10
Beyond the Regular Class
While Teaching A Weekly Class at a gym or a studio is likely to be your first gig as a yoga teacher, there are many other opportunities for you to teach. Outside of the gym or studio, you might set up your own one-person shop offering regular or occasional sessions at a community center, house of worship, art gallery, or park. And beyond the weekly class format, you might offer one-time workshops, limited-run series, retreats, private lessons, fundraiser classes, and online content. Let’s explore locations and platforms for these teaching options and the best way to plan, execute, and evaluate them professionally.
diy: the one-person physical studio
Find a Location
Cast a wide net to find a good location to host your in-person classes. Think of spaces that have downtime at the times you’d like to teach. This could include school gymnasiums, houses of worship or community centers, dance studios, or parks. Give deep consideration to parking availability and accessibility via public transit, depending on typical methods of transportation in your area. You want it to be as easy as possible for people to get to your class.
If you are going to teach on your own, you’ll need a space that has room for enough mats for you to pass breaking even and earn money. A yoga mat is generally 2 feet (0.5 m) wide and 5½ feet (2 m) long, so you’ll want a space of at least 4 feet (1 m) by 7 feet (2 m), or 28 square feet (2.5 m²), for each student, plus cushioning around the sides of the room and space for you. (If you are in a dense metropolitan area, you may go tighter, as your students may be accustomed to having less space between mats and generally used to sharing tighter quarters with other humans.) I suggest giving more space per student: 40 to 50 square feet (4–5 m²) per person.
You’ll likely pay a flat fee per hour to rent the space. Be sure you are clear on when you are allowed to come, whether and how you are expected to clean, and the length of your contract. Get this in writing, and run it past an attorney to be extra clear. As you secure your rental, you need to be sure you’re going to clear enough students in class to cover the fee and to earn you a profit. Consider whether and how you can cancel the contract if you aren’t getting traction.
If you are teaching outside on public property, like a municipal park, you will likely need a permit from the town. Be careful to research and secure what you need long before you plan to start teaching, as permits can get tied up in bureaucracy. Obviously, if you are outside, you’ll need an inclement-weather plan and clear communication with your students about how and when any cancellations or rain locations will be conveyed: on your website, social media, email list or newsletter, or all of the above.
Be sure your liability coverage extends to any physical location you rent, and check that the venue also has its own insurance covering the building itself (entry and exit).
Finally, consider equipment. Are you going to buy enough mats, blocks, blankets, and other props to outfit your entire class? If so, where will you store them and how will you transport them into and out of class? Are you asking students to bring their own materials? If so, you might be able to sell them props to enhance your bottom line. Students would buy from you, then carry their own props to and from class.
Promote
Decide who your student base will be—this may depend on the location of the space you’re renting, and it may target the people who already visit the space. Then figure out where they are spending time, so you can decide how best to market your classes to them. For example, if you are teaching yoga at a boathouse in a vacation town, you can post flyers at the venue and in other places vacationers visit during the week: the rental agency, the local grocery store, the ice cream shop, and so on.
If you expect students to bring their own props, make this clear in your promotion. This could be as simple as “bring a beach towel and sunscreen” for outdoor classes.
Set Pricing and Payment
Figure out a pay structure that makes sense. Say you are teaching on a beach—and of course, you have taken care to get the town’s permission. Do you expect an audience of locals, or of weekenders and/or vacationers? If the former, you might offer a low rate for a series to folks who can show proof of residency; for the latter, single drop-ins at a higher price make sense. Or perhaps you’ll offer both to incentivize a broader range of students to come to class.
Decide how to take payment. Do you want students to pay only in advance online so that you don’t need to handle class fees immediately before and after you teach? Or do you find it easy enough to process cards using an app like Square or Stripe on your phone? If you are selling a class pass, devise an easy way to keep track of how many classes students have left. This could be a spreadsheet, a paper notebook that you photograph weekly in case of loss (store the photos in the cloud), or an online scheduling or event software.
diy: the one-person virtual studio
Find a Location
Even when you’re teaching virtually, you still need a home for your classes. This could be directly on your website, using uploaded or embedded videos, or via a plug-in housed on your website. In the former scenario, you’d upload videos to your site, YouTube, or Vimeo, and set the videos to private mode or protect them with a password, then sell access to your viewers. This is a way to test the waters or get started sharing free content to build your brand.
The next level would be using a video-on-demand platform to handle delivery and sales, freeing you from having to manage viewers’ access to videos. These platforms handle payment, and they generally allow you to customize the presentation of videos, so you have a consistent brand identity between the main page and the video platform. These include Namastream, Pivotshare, and Vimeo Pro. Visit yogateacherhandbook.com for a list of platforms to consider.
Promote
Promoting your online studio starts with generating some short, helpful video clips that demonstrate what you have to offer. Record and edit several of these, keeping them under three minutes long. Try to teach something in each one: a fun use for a prop, a mantra, a breath technique. These could even be snippets from your longer video. Include a call to action: “Find more tips like this at my online studio!” “Sign up for my newsletter for more of these!” Add captions for accessibility and viewers’ ease of use. Then, share the clips liberally.
As part of this sharing, you might boost a social media post or make an advertisement out of your video. Depending on who your target audience is, you can really dial-in your online advertising.
Most important in promoting your offerings online: Be unabashedly yourself! If you’re goofy, lean in. If you’re strong, highlight that. If you play live music in savasana, show it! First off, it’s easier to be who you are, and secondly, it’s what will draw your unique audience to you.
Set Pricing and Payment
There are three options for pricing online content: selling a subscription, offering a short-term rental, or making the content available for purchase (either as a download or lifetime access). Some combination of these will likely work for you.
Subscriptions help your bottom line by generating recurring revenue. Once you have a library of several videos, and especially if you are regularly updating your content, subscriptions offer value to the user: They can access whatever they like in any order based on their available time and needs.
Rentals are a good entry point; they let users sample the content without committing much time or money to a purchase or subscription. You may offer a free rental as an incentive for people to sign up for your newsletter, or let your friends share a code for a free rental.
Purchases make sense in some contexts, especially if you are writing in addition to video. E-books and PDFs outlining yoga exercises can be a nice complement to follow-along video content.
A combination of all three may work best, with price points that make it easy for users to choose what’s best for them. My Core Strength for Real People series, hosted by Vimeo On Demand but housed at corestrength.sagerountree.com, is priced at $9.99 per month for a subscription, $1.99 per 48-hour rental, or $3.99 per video for purchase. I offer a free rental code for newsletter subscribers, which is included in their welcome email.
If you’re using a video-on-demand platform, you may pay a monthly fee for the service or share a cut of what your videos earn. Projecting forward several months, to estimate what you might earn, will help you choose between platforms.
Launch with a Catalog and a Plan
As you produce the content for your studio, start by developing a catalog of several videos—both longer follow-along videos and shorter instructional ones. These longer videos may be anywhere from ten to sixty-plus minutes long. If you are offering a subscription library, instead of recording one very long video as though it were an in-person class, consider breaking it into segments: centering, warm-up, movement, stillness, closing. Then, students can link these segments together to choose their own adventure—à la carte, as it were. You can also offer a full, fixed menu of a long practice as a stand-alone purchase.
The shorter instructional videos can be demonstrations of prop usage, alignment or action in a pose, or anything that would be useful for the viewer to learn outside of the context of a follow-along video. These include short videos where you introduce yourself, tell relevant stories about how you learned to do a certain pose, or share how you overcame an obstacle using yoga. Students will enjoy knowing about you and your background—and the more you show your personality while staying professional, the more loyal your customer base will be.
