Yoga teachers provide a valuable service. We teach people how to inhabit their bodies with greater awareness and ease. Often, the most effective way to instruct our clients is through private lessons. In one-on-one sessions, students can easily communicate what’s really going on in their bodies in a safe atmosphere.
But how do we put a price on this service that will both attract potential students and make it worthwhile financially? If you have a heart for private lessons, you might consider a few of these ideas.
Determine a Base Rate
A base rate is the breakdown of dollars per hour. To determine a base rate, begin to assess a few factors such as your experience, education, and areas of speciality. There is a certain amount of play within these items–some teachers have more education, others more experience.
Aside from these factors, your reputation as a teacher often speaks into the pricing. If you’re building a public clientele and breaking into the scene, then you may want to start with a lower base rate. Established teachers can often ask for more money per hour.
If you offer privates at a certain price and you’re not getting any bites, then consider lowering your price point. If you have a speciality skill and feel strongly about what it is worth, then stand firm with your pricing.
A Lower Price Point
Most of us have spent time traveling to a public class to earn much less than the standard $75-$100 per hour fee for private lessons. For many aspiring yoga students, $75+ per hour is extravagant. Lowering the price point attracts more clients to private lessons; they quickly realize the benefits of these personalized sessions, and you earn a steady stream of income.
I have a home studio, so I offer private lessons at $25 per hour. Now, before you shriek in terror, consider that I have eliminated my travel time, fuel expenses and studio overhead. Not to mention I can be practicing, folding laundry, blogging, or prepping for the lesson until the minute my client shows up.
From this base rate at my home studio, I calculate how much private lessons would be at other locations. For example, if someone lives 10 miles away and requests a session at their home, I would start at $25 per hour and add about 40 minutes of round trip travel time. For longer distances, I would factor in the cost of fuel.
Here’s the math—remember proportions in algebra??
=$25(base rate) + calculated travel time ($25/60min=x/40 min of travel time)
=$25 + ($25/60*40=x)
=$25+$17
=$42 for 60 minutes
Or based on a $25 base rate, you could add about $5 dollars for every 15 minutes of travel time. You can be flexible and round to $40 or $45 using any additional location/time/relationship factors that may come into play.
Since I have lowered my price point, I have attracted many more private clients who then recommended me to their friends. The bottom line is, I’d rather be teaching more often for a little less money per session than not teaching at all.
Offer a Lower Price Point for a Limited Time
If you are not comfortable with permanently setting a lower rate or if you have regular clients at a higher price point, offer sessions for a limited time at a discounted rate to generate more interest in private lessons.
Present Private Lessons As An Intro To Home Practice
Here’s where you amplify the benefits of private lessons. Provide your students with home practice plans so they can assimilate the lesson information from your session into a personal practice. This dramatically increases the value of the private session. Their investment teaches them to practice yoga whenever and wherever they choose, and that’s huge!
I email my students a 30 minute home practice plan after our session. It is written simply and echoes the points we covered in the class. You do not have to go into great detail about every posture — it usually takes me about 2 minutes to compose and send. Sometimes I will lend or recommend books with practice sequences for them to work on.
Teachers often ask , “what is the proper balance between supporting my clients’ home practices and maintaining a steady clientele?” or “how do I not teach myself out of a job?” I personally feel this is a flawed way of looking at the scenario. In private sessions, you address specific concerns without overloading students with too much information. A significant portion of the time may be spent in conversation — learning through listening.
Home practice gives students a place to integrate the new information in their minds throughout their bodies. Clients may come steadily for months/years or for just one or two sessions; when they realize that your priority is their growth then their trust deepens and they are eager to support and recommend your services.
As a teacher, you use your experience and knowledge to address what the student needs. If someone comes to me and wants to learn Handstand, but they haven’t yet made friends with Tadasana, then I don’t teach Handstand until I see considerable progress in their foundational poses. So in a sense, I teach what they need and not what they had in mind. Some people appreciate this and keep coming back. Others do not. You can’t control that — you have to let go of a tendency to grasp on to your students.
Trust your intention as a teacher.
Bartering
This is a great way to hone your private teaching skills and obtain services that you need or want. Trade yoga lessons for other services such as massage, child care, hair care, etc. You can cross promote with your trade client — my massage therapist and I recommend each other to our clients and on social media.
