Some of the items below contain affiliate links which means we earn a small commission for anything that you purchase (at no extra cost to you of course). Anything you purchase from the links below directly support our site 🙂 

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We often get asked questions like “what should I use to make my website? Or what travel yoga mat do you recommend?” — so we decided to make a list of all our favorite tools, services, and products. 

Who is this list for? Yoga teachers, wellness entrepreneurs, yogis, and travelers. 

If we missed anything or you have further questions, comment below, say hi on social media, or reach out at TheYogaNomads@gmail.com 

 

Yoga Teacher Basics

• Yoga Teacher Training Certificate – Before you can start teaching, you need to complete your 200-hour yoga teacher training course. There are many different types of courses to choose from. In this guide, we walk through choosing the right training for YOU. 

• Yoga Teacher Insurance – Before you start teaching you should be sure to purchase yoga teacher insurance. This protects you in case a student gets injured in your class. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Our favorite is BeYogi which offers the best care and the best price. BeYogi is offering our community $10 off yoga teacher insurance, access the discount here: https://beyogi.com/yoganomads  

• A great yoga playlist – Most people agree that music can make or break a yoga class. It’s not easy to build a good playlist, however, we’ve got you covered (Here’s a vinyasa yoga playlist) 

• Get your taxes in order – As a yoga teacher, you’re most likely considered an “Independent Contractor” in the US. This means filling your taxes is a bit more complicated than normal employees. We published a guide on taxes for yoga teachers and we also recommend a premium product that will likely save you money on your taxes this year.

 

Website stuff

• Website Hosting with Bluehost – All websites need hosting. You can think of hosting as “paying rent” for your website to live on the internet. We use and recommend Bluehost which only costs about $7/month and comes with a free domain name (ie: YourName.com). Only takes 5-10 minutes to sign up and you can install WordPress on your site through Bluehost which saves some time.  

• Content Management System (CMS) – Most yoga teachers don’t know how to code their own website. Instead, we use Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, SquareSpace, Wix, etc. We have always used WordPress and recommend it for yoga teachers.  

• WordPress Theme (Divi by Elegant Themes) – WordPress is free to use, but you need to pick out a “WordPress theme” before you get started. Themes are design templates that make your site look good and uniform throughout. Some themes are free, but we recommend buying a premium theme as they look better and come with support in case you get stuck. Our favorite WordPress theme is Divi by Elegant themes. Here are some website examples that use Divi to get a feel for it.

• Email Marketing Tools – The most effective way to convert casual readers/students into paying customers is through email marketing. Most people think social media is all you need for marketing, but that is simply not true. People aren’t in a “buying mood” while on social media, where as when you connect with people in their inbox, you have a better chance of converting them to customers. Email software makes managing everything really easy. There are two options that we recommend choosing between. 

• • Mailchimp – the most basic email marketing tool and has a free option. Mailchimp is great for Karma businesses, but as soon as you want to take your business seriously you’ll outgrow Mailchimp 🙂 So we only recommend mailchimp to people who aren’t trying to earn an income from their yoga/wellness business. 
  • Convertkit – this is the tool we use and recommend for any yoga teacher who wants to earn an income from their yoga/wellness business. It’s very easy to use and they have great features to help automate your email marketing efforts. Convertkit offers a 14-day free trial and starts at only $29/month after that. 

 

Marketing tools

• Email marketing tools – we use and recommend Convertkit. More details in the section above. 

• Tailwind – a wonderful tool for scheduling pins to go out on Pinterest. A consistent Pinterest strategy is a great way to increase your traffic over time. Currently, about 15% of our traffic comes from Pinterest. One year ago we were seeing less than 1% traffic from Pinterest. Highly recommend leveraging Tailwind + Pinterest 🙂  

• Stripe – free tool that makes it easy to accept payments for your products/services. We use Stripe to accept payments for our online course and it’s how we used to bill our 1×1 coaching clients.  

• Course Cats – A premium WordPress theme designed to make self-hosting an online course as easy as possible. Not cheap but we love it. It’s the theme we use over at CreateBeautifulYogaWebsites.com  

• KeySearch.co – a simple tool for finding long-tail keywords to target. This helps with SEO which is an important strategy for us here at TYN 🙂 

• Vimeo Pro – this is our favorite tool for hosting videos online. All of our online course training videos are hosted with Vimeo Pro. Very reasonable prices, unlike Wistia which is the tool we used to use. Vimeo all the way! 

• Genius links – we use this tool to help with Amazon affiliate revenue around the world. This tool automatically adjusts your amazon affiliate links to reflect the local amazon store for your reader. For example, if someone from the UK reads our article about yoga mats and wants to purchase then Genius links automatically takes them to the Amazon UK store (instead of the Amazon US store). No brainer tool if you’re focused on amazon affiliate income 🙂  

• Mediavine – we use mediavine as our only ad partner on TYN. They get access to our website and sell ads on our behalf. It’s a very simple way to monetize your site. You need a lot of traffic to earn serious income, but it’s a great option for many websites. Reminder: You need at least 25k page views per month to apply for a partnership. 

