Considering Various Revenue Streams: Building Business & Revenue Streams

Other Settings & Scenarios

Aside from typical class scenarios, options include:

  • Workshops
  • Series
  • Retreats
  • Conference and festival teaching
  • Teaching at a business, medical facility, preschool or other organization
  • Teacher trainings

More Ideas

Here are my five proven strategies for making money now as a yoga teacher:

  1. Offer a “Yoga Review” to clients
  2. Create a customized yoga plan
  3. Schedule an online “Live” workshop
  4. Create beautifully designed templates
  5. Small group coaching opportunity

I explain all the strategies and give you three easy ways to pitch them in the video. – Alanna Kaivalya Ph.D.

Different Formats Offer Different Opportunities

Linear Learning vs Connection

Traditional courses, online or off, are linear. They’re based on a direct connection between the instructor’s content and the student’s attention. Write this down, memorize this, understand that. Traditional courses scale in a particular way. They scale even better when the instructor appears on video.

Workshops are different. Workshops are about the cohort. The other students. The people you meet, the people you learn from and the people you teach. Workshops involve work, not the compliance inherent in testing and certification… It’s very difficult to run workshops at scale in the real world. The physics of interaction make it awkward. But it turns out that online, a workshop is a powerful way to learn.

A course can be quite effective. Students get a ton of actionable insights… but a course can’t possibly provide the magic of a workshop. And workshops are the future of online learning. That’s because in a workshop, you are able to connect, and connection is at the heart of the economy we live in now. Connection means finding the others. Embracing peer support, giving more than you get, engaging with ideas and with other people. Connection is part of the process of growth. Connecting with possibility, with change and with the generosity of new ideas and new approaches. – Seth Godin

Passive Income

  • Creating ways to earn passive and residual income is a key component of an effective business. In yoga teaching, this is accomplished through video courses and other online options.
  • In the article quoted below, the author notes that maximizing active income is, of course, a smart practice but creating passive income is even better. Best of all, she explains, is residual income.

Models Other Than Exchanging Time for Money

Cultivating outside income is the very smartest thing you can do as a yoga teacher.  Exchanging time for money (how we make money teaching yoga) is the absolute worst business model out there. You can only teach so many classes and charge so much. And if you get injured, you are in serious trouble. Developing outside income will create financial security and stability. – Laura Erdman-Luntz

Privates

A goal for experienced teachers may be to teach private sessions. This requires knowing why students would search out private sessions and for which types you are a good fit.

Empathizing with why people seek out private yoga can help point you to which types of students are your best fit and who you will refer out. Darren Main offers the following list of reasons in The Yogi Entrepreneur:

  • Injuries and Medical Conditions
  • To Refine and Deepen Practice
  • Dislike Group Settings
  • Discuss Issues
  • Developing a Yogic Lifestyle
  • Scheduling Conflicts
  • Money is No Object

For support around teaching Privates, see Art of Teaching.

See Also