As you work on these videos, you will edit them a little or a lot. Editing can be as simple as using your photo-editing software to trim off the excess video at the start and end of your class—or as sophisticated as using video-editing software to add transitions, B-roll, voice-over, or other effects. If you misspoke, forgot a pose and started a sequence over to include it, or otherwise flubbed something, you can edit it out at this stage. If you use a Mac or an iOS device, iMovie is a good starter editor, as is Lightworks or Kapwing on a Windows system or any browser, and Adobe Premiere Clip on Android. If you are looking for a full-featured program, Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro will offer additional options, though they are far more complex than you need to start. At the very least, prepare a title card: a graphic introducing your content. This can be still or animated, and it will include the title of the series, possibly the episode title, and your name. At the end of the video, insert any credits and a graphic pointing viewers to your website or suggesting some other action to take.
Be sure to amass a decent library—at least five longer videos and five to ten shorter videos—before launching the platform. That way, it will immediately demonstrate its value to people who consider subscribing or buying. It may make sense to have several longer classes available at launch, with several more finished and ready to be uploaded on a regular schedule. This will help retain your initial subscribers.
When you set this schedule, don’t be overly ambitious! One or two new videos per month should be plenty. You can always add content more frequently than you planned; but once you have promised to add more on a particular schedule, you’re committed to it.
Beyond the regular class, whether at a studio, retreat center, or DIY location, you might reach students with a workshop, series, or retreat. Here’s how to get started.
developing workshops
A workshop is generally a onetime event focused on a limited topic that takes place in a day or over a weekend. Think of it like a feature film: It should be able to stand alone, though it might leave room for a sequel. If you can envision more than two meetings for this workshop, you can develop it as a series, which we discuss below. All of the steps you’d take to develop a workshop will apply to series, too. And both workshops and series can be offered as online courses—detailed in what follows. Here is how to create, plan, place, and promote a workshop. (I also cover this topic in the Workshop Workshop at sageyogateachertraining.com.)
Identify and Define Your Topic
You may get an idea for a workshop based on something you see your students working with in class. Maybe you realize they need to learn the basics of chaturanga, or sun salutations. Maybe they want to learn more about pranayama. Workshops can also be keyed to the seasons: You could do a workshop on surrender and letting go for the autumnal equinox, for example, or on setting intentions for New Year’s Day. Or you can pitch a workshop to people who participate in an activity: yoga for gardeners, yoga for bridge players, and so on. Or target a life situation: combating infertility, coping with grief, dealing with osteopenia and osteoporosis.
A good workshop has a very clear vision of its topic. To sharpen your understanding, ask yourself the five Ws and one H. Home in on the problem (the what) that your students (the who) will relate to. Ask yourself where and when and why they encounter that problem. Then plan to solve it with yoga—the how.
Focus on Your Topic
Spend some time considering what you have to teach and to whom. Write in response to these prompts:
▸ Who are your students? These can be your current students or the students in a location where you plan to offer a workshop.
▸ What is a problem your students have? This could be not feeling ready for a handstand, or having back pain after gardening, or feeling anxious before standardized testing.
▸ When do they encounter this problem?
▸ Where do they encounter this problem?
▸ Why does this problem emerge? From your answer here, you’ll be able to see the solution.
▸ How can you use yoga or movement to address this problem?
Write a Description and Title
A good description and title set out the road map for you and your students. It guides your students to see themselves in the workshop, and it sets the agenda that you’ll flesh out in your class planning. A good description hits these notes:
▸ Recognize a problem.
▸ Propose a solution.
▸ Explain the methods.
▸ Project the results.
▸ Define who this is for (beginners or teachers) and not for (anyone with major injuries, for example).
▸ Include the price and when and how to register.
Here’s the description I wrote when I developed my Workshop Workshop as a three-hour in-person offering:
Are you eager to share your favorite topics with your students in workshop format but unsure about where and how to begin? In this workshop on developing workshops, studio co-owner and yoga teacher training lead teacher Sage Rountree explains the who, what, where, why, when, and how of creating, locating a home for, marketing, and teaching successful workshops—from one-hour sessions to weeklong intensives to retreats to ongoing series.
In lecture, discussion, journaling, and small-group work, you’ll identify what you have to offer, refine your vision, write a description that will encourage students to sign up, create a lesson plan and resources to provide students, develop a marketing plan, and workshop the workshop itself with your supportive colleagues.
This workshop is appropriate for teachers of all styles of yoga and movement arts. Bring your tablet, laptop, or notebook, as well as your workshop ideas and questions. You’ll leave with a fully developed offering to benefit both your students and your own career.
$75; $65 before 3/1
3 Yoga Alliance continuing education credits
Sign up here [with a link]
Once you’ve got the description written, you can title your workshop. It could be Yoga for X, where X is the problem you’ve identified, or Yoga vs. X. Or, if it’s an introductory workshop, how about X 101, X Basics, or Fundamentals of X? You can also add a subtitle, something like “The Workshop Workshop: Designing and Leading Transformational Programs,” or “Yoga for Athletes: Strength, Flexibility, and Focus.” Your title should consider the voice or tone and culture of the host studio. The studio may even have suggestions or input.
Draft a Description and Title
Using the model above, write a description for a workshop designed to help students solve the problem you defined in the previous exercise. Hit these notes:
▸ Define a problem.
▸ Propose a solution.
▸ Explain the methods.
▸ Project the results.
▸ Explain who this is for (beginners or teachers) and not for (anyone with major injuries, for example).
▸ Include the price and when and how to register.
Plan Your Lessons
Working from the expectations you’ve set in the description, plan what you’ll do, why, and how you’ll do it, while noting an estimate of how long each portion of the workshop will take. Be sure to balance stillness and movement and, if relevant, personal work like journaling or asana practice with small- and full-group work and discussions. Plan more than you need, and designate which activities could expand, contract, or be cut altogether.
Repetition is the key to learning. Repeat your central message early and often, and be sure all the activities you have planned are tied in to this message.
You’ll want your students to have a clear takeaway from the workshop: a sense that they have learned something they can apply in their lives on or off the mat. This could be a handout, a video you send a link to, or something else, like an outline explaining a homework exercise.
Lesson Planning
Using this format or one that makes better sense for your teaching style, write a lesson plan for the workshop. Be sure to consider what could be cut for time; you might choose to highlight it in a different color.
|
Time in class |
What you’ll do |
Why you’ll |
How you’ll |
How long it will |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Teach or Record the Workshop
A workshop is, in many ways, a lot like a class, and all my advice about setting up for and leading a class applies. In other ways, workshops are different. They generally last longer than a regular class, so you may want to offer a scheduled comfort break. If you’re leading a daylong or weekend workshop, there will be breaks for meals. Be clear with students on how long each break is and when, where, and how you will reconvene—“Let’s take fifteen minutes and meet back here at 11:45, sitting in a circle. I’ll sound the chime at 11:45.”
If you are recording your workshop for delivery online, divide its content into digestible lessons. These videos should last around twenty minutes or less (this makes it easier for your students to process and for file management.) Students can move through the course little by little, at a pace that allows time for them to integrate the lessons. Collect any materials that will complement your lessons: not only your lecture and practice but also slides, illustrations, video clips, and so on. Written material can be offered as downloads, and illustrations and clips can be edited directly into your video. These extra materials make your video far richer and more engaging than a simple, unbroken recording of you talking.
