So you’ve decided to become an online fitness instructor. Congrats! You’ve stumbled upon a pretty cool career path, especially if you can teach others how to achieve fitness goals, or if you’re just looking to make some extra money on the side. You’ll need to learn a few key things, though, if you want to make the most of your new found status.
Create a Blog
One of the first things you should do if you want to make money from your online fitness program is to create a blog. When possible, create a fitness blog for your website. If not, create a blog for the purpose of monetizing it. Think of the major corporations that offer fitness programs. Many of them have a website where they promote their programs and books. If you check their blogs, you’ll often find that they discuss fitness, nutrition, and health-related topics. All of this content is designed to bring in readers and establish brand recognition.
Blogs are pretty self-explanatory. You’ll need to set up a WordPress account, or another blogging platform, and then populate it with content. Don’t worry, anyone with a working brain can do this. Creating a blog takes less than an hour, and then you’re good to go. Just remember your blog’s content is what will attract, and then retain, your audience. As with any business, you want to create content that is both relevant and interesting to your target audience. If you want to be successful with your fitness blog, you need to establish yourself as an authoritative voice in your industry. The best way to do this is to develop high-quality content that is both relevant and interesting to your target audience. Ideally, you’ll want to create content that is both entertaining and educational. If you’ve ever heard the saying ‘content is king,’ well, now you know why.
Monetizing Your Blog
Since you’ve decided to monetize your blog, you’ll need to choose a monetization strategy. There are several options for this, but you’ll want to experiment with at least two to see what works best for you. Once you’ve established your blog, look into the performance of your different monetization strategies and see which one attracts the most readers. Monetizing your blog isn’t as hard as you’d think. There are plenty of options available to you, from offering paid courses to providing affiliate marketing opportunities to creating a membership site. Just make sure you choose a monetization strategy that is both flexible and easy for you to manage.
Launch A Product
If you’re looking to make even more money from your online fitness program, you can launch a product. There are several different products you could launch, ranging from an ebook to a checklist to a software product that helps you run an online fitness program. Just keep in mind that creating a product takes a lot of work. You’ll need to do extensive market research, come up with a solid value proposition, and then create a marketing plan. Don’t expect to be able to get rich from product creation alone, though. You’ll need to learn how to promote products effectively if you want to make any money at all.
Affiliate Marketing
Even if you don’t want to create a product, or if you’ve established your blog with the intent of just monetizing it, you can still choose affiliate marketing as your primary monetization strategy. This is where you earn a commission when a customer clicks a monetized link, or buys a product that’s promoted on your blog. Depending on the size of your audience, you could seriously consider pursuing affiliate marketing as a way to make money from your blog. There are plenty of opportunities available to you, from showing ads to videos, all the way through to creating a completely affiliate-driven blog. Just make sure you do your research before you get started, as not all affiliate marketers are created equal. Some will take advantage of your blog’s audience, while others will just try to make a quick buck.
Sell And Re-market Products
You can also choose to just sell and re-market products. Some businesses, like Fitbit and Bodybuilding.com, promote and sell fitness products and supplements directly to consumers. You could think of this as a form of ‘showrooming,’ where consumers browse products in a physical store, but then buy them online. Since these companies have an online component to their business, they often get bombarded with online shoppers who want to try out their products. If you’ve got a small business with a physical storefront, consider whether or not you want to take this route. Just remember, though, that it is quite a bit of work to get all of this set up. You’ll need to work with a product vendor, get approvals, set pricing, and then get the word out about your online store. You may also want to consider creating a shopify store, which is totally free, and then just selling and re-marketing products through it. No need to set up billing, or worry about dealing with shipping. You could also use Shopify’s ‘drop shipper’ option, which will take the stress out of shipping, and allow you to just focus on growing your business.
Courses & Group Training
If you’re looking to create a revenue stream from your blog, you can also choose to create online courses. Think of all the successful fitness bloggers and how many courses they’ve created. This is a fantastic way to make money from your blog without having to worry about monetizing every single blog post. With an online course, you’ll need to provide content for your students to consume. Whether that’s a PDF guide, or a series of FAQs or reviews. Just make sure you learn how to do effective SEO for your courses. This will help potential students find your course, and then subsequently buy your products, once they’re immersed in your content.
Group training is kind of like offering an online course, but instead of focusing on an individual, you’ll be teaching a group of people. Think of all the fitness studios that offer group training sessions. Many of them are geared towards weight loss, but many others are designed for sports performance. If you’re looking to make money from your blog, you can create a series of group training sessions, or offer private group training sessions. Just make sure you register with your local business licensing agency, as well as the state certification agency, if you are going to be offering group fitness classes. There are plenty of ways to make money from your blog.
Selling And Promoting Your Own Products
If you’ve got a product or service that you believe would be relevant and valuable to your target audience, you can choose to sell and promote it yourself, without having to go through an affiliate marketing network. This is called ‘product brokering’, and several companies like Jovani and ClickBank specialize in this area. If you’ve got a product or service that you can promote and that fits well with your target audience, you may want to consider pursuing this path. It can be a little bit tricky to get started, but as long as you’re willing to learn and develop strategies, you’ll be able to succeed.
Start An Online Store
An online store, or e-commerce store, is where you’ll sell your products to consumers, either directly, or through an affiliate marketing network. You’ll need to decide which one you want to pursue, before you get started. It is quite a bit of work to get all of this set up, especially if you’ve never done it before. You’ll need to work with a store vendor to get this set up, along with providing your own payment processing. If you’ve got a physical store, you can get all of this done with Square, for example, by using their drop shipper option. Alternatively, you can use Shopify’s ‘storefront,’ which provides all of the features you’d need to get started, for free. Once you’ve got your store up and running, you can start advertising and selling your products, either directly, or through an affiliate marketing network. Don’t expect to make a lot of money from an online store, especially if you’re just getting started. It can be quite a bit of work to make sure your store is set up correctly, and that you’re not making any obvious errors, which may cost you money. Just remember, though, that this is a fantastic way to make money from a blog. Whether or not you want to pursue this route, depends on what makes you happy. It can be a very flexible way to earn a passive income stream, and that’s what you’re looking for, as a blogger, entrepreneur, or solopreneur.