How to easily create your own online yoga studio

Why you should create your own online studio and how

Overview

In this article, you’ll learn how and why you should start building your own yoga brand and audience to teach online classes and build a sustainable business.

It’s clear that, in this day and age, it’s best to get started online as soon as possible. My own mentor, Marie Forleo, has been saying this for over a decade now. Personally, building my very first business online has always been the best decision I’ve ever made and this is now something I always keep in mind when making important decisions.

Why you should start teaching online now

Take another simple example:

Let’s say you have built that fantastic, raving audience on your favorite social channel. Now is time to monetise with your own product and services – that is unless you just want to promote other companies’ ethical products that you truly, fervently believe in – if that’s enough for you to make a living. But once again you’re not in control here. If it’s your conscious choice, then fair enough. If not, keep reading!

What do you do when you want to talk to your audience about that awesome new offering, service, program or class that you have just released?

Do you really think that publishing a few posts on social media will do it?

Nope. You’ve got to have a proper way to keep communicating consistently with your audience, personally. Social media can only serve as support to reinforce your message and generate traffic but shouldn’t be the foundation if you want sustainable results.

If you are serious about building a business – and I assume you are – you should definitely be able to contact your audience personally. I am not even talking about tracking conversions, AB testing and so forth. If you want to build a customer base – and if you’d like to make a living from your teachings – this is something you should be building.

In other words, you’ve got to become the owner of your audience and data.

So I hope you understand the importance of building your own business professionally by now.

Let’s then dive into the how.

How do you easily create your online studio?

There are many parts you have to take into account here and I’d like to share a few questions that you should definitely ask yourself before making any decision:

1. What kind of offerings would you like to create?

Would you like to simply teach online, live stream classes only? And if so, would you like to offer the replay video with it – for a limited time or lifetime access?

Or maybe you’d like a combo of your online and offline classes?

You might want to offer classes but also workshops on other topics such as yoga alignment, nutrition, or essential oils, depending on your skills and knowledge?

One thing is for sure, if you’re not clear on what you’d like to do, chances are you won’t be able to take the right decisions when it comes to the tools, tech and platforms to use, let alone your positioning, communication, and packaging, which leads us to question number 2…

2. Packaging – how do you want to package your offerings?

Is it a simple pay per class/workshop option? Or do you want to set up a monthly membership to access all your online and/or offline offerings? Maybe it’s a mini-program such as a 21-day yoga challenge…

Whatever is best for you, be super clear on what and how you’d like to package it. It will save you a lot of time, energy, and confusion.

3. What would be your pricing?

Now about pricing. I guess this part is so personal, I don’t need to get into much details. But you definitely have to know if you’re planning to offer drop-in classes and their price. Would you like to offer a ‘pass’, which allows students to buy a bunch of classes for a reduced price, a monthly membership to access to your community content (in that case, make sure you release enough great content per month and be consistent with it). Or a fixed price for a mini-program or a challenge.

Define your offerings and the price that goes with them.

Keep in mind that Wellnest allows you to do any of these possibilities as well as a combination of several of them. So far, I still haven’t found such tool on the market.

4. What tool(s) are you going to use?

Obviously, you might think my point of view is biased here because I am using Wellnest. But I’ll try to give you a good overview of what type of platforms you can find on the market depending on your needs. Having started with Udemy back in the days (in 2014), I think that by now, I have figured one or two things when it comes to choosing the best tech options for your online business!

Let me first tell you that Wellnest has been specifically designed to give you the flexibility to do anything that has been mentioned above – or a combination. That means that you could easily combine online and offline events + mini-courses or membership content, all in the same platform.

Then, it will all depend on the type of offerings you’d like to create. If your only goal is to teach online and offline classes then you can go for one of the high-end options, such as Mind Body Online. They will give you everything you need to manage that part of your business (bookings, payments, timetable, instructors management, etc…)

However, even though they are pretty big and have been on the market for over 10 years, I rarely heard great comments from their users. Is it due to the fact that their tech is slowly being outdated? I don’t know. I never personally used their product, so I can’t tell but I know. many who have been disappointed.

The other option, if you’re planning to offer mini-courses, then a LMS might be more suitable for you. Things like Teachable or Namastream for example. They are great options – premium pricing though – and you’ve got to bear in mind that – because they are a LMS (learning management system), they have been designed to produce programs and courses. They will not give you the opportunity to manage the admin behind your classes (team management, bookings, offline events, timetable, passes and drop-in classes, etc.)

I think that choosing the right tech for you is a very personal process. However, this is not a decision you should take lightly as when you get started with a system, changing or plugging a new one can be way more complicated than getting started from scratch.

I have created a full demo video to show you how I am using Wellnest to create and manage my own online studio. In about 15 minutes, it will give you a great overview of the tool you can work with, how, and what you can do with it. My deepest hope is to help you make the best informed decision possible to build and grow your successful yoga business! 

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Have more questions?

If so, feel free to contact us here. We are happy to help you with this exciting and life-changing process!