If you are a personal trainer, fitness coach or health professional you need to have a blog. A blog builds your presence, adds value to clients, and it will get you more sales. Blogs are much more than a marketing tool – A blog can be a money printer. A well crafted blog is your salesman that never sleeps. This article gives you an overview of how to start a profitable blog for your fitness business.
Preface: The fitness space is very competitive. Some might even say it’s saturated. That’s because the barrier to entry is low. But, like most industries, the fitness space is FULL of opportunities IF you’re willing to work harder and smarter than the other trainers. The vast majority of fitness content is generic and low value. People what something MORE that speaks to them and a particular issue they’re dealing with. They’ve already read about ‘balanced diet’ and ‘walking 30 minutes a day’ so you need to think past that. A fitness blog is an opportunity to establish yourself as an authority. It’s a chance to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack. Your blog helps define your niche and test the market, for free! Your fitness blog is also your voice to prove to your clients that you’re not a stereotypical trainer. You’ve got to prove that you’re more than a chiseled stud – show them there’s something between the ears.
In this post I’ll discuss general reasons for starting a blog, why I started a blog, and why fitness professionals should have a blog.
Let’s begin.
Is Blogging Dead?
Some say blogs are dead but I beg to differ. People want information and blogs are how they get it. How do I know? Readership continues to grow and the amount of money spent on the internet does too.
The first thing people do when they have a question is search google. And what does google show them in response to their inquiry? You guessed it, blogs.
Which leads to the conclusion: As long as people have a problem to solve there will be blogs.
If people have a problem they’ll go through hell and high water to solve it. They will come searching. All you have to do is be there with the answer and voila.
If you solve a problem that enough people have then you my friend can write your own check.
How Much Money Can You Make Blogging?
You can make a bundle or you could make nothing at all. It all depends on the value you provide to your market and how well you execute. Most bloggers make zilch but some make well over $100k/month.
If you have any type of specific knowledge, people will pay you for it. You could be an expert in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures and create an entire business around that.
You might think that’s ridiculous but it’s a big wide world out there and with a little bit of effort you can reach those who need what you’re selling.
Rest assured if you can make $1 online you can make $10, if you can make $10 you can make $100, if you can make $100 you can make $1000. If you can make $1000 than you my friend can make any amount you decide to.
It all starts with your first sale.
How to Make Money Online with a Fitness Blog
You have to sell something. There’s no way around sales if you want to make a living in this world. You must sell a product or service in order to make money on the internet.
You could…
Create your own product and sell it – Create a course, write an ebook (like The Skinny-Fat Solution) or produce an exclusive video series for your customers. You can sell these products directly from your site.
Sell someone else’s product – You sell someone’s product and get a commission for the sale. This is called affiliate marketing and people make a fortune with it. At the very least you can make a nice side income with affiliate marketing with just a few well written articles.
Sell advertising – You can join an advertising network or have companies pay you to advertise on your blog.
Sell a service – Business consulting, life coaching, online personal training, nutrition services. Just put the solution to your customer’s problem in a nice offer and sell, sell, sell!
What else – The best part? You are only limited by your creativity. There are infinite ways to cash in if you add value to people.
See? It’s easy. Once you have people reading your blog just sell them relevant products and services that will make their life better.
Sales is the Name of the Game
You must either get good at selling or get good at begging for scraps. Sales is an art and a science and if you want to get good at it you need to practice, practice, practice.
Sales is not hard. I used to suck at sales. Now I’m better at it because I’ve worked at it a lot over the years. Anyone can get better at sales if they just keep trying and never give up. You need experience in order to grow. And remember, rejection is part of the game so don’t take it personally. Take rejection as feedback and use it to improve.
Once you realize that sales is just a transfer of a feeling you will be unstoppable. When you know you’re good at what you do people can feel it. And they are much more likely to buy from you (so long as they have a need for what you’re selling of course).
Many people aren’t good at sales because they get nervous talking face to face. With blogging that problem is solved! You never need to show your face and you can make sales without actually speaking to anyone.
All you need to do is convey a feeling with your words.
Note: Even if you decide not to sell a product or service you still need to sell yourself. So work on your message. The words you use matter. (Another benefit of blogging is it allows you to hone your message.)
How to Start a Blog
Okay, now the fun part. You need two things to start a blog – a domain name and a web host.
1) Domain Name – Your domain is the main URL people type to get to your website. My domain is ironandgrit.com. Domain names are purchased on domain registers. Namecheap is my favorite registrar and frankly the easiest to use.
Pick a domain that you like and that makes sense for your business. The more brandable the better. Your domain name can be niche specific or not. It just needs to be easy to remember. You can build a brand around any name.
Pro Tip: ALWAYS own your own name. If your name is Bob Pinkerton you need to buy bobpinkerton.com. (And .net, .org, etc. if you so desire.) That way no bad actors get ahold of it and sully your good name.
