How to Make More Money as a Personal Trainer without Raising Your Rates

If you want to make more money as a personal trainer, you might be thinking about raising your rates. This is the easiest and most straightforward way to increase your income.

In fact, if you haven’t raised your rates in the last year, you should go do that now. Seriously, go do it!

We recommend raising rates every six to twelve months. But, with that being said, you can’t go from charging clients $60 an hour to $120/hour overnight – or even in a few months!

Raising your rates is slow. It takes time. You need to gain experience, differentiate yourself from the competition, and bring serious results before you can charge your dream rate.

That’s why it’s important to have more strategies in your toolbox for increasing your income instead of simply raising your prices.

Expanding your services and following proven strategies can help you make more money as a personal trainer and build a more sustainable business. This involves going online in addition to in-person training and building out great and unique programs that serve more clients than traditional personal training models.

Sounds pretty great, right?

But before we get into the nitty gritty, let’s talk about what’s even possible.

Inside this blog:

• Chapter 1: Can you make 100k or more as a personal trainer?
• Chapter 2: 3 ways to make more money
• Chapter 3: Reach your financial goals with a personal training software

Chapter 1

Can you make 100k or more as a personal trainer?

If you’re first starting out you might be wondering how much you can truly make as a personal trainer. Or maybe you’ve been working as a trainer for a while, and you just can’t seem to reach the financial goals you dream about.

The average personal trainer base salary in the U.S. is around $40,000. Not bad. But you’re more than average right? So what’s realistic?

Is it even possible to make 100k or more as a personal trainer?

The answer is yes.

It is possible to meet all your financial goals while working as a personal trainer, and the earning potential is unlimited. We have plenty of personal trainers on TrainerFu making six figures in their business, and they didn’t get there by simply raising their rates every few months. You can do this too, and we are going to show you how.

Chapter 2

3 ways to make more money

The section you’ve been waiting for. As a personal trainer, you might be used to relying on one-on-one training sessions alone to bring you income. The biggest downside to this method is that you are limited by your own capacity. Even if you are charging a great rate, there’s only so many training sessions you can squeeze into a day. The personal trainers that are making the most money have expanded their careers beyond these typical training schedules.

We’re going to share three ways to step outside the traditional personal training box so that you can optimize your schedule and make more money with less effort.

1. Template program

Passive income. Have you heard of it?

It’s the best way for individuals in a variety of industries to make money while they’re sleeping! And as a personal trainer, you should take advantage of building passive income to supplement your traditional training and make more money.

We recommend creating a template program or fitness challenge that is a one size fits all training program that clients can purchase online and complete on their own time.

The upside to a template program is that it doesn’t take that much work on the front end, and then can make you money for years to come! You typically won’t charge much for these, (anywhere from $10-100 depending on the content) but you can easily convert people that download the program into paying clients later down the road – if your program offers them a lot of value.

Your templated program will most likely consist of a bundle of content that you deliver to clients in a method of your choosing (though we recommend using a personal training platform.)

It can include things like:

• A few workout videos
• Exercise instructions
• Meal plan
• Mindset and habit resources

TrainerFu’s online platform actually has Master Templates that you can work from to create yours in less time. This can help you start making more money sooner.

When you first create a templated program, make a big promotional push on your online platforms. Send it to leads via email or share it with Instagram followers. Continue to sell this program from time to time, and enjoy watching that passive income roll in.

2. Combine online and in-person training to capture a bigger slice of the market

To make more money as a personal trainer, you need to get more clients and keep them around for the long haul. One way you can do both of these things is to combine your in-person training with online training.

Online training involves delivering all or some of your training package components to clients in a remote manner. You might offer fully online training or hybrid online training where you still meet with some clients regularly.

Online training is a great way to become more profitable because it can help you serve more people than the traditional personal training model. Let’s break down why.

Traditional personal training is clearly an excellent way to meet your fitness goals, but it can get expensive. Say you are charging a very reasonable rate of $60 per session. Since most people would want to meet two to three times per week, personal training could cost as much as $720 per month!

When you think about it, the amount of people that can spend that much money on training is probably pretty low.

Now on the other end of the spectrum, you have the standard gym membership. This is much more affordable, but doesn’t necessarily provide the customized experience or one-on-one support a lot of people are looking for.

There are plenty of people out there that can’t quite afford traditional personal training but can spend a little more money than the average gym membership. This is your gap in the market.

Additionally, there are also people that want help reaching their fitness goals but have inconsistent or busy schedules or travel a lot. These people could also benefit from online personal training.

Online personal training serves all these types of people because it is more:

• Affordable
  
• Flexible
  
• Customizable
  

By bringing your training to this segment, you can make your business more robust and much more profitable.

When you’re ready to launch your online training components, consider selling to existing clients first. Think about who you work with that might be ready for a little less hand holding, but still want some support. When talking to prospects, remember what makes online personal training special. Offer it to leads that are put off by the high cost of traditional personal training or need more flexibility and customization out of a fitness program.

3. Create an online group training program

An online group training program or group fitness challenge is a great way to serve more clients efficiently and effectively. Just like a template program, this is a less customized form of training, which takes less of your time, but is still a great option for clients.

To make sure that the online group challenge works for all participants, it is important that the participants more or less have the same start point and a common end goal. This helps you design your program accordingly. For example, you can bundle working moms who are looking to shed a few pounds in one training group.

Here are some things you might include in a group training program:

• Private social network
• Weekly Skype check-in calls
• Prizes for top achievers
• Recipe of the day, meal guide or weekly meal plan
• In-app courses on nutrition, mindfulness, cooking, etc.
• Habit coaching
• Nutrition coaching
• Support through chat
• Daily fitness videos

Incorporating group training into your fitness business can be really lucrative and allows you to scale quickly. You can consider charging a flat rate for an online group training program, for example, $799 for a 12-week challenge. Now, imagine if you got just ten people to sign up, that’s a pretty good profit, right? Plus, once you’ve created an online group training program or challenge, you can reuse the content over and over.

Chapter 3

Reach your financial goals with a personal training software

The three strategies above will help you make more money without raising your rates. However, if you attempt to do all of these things without the right platform or system, you will spend a lot of your precious time and see a diminished payoff.

TrainerFu is the platform that can help you create templated programs, offer online training, and build amazing group training programs. Don’t rely on stale methods of selling or wait around on raising your rates to make more money! You can build a highly profitable business as a personal trainer and you can do it fast like so many successful personal trainers on TrainerFu. Try it for free today.