If you’re a yoga studio owner or teach yoga in person, you might be thinking of creating an online business to grow and diversify your income streams and offer different solutions for your clients.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to make money teaching yoga online, and in this article, we’ll cover the five best options to make money as a yoga teacher in 2024.
We’ll cover the pros and cons of each method and share some examples to help you better understand what your options are.
Toward the end, we’ll also share some essential steps for getting started.
1. Teach Live Classes
The first option that we’ll look at is teaching online live yoga classes.
This method is the most similar to teaching yoga in a studio since you’ll either have individual clients or you’ll run group classes.
To set this up, you’ll require two pieces of software:
- A scheduling software to accept payments and manage bookings
- A video conferencing platform to deliver your online classes
For scheduling, we recommend Acuity Scheduling, and for class delivery, we recommend Zoom.
This monetization model is incredibly simple to implement. In fact, you won’t have to pre-record videos or invest heavily to get it going; instead, you can just move your existing yoga practice online.
Back2Health Yoga is a brilliant example of a business that has done just that.
This hybrid online yoga studio offers virtual classes in addition to its in-person sessions. One of the company’s biggest selling points is that students can choose between learning from home or in class.
Back2Health Yoga uses Acuity Scheduling for bookings and payments and Zoom to deliver live sessions.
Although live teaching is a brilliant and cost-effective solution when getting started, it isn’t very scalable. So, if you’re a yoga teacher looking to grow your business, you’ll find an excellent method you can implement below.
2. Sell Video Courses
Another popular method successful yoga teachers can use to make money is selling video courses.
Instead of teaching live sessions, practitioners pre-record content they’ll sell as individual classes, bundles, or courses.
This solution is incredibly scalable. In fact, once you’ve created the online course, you can sell it to an unlimited number of people for no additional cost.
Here are some more benefits of this strategy:
- You can sell many hours of content at an affordable price, making it more appealing and accessible.
- You can free up your time as you don’t have to be present to teach live sessions.
- Your students can learn at their own pace, as they don’t have to schedule classes or make sure they’re available at specific times.
Now that you know the benefits of this method, you’ll need an online course platform, and we recommend using Kajabi.
Kajabi is an all-in-one platform that allows you to host and sell your online courses, build a website, run a blog, and market your courses. Read our Kajabi review guide for more information.
If you’re looking for an inspiring example of a yoga course, you should check out Jala Yoga. It has built its entire website and hosted its five courses on Kajabi.
3. Launch an OTT Platform
If you’re a yoga teacher looking to sell video content but want more features than those offered by online course platforms, look no further, as we’re going to cover the exact method for setting up your own OTT platform.
An OTT platform is an over-the-top media service that gives your customers direct access to your content. Plus, it enables you to sell videos individually or provide your subscribers with complete access to a video library.
While there are several OTT platforms that you can choose from, we recommend using Uscreen.
Uscreen allows you to create a video membership site that can also be published as a native app for mobiles, tablets, and Smart TVs—which makes it perfect for at-home yoga tutorials.
Read our Uscreen review for more information on the platform.
An excellent example of a yoga streaming platform is Wanderlust.
As part of their subscription, students can access over 2,500 yoga classes on-demand through a native app.
4. Build a Yoga Community
If you’re a yoga teacher looking for more member interaction and engagement, then maybe the first three options aren’t for you.
Instead, building a yoga community could be better since it can help you grow your business by establishing an audience of passionate followers that trust your brand.
To grow your community, you can engage in conversations around yoga practices and shared experiences and support your members through training.
Once you establish it, you can monetize it in several ways:
- Charging a subscription fee: You can charge each member a monthly or annual subscription fee to be a part of your community.
- Selling courses: After members join your community—be it free or paid—you can sell them courses.
- Creating challenges: You could charge a fee for daily coaching sessions or targeted training for a set period.
- Offering retreats: You’ll be able to advertise to your community an in-person retreat that you can host.
Now that you understand how creating a community can make you money, let’s find out the best platform to host it, and we recommend Mighty Networks in this case.
The platform makes building and running a community on your own website easily. And you get powerful engagement tools, such as rich media content, livestreaming, online courses, group chats, mobile apps, etc.
For more information on the platform, read our Mighty Networks review.
One of the most popular yoga communities, Kula by Yoga, was built using Mighty Networks and is completely free to join. It even has branded apps for its community.
5. Start a YouTube Channel
The final way yoga teachers can make money online is by starting a YouTube channel.
The platform has over 1 million full-time creators and is undoubtedly one of the best ways to build an audience and make money from it.
The cost of getting started is minimal. In fact, most smartphone cameras are good enough to shoot with, and usually, only basic video editing is needed.
You can offer your content entirely for free while monetizing your audience with other methods. Some of them are included in the list below.
- YouTube ads: This is the most popular monetization method. All you have to do is enable ads when you become eligible, and you’ll be paid per view.
- Affiliate marketing: Another popular way to earn money is by promoting products or services; once your subscribers purchase them, you’ll receive a commission.
- Selling merchandise: You can leverage your channel by selling products to your subscribers—the most popular examples are t-shirts and hoodies.
- Offer courses and memberships: You can use your videos to promote your courses and memberships.
One example of an incredibly successful YouTube channel is Fightmaster Yoga, which has over 675k subscribers.
The company’s yoga teachers run daily live class streams that are free to watch, and to monetize their audience, they’ve enabled YouTube ads.
Essential Steps to Make Money as an Online Yoga Teacher
Now that you’ve read about these five methods for making money teaching yoga online, here are some essential steps to get started.
Find Your Yoga Niche
The first step is to find your yoga niche. Think about what kind of yoga you want to teach and to whom you want to teach it. There are many different types of yoga, such as Ashtanga, Bikram, Hatha, Kundalini, Power, Vinyasa flow, Yin, and more. You can also specialize in teaching kids, beginners, pregnant women, seniors, and even doga (yoga with dogs)!
Find Your Platform
There are many different options, so it’s important to do your research to find the one that best suits your needs. Then, once you’ve found a good platform, make sure to set up everything professionally and easily for your students.
For more information, check out our guide on the best online yoga teaching platforms.
Build an Online Presence
The next step is to build an online presence. Start by creating a website or blog to share information about your yoga classes, schedules, and rates. You can also use social media to promote your business and connect with potential students.
Grow Your Mailing List
Irrespective of whether you promote your business through a blog or social media, it’s important to build an email list.
This is the best way to stay in touch with your students and promote your business while also being your own asset. So even if something happens to your social media account tomorrow, you’ll have a list of people you can contact.
Final Thoughts
This guide covered the five best ways to make money as an online yoga teacher and shared some essential steps to get started.
Below, we’ve quickly summarized the different options you have:
- Teaching yoga online is the simplest method to start, and it’s perfect if you’re just beginning or looking to expand your existing in-person yoga business.
- Selling courses online is far more scalable. This could be a good option if you’re looking to generate an income that isn’t dependent on trading your time for money.
- Launching an OTT platform is the perfect solution for businesses looking to build a yoga on-demand business, complete with subscriptions and native apps.
- Building a yoga Community is great if you want to interact and engage with your members. You can monetize the community by charging for access or selling other products.
- Starting a YouTube channel is a fantastic method for growing your audience quickly; you’ll have a passionate audience that trusts you, and you’ll be able to monetize later on.
We hope that we’ve helped you choose the right model for making money teaching yoga online.
If you have any questions, please drop them below!