Making More Money as a Personal Trainer in a Nutshell
Some ways to earn money in addition to one-on-one sessions include doing semi-private training (with up to four clients simultaneously), charging extra for nutritional guidance, hosting workshops or seminars, setting up a referral program for word-of-mouth advertising, offering online coaching on the side, and selling digital products.
Let’s Get the Basics Out of the Way
Personal training is a career with many opportunities to grow professionally, earn more money, and prosper.
The first step is to get certification from an organization like ACE, ISSA, or NASM. This helps you land a better job and work as a personal trainer. You can learn everything there is to know about this process in our guide.
Once you’ve done that, choose between self-employment and working for someone else.
As a beginner, working at a gym, at least for a while, would be the better option, as it would provide exposure to clients and allow you to learn from other trainers and see how the coaching process looks.
At this stage in your career, it’s best to focus on the fundamentals:
- Learning how to connect with clients
- Build habits for more effective coaching
- Get comfortable with guiding clients through workout sessions
Some trainers make the mistake of spreading themselves too thin right from the start to make money. Don’t worry––there will be plenty of time for that, especially as you establish yourself as a professional, knowledgeable, and dependable trainer.
As far as base salary goes, here is what you can expect:
Of course, remember that your location and the gym you work at will influence these numbers. Read our full report on personal trainer salaries.
Now, let’s examine ways to earn additional income as a personal trainer.
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9 Ways for Personal Trainers to Earn Money in the Fitness Industry
1. Try Semi-Private Personal Training
Semi-private personal training is where the trainer works with two to four clients simultaneously.
This approach allows you to earn more by increasing the revenue from each training session because each client pays a fee.
For example, if one client pays $60-70 for a one-on-one session, they might pay $35-40 for semi-private training. Training four clients at a time would net you $140-160 for the same hour of work.
That approach also benefits clients, as they would pay less for personalized guidance. Rather than paying full price, personal training clients split the bill.
As a fitness trainer, this approach is also practical for managing a larger client roster and controlling your weekly working hours.
That said, it’s worth noting that the semi-private model is unsuitable for beginner coaches because it takes skill to coach up to four people and give everyone the time they need.
If you are interested in the approach, start with two clients simultaneously, then move up to three, and finally work with four people simultaneously. But take it slow because coaching multiple people is more complex and takes a while to master.
2. Help Clients With Their Nutrition
In our guide on becoming a personal trainer, we discuss the importance of earning a nutrition degree or certification.
You may wonder why that’s important since your job is to train people. There are two primary reasons:
First, having a certification or degree and being able to help clients with their nutrition presents you as a complete expert who can guide them through the challenges and help them reach their goals.
Second, it’s essentially mandatory to be competent in this area because training and nutrition go hand-in-hand. Being a good trainer is important, but you must also help your clients eat in accordance with their goals.
Clients would otherwise need to look for help elsewhere for their nutritional needs, which could sometimes lead to a situation where they don’t get the desired results due to bad eating strategies.
Plus, helping clients with their nutrition means you can earn more from each person you work with. Nutritional guidance costs extra, and you can even sell meal plans or agree to review their daily food logging (such as on an app like MyFitnessPal) and offer tips.
3. Specialize in a Certain Field
Earning a personal training certification is a practical first step to getting into the industry, having the opportunity to work with people, and deciding how you want your career to advance in the long run.
However, that doesn’t mean you must work with the general population forever. There are numerous specialization options for personal trainers, each presenting unique opportunities and allowing you to earn more.
Common options include:
- Senior fitness – ACE, ISSA, and NASM offer this certification
- Weight loss specialist – ACE, NASM, and ISSA offer specializations
- Corrective exercise specialist – ACE, ISSA, and NASM offer relevant courses
- Physique or bodybuilding coach – NASM and ISSA offer this certification
Specializing sets you apart from other personal trainers, making it easier to land clients and make a name for yourself in the industry.
It also allows you to charge more because you will work with people with unique needs. For example, the average senior fitness instructor salary in the US is $116,276.
4. Sell Workout Plans
Selling workout plans on the side can be a decent source of mostly passive income because you can use workout templates to automate the process.
