How to become an online fitness coach (Step by step guide)

Love fitness? Enjoy teaching others? Looking for a career change or new business opportunity?

Online fitness coaching could be just what you’re looking for.

It has a low barrier to entry, it’s simple to set up and can provide decent income potential.

If you put in the same effort on your business as your clients during workouts, the sky’s the limit!

If you’re thinking of turning a passion into a business, this post is for you as we’ll show you step by step how to become an online coach.

We’ll show you the competition, share how to make money, show you how to set up a website and create memberships.

We will even share some tips on marketing your new online fitness coaching business to give you the best start possible!

Online fitness coaching as a business model

Online fitness coaching was a thing long before the pandemic but it exploded afterwards.

The convenience of not having to go to the gym and being able to work out from the comfort of your own home makes online fitness exceptionally popular.

Check these online coaching companies out:

Future

Future offers online fitness training and coaching and includes classes, personalized coaching and more. The platform uses fitness watches and whatever equipment the user has to hand to deliver coaching.

Future costs $149 per month.

Flexit

Flexit offers a range of private and class-led fitness coaching that covers beginners all the way to advanced. Training is matched to your equipment and is tracked via an app.

Flexit costs from $139 per month.

Caliber

Caliber is another real life online fitness coach that provides a range of training options remotely. There’s readymade training programs and one-on-one training that covers beginners to advanced users.

Caliber costs from $19 per month.

Notice the difference in pricing? There is huge scope there for you to price yourself much lower than Future or Flexit while offering a more personalized version of Caliber.

Imagine how much you could earn with even a couple dozen clients paying $20-$50 per month?

How to make money as an online coach

Part of how to become an online fitness coach is making it sustainable.

While you could offer online fitness coaching out of the goodness of your heart, something has to help keep the lights on.

That’s where monetization comes in.

The good news is that you can make money without impacting the user experience.

Here’s how:

• Membership/subscriptions – Memberships or subscriptions are the most common monetization models for online coaching. Charging a fee for individual classes or group classes will likely be your main source of income.
• One-to-one tuition – One-to-one tuition is a lot of work but it’s also something that’s very hard to compete with. It’s what could mark you out as a unique fitness trainer and earn while you do it.
• Sell merch – Merchandise like workout gear, weights, yoga mats, nutrition products, shake bottles and more could all work for your brand while earning you money.
• Sell fitness plans – Creating fitness plans to achieve specific goals could also be a money spinner. Think weight-loss fitness plans, post-50 plans, post-pregnancy fitness, couch to 5k and similar.
• Sponsorship – Once you’re a recognized brand, it should be relatively simple to attract sponsorships. Whether that’s promoting sponsored products, wearing sponsor’s gear or something else.
• eBooks – You could also add recipe books, workout books, techniques, books that include your fitness plans or eBooks that address certain conditions or fitness goals.
• YouTube – YouTube is going to be central to helping you build your online fitness coaching brand. Build a following and you can monetize your videos too!

Those are just some of the many ideas you could use to make money as an online fitness coach.

What you’ll need to become an online fitness trainer

Aside from relevant skills and experience, you’ll also need technology to help you deliver fitness classes online.

You’ll need:

• A computer – The hub of your online world where you’ll manage your website, edit videos, chat to clients, hold video classes and spend a lot of time.
• Camera and microphone – You’ll need a good quality camera and microphone to offer classes, record high quality video and present a professional persona.
• Workout space – While a hobbyist can work out in their bedroom or basement, a professional is going to need more. You’ll need to outfit a room so it looks like a purpose-built workout space.
• Digital assets – You’ll also need a website with optional membership plugin, social media accounts, a YouTube account and the software to help you create and edit videos.

Those are just the basics but should be enough to get you started.

You’ll notice we haven’t mentioned preparing your classes in advance. That’s on purpose as you’ll all have different ways you want to approach this.

Some of you will want to pre-record video workouts while others will prefer live video classes. Others will want to create a more structured course with modules, quizzes and certificates.

This guide is more concerned with giving you the foundations to build your online fitness brand rather than covering every use case.

We also don’t cover setting up a company. While that’s another fundamental of how to become an online personal trainer, you’ll all do it in different ways.

