Okay, this is the number one question that personal trainers ask us at WeStrive... How much should I charge my clients, how often should I charge my clients, and how do I support my reasoning. Check out the article to have all your questions answered and more!
Okay, this is the number one question that personal trainers ask us at WeStrive... How much should I charge my clients, how often should I charge my clients, and how do I support my reasoning.
Well, you're in luck! We've sat down (virtually of course) with top industry experts to discuss all things pricing. This isn't an exact science, and will require some selling on your end. However, if done correctly, you can start growing your online business immediately.
Online personal training is completely different from in-person training. Some trainers charge $75/session in person and then will also sell their online training for $75/month. It's all about the value, experience, & content you're bringing to your clientele.
For example, a program that a client downloads as a PDF will be a lot less expensive than a customized plan with weekly check-ins (like you can do on WeStrive).
In this post, we’ll cover 10 factors to consider when deciding on your online personal training pricing:
- What do trainers typically charge for online training?
- Figuring out what the competition is charging
- How long should the programs be that I'm selling?
- What incentives or Value-Add can I offer my potential clients?
- How do I find my target audience & figuring out how much they can afford
- Figuring out how much my time is worth to me
- How long should it take to figure out my pricing?
- Payment structure: One-time payments vs. recurring
- The difference in pricing between in-person & online training
- Should I offer free trials or a discount?
We Asked The Fit Pros
We've spoken with a few fit pros about most of the questions on here. Throughout the article we will reference two of the fit-pros that we feel gave the best answers to our questions. The first are Chris & Eric Martinez who run Dynamic Fit Pros. The second is Dennis Deheza. Both groups have years of experience in both personal training and helping trainers grow their business.
1) What do trainers typically charge for online training?
The word 'typically' is key here since personal trainer pricing can range anywhere from $15/month - Thousands/month.
Dennis Deheza has this to say about online pricing for trainers:
It depends on your model if you are charging low, mid, or high ticket.
I’ve seen anywhere from $50/month to $3000+ programs.
The MAIN difference that caters to what you are charging mainly is what you offer in your program and how niche you are with your program as well.
If you were to cater to help everybody such as general population and offer a fitness program, it is reasonable to only charge $50-$100/month for a customized fitness and nutrition plan.
But if you were to cater to a specific niche that you know really well and can promise a transformation not only physically but emotionally, they are willing to pay a higher price.
Example: Helping Busy Moms find priority in their lives again and feeling confident when looking at themselves in the mirror.
The guys at Dynamic Inner Circle didn't give a specific price, but offered this advice:
Typically online trainers under-charge because they are basing their services off time rather than value. They are stuck in the broken model of selling sessions like they did with in person coaching.
Online trainers need to learn to sell the value in their programs. In our Dynamic Fit Pros Program we teach what's called the Value Ladder. By stacking and packaging all the value, benefits, time with coach, and outcomes together this leads to charging a higher premium as an online coach.
2) Figuring out what the competition is charging
If your personal trainer friend charges $100 for online training in your small town then there's no way you can charge $400.... but wait, it's online... so why not? With online personal training, you can reach anyone in the world so don't limit yourself to your home town or even home state.
With that being said, don't compare yourself to trainers at your gym, compare yourself to trainers in your niche to get the best view on pricing.
Do you train stay-at-home Moms? Get your research started with "stay-at-home mom fitness plans" and start taking notes on pricing 💪
3) How long should the programs be that I'm selling?
Trainers on WeStrive vary across the board on what length of programs they use. We have trainers that offer 1-week plans every week for 12 weeks in a row and then some trainers who will assign a 3-month plan right out the gate. For that reason, we took a step back and asked both of our fit-pros.
Dynamic Inner Circle:
Always try and sell longer duration "Transformation Programs" rather than short transactions. We teach our students to sell anywhere from 8-24 week programs this way you have the client locked in for a longer period, you can charge more, they see the value, and get results.
If you cannot sell them into a Higher ticket transformation program than you definitely want to have a down-sell of a monthly continuity program to show them your value as a coach and eventually buy their trust to invest in a higher ticket program.
Dennis Deheza:
Ideally, if you are charging more low ticket and have consistent clients coming in ($50-$100/month) you can charge weekly and even monthly. The advantages of charging weekly is that you get paid more at the end of the year as there are 52 weeks.
Monthly is also a great option for more low to mid ticket pricing ($50-$200/month) as you know when you are getting paid every month.
If you are charging a high ticket ($1,000+ program) ideally charging 3-4 months is advantageous as you are selling the transformation instead of just giving a normal fitness & nutrition program. There are other things that you can add to your high ticket program such as mindset training, daily habits, accountability check-ins, a private facebook community, etc.
I think a good point to take from this is what Value-add are you bringing to the table? We'll cover this in our next point.
4) What incentives or Value-Add can I offer my potential clients?
Every trainer has their specialties... what are yours? Find what things stick out about your personal training business and highlight those when approaching clients with your online training.
Here are some examples of some unique things you can offer, especially if you're qualified to offer them:
- Meal Prep
- Custom workouts based on client's equipment
- Weekly coaching calls
- Macro-tracking
- Specific training types (rock climbers, martial arts, stay-at home moms... what's your specialty?)
- Weekly Zoom training
Those are just a few ideas. Sit down and figure out what makes you special - and then offer THAT in your training!
5) How do I find my target audience & figuring out how much they can afford
Finding your target audience can be a long journey (or an easy/quick one). Thankfully, we have two amazing methods on how to accomplish this:
The first method offered is by Dennis Deheza:
Typically when finding your target audience, it is best to already look at the fitness business that you are already catering to.