• Typeform – this is our favorite tool for making surveys. You can design beautiful forms and custom brand them so they look integrated with your offerings. Also possible to create “shopping cart checkout” features when you integrate with stripe. 

• Canva – easy and fast graphic design. We use this tool every week and often daily. No brainer for all online businesses.

• Trello – we use Trello to manage our editorial calendar. It’s a simple tool to keep track of steps in a project. We link the ability for our entire team to see a snapshot of all upcoming content.  

• Slack – An alternative to email for team communication. Some companies can use the free version, as your team scales in size and you use Slack more, you need to pay for use. Well worth the cost. Just don’t keep slack open all day or you’ll be attacked by notifications and never get anything done!

 

Travel tools

• Airbnb – hands down our favorite way to travel is through Airbnb. We like Airbnb for a couple of reasons: 1) we love our own kitchen when traveling, and 2) we can stay in really unique homes which is more fun than standard hotels/hostels. Get $55 off your first stay with Airbnb if you use our signup link. 

• Booking.com – we use Booking.com to find good accommodation options around the world. Although Airbnb is usually our first choice, Booking.com offers many more options and we can find much lower prices. Lots of places offer free cancelations and the ability to pay when you arrive.  

• Travel Insurance – Travel insurance is a great way to protect yourself against health issues or accidents on the road. Not useful for little things like scraps or dentist appointments. However, if something serious happens on the road, it’s great to know your insurance will reimburse all your healthcare costs. We have used both World Nomads and Safety Wing. Both are good options, Safety wing is a bit cheaper, World Nomads has a bit more extensive coverage options. Here’s our review of World Nomads travel insurance. 

• Our food map – the number one reason we travel is to explore food! During our travels in Asia we started to make a shared google map that has links to all our favorite restaurants, food stalls, fruit stands, durian sellers, and more. Over 1,000 people have used it since we created it. This thing is pure gold 🙂  

• Food bloggers – our favorite food bloggers are Mark at Migrationology and Jodi at LegalNomads. Browse the location you’re visiting to get some tips on where the good food is hiding. 

 

Travel gear and planning tools

• Packing lists – Packing lists depend on how long you’re traveling, what climate you’ll be in, and many other factors. That being said, we usually travel with carry-on sized bags. Here is a packing list for men and here’s a packing list for women.  

• Our favorite backpacks – we have tried pretty much every carry-on backpack for traveling. Here’s a list of our top 5.  

• Banking and Credit Cards – for international travel and long term travel in general, it’s important to get your banking and credit cards sorted out. You need a credit card with free international fees as well as an ATM card with no fees. Here’s a guide to help you get a handle on your travel banking.  

• Favorite yoga mats for traveling – no surprise that we usually travel with yoga mats. We’ve tested pretty much all the traveling yoga mats the YOGO is the best. If you’re curious about other options, we put together our top 5 here.  

• Comfy travel clothes – it can be hard to find the right travel clothes. It’s not easy to find clothes that are comfy, practical, and still somewhat stylish.  

• Pre-travel checklist – before we go on adventures, we follow our pre-travel checklist. There are SO many little things to remember such as: call your credit cards, pause your cell phone plan, forward your mail, find someone to water your plants, make an amazon prime order, and more. This guide will help stay organized during a chaotic time.  

• Google flights – this is simply the best way to find flights. If your dates are flexible, google fights help find really good deals. You can also search by location only to find cheap fights that you wouldn’t find otherwise. 

 

Bitcoin and other Miscellaneous tools we love

• Lolli – earn Bitcoin (BTC) back when you shop online. Absolute no brainer. Signup, shop online as usual, earn FREE bitcoin back when you shop at one of their 5,000+ partners. We’ve earned $150+ in the last couple months just for signing up.  

• Cash App – the easiest way to purchase Bitcoin. Cash app works like Venmo where you can send money to your friends. You can also get a debit card connected to your Cash App account. That being said, I only use cash app to purchase Bitcoin. Using our link will give you (and us) $5 in Bitcoin when you signup.  
• Swan Bitcoin – the perfect way to automate your bitcoin investing. Users pick how much bitcoin you want to buy and how often you want to purchase. For example, you can set it up to buy $50 worth of bitcoin every week. In my opinion this is the right way to invest in bitcoin. Just pick a small amount automatically invested each week (even $10/week is better than nothing!). This article explores the best places to buy bitcoin. 

 

Let’s wrap up

Any tools you recommend we check out? We’re always on the lookout for better tools 🙂

Reach out at TheYogaNomads@gmail.com with any suggestions or questions.