How to Make Money From Fitness Blogging

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Before we begin, ensure you have read the how to start a fitness blog article to get yourself up and running if you do not have a fitness blog already!

If you’re serious about how to monetise your fitness blog, then you must have private hosting, no Wix site will work to make your fitness blog profitable with some of these strategies e.g. example setting up AdSense, building your domain etc

Before you can even contemplate turning your new health and fitness blog into a profitable business, you need to understand who pays you money and why they pay you money. 

The majority of fitness blog earnings come from business’, not consumers or subscribers, but both work hand in hand!

If you do not understand the who and the why, you will hit a brick wall super-fast!

Once we have established the who and why, this chapter will answer the bigger question, the how! 

But more on that later….. 

First the who:

But why and how do these companies pay fitness bloggers and what for? 

All fitness related business’ work with health and fitness bloggers to some extent, whether that being on a re-occurring basis or as a one off. 

Business’ want sales and to help get sales they use bloggers. Bloggers have what they want…..access to a trusted audience or your website, specific to the fitness niche. Better yet, they are willing to pay to get it!

What Business’ Want From Fitness Bloggers

But there is a catch! The size of your audience, which includes subscribers, followers and page likes in cohesion to the strength of your website’s domain will determine how much you will make blogging fitness. 

Now the good news…. 

You can influence this!

Building your Domain Strength to make Money Fitness Blogging

When asking yourself how much can I make fitness blogging, you need to understand the importance and necessity of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). SEO will directly influence your fitness blogging profits! 

The strength of your blog with determine how much you can make as a fitness blogger.

Backlinks are what determine your website’s strength.

Backlinks are “an incoming hyperlink from one web page to another website.” Here is a couple of examples: 

This is a backlink using the anchor term “Personal Trainer” to our homepage from The Guardian Newspaper from an article Chris, one of our personal trainers contributed to:

Here is another example, this is a backlink using my name as the anchor term - “Luke Hughes” to our healthy habits blog post from Cosmopolitan magazine:

Backlinks are like votes in the eyes of Google! 

If a website links to you, that is like a thumb up to say “this article / website is really good”.

The backlink we got from the Guardian, which has a domain ranking score of 93, is incredibly valuable to our SEO, brings in huge traffic to our business and boosts our domain authority. If we paid an inside source or journalist to include our link in their article, it would cost around £1,000, just to put a link in. Take a look below how much a link from Forbes (same strength as the Guardian) would cost:

You might be wondering how does this relate to how to monetise my fitness blog…..Stay with me, we will hit that nail on the head in just a moment! 

Each backlink increases your domain authority (DA) or domain ranking (DR). Getting backlinks to your fitness blog will increase your domain authority and catch the attention of business, the people who pay you money! 

It is important to note, not all backlinks are equal! 

The stronger the DR, the better the backlink! Backlinks that are contextual (in text) are far stronger than backlinks in comments and forums for example. 

High authority websites like the BBC, Prince’s Trust or a high-end magazine is worth far more than 20 backlinks from low tiered websites – BARE THAT IN MIND! 

The reason this is important, is when trying to make money from fitness blogging is that business want to get their website link onto your blog. You will charge them for that privilege! 

The higher your domain authority, the more traffic you get, the more subscribers, the more valuable your fitness blog becomes, hence the more money you can make from fitness blogging. 

You can charge businesses for guest posting on your fitness blog or including their backlink to their website within one of your new fitness blog posts. The higher the domain authority the more you can charge, they literally go hand in hand. 

Take a look below at Fat Joe SEO services, who sell links to business from bloggers. Take a look at how much a backlink costs based on strength: 

Now take a glance here at highly successful UK fitness blogger, Carly Rowena’s website:

If we examine her backlink profile, using Ahrefs, we can see she has a strong website of 51DR, (Anything over 50 DR is considered very strong) which is especially strong for a single fitness blogger:

Carly Rowena could charge far more for her fitness blogging services than the huge majority as she has worked hard at generating backlinks from high authority sites. 

Here is a rough table for how much you can make fitness blogging per backlink sold:

But how do you build backlinks to increase your fitness blogging profits?