If you have multiple target audiences, some good questions that you can ask yourself are:
- What niche or target audience do I like working with considering the clients that I already have?
- Which clientele makes up most of my business right now?
If you don’t have a current fitness business, the best place to start is to start with your own story
If you don’t have a current fitness business, the best place to start is to start with your own story and how you got into fitness and how that helped transform your life. There are millions of other people who have gone through similar journeys as you and would be willing to hear your story and work with you.
When it comes to what they can afford, you really have to test the waters with sales calls. Overtime you’ll find out what the best price point is after having dozens of sales calls with potential clients.
The second method is offered by Dynamic Fit Pros:
The best way to find a niche is to first identify your Core market (General population, Body recomp, Fat Loss, Sports Performance) the from there you need to identify your sub market. Let's use an example with a online coach wanting to Target clients that want to Lose Body fat.
The sub market for this is: Moms, Dad bods, Obesity, College students.
From there we can narrow down the niche now to either males or females, ages 30-50, busy working, office jobs, need more confidence, lack body image issues, want their sexy back.
Now it's much clearer on who your niche is and who you want to speak to when marketing.
6) Figuring out how much my time is worth to me
A lot of personal trainers forget to value their time. How much is it costing you to speak with a potential client, learn about their training habits, build them a fitness, plan, speak with them daily/weekly, etc.. If you're spending 20 hours on a client a month, it's not worth it for your time to charge them $50/month. At that point, you're getting paid $2.50/hour.
However, if you just need to assign one plan and spend an hour a month on this client, then $50/month AKA $50/hour isn't half bad!
With apps like WeStrive, we automate most of your online training for you. Everything from program building software to client tracking tools is taken care of - which drastically cuts down the number of hours you're spending. So while some trainers don't like spending $17/month on a tool like WeStrive (even though we're one of the least expensive platforms out there), you have to ask yourself how much time you're saving? If you go from spending 20 hours a month building programs in Excel and now only have to spend 2 hours a month... didn't you just save 18 hours? Congrats, you now have 18 more hours to spend on growing your business.
Both the software you use and the price you charge your clients should be looked at from an hourly rate perspective. What's the true cost to bring a client on board? Try to base your pricing on that number.
7) How long should it take to figure out my pricing?
You're not going to get it right the first time - your pricing will change over time and it's best to decide on a price and then adjust while you grow. As a CEO, I make this mistake constantly. I spend way too much time guessing what I should do, and not enough time just deciding on something and then adjusting over time.
The gentleman at Dynamic Inner Circle believe that identifying your pricing should take no longer than 30 minutes and they stated, "It all depends on the value you provide".
On the same topic, Dennis offered this:
"It depends on what you are offering. If you are catering to the general population and offering a customized fitness and nutrition program you can start low to mid ticket pricing ($50-$200/month).
If you are niching down and include other things to your program such as mindset, accountability, habits, community, weekly group coaching calls, etc you can start off at least at $1,000 for a 3 month program."
8. Payment structure: One-time payments vs. recurring
A huge question that trainers ask us is all about whether you should charge client for one big package once OR if you should offer recurring payments week-by-week/month-by-month.
The fit-pro twins at Dynamic Inner Circle believe that the one-time selling of a Transformation package is always best because it's a bigger investment (and then you can break it into multiple payments).
When speaking with Dennis, he feels that for low to mid ticket you can offer recurring pricing as they are more willing to pay that because of the price point. Then, for high ticket you can push for one-time payment but if they can’t pay that you can split things up into whatever works for them.
9. The difference in pricing between in-person & online training
Online training and in-person are very different. When you are in-person you can be much more hands-on, but when you are online, you can spend a lot more time actually working with the client.
When asking Dennis Deheza, he said that the pricing should not change at all. In fact, you can and should charge more for online training if you are offering more. With in-person, you are there for the 30 minute or hour session while with online training, you can offer much more outside of the session.
10. Should I offer free trials or a discount?
Shameless plug, but at WeStrive we offer free month trials. However, that doesn't mean that you should for your personal training business. When asked if you should offer free trials or a discount, Dennis simply replied, "No" (should be a good indicator that you shouldn't offer these lol).
Chris & Eric with Dynamic Inner Circle suggested offering the below structure as an alternative to free trials or a discount:
Step 1: Get leads in through a free or discounted-high value offer like a 5-7 day online fitness challenge
Step 2: Implement the “4 Cashflow Divisions to an Online Business":
- Core product offer
-Ex: $1499 8 week transformation program
- Add on’s or up sells
- Ex: add on done for you meals or supplements
- Prepaid or financing for programs or offers in the future. Offer prepay 10-20% discount
- Ex: your phase 2- six-month program is the next level for your client and you want to offer this as a prepaid upsell for 10-20% off the normal price since they already committed to your 8 week transformation program. So, the six-month program is $5000, but if they commit today and for the next 6 months, they get a 10-20% discount
- Continuity
- Ex: Turn prepaid offer above into reoccurring discount. Your six-month program above was $5000 and you gave them a 10% discount, which is $500, now you can turn the rest of the six month program into monthly payments of $750
And there you have it! We have so much more that we want to add to this article, but the team figured that 10 points was enough. If you have any more questions about setting your pricing, you can reach out to us at help@westriveapp.com or contact the two groups that assisted in writing this article below. Have a great day and don't forget to keep striving!
Make sure you're setup for online training with these articles:
- Easy Websites & Apps to make your training business better
- How to make reliable & quality client questionnaires
- How to write a memorable and professional fitness bio
Thank you to Dynamic Inner Circle (run by Chris & Eric Martinez) & Dennis Deheza for the incredible tips & tricks!