2) Web Hosting – Hosting providers store your website content and database so people can access it through their computer or smartphone. Get your website up and running within minutes with Bluehost. It cost less than $5 per month. If you want faster load times and powerful development features right out of the box check out WPEngine.
Make Your Blog Look Good
If your blog looks like poop you’re going to have a hard time keeping peoples’ attention no matter how good it is. You’re selling an image and your image must be good. therefor your fitness blog needs to look sharp. This is done easily with a modern ‘theme’.
Website Theme – Iron & Grit used the Magazine Pro Theme built on the StudioPress Genesis Framework. Themes make it easy to get the right look and feel for your blog. Now you have a nice, clean profession website. No coding required.
Always get a responsive theme. Responsive themes scale in size to look good on any device. 70% of your traffic will come from smartphones so a responsive theme is a must.
Under the Hood
WordPress – Iron & Grit runs on WordPress. WordPress is a Content Management Service. Always use wordpress.org and NOT wordpress.com. WordPress.com is for amateurs and it appends “.wordpress.com” on the end of your url. It’s ugly and it tells people that you are an amateur. Always use wordpress.org like the pros do.
If you’re less technical Shopify is an option. I don’t use them because they look ‘too basic’ and have some pretty stupid URL structure issues in my humble opinion, but a lot of business that run on Shopify and make a killing. It’s an easy and economical option for an e-commerce store.
WordPress Plugins: WordPress is a wonderful community of developers that create easy to use plugins to make your plug run perfectly. Plugins give your website any look, feel and function you desire. If you get an idea on something to add to your blog just do a little research and there’s a good chance a plug in exists for it.
Email list: Collect emails from day one. These are people that are interested in what you have to offer. Send them valuable, exclusive email content and sell, sell, sell so you can cash your checks. Your email list is also your lifeline in case something happens (Domain name change, site is down, updates, important news, etc.) You want to be able to talk to your people directly. Mailchimp is a free email subscription and contact management service up to 2,000 subscribers.
Search Engine Optimization -Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way to strategically post content that ensures you rank well in google. When someone. SEO is The main things to remember is to write quality content that is informative and easy to read. Write for humans and not machines and you will reap the benefits of SEO. Just pick a topic, write about it thoroughly, and you will rank fine in google.
Secure Socket Layer – Secure Socket Layer encrypt information passed back and forth from your website. It’s important for security, privacy and user experience. Install a SSL certificate from the get go. I installed it later and my traffic plummeted because it changes your website’s URLs. It took 6 months for my organic traffic to return to normal.
Money Makers
Clickbank – Affiliate marketing network with lots of products and services to choose from. All you do is sign up and apply to companies to sell their goods.
Commission Junction – Affiliate marketing network similar to click bank but with different companies and product/service offerings.
Share-a-Sale – Yet another affiliate network.
Amazon Affiliate – Commissions are a joke compared to other programs. But if you have heavy traffic it can add up and buy you a nice steak dinner every once in a while. You can start with Amazon but always be on the lookout for new/better affiliate programs.
Google AdSense – Google’s flagship advertising network. Payouts are low but can add up. Can make you a pretty penny if you have decent traffic or a high-ticket niche.
Niche Products – Track down your favorite brands/products and join their affiliate network.
Getting Paid
There are a variety of options here. Do a little research and see what’s best for you. Make the buying process flawless. It should be as easy as possible for your customer to make a purchase.
You can accept cryptocurrency for you product and service. I recommend doing this as you will be ahead of the curve. There are a few ways to accept crypto as payment but are beyond the scope of this article.
Helpful Tools for Bloggers
Google Analytics – Valuable insights on your website traffic. Use it to improve your blog and learn about your visitors.
e-junkie – Set up your account to sell your digital products. Once your customer makes a purchase their product is emailed to them immediately through an automated process. Easy peasy and squeaky clean.
Fiverr – Outsource work and get tasks done. Perfect for logos, infographics, social banners, book covers, t-shirt designs, written content, market research, etc. etc. All of it can be found on Fiverr for cheap.
Fitness Blog Recap
What should you blog about? Whatever you want! Write about client success. Tell people your story. People want to know you. They want to know how you can help them and the only way they know is if you tell them.
Another great blog tip is to learn something extensively then teach people about it. Blogging about newly learned information is a great way to organize your new knowledge and put it out for the world to see – might as well if you have to learn it anyway and if you can find a way to make it fit your niche/market.
Thanks for this article, I’m wanting to start a blog but the self doubt is stopping me. Is it really possible to make a lot of money? an actual living? because a lot of people say it isn’t and only the ‘lucky ones’ make it
Thanks.
It’s hard work but you can make a lot of money if you treat it like a business. If you want to make money you need to sell something so start a business (e-commerce or affiliate) and use your blog to drive traffic and make sales.
Thanks so much for the reply! After listening to your podcasts – which are awesome and highly motivating dude! – I know what I’m going to do, I have a vision. Time to do the work! Cheers
Best of luck Danny – Go make it happen!