Introduce yourself and your workshop with a clear road map of where you’re going and how you’ll get there. This reiterates the expectations you set in the title and description, and it establishes a baseline so students can feel that their expectations are met.
In addition to lecture and led practice, some workshops can leave room for full-group or small-group discussion. Inviting a discussion can feel like a pleasant loosening of the reins, but remember that as the leader, you’re still the one responsible for keeping class on track. Some students will take advantage of discussion time or Q&A time to tell stories that aren’t really questions. To stay on the rails, you may sometimes need to say, “Great question,” or “Interesting story, but it’s outside the purview of this workshop. Does anyone else have a question on our current topic that it would help everyone to hear answered?” If you are going to leave room for questions, slot this time before savasana. After savasana, especially the luxuriously long savasana that workshops afford, students won’t feel much like talking—if they even remember their questions.
In the context of a onetime workshop, it’s likely unnecessary to do a long period of student introductions. These can take forever and contribute little. If there’s something you would like to know about your workshop participants, set up an intake form at registration, email them in advance, or check in with them individually in conversation or on paper when they arrive.
At the end of the workshop, you want students to feel that they have clear takeaways. Explain to them the next steps on implementing what they learned in their practice or their lives. This is where distributing a handout or pointing students toward a website is helpful. Let students know how to contact you, and follow up if appropriate with an email outlining what you covered. Know that not every studio will agree to provide email addresses to you, so you may need to get permission to ask students to sign up for a follow-up email at the end of the workshop. Have a piece of paper, tablet, or laptop ready for this.
Place Your Workshop: Inside the Studio
You might start by offering workshops at your home studio. This gives you a comfortable rookie experience: While the format may be new, the physical space and the student body will likely be familiar. In time, you might broaden your reach to offer your workshop at other studios. To do this, get a sense of the studio culture. Your masterful workshop on using props for restorative poses may not be the best fit for a hot yoga studio. And your skillful yoga for runners workshop will be preaching to the choir at a studio that already offers many weekly yoga classes geared to athletes. You want to find the sweet spot: a host studio that has a receptive student base, where your workshop will not be redundant to their current programming. If you have a friend who teaches at or studies at the location, ask them to write an email introducing you to the program director there, then follow up with a pitch.
This pitch should be a professionally written and proofread email covering:
▸ Your connection to the studio (if you had an introduction, move that liaison to BCC and thank them) or your reason for being in the area (if you have friends or family and will already be visiting, say so; this shows that you are likely not to flake out if enrollment is low)
▸ The history of the workshop’s success, or your personal success as a teacher
▸ Your website address, where your reader will find a robust bio and, ideally, video clips of you teaching content similar to what you are proposing
▸ The proposed workshop title and description, and ideas about pricing
▸ A mention of your minimum, if any, and the split you would like. This could be 40:60 between teacher and venue (at major yoga centers), or 50:50 to 70:30 (elsewhere).
▸ A link to your media kit folder containing asana and headshot photos, a sample flyer, a bio, and pricing
▸ To take things to the next level, send a spreadsheet projecting how revenues will scale based on number of students. You’ll need to use the formula function to do this easily—if you’re not familiar, ask a friend who has facility with spreadsheets.
If you do not receive a reply, send a polite follow-up in a week.
Place Your Workshop: Outside the Studio
Some workshops naturally lend themselves to venues outside the studio setting. They could be yoga for CrossFitters held at the local CrossFit box, or yoga for knitters at the yarn shop. Or you can travel to whatever club or interest group might enjoy learning how to solve a problem or enhance their experience through yoga. You may need to handle the bulk of the contracting/terms agreement and payment processing for your host, and thus you should get a bigger split. Be sure that your insurance will extend to the venue.
Decide on When and How Long
To find the right time of year and time of day for your workshop, consider the season, any holidays, school schedules, and local events. Revisit your notes on when students encounter the problem your workshop will solve. Think about how potential students spend their weekend. If you’re leading a workshop on yoga for athletic recovery, for example, it should go in the mid- to late afternoon, not on a weekend morning when people are running, riding, or playing soccer.
How long should your workshop be? It depends on the content and the students’ level of experience. If students are used to sixty-minute classes, a three-hour workshop on inversions might be intimidating. Shorter would be better in this case. If you’re training yoga teachers, on the other hand, a three-hour session isn’t at all daunting.
Contract Your Workshop
Once you are invited to offer your workshop at the studio, you’ll agree to a contract. This could be a formal document or an agreement made via email. Either way, be sure you have terms clear in writing. Your contract should outline the studio’s promotion plan, your promotion plan, and how much you will be paid—including how and when. Many contracts include an agreement that some charges will come off the top before the profits are split. These can include travel, marketing fees for flyers and advertising, and credit card processing fees. Contracts should include a minimum number for enrollment, as well as a clear maximum number of enrollees or a plan for renting a larger space if needed. Outline steps for how any cancellation will be decided and announced and how and by whom refunds will be made. You can find a sample contract to copy, paste, and tweak at yogateacherhandbook.com.
At the contract stage, you’ll settle on pricing for the workshop. Depending on your credentials, the topic, and the studio and local culture where you’ll be teaching, this could range from $10 to $40 or more per hour of workshop time. If there is a minimum number of enrollees, implement an early-bird discount to encourage people to sign up before your do-or-die date to hit the minimum. Conversely, you can raise the price the closer you get to the workshop. However, I believe people respond well to discounts, rather than increases, which feel like late-payment penalties.
Venues may offer discounts or even full scholarship slots to their staff, space permitting. Owners generally attend free. You might want to invite a local friend to attend for free. These should be included in the contract.
Some hosts will ask you to agree to a light noncompete clause, generally by including language to the effect that you won’t teach the same or a similar offering within a limited time period (like ninety days) and a limited geographical area (say, one hundred miles).
Place Your Workshop: Online
Online workshops can be hosted on your own or with a different host. If you already have a platform for online content, you could add the workshop as a stand-alone sale or part of a subscription tier. Or, your workshop may be part of a bigger event, like an online summit featuring many teachers or a platform such as Yoga International and Yoga Alliance. The split you’d receive would vary, depending on the platform.
Promote the Workshop
After working through the exercises in chapter 4, you’re a whiz at promotion. Follow the steps you’ve learned: Generate some workshop-specific assets, plan a promotion calendar, and schedule your marketing for newsletters, social media, and, if relevant, paper.
For onetime workshops, spending a small amount on a targeted ad on Facebook or Instagram may make sense. Use the advertising tool to narrow down your audience to the exact students you’ve envisioned while developing the workshop, in the specific area. That will get you the most bang for your buck.
Refine and Expand the Workshop
Just as you should do after classes, after offering a workshop, you should make notes on how it went and how you can improve in the future. It is also useful to ask students for feedback, though this may not be something you do after your regular class. Your workshop students will have a shared interest in the topic you taught on, and they may have enough experience to give you useful constructive criticism so you can improve the workshop the next time it is offered.
To gather this feedback, bring a sheet or half sheet of paper with just a few prompts on it. I favor a “keep/drop/add” trio of questions, which echoes the roses/thorns/buds model.
▸ Keep: What did you find most useful in this workshop?
▸ Drop: What was unclear or confusing?
▸ Add: What could be included in the future to enhance your experience?
For a onetime workshop out of your usual market, receiving anonymous feedback makes sense. If you’re leading something for teachers or something that is going to have a round two in the future, you might choose to ask for student names and contact information so that you can follow up.
An alternative is to create a web form and send your students a follow-up email—maybe with an electronic version of the handout you created for the workshop—asking them to offer you feedback. Or simply ask for a reply to your email.