The process differs depending on where you live too, so you’ll be better off with local advice for that.

We’ll cover everything else though.

1. Choose your niche

Choosing your niche is an essential first step in becoming an online coach.

It will inform your brand, brand name, type of website you need, how you approach being a coach and everything you do from this moment on.

Your niche will also dictate your target market, which will be important later.

Choosing a niche in an area of fitness you love is always the best way to begin.

Mark Anthony is attributed with saying, ‘If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.’

It’s so true!

That’s why we recommend choosing a niche in an area of fitness you’re passionate about.

That passion will come across in everything you do and should help you engage better with your audience.

If that niche isn’t particularly profitable, you can always expand it once your name is out there and you’re beginning to build a following.

2. Get certified and work as a fitness coach

As the many thousands of fitness videos online prove, you don’t need experience or qualifications to be an online fitness coach.

But it will help.

If you’re looking for reliable fitness advice or training, who would you be most likely to pay?

Someone who says they are an expert and has published fitness videos on YouTube?

Or someone who is a fully qualified expert with real life coaching experience who has published videos?

All things being equal, we imagine you would choose the person with qualifications and real life experience. We know we would!

That’s the value of being certified.

It will take time, perhaps investment and definitely effort, but it could make a real difference to how successful you are.

Organizations such as ISSA offer personal trainer certifications in the US. Other countries will have their own options.

An alternative to being certified is real life experience working in a gym.

A year or two of experience will teach you a lot and add to your authority when it’s time to set yourself up as an online fitness coach.

You may even acquire certifications while you’re there.

3. Set up your website

Now the preparation is out of the way, it’s time to begin building your business.

We’ll begin with a website.

First, we’ll build a basic fitness website promoting your brand.

Then we’ll add a membership component so you can offer fitness classes, tuition or other resources in return for a monthly fee.

This will be an optional component depending on how you want to run your business, but we want to cover everything.

This section will cover:

1. Creating your coaching website with WordPress
2. Installing Astra and a fitness theme
3. Setting up memberships so you can earn as an online coach
4. Configuring a payment gateway so you can get paid

Let’s get going.

Create your coaching website with WordPress

Building a website with WordPress is simple and takes less than an hour.

Using WordPress and the Astra theme, you can have a fully operational website for an online coach ready to go in no time.

Or you could short circuit the entire process by using ZipWP.

ZipWP is an AI website generator that can build a fully functional first draft website in around 60 seconds. That includes pages, a contact form, basic website copy and images.

All you need to do is customize the content and change any images (hence ‘first draft’).

Whether you build it yourself or use ZipWP, you’ll need a domain name and web hosting.

Popular web hosts include SiteGround, Cloudways, Bluehost, HostGator and GreenGeeks. They can register your domain name and provide hosting too.

All hosts have a simple setup process:

1. Choose the hosting plan that suits your needs
2. Choose a domain name that reflects your brand or your goals
3. Sign up with the host and purchase the plan
4. Select the WordPress option when asked how you want to set up your plan

Each web host handles this process in slightly different ways but each makes it as easy as possible.

Once done, log into your new website using the provided link or by adding ‘/wp-admin’ to the end of your chosen domain name.

Install the Astra theme

If you check the main page of your website, it will work but it won’t look great. That’s because WordPress uses a default theme and there’s no content yet.

By the end of this section, you’ll have a fully fleshed out website with pages and everything.

That process begins by installing a WordPress theme.

We’ll use the free Astra theme for this as it’s a top performer with readymade fitness templates.

You can use whatever theme you choose, the process will be the same.

Open your WordPress dashboard and select Appearance > Themes.

Select Add New and you should see Astra in the list of themes on the page.

Select the Astra theme, select Install and Activate once the option is available.

You’ll see a new Astra entry on the left menu in your WordPress dashboard.

Select Astra and select the blue Install link by Starter Templates on the right.

Select Appearance from the left men, then Starter Templates.

Select the Personal Care menu on the templates page and then Fitness.

Choose a template you like and it will open in a new window for you to preview. Have a look around and use the menu on the left to set up the one you like.

Don’t worry if a template isn’t perfect for your needs. They can all be used as is or be customized using your favorite page builder.

