Yahoo News 'How do I monetise this?': a meditation teacher learns how to build an online business
When Lucy Stone worked as a BBC radio journalist, she would often have panic attacks in the bathroom before she went on air. That was, until she started meditating. “I’d say, I’ll be right back, and I’d go and meditate for a few minutes,” she says. “After that I’d feel like I’d come back to who I was. No one knew at the time.”
It’s an approach that has served her well over the years – through a career change, a divorce and, most recently, her mum’s death – and one that she now teaches to others through Meditation Rocks. “For me, meditation is about my health – if I don’t do it, I don’t feel as well,” she says. “Certainly with my mum’s death, it has helped me to put things into perspective, to get some comfort and some sleep.”
Stone started offering guided eight-minute meditations via Facebook Live at 8:08am each morning during lockdown. Meditation Rocks is her third business (she also runs Yogadoo, offering yoga classes to children, and The Hive, a yoga studio in Bath), and she has built up an archive of 70 videos over two months, some of which have been viewed thousands of times. Though they’ve all been free, the momentum has made her consider moving the brand to a dedicated website and launch a membership model.
“Not all of my users want to use Facebook, and I also want control over how Meditation Rocks is presented, and to maybe have room for a blog, events and a shop,” Stone says of the move to a website. “My next step is, how do I monetise this? When you’ve offered a lot of free content, how do you then start charging for it while also growing a community?”
Stone records a guided meditation
Many small businesses feel their operation is too small to warrant a website and will instead rely on social media platforms and Google listings to give them their digital footprint. But such an approach has built in limitations. There’s the fact that customers can’t access information if they’re not on platforms such as Twitter or Instagram, and there is evidence to suggest a growing distrust of content on social media platforms, which can lead people to have less confidence in businesses using them. Covid-19 has encouraged many entrepreneurs to consider setting up websites for the first time, with the domain specialist and website builder GoDaddy seeing a spike in e-commerce interest in particular.
For those who do make the leap, many will find their website becomes the central hub for their brand. Good websites reach new customers, boost confidence and convert browsing into sales (on whatever device the customer is using). They can provide analytics and insight that would never be available in face-to-face retail, helping to inform entrepreneurs’ decisions about how best to meet customer demand. They’re also platform agnostic, meaning users of all or none of the social networking sites can access them. Small businesses using GoDaddy’s website + marketing tool, for example, have reported seeing 17% more customers and some £8,000 in additional revenue within 12 months of going live.
Working with mentor Nadia Narain, Stone has settled on a subscription model that includes daily guided meditations and access to one pre-recorded course per month
Stone has teamed up with GoDaddy and its specialist guides who help businesses get online every day, and is receiving additional support from celebrity yoga teacher Nadia Narain. In her first mentoring session with Narain, there are tears, laughter and thought-provoking questions as the pair discuss Stone’s journey and where she could go from here. “You have to make peace with the part that needs to charge. You can give lots of your energy for free but people also need to invest back into you,” Narain says. “I think you have to find a price that feels authentic – does it align with your worth and experience? And then go for it. It’s not about comparing with anyone else’s number.”
Stone’s GoDaddy guide, Radu, is helping her to build the new website, which she hopes to launch in August. “He and I have been liaising a lot. I’ve sent him some websites I like the look of and I’m browsing through templates to choose which one I like from a user experience.” She has decided to launch with five pages and has tried to write the copy in a friendly, jargon-free way that’s accessible to yoga beginners. That will then be reviewed by GoDaddy from a search engine optimisation (SEO) perspective – to check it will show up well in searches.
“I’ve also been sorting out how the subscription model is going to work and what I’ll do for free,” she says. After her discussion with Narain, she’s decided to price the subscription at £8.08 per week, or £25 a month, to include daily guided meditations (run on the website via Zoom) and access to one pre-recorded course a month, covering topics such as better sleep, taking back control, and grief. She’ll also continue to offer one free class a week via Facebook Live. “I don’t feel I’m big enough yet to stop doing the free stuff entirely,” she says.
There will be classes specifically for children and membership packages for families, as well as the option to purchase courses without subscribing. Having purely relied on word of mouth to date, she’s now looking at using marketing tools to grow her audience, such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and building a newsletter database.
Narain and Stone also discussed developing brand-affiliated products. Narain has created a perfume, designed candles, written books and has released a range of DVDs. She says these projects have evolved naturally. “I’m constantly creating. I never did any of this stuff for money, I did it because I loved it,” she says. But during lockdown, with her yoga classes on pause until she could set up online, she realised these channels actually provide a good, dependable income. “They don’t have to make a lot but they make a little bit that adds up,” she says. “If you think about the products that you like, just make sure they always align with you.”
For Stone, ensuring that her audience feels “seen” while she’s teaching remotely is something that has been on her mind. Narain, who has had up to 180 people in a Zoom yoga class at any one time, says the key for her has been to keep it informal and to mention a few people in every class. “There’s something very personal about that,” she says. “By picking out the small details and honing in on someone, it makes everyone feel that you’re looking at them.”
Stone is optimistic about the future: “I think I’m unusual in the meditation world because I’m just an ordinary person,” she says of her appeal. “I’ve suffered, I’ve had depression, I’ve had burnout at work, I’m now juggling life as a single mum. I’m not someone who floats around in white robes with a gong. Meditation has to fit into my life. I think that’s why people have warmed to me a little bit.”
GoDaddy launched the #OpenWeStand initiative offering a number of free tools, widgets, resources and blogposts at openwestand.org to help small businesses keep their digital doors open while their physical doors are closed. More than 50 companies have joined the cause, including Slack, Salesforce, PayPal, and more
