Personal trainer certification completed—check!
Motivation to put your certification to work—check!
Innovative ideas for how to make an income as a personal trainer—pending.
You’ve done the hard work to get your certification, and now you’re ready to get to work and start making some money doing what you love.
The first step to starting your personal trainer business is finding your niche. By narrowing your focus, you will be able to design your service offerings to meet your client’s specific needs.
Next, it’s time to get innovative. What are some ways that you can make money as a personal trainer to set you apart from the crowd?
Below we describe five ways you can make money as a certified personal trainer. If you want more information on what your earning potential is as a personal trainer, check out the Ultimate Personal Trainer Salary Guide.
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5 Ways to Diversify Your Income as a Personal Trainer
Exclusive One-on-One Training
Most people imagine personal trainers engaging in one-on-one training, and there is a significant need for trainers who provide this service. You can offer your services as an employee of a gym or as a freelance personal trainer who can visit people’s homes.
From the perspective of business income, however, when a personal trainer depends solely on one-on-one training as their main income source, their potential to grow their business is limited by the number of hours they have in a day to be with clients. When trying to maximize your income with this model, you’re more at risk of personal trainer burnout.
So, how can one-on-one training be best utilized to increase your income? You can offer this service as an “exclusive” service in addition to group training or other income streams. When you brand your one-on-one training sessions as exclusive, limited, and high-value, people will be willing to pay significantly more, especially if they have already taken advantage of your other services and have been satisfied.
Group Training
Group training is a great model to train several people at once in an in-person class format or online as part of a training program.
Clients often seek out this option because they enjoy the opportunity to socialize with other people to create a supportive community and pay less than for one-on-one sessions.
For personal trainers, group training sessions are a great income generator when you enroll many clients at once, but you should establish a minimum enrollment goal to make sure you cover costs and pay yourself.
Keep in mind that, even for group training, you need to make an effort to make a personal connection with everyone in the class. While it may be tempting to take as many people as are interested to maximize your income, you should put a cap on the number of people that can enroll based on your ability to give each person the attention they need to carry out the training responsibly and carefully. Remember, you can always open up another session!
Group training can be carried out in person or on online platforms, including a personalized branded app, Facebook groups, or apps designed for personal trainers.
Online Training
You can use digital tools like apps and meeting platforms (Zoom, Skype, Google Meet) to offer classes to a large group of clients. You can also prerecord classes that people can playback with a fee.
If you choose to offer your services on an app, you have two main options. You can create your own personal training app by hiring an app designer, or you can upload your routines onto an app designed specifically for personal trainers to interact with their clients.
The advantage of using online training platforms is that there is plenty of room for income growth. They are also becoming more and more popular for clients to use, as home workouts become the norm and app access tends to cost less than gym memberships.
Remember that to get people to sign up for online training, you’ll need to get them onto your site or your app to make a purchase. Here are some ideas for how to turn your social media followers into client leads.
Digital Products
It’s time to own it—the most valuable part of your personal training certification lies in the knowledge you bring to the table. When you find the sweet spot between your coaching knowledge and understanding your niche’s needs, you have information and tools that your target audience will be happy to pay for.
Invest time and resources to put your know-how into e-books that describe your unique methodology or that share unique tools and tips. You can also build downloadable workout plans that will help your clients achieve a certain goal.
To make the most out of selling digital products, it’s important to have a website you can be proud of and implement an effective social media strategy to turn your social media followers into leads.
If you’re interested in learning how to turn your social media followers into paying clients, read this article.
Membership Programs
When it comes to leveraging your income, membership models are extremely effective ways to secure your income. The membership model can be integrated with many of the income sources mentioned above, including online and in-person one-on-one and group training, digital product offerings, and app subscriptions.
The difference between a membership model and session-based model is that a membership model helps to secure income from your clients on a monthly basis. When you charge by individual sessions, clients can easily become irregular or they can choose not to pay for a personal training session from one week to another. This makes it difficult to have a steady income and make the most of your time.
Membership models are usually based on a set monthly fee for which paying clients gain access to different services and digital products. You can even create different service levels where the higher paying memberships offer added value, like regular one-on-one sessions, e-book downloads, or personalized training plans.
Are you looking for more ideas on how to maximize your income for your coaching or personal training business? Check out AFPA’s Ultimate Personal Trainer Salary Guide.
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