I favor both: a short paper evaluation at the end of the workshop, while students have the content fresh in their minds, and an electronic invitation for more feedback a few days later, when the content has been digested. This email could also invite students to offer a short testimonial for use on your website and in your workshop offerings form (see the next section).
Also ask the venue for feedback. Tell the manager or owner that you are eager to hear how you can improve, and that at any point you’d like to know the feedback that students are sharing.
Once you have this feedback, refine your offering accordingly, then work to schedule it again. You could offer it at the same venue in another season or at another venue—provided it doesn’t breach your contract. As you prepare to offer the workshop again, you may need to scale it up or down. Maybe it was too long, and you want to condense. On the other hand, perhaps you can see ways to expand it, either into a weekend or into a series or a weeklong intensive or a teacher training.
Next Step: Develop a Workshop Offerings Form
As you gain experience leading workshops, and interest in booking you grows, you should develop a workshop offerings form. This document, saved as a PDF, will include many of the typical media kit assets: your headshot and other pictures, short and longer bios, a list of your social media addresses. It should also include a menu of workshops that you can offer, with descriptions that studios can imagine cutting and pasting to their website. Include a line about typical workshop length and, when relevant, ways to spin each workshop. If you are very popular, you might also include a booking rate sheet.
If your workshop offerings document is well written, studios will see the value in your offerings for their particular student base and will be able to cut and paste your description when they create the registration for the workshop. While it’s good to have one generic workshop offerings form available on your website, you’ll get even better traction if, after carefully researching their vibe, class and workshop offering, and student demographic, you customize the form to each studio you pitch. If you aren’t physically in the area, do your research online or send a friend.
Develop a Workshop Offerings Document
Pull together a Workshop Offerings form. This document should include:
▸ A front page with a smiling picture of you, contact information, and one or two paragraphs of bio
▸ Some testimonials from well-known teachers and your students
▸ A list of workshops you can teach, each with a title, time or a time range, a robust description, props needed, and suggested pricing
▸ Your desired pay rate, including a minimum, if you have one
▸ A sample contract
Save this document in PDF format and put a copy in your media kit and on your website. You’ll find my workshop offerings form at yogateacherhandbook.com.
developing series
A series, as opposed to a workshop, happens more than once, generally on the same day of the week and at the same time over a series of four to twelve meetings. We’ve offered dozens of series at Carolina Yoga, from Yoga 101 and Flow Yoga 101 to Yoga vs. Trauma, Yoga for Athletic Recovery, and Yoga for Back Care. As the titles imply, series address a population or a special topic but go either broader or deeper than a workshop.
Series have the benefit of building progressively, so concepts or movements that are introduced in the beginning can be reinforced and revised in subsequent meetings. And series can lead to other series: Yoga 101 to Yoga 102 or Yoga 201, Basics of Acro Yoga to Intermediate Acro Yoga, etc. Once you have developed the syllabus for a series, you can repeat it year after year.
At Carolina Yoga, we offer series in both closed and open format. A closed series requires students to commit for the full run of the series, with no drop-ins allowed (they can drop out, of course). This is good for true basics, like Yoga 101, and for sensitive topics—Yoga vs. Eating Disorders, Yoga for Trauma—where the group dynamic is critical to creating a safe space for students. These workshops also require extra training on behalf of the teacher.
An open series does allow drop-ins, generally at a price that’s higher than the price of a regular drop-in class. Students who drop in recognize that they are joining midstream, and that their classmates will have seen some of the concepts and movements already. But in the context of our open series, each session also works as a standalone. Think of it as an anthology series, like Law and Order: There is much to be gained by following the characters’ arcs over a season or the run of the show, but each episode also offers a beginning, middle, and end of its own.
To accommodate the teacher’s expertise and to incentivize students to commit to the full series, we pay well (70 percent of series price to the teacher if there is no minimum for the series, 50 percent if there is) and price the series appealingly. For students, committing to a four-week series can cost less than dropping in for four regular classes, but dropping in to a single session of an open series will cost more than a regular class. For example, a four-week series could be $50 or $60 ($12.50 or $15/class), but a single drop-in could be $15 or $20.
Like workshops, series can run outside the studio system. If you have a venue—a church basement or a high school gym, for example—a series is a good choice because it has clear start and end dates. Series can also run online in real time.
Envision Your Series as a Repeating Workshop
To home in on a topic, description, lesson plans, placing, and promotion strategy, follow the steps outlined in our investigation of workshops above.
One exception on how you would teach series rather than workshops: Depending on the topic and your methods, it might be useful to allow time for students to introduce themselves or to talk briefly each session about anything they’ve realized, noticed, or found changed since the previous week. Or create an email list, Facebook group, or group chat for your students, so they can discuss the content with each other outside class. Some online platforms will have a forum built in to course software.
teaching online courses
Removed from the constraints of time and space, your online content can take the form of single-session workshops, multi-session series, or online courses of any stripe. A course could be Yoga 101, a monthlong challenge with daily exercises, fourteen days to handstand, or continuing education for teachers—whatever best suits your interests and teaching skills. These courses may be asynchronous, or they may include a combination of students moving through lectures and practices on their own with occasional check-ins. Depending on your content and setup choices, you can release lessons to your students on a weekly basis, require they finish one (and even pass a quiz) before starting the next, or let them pick and choose how to move through the course. You may price these however you see fit. Since they take a lot of work to organize, courses are typically priced high. And since very little is required for maintenance after the initial work is done, teachers frequently offer discount codes and incentives.
Some of the platforms that you may use for your online studio are set up to handle courses—Namastream is one example—or, you can host your courses on dedicated e-learning platforms, such as Coursera, Teachable, and Udemy. A benefit is their help with promotion; a drawback is their taking a bigger cut of the revenue. Platforms like Teachable and plug-ins such as LearnDash and Sensei LMS work with a WordPress site. Visit yogateacherhandbook.com for more suggestions.
Typically, teachers progress to creating online courses after several years of experience teaching the course content in person. But in the post-COVID world, where people are more familiar with online learning, you may have success with an online course right out of the gate. If you are handy with content production and comfortable with the e-learning platform you choose, this can be a great way to earn passive income and help students you would never encounter in person. The instructions in “Content Creation” that follow will get you started.
teaching private lessons
Some people are naturals in a private lesson: they shine in giving personalized attention to one student or a small group. Others would rather teach a full room of strangers than spend an hour one-on-one with a student. Know yourself! Teaching private lessons can be a mainstay of your yoga career if you enjoy them and you live in an area with a culture that values them, like New York City and Los Angeles. Or you may teach private lessons only rarely and at a very high price or, conversely, for free as a service to the needy or as a gift to friends and family.
Finding Private Clients
Private clients can be divided into a few groups. Knowing which of these you want to teach will help you market to them. One is the student who wants to confirm they are flexible enough to make it through your regular class without feeling embarrassed. These may be onetime gigs, but they convert to regular students in your group class. You may draw these clients from your class or through word of mouth.
Another kind of client is the student who’s attended a few classes and wants individual attention for a specific goal like “I want to workshop my downward-facing dog” or “I want to make it into handstand eventually and need to learn the progressive steps to get there.” In this case, instead of offering one-offs, tell potential clients what they can gain by committing to a series of five, ten, or twenty private sessions. It’s a chance to customize a practice and see really targeted, tangible progress. To gain these clients, with your studio’s permission, you can mention in class that you are available for private lessons to workshop particular roadblocks or build to goals.
