There’s never been a better time to sell yoga memberships online.
Trends show that demand for online yoga and fitness content is growing. And, we’re seeing creators that teach yoga online earn more money while increasing their quality of life and total reach.
Better still:
Membership platforms — like Uscreen — make it easier than ever to build, grow, and promote your platform than ever before.
If you’re looking for a way to take your online yoga business to new levels of income and flexibility, read on to find out more.
Wait, Can Selling Yoga Memberships Online Really Work?
Lots of people who teach yoga online are on the fence about the potential of memberships. And, trust me, I get it. It’s more common to stick to “traditional” online monetization methods like:
- Sponsorships
- Ad revenue
- Retreats and workshops
- Private lessons
- Physical products (yoga mats, etc.)
So, it can feel like they’re the safer and more conventional options to choose from. But the truth is that it’s not an all-or-nothing game. You can do both.
In fact:
Memberships are powerful because they provide the financial stability you can rely on. Those recurring monthly membership payments compound quickly, and are more likely to stick around than one-off brand deals. So, you’re much more in control.
That means you can be pickier with the brand deals you accept. Have more money to invest in your (online or offline) yoga studio. Pick better locations for retreats. Or, even just employ people to help you consistently.
That is how yoga instructors the world over are using membership models to transform their businesses.
Take Collective Kula for example. Their yoga membership currently brings in $20,000 a month and has grown 36% over the last six months.
I’ll talk more about them later (click here to jump ahead). But, for now, let’s look at how you can start to sell your yoga memberships.
How To Sell Yoga Memberships In 2024
1: Clearly define your target audience and “true fans”
If you’re already creating yoga videos, you probably have a healthy audience that interacts with your content. Most likely on YouTube or Instagram or both.
Within that audience there will be a few different types of viewers:
- Engaged fans: people who watch your content occasionally and throw in the odd interaction
- Advocate fans: people who actively follow your content and journey, and will buy the occasional product or service from you
- True fans: the people who want to engage with and support you, no matter what the product or service is
Your goal isn’t to try and sell memberships to all of the fans on this list. Instead, you want to focus on creating a product for the true fans.
What you’ll need to figure out is:
- Who are your true fans? (If helpful: what are their demographics? What do they like about your yoga practice?)
- What service are they looking for? (if helpful: are they looking for access to a community? Do they just want online classes?
A great example of this comes from Yoga With Adriene. The branding and mission statement for their online yoga studio is about connecting as many people as possible through online yoga classes.
When your brand is built to appeal to everyone it can be a struggle to figure out who to target with your memberships. So, they looked to find who their true fans were, and built Find What Feels Good (FWFG) on what they were craving:
- Connection
- Community
- Access to coaches
The focus of FWFG is to extend their mission of bringing people together, but by providing a service that puts their online community and exclusive content in one easy-to-access place.
Even though the core product is still technically yoga, the value here is driven by curated connection, content, and community access.
2: Build an attractive offer that caters to them
Once you know who your target audience is, you need to build an offer that will attract them. This is the “value add” of your online yoga business, distilled down into an offer.
When building your offer thing about:
- What does a member get for their money?
- What will keep them coming back to your membership month after month?
These are big questions so it’s okay to take some time to figure this out. And, there are lots of possible answers. You’ll need to find your unique blend for your audience.
What we often see at the core of successful yoga memberships is a combination of:
- Yoga community: a place to connect with like-minded people
- Yoga apps: a downloadable app where members can access your content on-the-go
- Exclusive content: yoga videos they can’t access elsewhere
- Organized content: a content library that displays content (both free and exclusive) in an intuitive and easy-to-manage way
- Live classes: using your platform’s live stream feature to connect with your audience in real-time
You don’t need to have all of these to run a successful yoga membership. Just a combination that feels right for your business! And the more you can niche down and lean into your brand, the better.
Yoga For BJJ does this really well.
They’re aware that yoga and martial arts can be seen at opposite ends of the spectrum. Their true fans would rather be in the dojo than the yoga studio.
So they’ve positioned their membership as being different from yoga. You get all the benefits of a regular yoga practice, without ever having to step foot into the physical studio.
Their offer really focuses on:
- 10-minute yoga classes
- That are well organized in their video library
- With curated playlists for specific BJJ outcomes
- With yoga apps so you can access them anywhere
The value for your target market might be completely different. Maybe they want 60-minute long yoga flows with lots of meditation. Maybe they want yoga for weight management. Maybe they want an all-in-one option where everything you’ve ever taught is in one place.
That’s what you need to find out!
When you do, it’s time to look at pricing…
3: Price your offer in a way that adds value (to you and the customer)
Pricing is a big part of selling yoga memberships.
You need to set a price that is attractive and affordable to your potential customers, but that values (and sustains) the high-quality service and content you’re delivering.
The truth is:
Most creators set their prices too low.