There are many different styles of backlinks and if you like me, you probably have not realised it, despite using the internet for years. 

Here are some ways to get high authority backlinks to your fitness blog:

This takes hard work, dedication and time. You reap what you sew though, the higher your domain authority, the more money you will make blogging fitness.

Imagine you have a fitness blog like Carly’s with a 50+ domain strength and you can charge £300 just to take 5 minutes out to include their link in one of your articles. If you did 10 of those per month, that is £3,000 for less than an hour’s work!

Even though, many companies will approach you to ask about guest blogging on your fitness blog, doing some outreach is a great idea.

In fact, we have bought hundreds of links from bloggers that approach us. Every day we get emails like this one:

You can then negotiate how much your fitness blog makes or charges to that business’ when you get a response.

This should be your long-term strategy, in the same way building you subscriber base and social following, it takes time!  

Using Social to make money from fitness blogging: Creating Media Packages 

Companies also want to collaborate with fitness bloggers as they want exposure to their target market through your social accounts and subscriber base you have built from your blog.

Building your social following, engagement and subscribers is a must to increasing your fitness blogging earnings. 

Apart from domain strength, your value is your audience. 

Your audience reads your articles, engages with you every day and ultimately trusts your opinion. 

Companies know this, and they might offer you to review their fitness product or service in exchange for sharing their promotional article or expect you to socially share their article. 

This is where you need to be clear from the outset that for you to promote to your social circles is an extra charge, not an inclusive one! 

You want to develop as many ways as possible to make money as a blogging fitness, your social value should not be given away for free! 

Similar to building your domain authority, the more followers, page likes or subscribers you have, the more you can earn as a fitness blogger.

A typical media package can look something like this:

With a blogging media kit or package, try and include some statistics, aside from your number of subscribers:

This is a great avenue to how to make money from a fitness blog. When you are selling a backlink to a company, trying to up-selling them to the overall media package to increase your fitness blogging profits.

How to get more Subscribers to your Fitness blog:

 1. Include downloads within your blog posts

 2. Ask People to subscribe via your social channels

 3. Add a pop-up when people try to leave your blog asking them to subscribe

 4. Ask them to enter your free giveaway

 5. Content Locking – Stops readers viewing the entire content until they have subscribed. When they subscribe it reveals the rest of the article.

 6. Just ask for name and email, don’t ask for every part of their life.

 7. Put your email subscribe landing page in all your online bios.

 8. When someone blog comments, after replying, add a replying link asking people to subscribe.

If you want to know how to get more followers on social media, check out our in-depth article here.

MONETISE YOUR FITNESS BLOG WITH SERVICES 

When finding how to make money fitness blogging, finding a service that you can specialise in is a good way to focus your blog around.

Online Personal Training

When starting a fitness blog, it is always handy to come from a position of strength, especially when you are trying to build trust with your designated audience. 

Getting qualified as a fitness instructor or personal trainer is not just great as backing up your content, but also is a very, viable of how to make money blogging fitness.

Successful fitness blogger, Lisa Jane Holmes offering her personal training services:

Sell books or Ebooks 

If you love to write, composing a book or a downloadable e-book is a great way to not just make money fitness blogging, but to do something you really enjoy in the same instance. 

Take a look below at fitness blogger and OriGym ambassador Lauren Tickner selling her two E-books via her website:

Here is another example by fitness blogger Zanna Van Dijk, who is promoting her new book “STRONG” via her website to her audience:

Online Courses

Another good option to increasing your blogging profits and income is to create an online course that is appropriate for your audience. 

Creating online courses, whether that being directly within fitness or routes that can be connected to benefitting fitness-based business’. Here are some angles you may want to consider:

• Fitness marketing course
• fitness blogging course
• Fitness Consulting
• Nutrition Course
• Programme writing course 

Remember Lauren from earlier selling her e-book?

Well, here she is again adding another way to making money blogging fitness to her repertoire with “Online Fitness Business School”. A business course for fitness professionals to grow their business online:

Become a Brand Ambassador

If you’re a fitness influencer and have established an authority as a blogger within a particular niche, then modelling for a fitness brand is a realistic avenue. 