Some private clients are well-off and because of their work schedule—or, in some cases, their fame—can’t make it in to the studio. For these clients, a private lesson can look a whole lot like a very small group class, though naturally with specialized and individual attention. Word of mouth is a usual way to gain these clients. Again, you can mention in class that you do such work, and you may reach these clients through their networks. Or partner with a personal trainer or boutique gym: Approach them to say that you’re available for private lessons. Offer the trainer or gym a onetime free lesson so they can see what happens in a private session with you, then ask them to talk it up to their clients.
Some bookings will be for a special occasion, like a family reunion, a bridal shower, or a bachelorette party. These can be a blast. Fill your lesson plan with safe but showy Instagrammable partner yoga, theme it around love, create a playlist of the bride’s favorite songs, and follow the service industry’s conventional wisdom: The price of anything labeled wedding automatically doubles. Partner with wedding planners, reception halls, and bridal shops to get out the word that you are available. Having a pretty flyer or a mention on a wedding industry website can bring these clients to you.
Pricing and Policies
People value what they pay for. If a private lesson with you costs more than a class or a private lesson with your colleagues, students will take it more seriously, turn up more reliably, and do any homework you assign more diligently. This increases the value of yoga—you already value it, obviously, and pricing it accordingly encourages your students to value it. When you charge a fair but high fee for private lessons, you will have more resources to give lessons away to those who would really benefit from it but can’t afford it. As much as we value yoga, it is a luxury. We can’t argue that it’s a necessity like food or shelter; you aren’t engaging in price gouging by setting a high rate. You’re contributing to the economic wellness of the profession. Pricing yourself too low, on the other hand, both devalues yoga and undercuts your colleagues who also offer private lessons.
We tell our teacher trainees that $75 for an hour-long private lesson should be their minimum fresh out of training. This is about in line with massage rates; if it seems low or high to you, research massage rates in your area and align with them. Be sure also to look at your colleagues’ rates, or ask them about their rates. Any professional would be willing to tell you. Say, “I’m starting to offer private lessons, and I want to make sure I’m not underselling yoga or myself. Since you have a few more years’ experience than I do, I’d like to make sure I’m pricing correctly relative to you. What do you charge?”
For every year of experience, try scaling up by $5 to $10 on your base rate, so that by your fifth year you are at $100, $125, or more per hour. It is better to be too expensive than too cheap. You can always lower your rate or offer discounts, calling them “sliding scale” or “scholarships.” If you mention your $75 rate to a client who then says, “That’s it? I thought it would be more,” you can’t splutter, “I mean, $150 an hour!” And you can’t raise your rates that often. Once a year or every other year is reasonable, unless you are extremely busy, or you want to cull your client list.
Decide whether you will charge a flat rate or scale your rates, so that a lesson for one to three people is, for example, $75, and every person over three is $15 more per hour. Work to find a sweet spot where the group pays only slightly more per session than they would if they came to a drop-in class.
Make your pricing obvious on your website, unless you’re intentionally if-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it expensive. (You certainly shouldn’t be that expensive right out of teacher training!) Have a clearly labeled page on your website describing what you offer in a private lesson and how to book. When you get a query, be sure to point your potential client to that page even if you think they’ve already seen it. This begins to establish student expectations about what does and doesn’t happen in a private lesson. And it’s a way of discussing the money without having to say it out loud, which is often difficult for yoga teachers. Either way, make sure your pricing is clear to your student.
When you are very busy or if you can’t remember the last time you adjusted your rates, it’s time to raise them. Decide when to implement the change: The first of the year or the first of a month are both good times. You might choose to announce your raise a month or a few weeks in advance, to encourage existing clients to buy a package at the current rates. Make the statement clearly and without apology, either in person, in writing in a frame at your checkout area (if you teach from home, this might be by the chairs where clients put on their shoes), or online. Say something like, “As of January 1, new rates for private lessons will be as follows: $100 per hour, $450 for a five-session package; $800 for a ten-session package. It’s an honor to work with you to include yoga as part of your self-care plan!”
Students who can’t afford the new pricing will let you know. At that point, you can choose to grandfather them in at the old rate or refer them to a colleague who charges less.
If you are affiliated with a studio, your studio might handle booking private lessons for you, and would then take a cut. This could be up to 50 percent of the cost of the lesson. Such studios would not want you soliciting their students for private lessons offsite, so be very clear on what the studio policy is.
Determine the best way to book lessons—phone calls, emails, or scheduling software, which can be as simple as using a Google calendar and its invitations feature. At your first contact with the student, explain your cancellation policy. I suggest announcing that you charge for cancellations within 24 hours, except in the case of true emergency or sudden illness. If you confirm appointments either manually or automatically, using a scheduled email or scheduling software, you’ll likely never have to implement your charge-for-cancellation policy.
Use an intake form that starts with a waiver and continues to a questionnaire about what your student would like to learn, as well as their goals. If their goals aren’t clear, use a series of poses to observe their strengths and imbalances, then strategize about how you can address these imbalances. Take baseline measurements: how long your student can hold tree, where they are in downward dog, or where their hands wind up in cow-face arms. You’ll then be able to track progress as you work together. Take some before pictures, or record a short video.
You’ll need a method to take payment—if you are running a credit card, be prepared with an app like Square or Stripe open, logged in, and ready to go. You might like to take payment at the start of the lesson, which gets what might feel like an uncomfortable transaction out of the way. Or take it at the end, which is also a good time to schedule the next lesson. If you offer multi-lesson packages, develop a way to keep track of how many sessions your clients have left. A notes file or your calendar app can help.
Add Value
Private lessons can very specifically target the challenges and needs of the student where a regular class cannot. Add value on top of this by continuing the personalization in ways that would be tough to do for a whole class. Start with a follow-up email or handout with notes about what you worked on and any takeaways. You might assign homework, or record a sequence for your student to follow along with in the days between lessons.
If you are confident with physical assists and have your student’s express permission, you will have a lot more time to offer them in a private lesson. Be careful not to give so many assists that you either make the client too reliant on your touch or leave them feeling scrutinized.
Another way to add value to lessons with your longtime clients is to slowly amass a prop closet for them. If you travel to your client, you could bring a few different mats for a “test drive,” then give them (or sell them) a mat in their favorite material and thickness. Pick up a pair of blocks or straps, make them a feature in your next few lessons, and leave them at the client’s house as part of their yoga props cabinet. You could even mark anniversaries with such a gift, or throw in a mat or some props when clients buy a long-term class package: Buy twenty lessons, get a bolster.
Where to Meet
The studio is usually the best place to meet in person. It has the benefit of all the props, and it’s neutral ground. If—and only if—you are confident in your safety, you can travel to a client’s home for a lesson. Since this adds convenience for your client, consider adding a travel fee to your rates. This could be $10 to cover your gas or the cost of public transportation, or it could be half the hourly rate for the lesson itself to cover travel time. You get to decide! If you are in a student’s home, seek to reduce distractions: Ask them to turn off their ringer, put the dog outside, or send the kids out of the house, when feasible. Wear a watch so you can keep track of the time.
If you are very confident in your own safety, you can have clients visit you for a private lesson. In this case, you’ll have your props handy and be able to control the environment for sound, lighting, temperature, and so on. Be sure to issue clear parking instructions to your client and to have a clean, well-stocked bathroom available, as well as a clear view of a clock or your watch while you teach.
