price. The drawback is that it’s a one-time payment and requires constant marketing.
SVOD allows you to create community-driven membership where your students pay either a monthly or annual fee to get total access to your classes. On the plus side, you get recurring income, allowing you to retain existing members. The only drawback is that you’ll have to charge lower fees, which means it could take longer to generate your desired revenue.
SVOD is likely the more beneficial model long-term, as it can increase your income exponentially with minimal effort as you grow your customer base.
Invest in Marketing
Having amazing classes, yoga instructors, and a stellar website creates a great foundation to grow your online yoga studio, but investing in marketing can take you to the next level. Understanding how SEO, PPC, and social media marketing impact your online business will give you an edge over competitors in the already saturated online yoga industry.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You build trust and credibility with your students when your website is optimized. If Google recognizes your content as an authority in the industry, it will rank your page higher. Higher page rankings directly contribute to more traffic to your site. Using SEO, you ensure that your content gets in front of the right people so they’ll convert into clients.
PPC
Pay-per-click is an advertising strategy where you pay for an ad every time a potential customer clicks on it. This means that while SEO efforts are nearly free, you need to pay a fee if you run a Google ad about your online yoga studio. While that may seem counterintuitive, that small fee could result in immediate conversions or even bigger sales. In combination with SEO, ad campaigns can help you gain visibility to create and convert leads.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok can help you generate buzz and refer potential students to your website. You can showcase clips of your yoga classes so students know what to expect or even host free live events to boost engagement. Social media also allows you to interact with your audience on a more personal level, elevating your brand.
Start Filming Videos
Your videos are the product you’re selling, so you want to ensure quality content is available for your audience before you begin advertising your yoga practice. Once you’ve filmed a class or an introductory video, you can use clips from those videos to promote your business across different online platforms.
How to Move Your Yoga Studio Online
If you already have a brick-and-mortar studio, moving your yoga business online is another revenue stream that can help you grow. Your studio can serve as your dedicated recording space, where you film live classes or give your audience a tour of the space to build interest.
Offering online classes can also help you retain current students. If they can’t make an in-person class, but don’t want to miss out on their favorite yoga teachers, your online courses can meet that need and maintain student satisfaction without much additional labor.
You can also incentivize current students to become brand ambassadors or online students by providing insider discounts. If they promote your online classes or refer a friend, they can get a specific member deal so that they’ll help you build your business and reap the benefits at the same time.
When you’re ready to make the leap into the online yoga world, just follow these steps:
- Choose what type of yoga you’ll offer.
- Decide on pricing.
- Get the right technology to film videos.
- Create your first online class.
- Use marketing tools like SEO, PPC, and social media to promote your business.
Get Help From Professional Yoga Business Coaches at the Yogapreneur Collective
Knowing how to start an online yoga business can be overwhelming when you’re going it alone, but it doesn’t have to be that way. With the Yogapreneur Collective, you’ll have access to a community of successful yoga business coaches who will be there to support you every step of the way.
When you’re ready to step into your new era of success, join the Yoapreneur Collective.