Use Technology
Always send your clients reminders. Google Calendar has an appointment setting that books the session, places the date in your client’s Google Calendar, and sends reminders to them (and you!). It is professional and will help reduce no-shows.
For more tips about teaching private lessons, read these Teachasana pieces on Practical Aspects and Building a Client Base.
What are your pricing strategies for private sessions? How do you get more students in the door?
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Wendy Davis is a wife, mom and yoga teacher living in Nashville, TN. Homemaking is her priority — in her house and in her body.
When not practicing or teaching yoga, you can find her chasing her raucous boys, cooking or blogging at Tula Flow.
I think you’re offering great advice here, and I love your ideas about private sessions and home practice supporting one another.
I’m going to be a contrarian about your pricing, though! I see how you came to your $25 base rate, but you have to also see this from the perspective of teachers who ARE bringing in $75 (or more). I see you’re in Nashville, and I’m not sure what the rates are like for group classes, but here in the DC area, a fair wage for yoga teachers is about $50/hr. If I were to teach a private session at $25/hr, I would be cutting my own wage in half! Why would I want to do that? A private class is a specialty option, it costs more to a student, and it should provide more income to the teacher because it takes specialized knowledge, preparation, etc.
By teaching out of a home studio, I think it’s fair to offer small a discount, but charging only 1/4 the price of other teachers in the area is undercutting. Setting prices that low drives prices down for everyone, and I think we can all agree that it is hard enough as it is to get paid fairly for teaching yoga!
I think this is a really important discussion to have as a teaching community. My super awesome alter-ego is a bellydancer, and establishing rates is something that we are ALWAYS working on as a community, so that all our hard work, training, and talent is valued by our students and audience and so that we are able to support ourselves by doing what we love.
Thanks for reading the article and you pose a fair question! If you are satisfied with your current pay rate and number of clients, then I wouldn’t lower pricing. There is simply no need. If you are trying to break into teaching privates, then I think you have to offer an incentive for people to give you a go.
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Price points also depend on what the students are willing and able to pay. Students are used to paying about $10-$15 per class. From their perspective, the jump from $15 to $75 is astronomical! If we offer privates at $75 per hour and have few or no regular clients, then our price point is speaking loudly.
The intention is not to drive down prices, but to find prices that are appealing to students and also financially worthwhile to teachers. And yes, this is dependent on location and the condition of the area’s yoga climate. Is that a new phrase?
The $25 per hour rate in is to encourage people to come to my home studio. Personally, I like to be home more than in the car. When I travel to teach a private, the cost is around $45-$50 for 60 minutes or $55-$60 for 90 minutes. So, yes less than the going rate, but not a severe reduction.
Teachers that have a steady clients at a higher price points have usually spent a great amount of time honing their skill and connection with students. Students are going to them for specific reasons and are probably not going to be swayed to another teacher with a lower price. For example (although not very scientific), I love my hair stylist—her reasonable prices and reputation brought me into her salon. And although there are others in the area that offer the same services for cheaper, I keep going back because I have a connection with her. And she rocks it.
Teaching private sessions is my favorite way to teach. It’s a very different approach than public classes and takes time to cultivate. In order to refine these skills, we have to have clients to work with. This was a way that I found to make that happen.
Thanks for your feedback!
i agree with the comment above about pricing. this is a very low price point…when one begins to consider how costly teacher trainings ($3000+) or the cost of attending workshops to continue education or how strenuous teaching yoga can be on the body—it is important to consider these factors.
as yoga teachers, we have to put greater value in ourselves. society has been cheapening yoga by putting it in the gym where monthly fees are $30 or free classes held by retail stores or all the groupon deals—receiving private lessons in most activities are more expensive than group lessons so why wouldn’t that transfer into privately teaching yoga?? the jump from 15-75 isn’t astronomical, it is a reality. i think private yoga sessions are a luxury –how else are we supposed to do this and pay the bills????
Thankyou Wendy this article was very usefull to me as in my country peopl are not ready yet to pay much for private sessions.
but the ideas you shared hera make me think about some good strategies to start with private work!
I loved this article! Thank you so much for taking the time to write it. You are doing what you love and making yoga accessible to normal people. I teach as well, and I have seen group classes going for the same price as your private! I think yoga has become so commercialized and yoga is the last thing in the world that should be expensive. As for yoga being ” cheapened” by gyms, I think that it is wonderful to bring yoga to people who wouldn’t normally try it because of how astronomical unlimited monthly yoga fees are.