If you are giving private lessons online, see what platform your student prefers; this reduces technical problems and makes the experience easiest for your student. FaceTime, Skype, and Google Hangouts all work fine. Be clear whether they should call you or you should call them at the appointed time. Do your intake form and waiver ahead of time via email. Since you will not be on-hand with props, ask what equipment is available to your student, or plan a prop-free lesson. Ask for payment before the session begins, unless you know the student quite well. One benefit of virtual private lessons is that they can be recorded, if you and your student both agree. In that case, aim to use a platform that allows for easy recording, like Skype. FaceTime calls can be recorded using QuickTime, but it’s not as easy. Having a recording adds good value to the lesson!
teaching corporate classes
A variation on the private lesson is a standing corporate class, where you travel to an office, a hotel, or an apartment building—or to a virtual platform—to offer a weekly or monthly session to employees, clients, or residents. You’ll plan this like a class or, if it happens less frequently or students have no experience, a workshop.
Your studio may connect you with corporate clients. In this case, they may take a onetime finder’s fee or a regular cut of the class, especially if they process payment. If you would like to solicit such classes for yourself, construct an email following the advice above for pitching a workshop. Send it to wellness managers and property managers with an explanation of how yoga will enhance employees’ well-being or productivity, or how having yoga as an amenity will make a hotel or apartment building more attractive to guests or renters.
To price these classes, figure out who is paying. Is it the business whose location you’re visiting? You might price it at your private-lesson rate, perhaps with some travel time added. Is it the students themselves, either completely or as a supplement to a base rate from the company? If so, set your prices so that you will get the equivalent of your private-lesson rate or higher.
It’s smart to set a range of dates to see if this is a good fit for the business, the students, and you. A month of trial classes should be enough to test the waters. Then you can extend the contract, renegotiate it, or let it go.
Be sure that you have a trusted substitute teacher on deck to cover these classes if you have an emergency. Have them totally up to speed on the class: where it’s held and when, as well as how to get there, where to park, and whether and how to take payment. Bringing your sub along when you teach to see everything firsthand and meet the students is a smart move. Also ensure that you have a clear way to announce any class cancellations on account of illness or weather, or weeks off for holidays or travel.
free classes at stores
You may have noticed that retail stores selling yoga clothing often host weekly classes. These attract practitioners, who spend an hour or more in the company of the clothes, with the idea that they are more likely to buy. In my experience—and I would be happy to be wrong here!—in-store classes do not convert to paying students at the studio. Who comes to free classes at the mall? People who know they can get free yoga there every week!
You might have your own reasons for saying yes to an invitation to lead a free in-store class. Maybe you’re offered an outfit in exchange for your time—this could be a good deal, coming to the equivalent of $200 for an hour of your time. Or maybe you want to gain experience as a new teacher, or even apply for a job in the store. Be clear about your reasons. Just don’t expect the students, who may be very nice, to follow you to the studio or a private lesson. That doesn’t mean you can’t try!
If you are teaching a free class, plan to attend the class sometime in the weeks before it’s your turn to teach it. Look at the students, gauge their experience level and needs, and figure out how you can best use the space and your time. Decide how you can offer students something of value, both in your lesson plan and in exchange for signing up for your newsletter. Confirm with the venue that you can collect email addresses, then at the end of your class, invite students to sign up to receive a video, or a coupon for a discounted class with you elsewhere, whatever you think will make the best incentive.
fundraiser classes and donations
One way to use your teaching skill for good is to offer a fundraiser or donation class for a charitable cause. This could be something you do annually, like a class for the food bank offered every Thanksgiving. Or it could be a response to a natural disaster, like a hurricane.
For such a class, you could either suggest a donation or sell “tickets,” proceeds from which are donated. The latter may be easier if you can run it through a studio or a service like Eventbrite. Check with the studio owner and your accountant about how to log these. If you are asking students for a donation at the class, set out a box for cash or check donations, which you’ll then pass directly along to the charity. Or set up a tablet or laptop with the charity’s site open so people can make credit card donations. If you’re raising money for a local charity, ask if they could send a staff member to come say a few words at the start of class. This direct appeal will personalize the ask and is likely to generate more donations.
You might also offer a private lesson or a series of three or five classes as an incentive at a silent auction for a cause you believe in. Often, bidders at these auctions intend to take the class or lesson but never actually follow through. If people do follow through, they are likely to already be existing customers of your business. Either way, the charity will have benefited, and you’ll have put your name in front of people who have the means and the heart to attend charity events. Ask your accountant how to factor this donation in to your tax records.
Beyond your offerings at your home studio and in your local area, you might connect far outside the studio setting. This could be at a retreat, at yoga festivals, or through the content you generate.
retreats
A yoga retreat is a bucket-list item for many practitioners, combining their love of yoga with a fun weekend or week of travel. If you’re interested in leading retreats, give your interest some serious thought. What is your ideal retreat experience, both for yourself and for your students? How you prepare for these depends on your vision: Are you taking existing students on a fun vacation with some yoga thrown in? Are you partnering with an established retreat center to offer advanced trainings for serious students, or continuing education to yoga teachers? Are students going to leave feeling like they had a fun break, or like they’ve undergone deep personal transformation?
If you are leading a retreat on your own, you’ll have all the contingencies of setting up your own workshop—booking the space, supplying the props, marketing the event, processing payments, establishing a clear refund policy—in addition to playing cruise director for your students. This can quickly become overwhelming. To maximize the experience for both you and your students, it can be wise to partner with one or more teachers or event coordinators so that you focus only on what you’re good at. That also takes some of the work off you so that you can enjoy the trip yourself. Bringing a social director, a logistics coordinator, even a chef, will reduce your personal obligation while adding value for your students.
If you are in charge of the retreat, whether you’re bringing your own staff or using one on location, take plenty of time to strategize how you will control the smooth movement of your group from start to finish. Will you cover airport transfers to your destination? How will students move around once they’re at the destination? If you are hiring a driver, how will you confirm they are licensed and insured? How and when will students eat? What activities will you offer in addition to yoga? It’s good to present a range of choices, but be sure also to build in downtime and flex time.
There are many international retreat centers that cover much of the logistics, freeing you up to teach yoga. A quick internet search will turn these up. Ask lots of questions, and be sure to ask for references from former teachers and their students. What looks incredible online might not be so wonderful in person—and vice versa. Any reputable center will be happy to give you references, and some of them will invite you for a brief stay so that you can assess whether it’s a good fit for you and your student base. As you gain a profile as a teacher, you’ll find retreat centers reaching out to sell themselves to you. Keep your eyes on the prize: What is your vision for your retreat? Just because a particular center wants you doesn’t mean it’s the ideal fit.
Beyond vacation-style retreats are programs you might offer at established yoga retreat centers, like Kripalu, the Omega Institute, 1440 Multiversity, the Mount Madonna Center, and Esalen. When you teach at such a center, you’ll be responsible only for your teaching hours and off the clock the rest of the time. You might choose to engage with your students at meals, or in study sessions, or not. If you are an introvert or a business owner with other work to attend to each day, the ample downtime you’ll be able to carve out at an established center is priceless. Retreat centers generally do good promotion, as well, helping you reach students who wouldn’t find you otherwise, and whom you can then funnel into your other offerings. (Each year, I draw one or two students from Kripalu to North Carolina to take our teacher trainings.) In exchange, of course, you’ll be getting paid a smaller cut of the proceeds from your program.
