Training clients online can be a lucrative business model for any personal trainer. Instead of limiting yourself to clients in your area or at your local gym, online fitness coaches can provide services to anyone in the world.
Online personal training is highly scalable and yields massive profits. You can create a single program that trains thousands of people simultaneously, whereas training clients in person will always have a ceiling.
If you’re ready to break free from your current limitations as a personal trainer, this guide will teach you how to become an online fitness coach.
What Does an Online Personal Trainer Do?
The terms online personal trainer and online fitness coach are pretty broad. But it applies to anybody who provides fitness instructions, nutrition advice, or wellness education through digital mediums—like a website or mobile app.
- Create custom workout plans
- Record video demonstrations of exercises
- Provide virtual coaching services
- Host virtual training sessions
- Build workout calendars
- Send motivational check-ins
- Conduct online fitness assessments
- Make custom meal plans with nutritional guidelines
- Remotely communicate with clients
All of these fall within the scope of online personal training. You can choose to do as many or as few of these services as you want and even go beyond this list to stand out from other trainers.
Do You Need a Personal Trainer Certification to Become an Online Fitness Coach?
No, there are no laws requiring personal trainers to have a certification or license. This holds for all personal trainers, including those operating online.
Some gyms may only hire personal trainers who hold a particular license. However, this potential barrier is irrelevant if you’re selling your services online.
That said, becoming a certified personal trainer definitely adds credibility to services. You can always get certified down the road if you desire, but don’t let that hold you back from starting your online personal training business today.
How Much Money Can You Make as an Online Personal Trainer?
According to ZipRecruiter, the average salary of an online personal trainer is $61,000 per year, and top earners make over $108,000 annually.
However, it’s important to understand that this particular data is based on open job postings for online personal trainers working at gyms. But if you start your own online personal training business, you can easily earn double or triple the amount compared to working as a traditional employee.
Research from ISSA suggests that online fitness coaches can make up to $125 per hour, which translates to $260,000 per year.
Other studies found that online personal trainers make an average of $127,613 per year if they have at least 100 clients, which is easy to obtain when you’re not limited by physical boundaries.
As you can see, there’s quite a wide range here depending on the source and how you’re looking at the data. But I think you can safely hit a minimum of six figures within the first 12-18 months.
Can Online Fitness Coaches Still Train Clients In Person?
Absolutely. The beauty of being an online fitness coach is that it allows you to be in multiple places at once.
So you can continue working with your existing clients without it interfering with your online personal training services.
You may ultimately decide to transition those clients to your online program or start making enough money online that you no longer have to train clients in person.
How to Become an Online Personal Trainer in 7 Simple Steps
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s jump into the actual steps required to become an online personal trainer.
Most of these steps are fairly easy, although some (like creating custom training programs) will take a bit longer. Regardless of where you stand right now, you can complete this entire process in less than 30 days for fewer than $500.
Step 1 — Decide Who You Want to Coach Online
This is fairly straightforward, and most of you may already have this nailed down.
One major benefit of coaching clients online is that you can really focus on your area of expertise rather than working with any client who walks in the door.
Instead of coaching just anyone who needs to lose weight, you can get really granular here and focus on a specific subcategory of an otherwise broad and oversaturated market.
Here are some examples so you can see what I mean:
Weight Loss
- Men ages 50+
- College students
- Postpartum women
Sports Training
- Injury recovery
- Strength training for football players
- Basketball endurance training
Corporate Wellness
- Posture correction and flexibility exercises for remote employees
- 20-minute workouts for busy parents who work full-time
- Virtual group coaching for offices
All of the subcategories within these niches are obviously very different.
It’s important to narrow your focus to ensure your marketing materials and training programs actually resonate with potential clients.
You can always expand later on. But it’s much easier to start small when you’re first launching.
Step 2 — Choose a Core Business Model
Next, you need to determine a revenue model. There are plenty of approaches you can take, but these are the most common business models for online fitness coaches:
- One-on-One Personal Training: Personalized attention through video calls, custom training, and in-app messaging.
- Membership Programs: Monthly or annual subscriptions for clients to access training materials, videos, and other workout programs.
- Hybrid Coaching: Mix of online coaching with occasional in-person sessions for local clients.
- Digital Products: Charge a one-time fee for clients to access specific materials, like a downloadable meal plan.
- Group Coaching: Train multiple clients simultaneously through a live, virtual session.
- Online Fitness Courses: Fixed fee for a specific training course that’s designed to be completed sequentially (like a 90-day weight loss challenge).
- Premium Access Tiers: Set up multiple subscription levels, with additional perks unlocked at higher tiers to encourage clients to pay more for premium access.
You may ultimately decide to explore multiple business models. But I highly recommend starting with just one right now.
Master one method first, and then experiment with others later on if you wish to expand.
Step 3 — Set Up Your Online Distribution Channel
Now you need to figure out exactly how you’re going to deliver these services to clients online. There are really only two options to consider—a website or a mobile app.
Creating a custom mobile app is clearly the best path for online personal trainers.
This gives you a direct line to clients through their smartphones, which they can easily access when they’re at the gym or training from anywhere. You can’t replicate this type of experience through the mobile version of a website.
Having your own fitness mobile app also adds a level of professionalism to your services and helps you stand out from other trainers operating online.
