In this post, I share how to actually build an online business as a yoga teacher or wellness entrepreneur that generates consistent 5k months. If you’re struggling right now because you feel you’re doing “all the things” but nothing seems to work and you’re feeling a bit lost on what you should focus on to earn a consistent income, you’re in the right place.
I’m normally not a big fan of promoting a certain income number. I’m not the person to shout out “how to make 6-figures” or “how to become a millionaire”. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that – I’m all about you making 6-figures in your business or even becoming a millionaire.
I believe in purpose, in having a mission, and when it comes to income, I believe in making enough to support your lifestyle. For example, my goal isn’t becoming a millionaire, it’s things like buying my dream house, supporting my nephews financially, or starting my own charity that motivate me.
You don’t have to earn 5k per month with your business if that number doesn’t feel right for you. You also don’t go from $1000 months to $5000 or more months right away… we make this happen over time as we build your business for sustainable growth!
I don’t want you to get stuck here:
- Working a job you wish you could give up to focus on your own business helping people because this is your passion.
- Barely making a living rushing from studio to a private client to home teaching on Zoom.
- With no confidence in your sales abilities, you’re second-guessing every decision and trying quick “band-aid” strategies that don’t get you the results you’re after.
This is what you want:
- A consistent, sustainable income serving your people and making a real impact in their lives
Let’s face it, the yoga teacher business model was faulty even before the pandemic, with teachers barely making a living. If you’re ready to take control of your career, earn more, and find independence from yoga studios, you need to have an online business. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck at the income level you’re currently making.
You technically ‘have’ a business… but is it working for the life you truly want to be living? Unless you create an online business that can scale, you’ll be stuck at a capped revenue level and you will always struggle to get the income and impact you desire.
So, let’s look at your offers and numbers:
#1 Online Yoga Classes On Zoom
The first step for most yoga teachers when it comes to offering things online is to offer classes on Zoom. You might have set up a schedule and invited your students, and probably earn less than $500 through it. At this stage, you’re probably wondering how you can increase your student numbers and earn more money…
Maybe you ask for $15 or $17 for a class – this is what I’d call a low-priced offer. There’s nothing wrong with offering low-priced offers, but the sad truth is that it would be nearly impossible to earn 5k per month just with Zoom classes. Unless you have a huge audience, with low-priced offers you’re not going to achieve your income goals.
There are still things you can do to improve your income with low-priced offers though.
To give you an example, you can sell class passes, like for 10 classes, and you should limit the time they are valid. For example for a 10 class pass, when you’re offering 4-5 classes per week, you can limit the pass to 12 weeks. This gives your students some extra motivation to join a weekly class, and it’s better for you to plan your income ahead.
This is also why drop-in classes should be more expensive because it’s impossible for you to plan. You end up with only 2 students in one class and then 10 in the next. It’s much better to sell class passes.
Another way to increase your income (that’s easy to set up) is by creating a membership. I talked more about why you should start a yoga membership and how to set it up in a previous post if you want to read about this in more detail.
You can offer a monthly membership that includes access to your on-demand library with all the replays of your classes, sell that for $29 per month, and if you have 30 members you earn $870 per month. This kind of membership is also a low-priced offer, and again, unless you have a huge audience, it’s going to be difficult to generate significant earnings, but it’s a great addition to Zoom classes and you’ll earn a bit more already.
Other low-priced offers you can create are eBooks, or online workshops, or even a smallish online course that you sell for $100 or $200. These are all low-priced offers – they are where you start out, but as I said before, you need a huge audience to make a living from them.
#2 Private Sessions
The next step for many entrepreneurs is offering private sessions (e.g. yoga classes or life coach sessions). You can also offer private sessions online, and they’re a great way to increase your income significantly.
Create a package and add it to your website, explain how it works and set a price, and then you can simply sell it with a tool like Calendly or Acuity Scheduling. It’s very easy to manage with those tools and when you add some SEO to your website, you’re more likely to get found on Google when when people search for things like “private yoga”.
What you charge for your private sessions obviously depends on what you offer and your experience, but for example, a healing session can be $80 or $100. So if you get 5 private clients per week, that can really increase your income.
The problem with offering 1:1 products is that they are not scalable, and there’s not a lot of room to earn more without working more, to expand your impact. You only have so many hours that you are available in the day after all.
It’s not scalable, but it’s a step up from just offering low-priced offers like Zoom classes and a membership, and you might be able to earn 5k per month this way. But selling your time for money, and just relying on client work, is never going to give you the flexibility and the consistent income you crave. To get there, you need a high-priced offer.
#3 Higher-Priced Offers & Coaching
A higher-priced offer is an online course or an online group coaching program, that you sell for something like $1000 or more. I want you to create a higher-priced offer because this will really help you reach your income goals and increase your impact. I explained more about why you should charge more for your online course in this post, so definitely check it out if you haven’t done so yet.
Let’s do the math. If you have a $100 product, you need to sell it 100 times to earn $10000. A $1000 product, you need to sell only 10 times, and this can actually be easier, especially if you have a small audience.
You don’t need 5000 people on your email list to have a successful online business, you need a small group of people who trust you and like you, and want to work with you, and you need to have offers that really help them solve a problem they are having.
Having a low-priced offer like Zoom classes is great to get people in, they get to know you, trust you, and like you. And then you can offer them private sessions or an online course where you really dive in deeper to give them a transformation – this is also what your students are going to look for.
With yoga, there comes a point where we want to learn more, where we want to go deeper than a normal class. This is where a lot sign up for yoga teacher training, not necessarily to actually become a yoga teacher, but because they want to learn more.
And if you’re not offering yoga teacher training, this is where you might lose those students! Because they will look for what they think are more advanced teachers or sign up for a training with someone else. It has nothing to do with you or the quality of your classes, they just want more.
So give it to them! For example, you could create a transformative 6-week journey on how to bring yoga from the mat into your life, with trainings, live calls, and a community, and offer this twice per year.
If you sell this program for $1000 to 10 students twice per year, that’s $20000 that you add to your income or $1666 per month. And when you launch it the second time you’ll have testimonials from your students from the first round, so you might sell 14 spots instead of 10, and that brings your income to $24000 per year or $2000 per month.
These three kinds of offers all have a place in your online business, and together they work like magic.