If you’re interested in teaching at such places, dig in on their websites. Each should outline how to “pitch” a program. Ask your yoga mentors if they have any connections that might pull you to the top of the application pile—as with many things, who you know is as important as what you know, and one well-placed recommendation can open doors for you. Once you are a regular presence at one center, programmers at other centers are more likely to recognize your name and to consider you for their locations.
festivals
Eventually, you may be invited to teach (or apply to teach) at a yoga festival. These can be big corporate events like Wanderlust, or more homegrown (Asheville Yoga Festival, Floyd Yoga Jam). This can be a fun weekend and a chance to meet new students and colleagues. Don’t expect to be paid a ton—but do expect to have fun!
Like many things in the professional world, these festivals rely on networks and word of mouth to make their hiring decisions. Cold calls can work, for sure, but your best way in will be focusing on being a demonstrably good teacher with a visible presence online, both with content to share—videos, articles, social media posts—and a quantifiable following. Let your mentors know you’re looking to teach at festivals; they may be able to make some introductions for you.
When you are invited to a festival, you’ll be asked to submit descriptions of your workshops. Start with the workshops you’ve been teaching, and consider the needs of the festival participants. Are they looking for challenge? Are the majority of offerings already challenging, in which case you can offer a mellow or restorative class? Festivals are a chance to explore special topics, like yoga hybrids, partner yoga, yoga with live music, chakra balancing, and so on.
Make it clear in your contract whether the festival is paying for your travel, whether you receive a per diem to cover food, and what your accommodations will be. When you are a newer teacher, your contract will have fewer perks. When you’re so busy that you need to turn down some invitations, you should begin to ask for more accommodations in the form of single rooms, airport transfers, on-site transportation, and so on.
Be sure that you have a capture device to help students connect with you and continue the relationship beyond the festival itself, just as you have developed for off-site classes and workshops. This could be offering a copy of your playlist to students who sign up for your newsletter, encouraging people to follow you on Instagram to see a video of the peak sequence you taught, or pointing people to online video classes with you. It’s usually easiest to offer a piece of free content in exchange for an email address.
As you would after a workshop, write a thank-you message to the festival organizers. Ask for their feedback about your offerings, and let them know that you are eager to be invited back. You can say something like, “Thank you for having me, I had a great time! X, Y, and Z were especially well done. If I were lucky enough to be invited back in the future, what would you like me to change?”
content creation
What is this “content” that will help students connect with you? It’s something of value that will help students feel better through yoga. It could be as simple as an inspiring quote, or a brief description of a pose or an exercise or as complex as a video series, online class library, or an ebook. There are only so many hours in a day you can interact with students in person, and those hours are tied to one physical location. Creating and sharing content will help your students find connection when you aren’t physically present.
Early in my career, I used my experience with writing to offer a pose-of-the-month column in my statewide endurance sports magazine. The audience was clear: runners, cyclists, and triathletes. The problem they had was also clear: sport-specific tightness that might lead to imbalances, coupled with a general inability to relax. Each month, I outlined the what, when, why, and how of a particular pose or breath exercise to solve these problems. Then I collected some of the pose images into a slideshow, recorded a voice track describing how to do them, and posted these recordings as a podcast, Sage Yoga Training. Eventually I had a catalog of a dozen or so of these, which I was able to reference when I pitched the book that became The Athlete’s Guide to Yoga. On the strength of the book, I was hired to write articles and blog posts for Runner’s World and Yoga Journal. Later still I partnered with Yoga Vibes to record my classes for athletes and post them online, so that people could follow along with a video class to help them balance themselves with yoga.
All of this is content—articles, podcasts, books, and videos. My content generation started with my genuine interest in yoga for endurance athletes, capitalized on my studies in writing and my experience in radio production, took advantage of my husband’s ability with a digital camera, and grew from short snippets into content across a number of media: written, audio, and video.
What Do You Have to Say?
Creating content follows many of the steps you learned for planning a workshop. You need to figure out a way to help people through yoga. This could be by thinking of specialized activities or occupations, then thinking of a problem or a goal they have and how yoga can solve it or help them reach it. You can then start to think about where and how you might share this content. Here are a pair of exercises to get you thinking.
Find Your Message and Your Platform
Respond to these prompts.
▸ When do you feel most helpful as a teacher? Why? Where does this happen?
▸ What’s your favorite group to lead in a yoga practice? Why? What do these people all have in common? That is, who are your students?
▸ What is a problem they have?
▸ Where does that problem arise?
▸ When does that problem emerge?
▸ Why does that problem happen?
▸ How can they deploy your solution? What are the steps? Lay them out in detail.
▸ What will they wind up with when the problem is solved?
▸ Who is your message for? Who is it not for? How can those it is not for adapt it, or find a solution to their unique problems?
Next, ask yourself these questions and note your answers.
▸ Who/what are the thought leaders in your niche? How do they communicate?
▸ Where does your audience meet: online? in person?
▸ What are your strengths and production talents/resources as a writer/artist/teacher?
▸ What tools do you already have to get started?
Your response is now the basis for an article or a blog post, or for a short video. If it isn’t short, you can make it into a series.
Plan Your Content
To home in further on your message, clearly define the problem and the steps to solving it with yoga. What will your readers or viewers wind up with when the problem is solved: more comfortable hamstrings, better ability to meditate, or a good night’s sleep? Who is your message for, and who is it not for?
Once you’re clear on these answers, you can outline your content. Start with an introduction that is as explicit as you can be to define the problem. Then list your solution step by step, point by point. As you go, start to list what photos, videos, or other illustrations might help. This will become your asset list.
Now set yourself a timeline. You’ll need to work in three categories: planning your content, which you’ve already begun; producing it; and promoting it. For each of these, write out each next step to take. Set concrete dates by which you will take these steps, and find a way to build in some accountability: Work with a friend and promise to review each other’s material at a scheduled meeting, for example.
Make an Outline and Timeline
Start an outline of your content by responding to these prompts.
▸ Write an introduction defining the problem and pointing to the solution. Be as explicit as you can.
▸ List the steps of the solution point by point.
▸ Begin to note what photos/video might help.
Draft a timeline:
Planning
1. List the first step (e.g., type out an outline and shot list)
2. And the next one after that
3. Etc.
Production
1. List the first step (e.g., line up a photographer)
2. And the next one after that
3. Etc.
Promotion
1. List the first step (e.g., add a blog to your website)
2. And the next one after that
3. Etc.
Produce and Place Your Content
Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Whether you are working alone or with a photographer or videographer, schedule your writing or shooting time as an appointment. Accept some discomfort and procrastination as part of the writing process—and just get started. As you do, capture everything that comes to mind on your topic; you can edit it later.
There’s nothing new under the sun. Much of what you have to say has already been said by others before you. There are only so many ways to move a body, so many uses for props, so many ways to explain the chakras. Recognize, though, that no one has done it exactly the way you have. Focus on what makes you unique, with special attention to the audience you’re writing for. The clearer you can keep your vision of who you’re talking to, the easier it will be to create fresh and useful content, even if you’re covering something seemingly “basic,” like how to do mountain pose.
Both for writing and for imagery, you’ll need to find the right tone and look. Looking at role models can be helpful here. Once you’ve decided on a filter, a writing style, or a standard introduction and closing to your videos, make notes about it so you can deploy it in future episodes of the series.
Where you place your content is up to you. Some or all of these platforms may be especially exciting to you—choose the ones that excite you, instead of forcing yourself to work in a medium that you find difficult.
Social media. Social media is a friendly starting point for many, as you may already be offering pose tutorials or inspirational quotes there. Social media captions now count as writing—you can share something extremely useful in even a few sentences, especially when it’s accompanied by a photo or video. Including such captions also makes your content more accessible to the visually impaired.
