How I make money as a yoga teacher while travelling – sharing how much I made
Last month we travelled with our 3 boys through the UK and Portugal, and I made over $5000 without teaching any yoga classes. Want to know how I make money as a yoga teacher while travelling?
Read on to learn:
- how my business works
- how I make money as a yoga teacher
- how you can build a yoga business that earns you a passive income as well
I did zero work while we were away (other than responding to 5 customer service emails that took me all of about 10 minutes). I occasionally posted photos of our trip to Instagram, but none of it was business related. I had scheduled 3 yoga videos to publish to Youtube while we were away, but in the end I was having too much fun that I didn’t even remember to promote them.
I still made $5790.25.
To be honest, I feel a little bit uncomfortable writing this post. A lot of the content out there that makes income claims like this one, are created purely to try to sell you into a MLM scheme or some overpriced business coaching. I’m not trying to do either of those things.
Despite my discomfort, I will write this post because I want you know it’s possible. You don’t have to teach countless studio classes each week. You can make money as a yoga teacher without burning out. You just have to learn HOW to leverage the internet (and automation) to make an online yoga business that can work for you.
**This post contains affiliate links. That means I earn a small commission if you use one of my links to use a product. Using my link doesn’t cost you any extra and really supports my work – so thank you!**
But first, a few disclaimers about how I make money as a yoga teacher.
This is not a get-rich-quick situation.
It has taken me 8 years to grow my business to the point where it pays me a significant passive income. Did it have to take this long? No, but I’ve only ever worked ten hours or less each week on my business. I’ve done this while raising babies and I’ve bootstrapped everything because I’m stubborn. I do think I could have built it faster if I’d taken the time to learn how. Instead, I’ve just tried all the things, tried to stay focused on helping my audience and kept doing what worked.
It takes work, and you’ll need to be patient.
There’s a whole internet movement that preys on new Mums who don’t want to put their babies in childcare and go back to work. It’s a billion dollar industry that sells women the dream of hardly working while making money on the internet around their babies.
It makes my blood boil to think how many hormonal, sleep-deprived mothers have paid loads of money to “learn how to make 6 figures in 6 weeks” or “bought the starter kit”; only to realise that none of it works. Or worse than that. How many Mums have spent their entire maternity leave working their arses off to build their “team” or follow these programs, only to realise they’re still only making $100 per month and have to go back to work anyway.
Building my online business has taken consistent effort over the last 8 years. I’ve had to get over my own insecurities and learn how to do things I had no clue about. It wasn’t easy. I’ve never “hustled” in my business either. I don’t lose sleep over it. I’ve worked on my business in the pockets of time around babies and toddlers, and now busy school-aged boys. It takes a lot of work and patience, but gosh I’m grateful to the past version of me who started all those years ago. I don’t make millions of dollars but I do make money as a yoga teacher even when I’m not actively working in the business (and that’s worth more to me than anything).
How I make money as a yoga teacher while travelling
If you’re new here (hello and welcome!), I run an online yoga business around motherhood. I create yoga classes and meditations for women who are trying to conceive, during pregnancy and postpartum. My video classes are shared through Youtube and my website, and everything is automated with online tools, so that I don’t have to physically do anything once a sale is made.
How much did I make last month while doing zero physical work
My membership is my largest income source. Memberships are a great way for yoga teachers to earn a passive income because the payments are reoccurring. This means you don’t have to be constantly promoting your work in order to earn money regularly.
Memberships takes the pressure off. (And make teaching yoga way more fun). Currently my members pay $21 Australian dollars per month to access a library of classes for fertility, pregnancy and postpartum. A few of my original members still pay $14 each month and I have a couple of scholarship members on $10.50 each month.
While travelling my membership made $4115.50.
I also sell a variety of yoga products and trainings as one-off purchases in my online shop. These include my two teacher trainings (pregnancy and fertility yoga), my online business course (Presence) and a range of shorter yoga series’.
While travelling shop sales came in at $1167.
Google Adsense
I earn a small amount each month from the ads that Youtube places before and after my videos on Youtube. I have no control over what ads are placed, but given the fact that I earn this money without any extra effort; it feels like a nice bonus.