Best of all, it’s easier to set up and more affordable than you think. Buildfire’s fitness app builder starts at just $85 per month, and you can try it free for 30 days.
It’s a no-code platform, making it easy for anyone to create an app—even if you have zero technical experience.
Simply start with a template, and begin customizing your program from there.
Buildfire gives you access to tons of fitness-specific features that will help you better serve our clients while increasing your revenue.
- Integrate with YouTube or Vimeo to incorporate video workouts.
- Create custom monthly or annual subscription tiers for your clients.
- Sell digital products, like ebooks or premium videos, behind a paywall.
- Build custom programs and challenges that are unlocked based on completion (Day 2 is available after Day 1 is complete. Day 3 is available after Day 2, etc.).
- Send push notifications to your clients with daily workout reminders.
- Let your clients reach you directly in the app through instant messaging.
Creating a mobile app is by far the best way to become an online personal trainer.
The investment required is minimal, and the scalability is virtually limitless.
Step 4 — Create Your Online Training Programs
This will likely be the most time-consuming step of all. Now you need to actually create the programs that you’re going to sell online.
Psychologically, this part can be difficult for people who are used to getting their time—because right now, nobody is paying you to create these workouts.
But you need to look at the big picture and beyond short-term gains. The amount of money you’ll make for your time is significantly higher than you’d make doing one-on-one training sessions.
It may take you two or three weeks to write the programs, record the videos, and package everything together into something that can be distributed online or through a mobile app.
But that’s it—your work is done.
A few weeks of hard work can be used to sell your services to hundreds or potentially thousands of clients nationwide for an entire year.
Start with just one program for now. This is far less intimidating than trying to build the most comprehensive fitness program on the planet.
Look back at the niche and subcategory you defined for yourself back in Step #1 of this guide. Then create a program that speaks directly to the largest number of people in that sector.
Step 5 — Nail Down Your Pricing Strategy
Your pricing strategy will largely be tied to the business model you’ve chosen from Step #2.
You’re in total control over your pricing and how you want to market yourself compared to other trainers, but here are a few guidelines to help you decide:
- Most live training sessions are based on an hourly rate. This rate is usually higher than other online fitness programs but cheaper than in-person coaching.
- Monthly or annual membership plans can vary, starting anywhere from $25 to $250 or even $500 per month. It depends on whether you want to secure lots of clients for a smaller fee or fewer clients each paying a higher rate.
- Digital downloads are often the cheapest to sell. But the low fee makes it easier to scale and sell to as many people as possible.
Again, you have total freedom with how you want to approach your pricing. Just try to think of this in terms of the value you’re providing to your clients.
For example, you might set up multiple membership tiers starting at $50, $100, and $150 per month—and only clients at the $150 monthly tier have 24/7 access to message you from your app, whereas $50 members can send just one personal question per month.
Step 6 — Market Your Personal Training Services
Now it’s time to get the word out and promote yourself. There are dozens of ways to do this, but here are my top recommendations when you’re just getting started:
- Grow organically on social media (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok etc.)
- Send an email blast out to your current clients or contacts in the fitness space
- Partner with a local facility to spread awareness (like a nursing home or rehab clinic)
- Experiment with some paid ads on social media
- Offer a free download or free month to the first 500 people who download your app
- Pay a flat fee to an influencer in the fitness space to market your services (just make sure their followers fit your niche)
You get the idea.
There’s really no right or wrong way to market yourself as an online personal trainer. But the methods above are either completely free or have a marginal cost, making it easy to work with if you’re on a tight budget.
Step 7 — Secure Your First Client
You finally have everything in place—now it’s just a matter of landing that first client and securing that first dollar.
My best advice here is to set realistic expectations for yourself.
Would it be amazing to land 500 new clients the day your app launches and the program goes live? Absolutely. But in reality, the path to 500 clients will probably take much longer.
This is a good thing—yes, I said a good thing. Just hear me out for a minute.
Your first training program probably won’t be perfect. So starting with a smaller group of 25 or 50 clients in the first year will help you perfect your craft.
Landing 500 clients immediately is useless if they all cancel after one month.
Your goal should be to sustain recurring revenue and lengthen the lifetime value of your clients.
The first few months are pivotal in figuring out what’s working well and what could be improved. You should be asking your clients directly for feedback and then use that information to enhance our services.
Once you start seeing steady growth from your client base over time, with little to no churn, then you can think about expanding services and working on multiple revenue models.
Mobile Apps: The Secret Weapon For Fitness Coaches and Online Personal Trainers
Using a mobile app to facilitate your online personal training business will be your secret weapon for success.
The fitness app market is currently valued at $2.1 billion. This is projected to reach $2.47 billion in 2025 and eclipse $9.67 billion by 2033. That’s a whopping 18.2% CAGR during this period.
People are using mobile apps for fitness training, and they’re willing to spend money on it.
Furthermore, 74% of Americans have used a fitness app at least once, and 26% of those people use their fitness app over 10+ times per week.
In terms of personal training, mobile apps are a no-brainer. Your clients will need to access your programs while they’re on the go and at the gym, and a mobile app will give them the best possible experience.
If you’re using an app builder like Buildfire, there’s virtually no overhead costs to worry about. Just one or two clients can pay for your app costs, and everything else is pure profit.
Sign up today to start your 30-day free trial and take the first step to becoming an online personal trainer.