Use a common set of hashtags every time you post. One or two of these hashtags should be very specific to your unique content, and the rest can be slightly broader, so you can expand your reach to people who are searching by tag.
DIY writing online. If you enjoy writing, you can post your content to a blog hosted on your own site. Promote it with social media posts that pull a short tidbit out of your longer writing. Each blog post can be one to five paragraphs long. If you’re writing more than that, divvy it up into a series of posts, published a week apart.
Down the road, you can collect your blog posts into an ebook (you can do this on your own using various online outfits, including Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing), or eventually into a print book. Either would provide a passive income stream.
Other sites online. You can pitch your article to an online site that specializes in yoga or movement topics. With many magazines closing or moving away from print and into online spaces, there’s usually not much money to be earned by placing an article. Instead, use the opportunity to expand your profile. Be sure your article contains a rich biography with links for readers to follow you online, and an incentive to visit your site and learn more—possibly in a paid video series.
Free video online. It’s easy to share content on social media—just go live and talk about how to solve a problem with yoga! You can also record and edit videos for YouTube or other online sites where viewers can access them for free. Follow the video advice you’ll find in chapter 7.
DIY premium video online. As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, you can create your own virtual yoga studio housing a library of tutorials and classes. If you are catching seasonal visitors, this is another way to connect with your students once they leave town. You might eventually do some or all of your teaching online, which has the added benefit of being asynchronous: You do not have to appear in person at a set time, and the number of hours you could be teaching per week scales from five to twenty or so, to become infinite.
Established yoga streaming sites. In time, you might contribute classes to a high-profile site that will film them, sell them, and pass you a cut of the proceeds. The field of such sites is constantly changing, but you might look at Yoga Vibes, Alo, Glo, or OmStars. Just as in booking studio classes, there’s a chicken-and-egg conundrum here. It can be tough to develop the follower base to bring you to the notice of the big platforms, which might not want to take a chance on you without a proven track record.
To get out of this vicious cycle, share snippets of your content widely and freely. This doesn’t mean it all needs to be free, but you could cut a one- to three-minute video out of a longer one and offer the short one free. Be sure it contains a useful lesson and leaves viewers wanting to upgrade to the full-length video. The more you focus on genuinely helping people with your content, the more opportunities you’ll have to share it with a wider audience.
Videoconferencing live classes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many studios encouraged their teachers to lead live classes over videoconferencing software. Teachers were paid either by the studio or directly by students. This served as a bridge to keep students connected with their favorite local teachers and, for the studios, to provide value for those paying for the recurring memberships that sustain them. Now that students are familiar with such platforms as a viable way to do yoga, they are an option when teacher and students can’t be together in the same room at the same time. Since teaching live-stream classes requires much more demonstration on the part of the teacher, online instruction is no more (and possibly far less) sustainable than teaching the same schedule in person. Compound these demands with the number of technical issues that could occur—from Internet slowness to security violations—and multiply it by the sheer volume of other people offering the same thing, and you’ll find it’s not an appealing long-term solution. I suggest you prioritize creating asynchronous content like a library of online classes available by rental fee or subscription. This maximizes the potential amount you can earn without putting demands on you to be in a particular place at a particular time with a particular set of tech specs. That way, you can earn money without needing to commit yourself to a schedule.
Strategize Your Content
Since you can branch in so many different directions as you produce useful content, the direction you choose to go will dictate your next steps. If you are excited about one or more ideas, take a moment to jot down what they are, where you’ll place them, who might be able to help you, and what your first next steps are toward fulfilling your vision.
Promote Your Content
Promotion of your content works much like promoting a workshop or any other offering: You’ll schedule a promotion calendar and, when possible, automate it. Naturally, the content you make will go into your newsletter! Here’s some specialized advice about content promotion.
Tease your content. Outline the problem that you’ve identified and tease that you have the solution—and it will be available when readers click here, or viewers press play, or folks order your book. Get your audience excited to learn from you the solution to the problem.
Share and repurpose your content. Most content is evergreen, meaning it is relevant anytime. You can usually take a point or two out of your writing—maybe your first or second paragraph—and use them to promote the bigger piece of writing. Or grab thirty seconds to a minute from a shorter video so viewers have a sense of what they’re committing to if they watch the whole thing.
Sometimes you can take an image or a video you’ve used to make one point and repurpose it to make a new point. Be on the lookout for ways to spin your old content in fresh ways.
Evaluation and Replication
As with your weekly classes and any workshop you teach, you should regularly assess your content to see how it landed with your audience. If you’ve published online, you should have access to statistics in the form of page views or link clicks (you can get these from Google Analytics or other stat-counting programs) or likes and saves and comments on social media.
Assess what your audience found useful and what they found confusing. Then plan more content based on what your audience is telling you they need.
As you gain a platform and own a niche, look for ways to collaborate with others with similar or complementary skills. You might partner with one or more colleagues to run an Instagram challenge, or coauthor some writing—or devise an in-person workshop that plays to your combined strengths. Having the right partner can excite you about your content all over again. When you have the right collaborator, it feels like you do less than half the work for more than twice the fun.
As you continue to create content through the years, be sure to catalog it so your students can connect with your work, both recent and older. This could mean updating your website regularly to keep links fresh or restructuring it so students can find what they are looking for.
For more on creating content and detailed instructions on how to plan, place, and promote your content, please take the Content Workshop at sageyogateachertraining.com.
sponsorships
Once you are generating quality content—even just well-done social media posts—brands may seek you out to offer partnerships and sponsorships. This could be as small as free product in the hopes that you’ll mention it or give a review, or as big as being paid for a post or salaried as a brand ambassador. You will also be offered advice on promoting your social media or guest blog posts. You might find yourself inundated with these; it’s OK to ignore them if they don’t align with your vision for your career.
If you are paid to promote a product on social media—even if the payment is receiving the product itself—you should make that clear in your post with a hashtag like #ad, or #sponsoredpost, whatever the platform requires. But you don’t want to stretch your students’ goodwill thin by constantly shilling to them. When you’re recommending a product simply because you love it, make that clear, too! Both your students and that brand (tag them!) will appreciate your genuine praise.
If a brand invites you to be an ambassador, be clear on what that means. In general, they will expect a certain number of in-store appearances or social media posts each month. While it’s exciting to feel wanted, be sure you believe in the brand and think carefully about whether they are offering you enough to use their product to the exclusion of other comparable products you own. For example, if a clothing company wants you to wear their clothes exclusively, you need to receive enough of the clothes that it won’t be a difficult thing to do.
discounts
Once you are a Yoga Alliance–registered teacher or have a regular class, or both, you might be eligible for discounts at clothing stores like lululemon athletica and Athleta. Ask at the counter, and be prepared to show a business card, give your Yoga Alliance registry number, or demonstrate that you are a regular teacher at a local studio. These discounts are generally meant for you and you alone. The idea is that you will wear the discounted items you buy when you teach. Discounts are not to be used to buy gifts for friends, unless permission is expressly granted. Some companies let affiliates buy gifts before the holidays. Be sure to ask instead of violating the terms of the discount.
You can create your own opportunities as well. If there’s a brand you’d like to have a discount on, it doesn’t hurt to ask! Reach out with enthusiastic praise and see if they have a pro discount or might create one for you. Having statistics about your follower base, like its size or your email newsletter list, your follower count, and so on, will help make your case.
This is exactly the kind of hustle you’ll need to demonstrate if you want to make yoga a full-time job.