Once you’re happy, follow the setup wizard in the right pane to add your logo and install the template.

Once complete, check out your new coaching website!

There are a number of templates suitable for online fitness coaching, including:

Gym & Fitness

The Gym & Fitness template uses a dark background with bold green contrast color to make an impact. The template includes common content areas and extra pages for classes.

Personal Trainer

The Personal Trainer template is also a dark design, this time with a strong white font and bold orange stripe in the background to make it memorable.

This template also has common content areas but more extra pages.

Fitness Trainer

The Fitness Trainer template uses blue and green this time. It’s a bold, modern design with all the basics an online fitness trainer would need on a single page, including testimonials and extra pages for rates, training, clients and more.

Creating course pages

Once your template is set up however you like it, you may want to create course pages, posts or categories.

This is where you would host your workout video, fitness eBook or other content.

It’s up to you how you set it up, but you’ll need to configure this early so we can link it to a membership tier and be able to provide access once a customer pays.

Learn all about setting up fitness programs in this in-depth guide.

4. Install SureMembers and SureCart

Now your website is set up, you have the foundations of your online coaching business.

Now let’s turn it into somewhere you can make an income.

For that you’ll need two plugins, SureMembers and SureCart.

SureMembers is a premium membership plugin. It enables you to set up membership tiers that grant access to certain assets in return for a fee.

Those assets could be fitness videos, fitness programs, group classes or whatever you like.

SureCart is an eCommerce plugin for WordPress that handles the money side of memberships.

It includes access to payment gateways that allow members to pay for a course and for you to get paid.

You can also use SureCart to sell merchandise, eBooks, fitness programs and anything else you want to sell.

We’re going to concentrate on membership here though.

• Follow this in-depth guide to set up SureMembers
• This detailed guide will show you how to set up SureCart

Even though the guide covers setting up memberships, they are a key part of setting up your online fitness coaching website so we’ll cover that part here.

Create an access group with SureMembers

Sure Members uses the term ‘access group’ to describe membership tiers. You’ll need to create one access group per premium membership tier you want to use.

Don’t worry, it’s really easy to do.

We’ll create an access group here to show you how it’s done.

Assuming you already have SureMembers installed, do this:

Select SureMembers from the WordPress dashboard and then Access Groups.

Select Add New and give your group a descriptive name.

Select the dropdown in the Protected Content area and select how you want to protect your content.

You can choose to protect the entire website, all posts, all categories, all tags or all pages.

You can also name specific resources such as page names, post tags and so on.

Whatever setup you decided when you set up the website, pages, posts or categories, reflect that here.

Don’t forget to add your home and contact pages to the Exclude Pages section, otherwise nobody will be able to visit your site unless they are a member!

Move over to the Unauthorized Access column on the right.

Add a message that visitors who aren’t subscribers would see and a URL to send them to.

For paid memberships, you would typically send visitors who haven’t subscribed to a landing page with a signup form to convert them.

Make any other changes you want and select the blue Save Access Group button at the top right once you’re done.

You should now see your access group on the main SureMembers page.

Repeat this process for as many membership tiers as you want to use.

That’s the membership tier all set up, let’s now move on to the payment part.

Set up SureCart to accept payments

So far, we have set up a website, installed and configured SureMembers and created a membership tier.

Now we need a visitor to be able to pay you to become a member.

That’s where SureCart comes in.

SureCart is an eCommerce plugin that helps you build an online store. It works with popular payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal to enable people to pay you via your website.

We’ll use SureCart to allow visitors to buy a membership from your website and pay you there and then.

Navigate to Astra in your WordPress dashboard and select SureCart under Useful Plugins on the right.

Select Install next to SureCart to set it up. It will activate automatically.

Follow the setup wizard to set up the foundations of your store. You may also like to check out our in-depth guide to setting up SureCart.

Make sure to set up a payment gateway and checkout page so your store is ready to go.

Once that’s done we can proceed.

Select SureCart and Products from your WordPress dashboard.

You may see some placeholder products installed automatically when you set everything up. You can delete these if you like as they are just there to show you how a product is configured.

To delete products, open it up and select the three dot menu icon and select Delete.

