How to sell yoga videos online
A playbook for yoga teachers who already have recordings — a Zoom archive, filmed classes, a series on a drive — and want them earning as a paid library. By the end you have an audited catalog, an offer, access rules, a platform shortlist and a launch plan.
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The playbook in eight steps:
- Audit the recordings you have
- Choose what to sell
- Pick one-off access or subscription
- Structure the library
- Set access rules
- Choose the platform against a checklist
- Launch to your audience
- Keep subscribers after month one
Audit what you already have
Start with an inventory, not a platform. List every recording you own — published classes, workshop replays, the live sessions nobody rewatched — with length, style, level and technical quality. Most teachers discover two things: the archive is bigger than they thought, and less of it is sellable than they hoped.
Two filters decide what survives. Rights: commercial music licensed for a free platform is not licensed for your paid library, and students visible on camera need written consent for commercial use — flag every video that fails either test for re-editing, consent collection or the bin. Quality floor: stable framing, audible cueing, accurate titling. The floor is consistency, not cinematography — a paid library is judged by the worst video a new subscriber lands on.
What falls below the floor becomes your re-record list; the topics the audit shows you never filmed become your first publishing calendar. Both lists are assets — the audit turns a pile into a plan.
Choose what to sell
An archive can be packaged four ways, in rising order of commitment. Single classes sold individually suit standalone masterclasses and workshop replays. Series bundle related classes into a finite product — a foundations sequence, a month of mornings — and give first-time buyers a confident purchase. Programs add intent: an ordered path toward something, priced as the outcome rather than the video count. Full library access is the membership: everything, plus whatever you publish next, for a recurring price.
The packaging decision is an audience decision. Strangers buy small first — a single class or short series is their trust-sized purchase — while your existing students, who already trust the teaching, go straight to the library. Most durable yoga businesses sell a short ladder: one free sample, one paid series as the doorway, and membership as the destination. What they avoid is selling everything every way at once, which turns a clean offer into a menu nobody finishes reading.
One-off access or subscription?
One-off sales pay now: a launch converts warm buyers, the revenue arrives in a spike, and each new spike needs a new launch. Subscriptions pay patiently: each month starts from last month's base, and the compounding is the point — but churn works the base in the opposite direction, and a subscription must keep earning its renewal with fresh publishing and real structure.
The selector is your publishing rhythm. A finite, finished body of work sells cleanly as one-off purchases; pretending it is a growing membership invites cancellations when the growth does not come. A library you will keep adding to is subscription-shaped. The hybrid — sell the finite thing outright, run the membership alongside — captures buyers who will never subscribe without weakening the subscription.
On Propel, the supported access modes are subscriptions, one-time purchase, free previews, so all three shapes are buildable — the mechanics are on subscriptions and one-off access.
Structure your library
Selling access to a heap is a one-month business, because subscribers who cannot find the right class cancel. Structure is what they renew for. Organize along the axes students choose by: collections for style and theme, levels that tell a beginner where to start, durations so ten spare minutes finds a ten-minute practice. If your teaching has an intended order, show it as ordered series — the sequence you meant, visible.
Metadata does the quiet selling. Titles that say what the class is and who it is for; a description that mentions props, pace and focus; thumbnails consistent enough that the library reads as one product rather than a feed. Search inside a service finds only the words you typed — an untitled video is a video that does not exist. Structure once, properly, and every video you add afterwards inherits a home.
Set access rules
Access rules are the small print that shapes the student experience, so write them before launch. Decide what is free: a sample class or an open collection is your storefront, and free previews exist to demonstrate the teaching, not to duplicate the membership. Decide what each paid tier includes, in plain words. Decide cancellation behavior — what a member who cancels mid-month keeps, and until when — and put it where students can read it before paying; whether trials or trial-like offers are available on your platform is a question to ask the vendor directly. Then decide devices: where a subscription can be watched is part of what it is worth. On Propel, apps carry your brand on Web, iOS, Android, Apple TV, Android TV.