Brands look for authenticity and it’s a more than viable pathway than people think to make money from blogging fitness.  

We normally associate fitness modelling with ripped people on the front of supplement or clothing campaigns with the likes of Bodybuilding.com or Gym Shark. Yes, that is one aspect, but actually a small one!

Companies want blogging influencers that will be the face of their next product or service that resonates with their particular market niche.

Having an individual with bulging muscles on the front of a Yoga mat or triathlon bike, does not identify with the target market as well.

Here is a great example from running fanatic Kelly Ruck. Kelly owns the fitness blog Kellogs On The Run:

Kelly is also one of our brand Ambassador’s to promote our Personal Training Diplomas to her audience:

Having a dedicated page on your blog for brand ambassadorship and including links in your social bios for collaborations will encourage brands to reach out to you to model their gym gear, equipment or in our case our fitness courses.

Explore lucrative fitness careers by delving into the highest-paid fitness jobs.

Public Speaking

If you have either developed a reputation as an authority figure via your blog or simply have great academic background within an aspect of fitness e.g. qualified dietician for example, public speaking could be a great additional way to monetise your fitness blog. 

Public speaking can fit into several categories: 

Speaking at events

Tradeshows

For Media Outlets

Television

News shows

Brands

Hosting

How do you make money from your fitness blog with public speaking? 

They will vastly vary as it depends on what your presenting, how long for, who for etc. To give you a typical public speaking price: 

£500 per day is a typical rate, but it can be free if it’s a news broadcaster or into thousands for some brands, depending on your authority.

A good example of this is fitness blogger and personal trainer Katie Bulmer-Cooke's website:

Selling Products 

When thinking of ways to make money fitness blogging, one of the easiest ways is to sell products via your blog. 

This could be your own product, re-selling through a license of other products or what most fitness bloggers tend to do is affiliate sell for leading brands.

Here is an example of Gym Talk website, founded by Henry Croft. 

He has added a shop function to his blog to increase his fitness blogging income:

What other ways can you find how to make money from your fitness blog with products:

• Supplements
• Gym equipment
• Fitness courses
• Gym Gear
• Fitness gadgets
• Fitness Software
• Fitness books

Memberships / Digital Subscriptions 

Membership subscriptions work in a very similar fashion to selling online courses. The difference being an online course is pre-defined in terms of course outlay and price, whereas with a membership it is continuous, and price can also change. 

You can create a membership around:

 Educational advice

1. Healthy eating recipes
2. Marketing or fitness blogging tips
3. Monthly webinars or seminars
4. Online coaching
5. Meal plans 

Sometimes combinations of all the above creates a great membership. How much value and your level of authority will determine how much you can make fitness blogging via membership subscriptions.

Selling Advertisements 

Another way to identify how to make money blogging fitness is selling advertisement on your blog. Some of these methods requires minimal effort to set-up and can bring a nice steady income all year round, 24 hours a day. 

Ad Networks A great no effort, way of getting some extra fitness blogging profits is to sign up to ad networks.  Google ad sense is the most renown, however, there are many alternative platforms that you can use.

You will get paid through two mechanisms:

 1.CPC – Cost per click. 

This is where you can place banners or sidebars on your blog and you get paid every time a someone clicks on that promotion.

 2. CPM Ads 

CPM ads are where you get paid per 1000 impressions a fixed fee. This takes little effort to set-up and sustain as you simply get paid every time an ad is displayed. The higher your traffic volumes, the more fruitful this type of channel becomes. 

See an example of advertising here on fit Bottomed Girls. Notice the advert in the sidebar down the right-hand side:

Private Ads 

As we discussed towards the start of this article, brands are behind most income streams and selling private ad space on your blog posts is a good way to make money from blogging fitness. 

Private ads can come in several different forms:

1. Opt-in Pages
2. Sponsored posts
3. Links
4. Banners
5. Reviews 

When selling private ads, there is no middle person, thus you can set your own rates. For example, you can either charge a monthly or annual fee for a company to display their banner ad on your website or charge them a one-off fee. 

