*This is part 2 of a 3 part series about your yoga offerings. If you haven’t gone through Part 1 yet, I suggest going back to this blog post to decide on which offering you will focus on. Then in Part 3 we will talk about marketing that specific offering.
Now that you know what offering you’re going to focus on, it’s time to nail down the pricing. We are going to walk through how to price a class series, workshop, private sessions and memberships.
I will also share money mindset resources as we all run into these issues when it comes to pricing. While money is often uncomfortable to talk about, it’s critical to making the best decisions in your business.
Money Mindset Resources
I’m not a money mindset coach by any means but I’ve got some resources for you that have helped me and many others that I’ve worked with:
Jen Sincero wrote You Are A Badass At Making Money and it’s fantastic! Here’s a link to my bookshop.org store that shares proceeds with local bookstores.
Denise Duffield-Thomas has many resources on this topic so I highly recommend checking out her resources: her website, her books, her podcast
**This was also a podcast episode (episode #160. Use the player below if you'd prefer to listen to this message.
Pricing Your Yoga Offering
If you'd prefer to watch me talk through this answer, click the video below ⬇️
General Rules For Pricing Your Yoga Offerings
While there are many factors that go into pricing any offering in business, there are some general guidelines that you can apply to most:
Know the cost to provide the product or service - this includes material/supply cost as well as software cost and your time
Know the market value for the product or service - do research for comparable products and services to get this understanding
Know your niche - the more specialized an offering, the higher the price usually is
Know the project volume - the volume of sales you can realistically expect can help you determine the best product or service for your business and impact pricing
Know your needs - this impacts what you offer more than anything but you need to understand your needs to ensure you’re offering the optimal offerings
Let’s dive into knowing your needs and project volume a bit more.
Your Needs & Project Volume
For example, if you want to make $30,000 per year, let’s look at a few offerings to see how that would work out:
Private Sessions at $100 per hour
Let’s assume you’re taking home 50% of the revenue = $30,000 x 2 = $60,000
$60,000 / 12 = $5,000 per month
$5,000 / $100 = 50 private sessions per month (12 per week)
Class Series at $160 per 6 weeks series
Let’s assume you will run 6, 6-week series throughout the year
$60,000 / 6 = $10,000 per series
$10,000 / $160 = 62 students per series
Membership at $25 a month
$60,000 / $25 = 2,400 members per month
By understanding what you need/want to make in your business as well as how much of a specific offering you would need to sell, you have a more realistic view.
If you read 2,400 members a month and your stomach dropped a bit, then opening up a membership isn’t likely the offering I’d suggest for you right now. However, if you have the dream of running a membership one day you can still work towards that but now you know what types of numbers you’re realistically looking at.
It’s also important to note that the reality is that you will have several offerings throughout the year but if you’re trying to fill all of them at the same time it will confuse your audience and you will burn out.
It’s better to identify one that will be your signature offer and then have some specialty offerings throughout the year. You can also build upon your signature offering over time.
For example, if you ideally want to have a membership but your audience size doesn’t support that at the moment, you could have other offerings like private sessions or class series as you build your audience and slowly increase your membership. Over time you can lessen the amount of other offerings you have available.
Specific Yoga Offering Pricing
Your Hourly Rate / Private Yoga Sessions
The best thing you can do as a yoga teacher trying to figure out what your hourly rate will be for private sessions is to look at massage therapists in the area and get the average hourly rate.
This is still the case for virtual private yoga sessions too. Just because you’re offering something virtually doesn’t mean it has to be less expensive.
If you find that you’re not comfortable with the rate you’re finding, you can always start at the lower end of what you find and slowly increase your prices but please remember that private yoga sessions are higher priced for a reason - they involve a lot of your time and energy.
It’s like getting any type of customized support from any professional, it really needs to be a higher price. Anytime I see a price of anything lower than $60 per hour I immediately suggest that it’s raised and the average price that I see for yoga teachers is $85-$100 per hour.
Yoga Class Series / Workshops Pricing
The best thing you can do when pricing your class series or workshop is to understand your costs which include your hourly rate during teaching time, the rent/building costs, software costs, any materials/supplies you will use. Get a total amount in cost and add 20-50% (this will vary based on the supplies costs and how comfortable you are with the total cost). You will also need to understand the capacity for the class series or workshop.
If you have a physical location you might be limited in the number of students you can have. If you’re teaching virtually, you likely don’t have that limitation technically but you will have a comfort level with how many students you would like to have in this offering.
Take the total number for the series or workshop and divide it by the optimal amount of students you would like in the offering.
Example:
Workshop Total Costs =
Your time - 3 hours = $300
Rent for 3 hours = $100
Handout Printing = $25
TOTAL = $425 + 20% ($85) = $510
Students =
Maximum = 8 people
Workshop Cost Per Student = $510 / 8 = $63.75
Yoga Membership Pricing
Whenever someone asks me about memberships I hesitate a bit and I like to ask more questions about their audience and the type of membership they will be creating.
If your audience is smaller than 10,000 people and your idea is to open a low-priced (meaning under $100) membership, I would recommend that you hold off on launching the membership unless you’re prepared for it to take a while to grow.
But if your goal is to create a higher priced membership and your audience is smaller than 10,000 people, this could absolutely work! I’ve got a great example of this.
When it comes to pricing a membership, there is a wide range of options. I’ve seen memberships from $15 all the way up to $500 per month.
The reality is that pricing memberships is subjective but the more clear you are on the audience and the problem you’re helping them solve, the easier you will have your answer on pricing.
Lower Priced Yoga Membership Pricing Guidance
The best way to go about pricing your membership is to first look at your software or material/supply costs as well as your time and energy invested but also knowing that memberships take time to pay off.
The other component is how specialized the membership content is, NOT how much content is inside but how specialized it is for your niche. There are lots of factors that go into this model and my go-to resource for memberships is The Membership Geeks - they have a podcast and of course a membership as well. Here is a specific article that breaks down pricing your membership.
Typically memberships in the yoga space are $25 - $45 per month with niched yoga memberships between $50 - $85 per month.
Higher Priced Yoga Membership Example
I’ve seen this work well when you have a membership model that will work more like a hybrid between private sessions and class series. An example of this is Samantha Harrison’s Yoga Mystery Box which you can hear about in episode #91 on the podcast.
>> Click here to see Samantha's example in action <<
Overall, when it comes to pricing you want to know a few things:
Your cost involved
Your time involved
The volume needed to hit your desired revenue
If you find that the volume needed to hit your revenue target is higher than your current audience size, it’s possible that you want to consider a different offering until your audience is larger.
Or you can continue to move forward with the understanding that you won’t likely hit your revenue target during the first several launches. It could take a year or two to grow your audience size to the point where you’d like your revenue to be.
Your next step
Price your offering based on the suggestions I’ve shared in this blog post. Work out the math and go for it knowing that you can adjust your prices down the road if needed.
Until next time give yourself permission to name your price and grace along the way. I’ll talk to you soon!
“Overall, when it comes to pricing you want to know a few things: your cost involved, your time involved, and the volume you need to hit your target revenue."
- Amanda McKinney
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