In this blog, we’re going to share five ways you can start making more money from your personal training / online coaching business.
I’m particularly keen to get into this as it’s one of the areas we’re able to bring the most value to the clients we work with. So many Fit-Pros never consider the extent of their earning potential, and instead just stick to offering the same standard services, that they charge for either by the hour or on a monthly basis.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that, at all. However, if you’re serious about heading towards financial freedom, and you want to use your personal training business to get there, then we really do suggest that you spend some time thinking about how you can maximise your earnings, and the different types of income that exist.
First of all, let’s cover the two kinds of income that exist, before sharing our five revenue-generating ideas that you can implement in your business immediately.
The two types of income
- Active income
This is the income that will actively require your time and effort, such as delivering a personal training session or offering bespoke training and nutrition plans.
No matter which way you cut it, you won’t get paid if you don’t wake up each morning and do the thing that your clients are paying you for. - Passive income
This income is earned as a result of setting up a product or system that, once set up, doesn’t require any of your time or effort to maintain. Or at least very little!
People often get excited about passive income, as it can very much feel like “free money”, however, it’s important to remember that passive income is never TRULY passive. You do need to invest the time upfront to make it profitable long-term.
We’ll be sharing some passive income ideas further down this post. 🙂
Our 5 tips for generating more revenue
1. Offer a new service
Our first idea for generating more revenue is simply offering a new service. This is potentially a fairly obvious one, however, there are so many Fit-Pros that haven’t considered or pursued the idea of offering more than just one-to-one personal training, or monthly online coaching. For example, if you currently only offer in-person training sessions, then you could consider launching an online-only option so that you can work with clients that are slightly further afield, as well as building that secondary income stream.
Similarly, if you currently only offer an online option, then you could find that offering a more premium, in-person option is a fruitful endeavour for your business, too. Other ideas to consider would be small group training, online fitness challenges, Skype consultations and so on. There are countless options you can explore in getting more people invested in you as their coach!
2. Start a membership site
Our second idea is something that may appeal to you, although it will take some time getting things set up, as well as the ongoing updates required to maintain its value. Membership sites are an incredibly scalable business model that, if done well and populated with good content, can prove to be very fruitful indeed.
Aside from building the membership site, you would be required to continuously populate it with fresh, new and valuable content, to ensure people continue to pay their subscription and new people are attracted to sign up. This content would be targeted towards your ideal clients (see our last blog post on this topic here) and it would be a much cheaper, more entry-level option for those who perhaps can’t invest, or haven’t yet invested, in your primary services.
The really great thing is that you’d be doing the exact same amount of work whether you had 1 member or 100 members. If your membership is £10/month, and you had 100 people sign up, that’d be a recurring £1,000 you see every single month from doing no more work than when you first started. If things got really big, and you had 1,000 people sign up, to £10/month, then you’d have £10,000 in recurring monthly revenue – still from doing no more work than when you first started!
>> If you’d like to chat with us about building a membership site, we’d be more than happy to arrange a call! <<
3. ebooks, courses and other ‘fixed digital assets’
This idea is a popular one, but potentially not something you’ve considered or invested into yet. A fixed digital asset is something you produce once and keep forever, to either re-use or re-sell. A classic example of this would be an ebook. If you’re able to write a value-packed, in-depth ebook on a particular topic, that is in line with the interests of your audience, you could then sell that on your website for a minimum of £5 – £20, depending on the content, your audience and a few other factors.
But let’s just say that you sell it for £10. Each time that ebook is sold, that’s £10 hitting your bank account for absolutely no more work than it already took you to make the ebook in the first place. If you were to actively promote this ebook, then of course you could expect to see more sales and make more money, however, even if you were to leave it in the background, in an easily accessible place on your website, you could still see some sales trickle through as you grow your audience and establish yourself online.
A real-life example of this would be one of our clients, who has an ebook and a large audience on social media. The ebook is by no means their main product, and nor is it really promoted, however, they still regularly see 10s and 100s of sales each month from that one ebook, which sells at just less than £20 each time. Another popular example of a fixed digital asset would be an online course. These typically require more time and effort to get set up, however, they are also typically much more expensive for the end consumer. We regularly see online courses sell for £100s or £1,000s PER SALE.
4. Affiliate offers
Our fourth revenue-generating idea that you may not have considered before is affiliate offers. Or otherwise known as “Affiliate Marketing”. This is where you sell (or recommend) other people’s products or services to your audience in return for a % commission on each sale. This is a great option for many individuals as it doesn’t require you to have a product, service or even a large audience of your own in order to make money.
A great example of this would be My PT Hub’s own Affiliate Programme. This is open to anyone to join and offers up to 25% commission payout if you successfully refer new users to the platform. This payout would literally be a direct deposit in your PayPal account! In order to make the most of this idea, it’s worth considering offers that will resonate most with your particular audience, and simply checking whether or not there’s a suitable affiliate programme for you to join. This could be for a meal prep service, supplement brand, a particular gym accessory or otherwise. You’d probably be surprised at how many companies have an affiliate programme of some sort.
Bonus Tip: Check the footer of their website or search “[COMPANY NAME] AFFILIATE”. The biggest affiliate programme in the world is actually Amazon.com! In a matter of a few minutes, you can open an Affiliate account on Amazon and literally start selling products on their behalf, in return for a small payout each time someone buys via your link. The majority of affiliate programmes will also have a “Cookie Window” which, without getting too technical, basically means that anyone who clicks your link (usually) has 30 or 45 days to buy the product and you will STILL receive your payout. They don’t need to purchase immediately and they don’t need to go back to the site via your link for the payout to be valid! Whether you’re using affiliate marketing at a large scale or a small scale, this is a super easy and manageable way to generate extra income, every single month.
5. Charge more!
For our final idea, we’re going to wear our “Captain Obvious” hat and simply say “to make more money, you need to increase your prices”. We know it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out, but we also know how common it is for PTs to feel greedy or selfish when the thought of increasing prices crosses their mind.
The truth is, your pricing shouldn’t be based on what you feel comfortable charging, but rather the value you have to offer your clients, and the price they’re willing or able to pay. If you’re the leading expert in women’s weight loss, then you’d be very valuable to women who want to lose weight. As a result, they’d be more than willing to pay that bit extra for your service.
Similarly, if you’re a fitness coach for the rich and famous, then you likely wouldn’t charge just £15 a session, due to you feeling ‘greedy’. These are extreme examples, but regardless of where you’re at, your comfort zone is almost always the first thing to impact your feelings, decisions and behaviour, so the chances are that you already have room to increase your pricing, either now or over the next few months. Consider giving yourself a pay rise! With just a little confidence, it’ll be the easiest money you ever make.
I hope you found some interesting ideas in this article, and I hope it’s lifted the veil on how some of the most successful fitness professionals in our industry are able to generate extra income within their business.
A final takeaway here is that you shouldn’t feel guilty about charging more or establishing multiple revenue streams. All of the ideas above are very doable and very widely accepted as good money earners.
If you’d like to chat further about any of the above, then I’d be more than happy to hop on a call with you: http://bit.ly/FMFreeTrainingCall
Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next one!
Jonah Cockshaw
fitmedia.net
