How much do you charge per yoga class or private client?
How do you come up with the amount when someone requests services from you? Does it feel uncomfortable coming up with a price point for new clients or increasing pricing for long term ones? One thing I see over and over on the yoga teacher Facebook groups or forums I look at, are teachers asking what they should charge for classes, and based on the responses I have seen from fellow teachers, there isn’t a clear answer out there. Here’s the thing - pricing a service is a bit trickier than pricing a product. If you were selling a product you could look at the cost of manufacturing, shipping, markup for profit, and confidently come up with the sale price. With a service, you don’t have some of those tangible things to base your fee off of, so sometimes it can be confusing or uncomfortable labeling your offering with a price. I am constantly seeing teachers undervaluing their services, and to be honest, I undervalued my services for years to my ultimate detriment. I ended up teaching way too many classes a week to bring in my desired income, which led to absolute burnout - all because I was undervaluing (ie: undercharging) my services. If you can relate to this, it’s ok. You can turn it around. Once I figured out how to confidently price my services I increased my fee’s for new and current clients, and didn’t have one contract cancel (and this was during and post pandemic). Here is the biggest piece of advice I can offer that helped me re-think the way I priced my yoga services: price your services based on what you put into them, NOT what the client receives. This can be a big shift in perspective, so, what does that look like?
Lets say you are contacted by a new client who is looking to bring yoga to their employees during lunch hour twice a month. They will say “how much do you charge for a one hour class”. You may think “what is a price that I can offer that the client will feel is fair for one hour of service?” When you think of it that way, $50.00 for an hour of work for example, seems like a great rate - but here is the thing, you are not only working for one hour to provide this service. The client receives a one hour yoga class, but you need to shift the perspective to what is required of you to provide that class.
When you are deciding on your fees per yoga class keep the following in mind:
Total Time Commitment:
Travel time - especially if the location is going to require you to travel for more than half an hour each way. You could potentially be travelling more time than teaching which is pretty inconvenient, but because of the nature of yoga classes, very possible.
Prep time - how much time are you going to spend sequencing your class, making playlists, cleaning props etc. Don’t forget that all of this is part of the job you are being paid to do.
Time spent before and after the class - will you be required to keep track of students arrival or do any clean up of a space after? Most teachers spend time at the very least interacting with students before and after the class, and all of this adds up.
Back End or bookkeeping work - if you are required to do invoicing or any other type of back end work, it should be factored in.
Once you factor all of this in you will likely find the one hour class works out to a few hours of your time per week. Our time is our most valuable commodity, so ensure your fees reflect how much you value yours.
Your Experience and Expertise:
It’s important that you factor in the level of experience you bring to your classes when arriving at a price for your service. If you are a teacher with years of experience and training under your belt, you bring an immense amount of value to your students. Clients are likely coming to you because of your experience, perhaps over a newer teacher, so ensure your pricing reflects that. If you are a newer teacher you may start out charging a slightly lower fee if you are focused on building that experience up, however it’s still important not to undercharge because you’re new. As a new teacher it can be helpful to find a standard fee for classes that still pays you fairly, but leaves you the space to increase it as you continue to grow as a teacher. If you are a teacher with specialized trainings that clients are looking for, this is another value add. Clients won’t be scared off by a higher price point as long as they feel the fee reflects the value they receive. If you feel confident in your offerings, your knowledge, passion, and expertise, then you should feel confident charging appropriately for them.
So, once you look at what your total time commitment is and what you uniquely bring to the classes you are being asked to teach, you can see that we are calculating fees for much more than simply an hour of yoga. I hope when you shift your perspective to see your work from this side, you can feel confident in setting fee’s that feel appropriate for clients and will support your financial needs.
I’ll leave you with this final thought. It’s ok to meet your financial goals while doing work you love, that helps people. Don’t get sucked into the idea that “just helping people is rewarding enough”. You still have bills to pay, and if you are struggling to make ends meet, you will be less able to show up as your best self and provide the value to students they deserve.
If you have questions or need a pep talk before increasing your fee’s, please feel free to comment here, message me on Instagram, or send me an email!