3 Additional Revenue Streams for Personal Trainers.

A lot of personal trainers stick to one of revenue stream. Typically, their main source of revenue is the revenue they make from training clients. But, when you look at the world of personal training, it turns out there are a lot more opportunities for extra revenue then some may realize. In this article, we will cover, in detail, 3 additional revenue streams for personal trainers.

1. Selling Digital Assets.

This one has been a trend in the fitness industry for the last couple years and has solidified it’s place as a permanent position in the fitness industry. Selling guides and eBooks can be an excellent method of adding additional revenue streams for personal trainers.

As a trainer, you are trained, through rigorous education and industry experience to become an expert in physical fitness, health, and nutrition. If you wanted to put together an eBook or guide to sell, you could probably do quite well if you approached it the right way.

Sell eBooks

Here are some eBook examples you may be interested in exploring:

• An insiders guide to becoming a successful online personal trainer.
  • If you have had success as an online personal trainer, this could be a great option for you. Detail your experience, and what you found to be key ingredients in success.
• From Personal Trainer to Studio Gym Owner & Personal Trainer, a guide to opening your first studio gym.
  • This is a great option if you’ve already had success opening a studio gym.
• You’re a Personal Trainer Now What? A guide to launching a rewarding career as a Fitness Professional.
  • Really, any experienced trainer can write an eBook like this. Help trainers figure out rewarding career paths as a fitness professional.
• The definitive sales guide for Personal Trainers.
  • Sales is an aspect a lot of trainers struggle with, namely, new trainers. If you have found a system or philosophy that has yielded results for you, this could be a good option for you.
• Scaling your Personal Training Business 101.
  • Another aspect trainers struggle with are things like sales, developing their own business model, marketing, and a variety of other business related topics. Writing a guide about this would be of great value to many.

Related Content: How to grow your fitness business with an eBook.

Sell Fitness and Nutrition Guides

This has been one of the main trends in selling digital assets in the fitness industry, mainly leveraged by social media influencers. However, if influencers with no certification can have success doing it, so can a personal trainer with a certification and industry experience.

Guides are typically different then eBooks. Most of the time guides are there to help people work their way through fitness programs or nutrition programs. As in, guides usually mean people take action while reading the guide.

While eBooks are meant to be there to help people better understand more in depth concepts. Lets take a look at a couple examples of fitness and nutrition guides that are popular:

• Kayla Istines Bikini body Guide – The guide operates as a nutrition and fitness program. It walks people who purchase it through a 12 week fitness and nutrition program. It includes in depth instructions on how to do each exercise and how to eat to accomplish you fitness goals.
• Her Body by Gilles Souteyrand – This guide is strictly a 12 week fitness program. However, much like the previous guide mentioned, it gives in depth instruction on the entire program to help people who purchase it get maximum results. The guide can also be bundled with a nutrition guide as well.
• Fresh Body fit Mind by Amanda Bisk – This is a 30 day yoga guide. However, instead of simply paying for access, she offers an in-app subscription to gain access to not only the guide but also to a variety of other yoga classes. So, instead of generating value by driving sales on the guide alone, she uses it to get people on her app on a very cheap subscription basis.
• Premium Workouts by Tone it Up – Tone it up is a group of fitness professionals who sell a variety of programs in fitness and nutrition. However, just like the previous guide, in order to access it, you have to sign up for a subscription to their app where you can access other fitness and nutrition resources.

As you can see, although the terms “eBook” and “Guide” are somewhat interchangeable, guides and eBooks and typically different in the content they give to the reader.

2. Join an Affiliate Marketing Program.

As a personal trainer, your opinion on fitness, health, and nutrition products is likely to be trusted more then the average person. This means, if you announce support for certain products, people are more likely to trust your opinion on the matter. Affiliate marketing programs can be an excellent additional streams for personal trainers.

This is why joining an affiliate marketing program can add a decent amount of additional revenue streams to personal trainers.

But first, What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is the process of earning commission by promoting other peoples [or company’s] products. You find a product you like, promote it to others and earn a piece of the profit for each sale you make.

Pat Flynn

The quote above by Pat Flynn is about as straight forward as a it gets. In affiliate marketing networks, there are typically a couple parties involved:

• The Merchant: is the entity that created the product that you are promoting. It can be a big company like Cellucor or it can be small, local vendors.