When you’re ready to add a new product, do the following:

Select Add New from the top of the screen to add a new product.

Call the product whatever you like, but for ease of use, we named ours the same as the membership tier ‘VIP fitness club’.

You should see the new product details window. Fill in the name, a description of the membership tier, any supporting images and the price in the relevant boxes.

Select Add a Price in the Pricing box, give it a name and set Payment Type as subscription.

Set a price and a repeat schedule and decide whether you want to include a setup fee or a free trial.

Select Create Price when you’re done.

Then select Add New Integration within the Integrations box.

Select the dropdown menu in the popup and select SureMembers.

Select the dropdown below to set up your membership tier as the access group. Then select the blue Add Integration button to create the link.

Complete the rest of the product details page as required to set up your membership tier as a product.

Finally, change the setting next to Product Page under Publishing to Published rather than Draft.

Select the blue Save Product button at the top right of the screen when you’re finished.

When you go back to Products and select to view the product page, you should see it as it will appear to visitors.

Test everything works

That’s the setup phase of your online fitness website done. Now let’s test to make sure everything works.

Open your checkout page from Pages > All Pages > Checkout > Edit

Click the green Live logo on the page and switch it to Test. Update the page to save the change.

Keep that window open and open your new product in a new tab.

Select Add to Cart as if you were a visitor buying the membership. Follow the checkout process until it completes.

If it all works as it should, switch the checkout page back to Live.

Update the page again to save the change and your store, and your product is now ready to receive visitors!

Repeat this process for as many membership tiers as you created. Once you’ve done it once, it will be much faster the next time.

5. Set up media channels

Now you have a fully operational fitness website and membership tiers, it’s time to market and promote them.

Everything so far has been a one-time thing.

Marketing is an ongoing process that, once you begin, you’ll never stop.

Common marketing methods for online businesses include:

1. Social media promotion
2. YouTube videos
3. Interact with your communities
4. Create a lead magnet eBook or exclusive video teaser

Let’s cover each a little more.

Social media promotion

No business can afford to ignore social media. With billions of users, social media is your best chance of being noticed.

Join the networks where your target audience are likely to hang out and participate. Seek to add value to everything you write or reply and you’ll quickly build a reputation as an authority.

You can leverage that for your own benefit when it comes time to promote your fitness classes.

Add value and help others 90% of the time and people should view your 10% self-promotion more favorably.

YouTube videos

Creating simple workout videos and posting them to your YouTube channel can act as a free trial and as a way to gain an audience.

Make sure your videos are high quality and reflect your values while adding value to the viewer. Don’t give away too much and don’t go too heavy on self-promotion.

Like with social media, using YouTube is about getting your name out there and building a reputation as an authority.

It also works as a teaser which can help send viewers to your website.

Interact with your communities

Are you part of your local fitness community? A member of fitness forums or something else related to your niche?

Interact there, add your website to your signature and offer value, answer questions and generally be a positive influence.

Over time, this should compound to help build your brand. It’s not fast, or particularly easy, but it does work!

Create a lead magnet

A lead magnet is a freebie you offer in return for an email address. The idea is to provide something useful in return for permission to market to them.

Do it right and you could nurture the prospect into a lead, which can convert into a member.

It’s another long, slow process where you need to be careful to not overdo the selling. Do it right, and you can build long-lasting relationships that could turn into regular income.

Notice how often we said ‘value’ when talking about marketing?

People are so used to being marketed at that we are mostly blind or resistant to it.

By purposely not marketing but offering value instead, we’re building a positive association with your name or brand.

Over time, this should spread throughout your channels until you begin to be recognized as someone who cares about helping others.

It’s then a small step from knowing your brand to wanting to be part of it.

Online Fitness Coaching FAQs

We hope we have covered everything you need to know, but just in case…

How to start an online fitness coaching business – Conclusion

So that’s how easy it is to start an online fitness coaching business!

As long as you have the drive, enthusiasm and a few powerful tools, you can begin your journey to world domination in the fitness niche.

There’s an appetite, the technology and the means. It’s now down to you to make it happen!

Are you an online personal trainer? Run online fitness coaching classes? Make a living from your own website? Share your stories below!