This way, the client receives the plan, and it’s up to them to apply it, so you don’t have to invest time guiding them through each workout.
You can also use tiered pricing and offer each workout plan with extras like ongoing support or a meal plan. That would allow you to earn more from each sale.
Using a subscription model can also work with workout plans. The client makes regular payments and receives a workout plan for the upcoming four, eight, or twelve weeks.
You can use Hevy Coach to build workout plans, assign them to clients, and track their performance without checking in several times per week. When reviewing their performance, you can decide what changes to make as part of ongoing support (which could cost extra).
This option works well because it helps with client retention and leads to more recurring revenue rather than relying on one-off sales.
As a side note, this can also be a good option for trying online personal training and seeing how it works without fully committing. We’ll discuss that strategy below.
Related article: How Much to Charge for a Workout Plan? Here’s How to Decide
5. Host Workshops and Seminars
As a coach, 90% of your job is to guide clients through training sessions by creating workout routines, demonstrating exercises, and pointing out potential mistakes.
More importantly, it’s about communicating with people, building rapport, and getting them to listen to what you have to say.
So, why not apply the skills you build on the job to a more formal and structured setting in the form of a workshop or seminar?
Stepping in front of 20 people and sharing your expertise in a specific area might sound terrifying, but it’s important to remember that you will be talking about things you know and have taught numerous times before.
One option that works particularly well is targeted skill development. For instance, let’s say that you’re great at coaching the deadlift because you understand all the details––proper setup, how individual differences affect movement mechanics, common errors, maximizing power output, and more.
You can host a workshop where you teach deadlift enthusiasts how to do the movement or optimize their form for maximum safety and the best possible performance.
Charge each person who attends, and you can earn decent additional income for an hour or two of work. You can conduct surveys to see what people are most interested in and host a workshop on countless exercises.
Hosting educational seminars is also a great way to earn more. For example, you can teach classes on proper programming for strength, training principles for hypertrophy, periodization, recovery tactics, and nutrition.
As with skill development workshops, there are countless topics you can cover, and you can even turn the seminar into a regular occurrence if enough people show interest.
6. Leverage Referral Programs
Setting up a referral program can be an effective way to grow your personal training business organically without investing in ads.
It’s essentially a form of word-of-mouth advertising (you rely on recommendations) where you build win-win relationships with clients––they refer your services to friends and family, and you reward them for it.
Some reward options include:
- Complimentary training session
- Giving away a copy of a digital product (eBook, course, or something else)
- Membership discount (if you own a studio or small gym)
- Family or friend discount
One overlooked benefit of this approach is that referrals work far better than conventional marketing strategies. When clients refer your services, others are far more likely to reach out and give you a chance than if they saw your ad on Instagram.
Plus, this strategy can scale incredibly well. One client promoting your services to a few people is not a big deal. But then again, every beginning is tough, and it takes time to get the ball rolling.
But what if 5, 10, or even 15+ clients actively promote your services? You can quickly find yourself in a situation where you must turn down people because you don’t have enough coaching spots.
Related article: 11 Fitness Incentive Programs Ideas
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7. Offer Online Coaching Services
Online coaching is a practical way to earn extra as a personal trainer because many of the skills you build on the job transfer to the digital world.
It takes time to adjust because you can’t use the same hands-on approach as in-person training, but it’s easier than most trainers imagine.
The approach offers flexibility because you typically don’t have to invest as much time to coach each client.
A common approach is to provide the necessary nutritional guidance and training plan and check in every week or two to see how your clients are doing.
This means you can be an online coach on the side and not commit fully from the start. Whether you work for a commercial gym or your own business, you can market your services and sign new clients.
For example, you can work with clients in person during the workweek and attend to your online clients over the weekend. It would mean working extra hours, but the pay could be worth it.
Let’s say you opt for a subscription model, where clients pay around $150-200 per month for training and nutrition guidance with some basic support between check-ins.
Four active clients would be $600-800 monthly or $7200-9600 in extra annual revenue. The best part? Working with four clients wouldn’t take up that much of your time, and your weekends would still be mostly free.
