As a yoga teacher you’re most likely over-worked and underpaid! Many teachers I speak to are running a constant schedule of weekly classes for no increase in rates despite the level of their experience, which in some cases can be 10 years or more.

This has taken the fun out of teaching for a lot of yoga teachers. So how can you get back your time, begin to enjoy teaching again and earn as much, or even more, than you currently are?

The answer is in offering an online yoga course to your students.

Online courses have gained popularity and credibility among entrepreneurs across a range of sectors in the health and fitness space, so much so that a number of software platforms have been developed to help people release a course.

In fact, many of the more high-profile yoga teachers around the world recognize and appreciate the benefit online courses can have for them, their students, and their business overall.

The Benefits

Despite the recognition of most people that getting in exercise or general physical activity such as yoga is essential to good health, many people still struggle to fit in scheduled classes to their daily routine.

That’s why, in spite of best intentions to attend classes, you will also have seen that you cannot escape last minute cancellations from students.

Having an online course available to students for them to go through at their own pace and time is becoming more popular due to the flexibility this provides.

In addition, due to the number of yoga teachers graduating teacher training every year, it is becoming more and more difficult for teachers to differentiate themselves in their local community. Compare this to teaching yoga to people all over the world. An online course allows you to take your course to people everywhere without regard for borders.

The advantage of this is that it opens up your pool of prospective students and suddenly your target audience is multiplied.

By creating a course once that you sell over and over again, you limit the strains on your time as the right systems means you can continue to sell your course on autopilot.

This gives you time for yourself again, and allows you to enjoy teaching at a pace you’re comfortable with.

Creating and Selling a Course

So how do you go about creating a course and successfully selling it?

Well, it starts with identifying your course topic, which will invariably be what you currently teach anyway. The more niche your curriculum based on interests or demographics, the better your course will sell.

Online courses typically sell between $47 to $497, and I’ve seen courses sell for a lot more too. People are willing to pay for the convenience.

So spending time developing an online audience is necessary so that you can scale the numbers up and generate real sales. For example selling a course worth $97 to just 15 people will generate $1,455 in sales. And keep in mind, you don’t have to pay commissions to a studio so the majority of this will be profit. Not bad, eh?

Leverage off your current contacts, work from your Instagram following and an email list, if you have one to develop an initial audience to sell to. If you don’t have an audience yet there are many ways you can build one relatively quickly, and the focus should most likely be Instagram in the first instance.

Make life easy for yourself by choosing teaching software such as Teachable to generate your course on. They do all the heavy lifting and deal with all the ‘tech’ side of things. This means you can focus on your content and on delivering real value for prospective students.

Once you’re ready to launch to your audience, make sure to pay attention to customer service, just as you would if they were in your weekly classes.

Providing excellent customer service once people have bought your course is the gateway to building a roster of international private clients that you can continue your relationship on with to continue to grow your business.

Free Resources

Need help getting started? Check out these free resources:

• An eBook on “How to Create, Market, and Sell your Online Yoga Course”, explaining the process step-by-step (PDF download)
• Yoga Online Course Creators: Yoga Teachers Community (Facebook Group)

Tallat Mahmood is a yoga enthusiast and helps yoga teachers grow their business by creating online courses. Download a free eBook on creating and selling courses as a yoga teacher at Yoga Traffic Academy.