Internet Resources for Yoga Instructors and Studios

It is no longer a "nice to have" for yoga instructors and studios to be on the web and to communicate through electronic mediums with students. Increasingly, students are gravitating to studios and teachers who provide them with up to the minute information on schedule changes, studio news and specials, bios for instructors and details about rates, yoga styles and products sold by the instructors (e.g. t-shirts, massage, private sessions).

Many instructors are intimidated by the time involved, cost and the unknown elements of having a web presence. The good news it that do it is becoming less expensive and much less complicated to build beautiful, informative web sites. Much of this can be done on your own using pre-designed templates that can be customized with your pictures, colors, logo.

Even if you don't design the initial site on your own, they can be very easy to maintain. In fact when I consult with yoga studios and instructors and design their sites, I ALWAYS make sure that my clients are comfortable making their own updates on their new sites. Usually, this can be accomplished with a 1 hour tutorial. You need not be dependent on a web designer!!

Here are some great tools to get you up and on the web in very little time. And if you want more help, feel free to contact me - but I encourage you to give it a try on your own first.

Websites

Most of the easy to use website design companies offer one-stop shopping for getting the name of your website, tools and templates for designing your website, hosting your website and customer service for your website. Here are several that have good reputations and are widely used:

Best pricing options and customer service - Blue Host Web Hosting - $6.95/mo!

Most widely used and good shopping cart options, if you are looking to sell on-line - Go Daddy Custom Web site Design

If you've already got a website, but it's costing you a lot for hosting services, this is a great company to move your website onto. They also provide unlimited storage - Cheap Web Hosting I wouldn't recommend this one if you are brand new to having a website.

Data Backup (music, photos, studio records, documents)

If you don't regularly back up your data on a hard drive stored in a separate location from your computer, I highly recommend using one of these on-line data back up services. Imagine how devastating it would be to have to recreate a year's worth of financial records, redesign brochures, lose pictures, music etc.