Which way does a fitness trainer earn? This is one of the most popular questions among novice trainers. Its popularity is due to the fact that for many people it is the salary indicator that is decisive when choosing a profession. And often, this question flows into the next, a no less important one – what are the main and additional ways of earning in general for a fitness trainer. Today we will talk about the most popular ways to make money, that is, how many different ways a fitness trainer can earn.
Introduction
In the article “How does a fitness trainer earn” I talked about the basic principles of forming value propositions, that is, what a fitness trainer should do in order to make good money. In the article “Why do people visit a fitness club” we talked about the fact that people do not always come to a fitness club in order to improve their physical shape. I also recommend reading these articles. Now, in the study of ways to make money, we will first of all talk about the needs of your target audience, and then we will move on to specific forms of value, that is, from the general concepts given in the previous article, we will move on to specific offers on which a fitness trainer usually earns.
Which way does a fitness trainer earn

So, let’s start with the fact that if you want to make good money, you need to learn how to choose, or rather, determine with which clients you can make money and with which you can’t. That is, your task is not to chase everyone and beg and persuade them to buy your services, but in the course of communication to identify and as quickly as possible forget about those who don’t intend to spend their money. Such a client is not your potential customer. You can offer your services in a very native, and unintrusive way, but insisting on the need to purchase them, means putting pressure on the client, which they don’t like. However, we gradually got to the description of what exactly you can offer your potential clients.
If you want to learn how to create value propositions and sell them successfully, you need to understand how they need to be presented in order for the prospect to be willing to pay for them. A fitness trainer makes money on value propositions, which most often take the following 8 forms: service, product, resource, subscription, resale, mediation, accumulation, and capitalization. Now let’s take a closer look at them.
- Service. Provide some services that you know how to provide well (or better than others) and set a price for them. First of all, this is your personal training. You can also create your own program within the club, gather groups of, say, 10 people, and lead them within a specified period to the result. Help lose weight, help build muscle, help keep in shape, in general, for anything you can help – take a fee.
- Product. You need to create some kind of real, tangible thing or object and assign a price for it that exceeds the cost of production. It can be some kind of information product, such as a book (in the print, electronic or audio version), clothing under its own brand (T-shirts, caps, pants), various branded stationery (pens, notebooks, calendars), jewelry (bracelets, dog tags ) or other items – cups, watches, phone cases and more.
- Resource. Create some value that will be interesting to your target audience and which can be used even by those who are not in your locality, and then monetize it. Most often, your own website, YouTube channel, or an account on social media, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more acts as a profitable resource. The resource is monetized either through advertising or through the sale of your own goods or services.
- Subscription. Create something interesting and useful for your target audience and sell on a consistent basis. Your task is for the same customer to pay for the value you create from month to month. This can be a paid distribution of educational materials by e-mail. This could be paid access to an online body transformation school. The simplest thing is to work with your clients in the club so that they constantly buy your personal training.
- Resale. Buy something at a wholesale price that will interest your target audience and resell it at retail at your own markup. Very often, the most popular form of resale among trainers in a fitness club is sports nutrition. This can also include any product listed in the second paragraph above. But remember that the market for a product should always be analyzed in advance so that your margin does not scare away buyers.
- Mediation. Find something that will interest your target audience, then who sells it, and bring them together by charging a fee. You can charge a fee either from the client to bring him in with the seller, or directly from the seller himself, for bringing him a client. Such a scheme is perfect for those who don’t want to resell on their own, as described in the previous paragraph with the example of sports supplements.
- Advertising. Gather around you or attract the attention of a group of people united by the same needs (for example, to lose weight or build muscle) and make money selling advertising from a third business. You gather people united by the problem of being overweight, then you find a seller of fat burners and offer him to pay you to advertise his fat burners to your audience. You make money from advertising.
- Capitalization. Save or earn a certain amount of money, invest it (buy a share) in someone’s business and receive a set share of the profit, either in the form of a one-time payment once a year, or in the form of monthly deductions to your account. This is a fairly popular scheme of earning money, although not cheap, in which the trainer enters into a share with the owner of the fitness club and begins to share the profits from the business, and it happens that over time he buys out the entire club.
Conclusion
Well, today we have sorted out a rather complex and at the same time interesting topic. Now you know that asking the question “Which way does a fitness trainer earn?”, the answer must be sought first of all in the clients. The trainer’s primary task is to determine which client is solvent. If a person becomes a member of the club in order to show off to friends or colleagues, you will not earn money with him. Look for those who really need the result and sell them what will really move them towards the desired goal. Grateful clients, if not always, then very often become permanent, recommend the trainer to their acquaintances and bring friends to him. Whichever of the eight listed forms of value you choose, you in any case earn directly or indirectly from clients. Hence the conclusion – try to make each client permanent, because this will make your earnings permanent as well.
Felix Palmer – author of the blog crusfit.com
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