Selling Leads 

A great way to make money from fitness blogging is to generate and sell leads. For example, let’s say you’re a personal trainer and you want to write an article on how to become a personal trainer for on your blog. You might include a data capture box, where you collect readers enquiries for those looking to become a personal trainer and then sell the lead to a company that would benefit form that enquiry:

This works best, when you have pre-set a relationship with a company that you have approached. The cost of a lead depends on the nature of the what is being sold. For example, here at OriGym we pay around £20 per lead as we have a fairly high-priced service to sell with our PT Courses. Gym equipment would be another good example of a high-priced item. 

If however it’s for a meal plan, gym clothing etc, these are low priced items and require huge traffic flows to make it worthwhile, so be picky with this method of making money from your fitness blog. 

Affiliate Marketing Links

One of the biggest methods of how to make money fitness blogging is via affiliate links. The reason this should be for most fitness bloggers a must is because you will be writing and placing supporting links in your articles anyway, you may as well get paid for them. 

This is where an advertiser or business has an item they wish to sell, and they give you commission on each item sold that comes from your fitness blog.

The affiliate company normally, gives you a trackable link to place on your blog as well as a full media branding pack of logos and banners you can use. 

Great ways to incorporate affiliate list are through product reviews, listicle-based articles or expanded list posts. 

The beauty of affiliate links is that you can make money whilst you’re at work or asleep. 

Hell, we do it…..We have affiliate marketing links with fitness insurance companies, PT software, gym clothing and more. It’s easy money! 

Traffic Marketing Links

Traffic marketing works exactly the same as affiliate marketing, but with one big difference! 

With traffic marketing, you’re not making money from your fitness blog when someone buys a product, but in fact you will get paid when you drive traffic to their website, so the consumer doesn’t even have to buy anything. 

Bodybuilding.com utilises this method, but normally they have tiers of how much they pay you based on the volume of traffic that comes from your blog.

Selling News Letter Space 

If you do not have a newsletter right now, you might want to start one after reading this as your missing out on a great fitness blogging income that you can make some easy extra money from.

On your newsletter you can include an ad either during the text, at the bottom or the top of the newsletter. When thinking how to monetise your fitness blog easily, this has to be one of the big go to methods. It takes minutes to add a banner and a link into an email and you can charge up to £500 for one email, depending on the size of your subscriber base:

This is why building your email subscriber base is really important. Take a look below at how much you can earn fitness blogging from email newsletters:

If you can also demonstrate high click through rates or purchasing rates this cannot just help you sell your services, but also inflate your price. This is why tracking your analytics as a fitness blogger important. 

Competition / Giveaways

The last on our list for how to make money with a fitness blog is competition giveaways! 

Competition giveaways have several great benefits to you as a blogger……

1. Give value to your subscribers – One of your subscribers gets a free item, sometimes worth in the thousands. Here at OriGym we have donated to competition giveaways with a full Pt Diploma worth £1,500.
2. The brand you collaborate with gets great exposure through being advertised down your newsletter and blog.
3. You get fresh content to engage your subscribers with
4. You get paid by the brand that wants to enter the competition giveaway

Getting in touch with brands for competition giveaways could not be simpler and free! 

Using tools such as Journo Requests or Response Source allows you to reach thousands of business owners, PR agencies and blog owners in just a few minutes.

Go to Response.com and click send journalist enquiry on the homepage in the top-right hand corner. 

You can then fill in your competition giveaway as seen below:

These get sent out to all business owners, here is one that popped into my inbox just yesterday:

Companies and business owners will reply by the dozen to these, bringing the business to you. Alternately, if you want to attract certain businesses, outreaching to them directly is never a bad idea.

Before You Go!

When trying to find out how much do fitness blog make, there is no real definitive answer to this as it depends on how many income streams you have as a blogger, the strength of your website, your social following and how you decide to monetise your fitness blog. 

Hopefully you found these tips useful and ensure to subscribe for more blogging tips.

Want to become a Personal Trainer or take your fitness career to the next level? Go take a look at our Personal Training Diploma, or download our free prospectus here for more info!