Zoom’s impressive hosting capabilities allow you to connect with participants from all corners of the world, fostering a truly global and interconnected yoga community. These days, it’s a no-brainer for teachers looking to share their passion with a broader audience!
In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through every step of the process from how to being teaching online from setting up your virtual studio to promoting and monetizing your classes. By building a large following and offering on-demand online classes, some teachers make an impressive $7,500 a month. The possibilities are endless, and with the right strategies, you too can learn to reap the abundant rewards.
How to Lead a Live Online Zoom Yoga Class
1. Creating a Zoom Account
The first step involves setting up your virtual classroom on Zoom and to do this, you’ll need to set up an account. It’s incredibly easy to do so. Simply head over to zoom.us and click on the “Sign up, it’s free” button at the top right corner.
The Basic package is indeed free, however we recommend upgrading to the Pro plan for just £11.99/month ($14.99USD). This will grant you uninterrupted streaming for up to one hundred participants and remove the forty-minute time limit on group meetings, ensuring a smooth, seamless and uninterrupted experience for your online yoga classes.
2. Scheduling Classes
Once your Zoom account is set up, it’s time to schedule your classes. To do so, simply create a meeting, set the date and time, and send out the meeting link to your students. It’s a good idea to open the Zoom room fifteen minutes before the scheduled start time, giving everyone ample time to join and ensure a smooth start to the class.
3. Share Class Links
You can share the unique link to your scheduled class by email or share it through platforms like WhatsApp or Facebook. This not only allows your students to join the class quickly and easily, but also ensures that you maintain control over who can access your personal Zoom room. Take care to share the class link only, and not your Personal Meeting ID, to avoid any unwelcome surprises!
Preparing Your Virtual Studio
Now that your online classroom is set up, it’s time to prepare your virtual studio.
1. Choose the Right Equipment
The goal is to strike a balance between affordability and quality when selecting equipment. Options range from using a simple smartphone setup to investing in a high-quality webcam and wireless microphone. You should invest, according to your means, in equipment that you know is reliable, that you are familiar with, and that best replicates the desired appearance and sound of your envisioned classroom.
2. Set up the Space
The well-prepared physical space sets the stage for a successful yoga class. Creating the optimal space involves placing your recording device at an appropriate distance from your yoga mat (approximately five paces) and ensuring ample lighting for clear video quality. Get creative with propping up your recording device using items like sneakers, yoga blocks, or a selfie stick to achieve the perfect angle. Lastly, consider the atmosphere or ambience you want to achieve. Will you include candles or decorations or a trail of burning incense in the background, will you instil a sense of peace through minimal clutter and set dressing?
3. Conducting a Successful Zoom Yoga Class
It’s time to focus on delivering the goods: conducting a successful Zoom yoga class. This involves testing your connection and audio before your live class, managing interaction and engagement during class, and adapting your teaching style to an online environment.
4. Test your Connection and Audio
Before launching into your online class, it’s important to test your internet connection and audio to avoid any unexpected issues ahead of time so they don’t cause problems during class.
You can quickly check your connection by running a browser speed test or navigating a few web pages, and to ensure your audio is functioning properly, simply click on the arrow next to the mute icon in Zoom and select “Test Speaker & Microphone” or “Audio Settings.”
5. Managing Interaction and Engagement
Utilize Zoom’s “Spotlight Video” feature to keep your instructional video the focus of the class and use “Gallery View” to observe and provide personalized cues. Outside of the technical, be sure you engage with your students before class to create a safe, welcoming atmosphere and even generate some excitement. It’s good to encourage student to ask questions and participate in conversations.
6. Adapting Teaching Style for Online Classes
Adapting your teaching style for online classes is essential for success. This involves striking a balance between visual demonstration and verbal cueing, ensuring clear instructions and guidance for your students. You might also consider using a Bluetooth or wearable microphone to enhance audio quality and allow for greater freedom of movement during demonstrations.
7. Recording and Reusing Online Yoga Classes
By recording and reusing your online yoga classes you are creating an entire library of content to share with your students, to market yourself with, and also providing a backlog for yourself to review, chart your progress, and refine your teaching skills.
8. Recording Classes on Zoom
Recording your classes is an invaluable resource that allows you to review your teaching and provide classes to students who couldn’t attend the live session. To do so, go to your “Meeting Settings” and select the “Recording” tab to begin recording. Ensure that the “Local Recording” option is toggled on, and you’re ready to go!
9. Repurposing Recorded Classes
Repurposing your recorded classes is a fantastic way to maximise the value of your time and effort, to reach a wider audience and build your personal brand. Recorded classes can used for promotional purposes, shared across social media and even sold as a product. You can even get creative through editing the video, adding music, text explanations to create a fresh experience for existing and potential students.
Monetizing Your Classes
1. Pricing Classes
When it comes to pricing your online yoga classes, there are several pricing models to consider. Subscription video on demand (SVOD), pay-per-view, and pay-per-class are all viable options, depending on your target audience and the type of experience you wish to offer.
Be sure to consider your costs and the value you provide when determining your pricing, and don’t be afraid to get creative with membership options, class packages, or promotional discounts.
2. Collecting Payments
To collect payments for your online yoga classes, you can utilize reliable payment processing services such as PayPal, Stripe, or Square. These platforms offer secure and efficient payment processing, making it easy for your students to pay for your classes and for you to manage your income.
Additionally, some yoga management software solutions, such as Momoyoga and Mindbody, offer integrated payment processing, allowing you to manage bookings and payments all in one place.
Promoting Your Online Yoga Classes
1. Social Media Promotion
Leveraging social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or even starting a YouTube channel is crucial for promoting your online yoga classes. Share engaging content, including class highlights, testimonials, and behind-the-scenes glimpses, to showcase your unique teaching style and connect with your audience. To create an authentic online presence and to foster a sense of community, be sure to interact with your followers, respond to comments, and engage in relevant conversations.
2. Email Marketing
Email marketing is another effective strategy to attract new customers to your classes and convert existing subscribers into loyal students. Build an email list by offering valuable free content, such as a downloadable PDF guide or a video tutorial, in exchange for your subscribers’ email addresses. Craft engaging emails that provide helpful insights, share class updates, and showcase your unique teaching style.
3. Collaborating with Other Yoga Instructors
Collaborating with other yoga instructors is a powerful way to expand your network, share ideas, and reach a wider audience. Co-teaching classes, creating online yoga courses exchanging insights, providing feedback to one another, and developing joint projects such as workshops, retreats and online courses, are all sure-fire ways to enhance your expertise, enrich respective professional growth and to create a diverse learning experience for your students.
Summary
Teaching live online Zoom yoga classes is a rewarding and exciting journey that can help you reach new heights in your career. There are, of course, many checkboxes and to-do lists available out there to anybody embarking in any career, but the most significant component has to be your own relationship to the process.
As with all worthwhile journeys, the path is rarely straightforward, and it requires you to inject your own personality, figure out your own rhythm and ascertain how to do things in your own way and true to your own style. We hope this guide can be helpful to you setting out. Our last bit of instruction is perhaps the most important: to go forward with no small measure of discipline, determination, perseverance and – last but not least – a fully-embodied joy and passion. Namaste!