This amount varies from month to month depending on the number of views my videos get. This month they sent me $407.50
Book Royalties
My book Watering the Flowers; A guide to find healing and hope after losing a baby sells for $14 US on Amazon. I don’t earn much from royalties, but these sales are truly passive. I uploaded the book years ago to Amazon and I don’t do anything else to receive this money. Amazon handles the printing, shipping and customer service.
In September I made $44.82 US and $17.33 EU (approximately $100.25 AU).
How do I make this income passively?
My business makes passive income because I’ve set it up to run with as much automation as possible. This just means that online tools do the work for me. For example, I don’t have to manually send someone the video class they’ve paid for, my email automation does that for me.
Let’s look at all the different parts of my business and how I use automation to make money as a yoga teacher.
How my audience finds me
Fun fact. I don’t use paid advertising and I don’t rely on social media posts to promote my work. My YouTube channel and blog do the marketing work for me. When I write and create videos I choose my keywords carefully. This means that when someone searches for topics like “fertility yoga” or “pregnancy yoga” they’re likely to find me.
So while I was touring the UK with my family, hundreds of google searches were pointing lovely people like you towards my work.
How I sell my work
Once you’ve found my blog or Youtube channel you’ll be invited to download one of the various freebies that I offer. These include fertility and pregnancy yoga guides, as well as teacher training guides. YOU might like to download my passive income guide to get a clear idea of how my business works and how you might structure yours to start earning income passively.
If you sign up to receive one of my freebies you’ll then receive emails from me every 5 days or so with more classes and helpful information. I’ve written these emails over years. Every time I create a new video or write a new post (about one per week) I also add it as an email in my series. I use Active Campaign to host and send all of these automated emails.
I also invite my subscribers to join my membership or sign up for one of my courses in these emails. 90% of my sales and sign ups come from my email list, not from social media or search. I want you to know this because so many “gurus” keep going on about how crucial social media is for online business. If I relied on social media I would have made zero dollars while travelling, because funnily enough watching funny dog videos doesn’t pay all that well.
Okay… but how does it all worK?
What happens when I make a sale
All of my sales come through my WordPress website. I use the WooCommerce plug in to create my shop and Paid Memberships Pro for my membership area and log ins.
Once a sale is made these plugins automatically send my customers what they need to access their classes. It gives them their password and shows them what page of my website they need to go to.
Money is processed either through Paypal or Woo payments (credit card) and I pay a small transaction fee to use both of these tools.
So how much does it cost to run my business?
In the spirit of full disclosure, I think it’s important that we also talk about how much an online business costs to run. Automation tools aren’t free (but they are worth their weight in gold.) I literally wouldn’t be able to make money as a yoga teacher without them.
Website – $50 per month
Active Campaign. – $260 per month
Merchant fees – $257.93
Total – $567.93
I also want to point out that this money was pre-tax, so I still have to pay a percentage as tax.
Is this a typical month for my business?
This amount is on the lower end of how much I usually make each month. When I’m actively working in my business I also get traffic from social media and the new classes I’m sharing on Youtube. This drives more sign ups to my email list (and as a result more sales).
So how can you start making money passively as a yoga teacher?
- Create a series yoga classes or a workshop that you can offer online. (Make sure what you create solves a problem for your students).
- Share free helpful content based around that problem or offering. (For example. If your offering is yoga for anxiety workshop, you could share short practices to help manage anxiety. Or your personal story with anxiety and how yoga helped.)
- Start building an automated email series sharing this free content and engaging with your students/ audience.
- Create a freebie that encourages your students to sign up to your email list. (Hint. It could just be some of your free content packaged together as a mini-course).
- Rinse and repeat. Share your free content. Invite them to grab your freebie. Delight them in your emails. Ask for them to buy your offering.
- Practice patience. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by how much there is to do. Focus on sharing your great work and little by little your business and income will grow.
Have another question about making money as a yoga teacher that I didn’t answer? Leave me a comment below and I’ll be sure to answer. If you’d like to learn more about how my business works and walk through the above steps with me to create your business; join us in Presence.