• The Affiliate: is the party that does the promoting. Affiliates can range from a single person who has their own website and store to large agencies that do massive promotion for certain products. The job of the affiliate is to not only convince people to use the product but also drive enough traffic to their site such that it becomes worth it for the merchant to have the affiliate on the marketing network.
• The consumer: makes the whole system go’round. Without sales, there’s no commission.
• The Network: is the structure to the whole system. In some cases the merchant will create their own network, however, in other cases, the merchant will join a third party network. Third party networks are created by companies that specialize in creating affiliate networks. Their product is providing a framework for merchants to sell their products on a network and for affiliates to join the network and pick what products/services they want to market.

This all sounds more complicate then it is. While there are a lot of moving parts here, as the affiliate, your job is simply to market the products in the affiliate network within the guidelines provided by the merchant and the network.

Let’s look at a couple examples of affiliate networks for fitness/nutrition professionals.

• IdealFit – is one of the fastest growing fitness brands in North America. They sell sports nutrition products specifically for women. They also sell a variety of other athletic wear products for women. With their affiliate program, you get 8% commission for each sale you make on their behalf.
• National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) – is one of the biggest certifications in the personal training industry. It’s a lot of trainers go-to certification (along with ACE). However, with this affiliate network, you are selling a course/certification instead of a physical product. This is a higher ticket item. For each sale you get on the behalf of NASM, they give you $25 in commission.
• Horizon Fitness Affiliate Program – Horizon is a part of Johnson Health Tech, a company that designs and manufactures high quality exercise equipment. They are also a higher ticket item (expensive), but with that you get higher commission payouts. With each sale you make on their behalf, you get a commission rate of 8% with the average sale being at around the $800 mark.

The affiliate programs listed above are all “A-list” programs that are well worth it to join. They are reputable companies that sell great products and have fair commission rates for their affiliate partners.

Quality over Quantity

When choosing an affiliate marketing network to join and subsequent products/services to promote, don’t choose one over the other just because it is cheaper and you are more likely to sell more of them. The likelihood is people will affiliate your site with cheap products rather then quality products which is a recipe to scare people off. And especially stay away from MLM’s or other companies similar to them.

3. Sell White Label Products.

White label products aren’t branded and are available for people to brand with their own brand and sell as their brands products. A lot of influencers and big trainers will find white label products to sell under their brand.

Typically, all of the processing and shipping is done for you. Meaning you don’t have to purchase inventory, deal with shipping, or perform customer service.

How it Works

1. You set up your store and pick which products you want to offer.
2. Drive traffic to your store through ads or other marketing activities.
3. Make sure your stores design and user experience is professional and easy to navigate.
4. Set up automation software so when someone makes a purchase on your site, the white label can process the order efficiently.

There are a variety of white label products you can sell as a personal trainer such as, athletic apparel, supplements, and even equipment. Here some companies you can reach out to to sell their products:

• Nutracap – provides white label supplements in which you can design a label for and sell as your own. Additionally, if you don’t want to design your own label, you can ask them to do it for you (add-on costs may be applied).
• Flex-N-Flex Fitness Apparel – sells fitness clothing that you can brand as your own from t-shirts and tank tops to wrist wraps and weight lifting belts.
• Elivate – provides white label fitness equipment you can purchase, slap your logo on and use in your gym or even sell on a website.

As you can see, in the world of white labeling, pretty much anything is possible. If you wanted to, you could furnish a gym with branded everything, even you equipment.

Recapping Additional Revenue Streams for Personal Trainers.

After going over everything in this blog alone, there are ample additional revenue streams for personal trainers. Whether it be joining an affiliate program, selling eBooks or Guides, or even selling your own branded products, the opportunities are endless. However, we really only touched on three examples. I encourage you to do your own research as you are more then likely to stumble upon other options that weren’t mentioned in this blog.

Before we finish up, lets go over a couple considerations for white labeling products or joining affiliate programs. When looking at the products that you want to sell or promote, do not go with the cheaper options. The likelihood is that the products will not perform as well as the flagship products in the same industry. This has potential to leave people upset, never to come back to your site again.

After all, the whole point to selling stuff to people is not to amass dollar signs. It’s really to start a relationship with the customer whose foundation is built on trust. In the end, it will save you headaches to just go with the better product, even if it is more expensive or harder to get into.

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