You can also try hybrid personal training to gain experience as an online personal trainer. With this approach, you coach clients primarily online and occasionally meet them for in-person sessions.
Hevy Coach is an online platform that allows you to build workout plans, assign them to your clients (online and in person), track their performance, and make quick changes to their workouts when necessary.
Clients receive their workouts through the Hevy app and can easily log each exercise, set, and rep without spending most of each session on the phone.
8. Create Helpful Content and Sell Digital Products
Selling digital products like courses, eBooks, and workout plans (which we discussed above) can be another profitable option for personal trainers.
The best part is that you can combine digital product sales with online personal training to diversify your income streams even more and significantly boost your earnings potential. It all hinges on your ability to build an online presence and get your name in front of a relevant audience.
Fitness professionals looking to build a presence online and create new opportunities often choose content creation because it’s been proven to work, allows trainers to display their expertise, and provides value to prospective clients for free.
People interested in what you have to say can purchase your products to support you as a content creator and say, “Thanks for all the hard work you put in!”
Setting up a fitness blog is one way to go about it, particularly if you enjoy to write and can break down complex topics for the average person. You can write long how-to guides, as well as shorter lessons on various topics.
Or perhaps you feel more confident in front of a camera? In that case, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram would be good platforms to upload videos with helpful information. As with written content, you can experiment with different lengths, formats, and topics to see what works best.
One advantage of video creation for social media is that virality is more common, and you might experience more explosive growth if you produce high-quality, original content. Plus, you can generate ad revenue (typically based on views and engagement metrics), which is yet another income stream.
You can even create case studies of clients to display your expertise and give people a glimpse of what it would be like to work with you online or in person.
For instance, you can showcase a client transformation to display your coaching skills and break down the process, how long it took, and what obstacles you had to overcome.
Related article: 16 Fitness Content Ideas to Grow Your Business
9. Promote Other People’s Products
To piggyback off the previous recommendation, affiliate marketing is another effective way to leverage an online presence. The objective here is to recommend other people’s products and services rather than yours.
In turn, you earn a commission for successfully referred sales, which the affiliate program tracks through a unique code that’s part of the links you use.
For example, let’s say your unique code is ?a_aid=3451, and the product page URL is https://www.example.com/example-product.
Your unique affiliate link would be:
So, when someone clicks on that specific link, a cookie is stored in their browser. Even if they don’t make a purchase immediately, the cookie remains active, usually for 15, 30, or 45 days.
So, if the person makes a purchase within that time, you earn a commission, which can be as low as 2-3% or as high as 45-50%.
Affiliate marketing can turn into a mostly passive income source because you can produce content around products and services (such as reviews), and they can generate leads 24/7.
Plus, the beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to worry about shipping, customer support, and other things that come with selling products online or in person.
Related article: The 13 Best Fitness Affiliate Programs in 2025
Conclusion
Making money as a personal trainer doesn’t have to be limited to one-on-one sessions.
But even if that’s how you primarily want to go about it, you can always offer extras (e.g., nutritional guidance), leverage a referral program to grow your roster, and specialize in a field (e.g., elderly fitness) to set yourself apart and earn more.
Plus, the internet allows you to turn your first-hand experience into additional income streams, primarily by building an online presence and leveraging it in many ways: selling workout plans, generating ad revenue, and using affiliate marketing.
With that, we hope you’ve gotten a ton of value from the article. If you’ve made it so far, check out Hevy Coach––our all-in-one platform for personal trainers.
With it, you can create training plans, assign them to your clients, make quick changes when necessary, track how each client is doing, and answer questions through the built-in chat.
FAQs
1. Can I make good money as a personal trainer?
The base personal trainer salary is not huge, but you can earn extra in many ways, including by specializing in a particular field (e.g., elder fitness or weight loss), offering online coaching, and hosting workshops and seminars.
2. How can I increase my income as a personal trainer?
The most practical way to earn more is to continue working with clients one-on-one and start a side project (e.g., a blog or YouTube channel) to build your online presence and generate more revenue from affiliate marketing and selling digital products.