It makes sense that they feel this way, because lower prices feel like they’re less likely to be rejected than higher prices. But this comes at the cost of sustainability. Luckily, I can help you avoid that from the get-go!
Uscreen’s research into pricing shows that yoga memberships can charge anywhere between $15 and $30 a month for access.
But we’re also seeing a trend of yoga creators — like Yoga With Adriene you saw before — really pushing the fold and increasing their monthly and annual membership prices. You can read more about how they did that in our guide on increasing membership prices.
Coming back to your yoga membership, though…
We’ve also built a calculator tool that will educate you all about pricing strategy, and show you what you can realistically (and sustainably) charge based on where your business is right now. You can access it here:
Use our free tool to pinpoint your ideal membership price in just 3 steps, leveraging a decade of data.
4: Choose a membership platform that makes selling easy
One of the biggest questions to answer is: where are you going to sell your yoga memberships?
There are lots of membership site platforms out there for you to choose from. You need to find one with features that fit your needs and support the type of online yoga business you want to run.
So, allow me to introduce you to Uscreen…
Uscreen is an all-in-one membership platform built for video creators. And, we’re one of the only membership platforms with a proven track record with yoga creators.
Everyone you’ve seen in this article so far is a Uscreen user, and they’re just a handful of the creators we’ve helped earn $150 million+ a year over the last 6 years.
With Uscreen, you can easily sell yoga memberships by building a yoga website that includes on-demand video, a customizable library, live streaming, and a community space. This can be done on your branded membership site and mobile and TV apps.
Check out our case studies to see how creators use our platform to transform their businesses. And, you can request a demo of Uscreen by clicking the link below:
Build, launch and manage your membership, all in one place.
5: Show off your community and why it’s worth it
At the core of any good membership is a strong community. This is especially true for yoga memberships; this is a niche where lots of people actively seek connection.
In fact:
Even though your content and your offer will be what draws people in, it’s your community that will keep them coming back for more.
I think a great example of this comes from the fitness creators over at M/BODY. The live chat function of their live streams is a big reason people attend their sessions because it allows them to build relationships.
With the live chat feature, members can connect directly with M/BODY’s founder, Marnie, and each other. They come early to talk and hang out afterwards, while Marnie’s team can answer questions about workout modifications in real time.
This increases customer satisfaction and retention, and brings the M/BODY community closer together.
The impact of this is massive. Not only does it help you keep people coming back, but it also creates evangelists and advocates who sell your yoga membership for you.
Your community also becomes a great sales tool for you to sell more memberships as well. All of the content and interaction can help you create content to promote and boost sales. This could come in the form of:
- Showcasing your member area
- Sharing quotes and testimonials
- Promoting community challenges
- Spotlighting customer results
I truly believe that wellness professionals learning to sell access to community is going to be the most transformative trend in the yoga industry over the next few years! And, now is the best time to get started.
How Collective Kula Earns $20k/Month Selling Yoga Memberships
Collective Kula started out as a YouTube passion project for their founder Nicole Wilde. She had all of the gear to start creating content from her bachelor’s in film and photography and decided to pour her knowledge into her passion for yoga.
Her business model started out by focusing on traditional monetization models, with a heavy focus on in-person retreats. But, the feedback from her audience showed a desire for something different:
The YouTube thing turned into something much bigger than I thought it would be. And eventually, the community that began to form around our YouTube channel started asking, ‘What’s next? How can we practice with you more regularly?’ That’s when I realized it was time to transition to a membership model. I promised to deliver specific content, like uploading new classes three times a week.
She founded Collective Kula in 2020 as a way to bring a community focus to her memberships, and provide that structured yoga practice her audience was looking for.
Today, Collective Kula is a vibrant community of 640+ dedicated yogis and generates a monthly revenue of $20k+.
Nicole chose Uscreen as the platform for Collective Kula because of its comprehensive features tailored to support video content management, live streaming, and community engagement.
Her strategy to sell yoga memberships was simple, starting with an uncomplicated membership model, offering monthly or annual access to all content. This straightforward approach prevented any confusion for new members and let Nicole fine-tune her services.
I’ve been with Uscreen for a couple of years now, and one thing I truly value is how each meeting involves upgrading features and getting feedback about what I’d like to see next on the platform. This level of continually expanding and listening to your customers, seeking to make it better for people who are using Uscreen is amazing.
If you want to learn more about Nicole and Collective Kula’s full journey, you can read the full case study below:
Case Study: How Collective Kula Makes Over $20k Per Month
Wrapping This Up…
Now is the best time to start selling yoga memberships.
As Collective Kula, Yoga with Adrienne, and Yoga for BJJ have shown, recurring memberships can work for a wide range of yoga instructors, practices, and niches.
And, if you want a platform that can help you start, scale, and grow your online yoga memberships, you can request a demo of Uscreen below:
Build, launch and manage your membership, all in one place.
