Updated July 10, 2024

In this article, yoga teachers will learn five steps to starting their online yoga teaching careers. Make your yoga teaching accessible to all in this on-demand world we live.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Adapt to the increased demand for online yoga teaching.
• Ensure your yoga teacher insurance covers digital formats.
• Choose the right format and class size for online sessions.
• Establish a solid revenue stream with clear pricing.
• Use reliable platforms and payment processors.
• Set up a dedicated space with good equipment for filming.
• Engage students individually and use word-of-mouth marketing.
• Create a professional website and promote on social media.
• Ensure insurance covers streaming and real-time instruction.

Five Steps To Teaching Online Yoga

The new age of yoga has demanded that yoga teachers be more flexible than they have ever been in order to stay connected with their classes. For many, this has necessitated a leap into the digital frontier with online yoga classes. 

Today’s deep dive is dedicated to teaching effective strategies for teaching yoga online plus making sure your yoga teacher insurance plan covers the digital formats you are leaning towards providing.

Step 1: Choose the Right Way to Provide Classes Online

The very first step in choosing to go online with yoga classes is to think about how you’ll translate your current offerings into a digital format. For many yoga teachers, a solid class size runs about 10-20 individuals with larger groups accommodating 20-30. Getting any larger means less one-on-one attention. Now, this is largely dependent on the physical size of your yoga studio which teaching online completely negates. You could have a class of 100 individuals tuning in. 

The key is deciding how much you can reasonably handle and the format that works with your style. You can teach live streaming or pre-recorded, teach a class of 30, or stick with a highly-personalized one-on-one experience. 

Step 2: Set Up a Solid Revenue Stream

While offering classes for free may hold much in the air of altruism, it doesn’t go far for paying your bills or earning a living. So, unless you just happen to be independently wealthy, you’ll need to secure a solid revenue stream for your online yoga classes. The best news for online classes is these are scalable. Like we stated above, you are no longer constrained by the physical size of your yoga studio with how many students you can undertake.

Create a Framework for Charging Students

Some yoga professionals choose to accept a donation-based system for making money but this does not yield the kind of consistency that’s desirable to have a great handle on how much you’ll be making in this endeavor. Rather, establishing a clear cost for each class is your best bet for ensuring an adequate revenue stream to at least cover all the costs—including paying yourself and earning a living. 

There are a wide variety of formats for streaming classes and allowing access but you should do your research to find the most cost-effective and best utilization of your style and your classes. Hey Marvelous, formally Namastream, yoga reviews are really great because this platform makes it super easy to host your online yoga classes, set up subscriptions or memberships, and create an entire group teaching program all in one place. 

Other platforms like Zoom, Facebook Live, or Youtube Live can be quite useful and all have their own advantages and disadvantages. Explore your options and find which method is going to be the most effective for your style of yoga teaching. 

Use a Subscription-Based Model for Online Yoga Classes

A monthly subscription-based system is a great way to normalize your revenue over time with consistent results. For example, if you charge $100 a month for access to a certain number of live sessions you can multiply this by the number of subscribers to get a good idea of how much you’ll be bringing in each month. If you choose to charge $100 and have 50 students, that’s $5,000 per month just for this particular endeavor. 

Using Facebook Live or Youtube can be a little tricky with a subscription model as generally anyone with the link can access but there are ways around this with private groups or only inviting individuals after they have paid—these just take a little more legwork. Hey Marvelous, uncoincidentally, streamlines the process and handles the back end but you’ll need to pay for the service.

Charge Students for Each Individual Session

Another path you can take, or in addition to the above, is to charge for each individual class. This can prove to be more lucrative especially when you are teaching a specialized skill set. You can also choose to individualize a string of sessions like an online yoga retreat. In this format, students would pay a fee for a set period of access to a specific event or class. These niche formats allow experienced yoga professionals to charge a higher rate based on the advanced material, the popularity of the teacher, or a combination thereof. 

Make Sure You Get Paid 

So arguably one of the most important aspects to online yoga teaching is making sure you have an easy way to get paid. There are literally hundreds of different payment services out there and many are super easy to integrate with your website (perhaps a free website that comes with yoga teacher insurance, ahem?). Paypal is one the easiest platforms to integrate on the web and you can send individual invoices to each student. Stripe, Apple Pay, and even Venmo are all also easy to use. 

Do note that most every payment processor is going to charge a fee when collecting payments for you. Make sure to process any expense into your calculations of what you’ll be making and spending to ensure you have a viable/profitable operation.

Step 3: Filming and Streaming a Live Yoga Class

Okay, now that the important part of getting paid and the format for classes has been decided, it’s time to actually film your classes and become your own online yoga class producer. You don’t need to go out and spend a bunch of money on a lot of camera gear to pull off a really good production, but you should put in a little work to make sure the experience comes across as professional. 

A few tips as you get started filming include:

• Set up the shot: make sure you have a dedicated space that’s neat and clean. Declutter as much as possible to convey a serene and calming experience for your students. A natural background is great such as a large window, just make sure you time it right and don’t have the sun right behind you.
• Get a stand and lighting: you can use your i-Phone or android phone if it has a nice enough camera to shoot the yoga sessions but you should invest in a quality stand and some additional lighting to really boost the picture quality.
• Get a good microphone: the mic on your phone is not going to be enough to pick up everything you need to convey to your students. You can get a high quality wireless microphone from retailers like Amazon pretty inexpensively. Also found on Amazon is the Rode Wireless Go. This option is a little pricey but has great reviews if you are ready to invest. Since your students are relying on your voice arguably more than watching your sequence, make sure to invest in a good quality microphone to be heard clearly. 

You don’t have to stress about creating the perfect video but you should put in a little time and practice ahead of time to see if this is something you yourself would consider paying for. With a little work, a low-budget production can still seem like an incredibly professional affair.

Step 4: Engage Your Students

Hands-down your students are going to be some of your best evangelists when they have had a great experience with you. Word-of-mouth marketing is still one of the top ways to get your services launched and off the ground so rely on your present students to help build an online following. 

Engaging your students is going to take some work. As you do a live or pre-recorded session, make sure to take time to connect with students individually, either during the class or after. It can be as simple as commenting on the nice form of one student or sending a quick video message after the session thanking all the participants. Your students are engaging with your style of yoga teaching for a reason, make sure that you’re giving them the attention they deserve.

Step 5: Promoting Your Yoga Classes Online

With an engaged class and everything set up to accept payments and post videos online, now the final step is to start promoting your business. One of the easiest ways to do this is with a website. Remember that with beYogi, our membership includes a free professional website, making this an almost effortless endeavor. Create a nice page with all the pertinent information for your classes and then share this across social media to really drive awareness, which in turn boosts class size.

Find the Right Yoga Teacher Insurance to Cover Online Classes

Finally, and probably most importantly, make sure your yoga teacher insurance covers streaming and real-time instruction. With beYogi, we know that yoga insurance built for the world we live in today has to be just as flexible as yoga teachers so offer complete coverage for our members offering digital yoga classes. This is critically important as not every policy covers online yoga classes—leaving you exposed to liability. 

Rather than face this uncomfortable thought, you can have complete peace of mind before your next online session and sign up for yoga insurance through beYogi in just a few minutes.