Platform checklist
Choose the platform last, against the decisions you have now made — a platform is the wrong place to discover your access model is unsupported. Six requirements, each with the question that gets past the demo:
| Requirement | The question that exposes the real answer |
|---|---|
| Access control | Can you run subscriptions, one-off purchases and free previews side by side, and change a video's access later without re-uploading it? |
| Payments | Which methods do students see at checkout, who is the merchant, and what happens to a failed renewal? |
| Branding | Whose name is on the apps, the player and the receipts — yours or the platform's? |
| Apps | Which screens are included in the plan you would actually buy, and which sit behind a higher tier? |
| Data ownership | Are subscriber names, emails and billing relationships yours, exportable at any time? |
| Exit terms | If you leave in two years, what leaves with you — videos, list, subscriptions — and what does leaving cost? |
Weight ownership heaviest. Videos are replaceable; the subscriber relationship is not, and the difference between "your student, your list" and "a customer of the marketplace who watches your content" decides who owns the business in five years. Ask the exit question first — the answer tells you how the vendor thinks about the other five.
Checkout and payments
Checkout is where browsing becomes revenue, and friction here is expensive. Students should pay with what they already use — on Propel: Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay — and reach their first class within minutes of deciding. Which currencies you can charge in is a question to put to any platform, including this one: it decides whether overseas students see a familiar number and who carries the conversion.
Two operational realities to plan rather than discover. Tax: whether VAT or sales tax applies to your digital subscriptions depends on jurisdictions — yours and your students' — and belongs with a professional before launch. Failed payments: renewals fail for mundane card reasons, and involuntary churn quietly outgrows deliberate cancelling if nobody retries or reminds. Ask how your platform handles dunning; the boring answer is worth real money.
Launch to your audience
Launch to the audience you already have — the class register, the mailing list, the students who ask where the recordings live. They are warm, they trust the teaching, and their first-week membership makes the library look inhabited for every stranger who follows.
A minimal sequence that works: an announcement that says what exists and who it is for; a walkthrough that shows the library and names the starting path; a founder offer to the warm list with a real end date; and a last call that keeps the promise by ending. On social, show the product — the library, a class clip, the "start here" path — rather than launch theatre.
Then staff the first week. Login trouble, payment declines and "where do I start" questions all arrive in days one to seven, and fast, kind answers there set the tone of the whole membership. Decide your refund stance before the first request, and honour it evenly.
Keep subscribers after month one
Selling gets a subscriber to month one; the library earns every month after. Retention is mostly rhythm: a sustainable publishing cadence, announced and kept, gives every renewal a reason — two well-made classes a month, reliably, beat a burst of ten and a silent quarter.
Watch the engagement signals and act on them: members who stop watching in week three are telling you the onboarding path ends too soon; a series with high completion is telling you what to film next. Win-back is worth doing gently — a lapsed member who left over money or time responds to a "here is what is new" note months later, and a returning member costs nothing to acquire. Referrals, likewise, are earned quietly: students who practice with you weekly recommend you without a program, if asked at the right moment.
Measure the right numbers
Four numbers describe the health of a paid library, and none of them is follower count. Trial-to-paid or sample-to-paid conversion tells you whether the free doorway leads anywhere. Churn tells you whether the base compounds or leaks — track voluntary and payment-failure churn separately, because they have different fixes. Watch-through tells you whether the teaching lands and where students stop. Revenue per subscriber ties it together and makes pricing changes measurable. Review monthly; single weeks lie.
What the platform costs you belongs in the same review — the cost categories to include are on what the platform costs.
FAQ
How much should I charge for online yoga videos? +
Enough that your costs are covered at your realistic audience size, set by the model you sell — single access, series or membership. The pricing guide in this series compares the models on identical inputs and includes a calculator; the short answer is that the price is a decision you test, not a number you find.
Do I need an LLC or company to sell yoga videos? +
Business structure depends on your country, your liability comfort and your tax situation — one line on a yoga website is not the place to settle it. Ask a qualified accountant or lawyer where you live before launch.
How many videos do I need before launching? +
Fewer than perfectionism says, more than a handful: enough that the price feels fair on day one and a new subscriber can find a clear starting path plus a week of practice. A focused thirty-class library with real structure outsells a sprawling archive — and launching sooner means the publishing rhythm, which is what retains members, starts sooner.
Can I sell live classes the same way? +
Live classes are sold through scheduling and booking tools, which is a different product category. This playbook — and Propel — covers recorded video: publish the recording after the live session ends and it keeps earning in the library. Live delivery itself stays wherever you run it today.