How much can you earn as a personal trainer?
Blog #2
Learn how much you can charge per hour as a personal trainer and how you can earn £30k, £40k, and £50k plus per year
Before investing in any course, you must go into it knowing how you will make that money back and have a clear view of future earnings.
We strongly believe that our responsibility is to not just qualify an individual to become an industry recognised Personal Trainer, but to give them the platform to build a successful Fitness Business and to have a true understanding of what they will be expected to earn.
Obviously there are many different factors that may affect earning potential – such as location, employed/self employed roles and work ethic to name just a few. But what we will aim to get across in this article is a clear reflection of what type of living you could expect to make from this exciting career.
So let’s get straight to it, what can you earn as a Personal Trainer?
The average session rate will differ from location and level of education with each individual – for example if someone furthers their education by obtaining further qualifications such as the Level 3 Diploma in Sports Massage Therapy, or further Nutrition, Strength & Conditioning certificates etc – they can justify charging more.
Away from cities such as London and Manchester, the average rate is £25-£45 per session. In places such as London you can expect to charge upwards of £80 per session.
It is due to session rates like this that Personal Trainers can expect to earn £35k, £45k, £60k plus per year.
But it is imperative that you understand the cash flow projections that reflect these figures to really show you how much a Personal Trainer gets paid.
Is it just money that makes an individual want to start a career as a Personal Trainer?
A lot of individuals, myself included, decide to get into Personal Training as a way to earn a good living whilst doing a job that you have a great passion and enthusiasm for.
Since deciding to become a Personal Trainer back in 2002, I went from working an 8-6 job in an industry that gave no job satisfaction and having Sunday evening blues every week, to embarking on a career that I found to be exciting, challenging and rewarding.
But building any business takes hard work, consistency and determination, therefore I do not want to write at article that shows an exciting income potential and yet do not discuss what it takes to get it. Let me give you a quick insight into what is necessary to put into place first to be able to attain it.
Creating your Personal Trainer Fitness Business – Where do you start?
The Health and Fitness industry is as thriving as ever. With more and more media platforms highlighting the risks of obesity and poor health, and helping Fitness Professionals to spread the word about the high importance of being healthy, active and fit, it has definitely made individuals a lot more aware of the benefit of a Personal Trainer.
The result is that more people than ever are investing in Personal Training to support and to educate them on training, nutrition and the benefit to leading a more active lifestyle.
Is it a saturated industry?
This a question that is also asked by those looking to enrol onto a Personal Trainer course.
Our answer is simply ‘no’ – there are many fitness professionals we agree, but not all understand how to build a successful business and help clients in the long term using the correct knowledge and professionalism.
We pride ourselves on teaching you exactly how to make a positive impact on the industry and your future clients, ensuring you get a return on your investment in the quickest of times.
With that said though, it does not mean that clients will just come flocking to you once you put a few posts out on social media advertising your services as a fully qualified Personal Trainer. The first thing that needs to be done is the building of a professional looking business that potential clients would want to buy into, knowing that they are going to get value for their money.
So what does a professional business require?
- A professional looking brand/logo/company colours.
- A good website to showcase your services, prices, testimonials and free content of value.
- Social media platforms that are complete with content that delivers your views and ethos about how you will help clients achieve their goals and what you believe will benefit those who affiliate themselves with your brand.
Get a professional looking brand put together and start promoting your services, consistently, via advertising means and social media. Remember this should be promotion of your company, and not just your own training and nutritional habits per say.
Building a business will require a small spend for promotion and will require you to work hard at the beginning, yet with persistence you will get the business that you want on the back of all of this. Then your lifestyle will involve having a job where you can work the hours that suit you, whether thats as many hours in the week as possible to maximise your income, or maybe just working set days and timings to allow you to earn a decent wage and yet look after your kids at the same time.
How much can I expect to earn as a Personal Trainer?
As mentioned earlier, if working in an affluent district surrounded by high profile industries then a Personal Trainer can look to earn £70-£90 per session plus! Yet this is not always going to be where a lot of individuals will have a base for their business.
We do not want to set anyone up for an industry with expectations of earning something in that ball park, if you end up earning that then great, but we will be scaling this on more standardised session rates.
A lot of training courses, ours included, will have a bit of a Unique Selling Point somewhere in their advertising:
“Qualify with us as a Personal Trainer and earn £60,000 per year!….”
Is this attainable? Yes it is. But you can not just make a statement like that with no real evidence as to how this can happen.
Let us clarify this statement.
First of all, do not move forwards with the mindset of “£60k a year may be achievable for someone else but I could never get anywhere near that”, it is very, very achievable.
I have had the opportunity to work alongside, and qualify, many Personal Trainers over the past 18+ years, and the ones that wanted to achieve a large yearly salary all did so by applying the same qualities: hard work, consistency and professionalism.
Lets do a very basic projection for this and show how a much a Personal Trainer can earn:
- An average session rate of a Personal Trainer is anywhere from £25-£45 per session.
- 10 sessions of Personal Training per week will bring in £250 – £450, based on 46 weeks per year £11,500 – £20,700.
- 20 session of Personal Training per week will bring in £500 – £900 , based on 46 weeks per year £23,000 – £41,400.
- 30 sessions of Personal Training per week will bring in £750 – £1,350, based on 46 weeks per year £34,500 – £62,100.
As I mentioned, this does not just happen. It needs a good business plan and marketing plan in place, but it is achievable and a business of this type of income is exactly what we would want to see our students achieve.
Obviously there will be overheads and business costs involved that will need to be taken into the equation as well, this will all be factored into a solid business plan.
What next?
Decide what you want to get out of your personal training business – both financially and how it best suits your lifestyle.
Some individuals want to build a business where they are maximising the amount of hours that they can work every week, working as much as possible to create as much a yearly turn over as possible.
Yet others want to use their Personal Training business as a way to work limited hours every week and still earn a good wage. This may be because it is a job that works around the responsibility of having a young family, or it may be a job that works around studying a degree at university.
There are many different ways to build an income as a Personal Trainer within this industry. To help you decide what is best for you, we explore the many different options available for a personal trainer in our book ‘How to Build Your Business as a Fitness Professional’.
Not only does this book give you much more detailed cash flow projections, it will also give you inspiration on the many different ways of branding, promoting and advertising your fitness business.
This FREE book can be downloaded by clicking on the button below:
How we help you build the business that you desire and earn what you deserve as a personal trainer?
Along with our eBook, ‘How to Build a Successful Fitness Business”, we have an online module that we have created using the evidence of our very own tutors to show how to build a successful business as a Personal Trainer, i.e we are giving you the evidence and the blueprint to be able to do this for yourself.
Your course support tutor will also be encouraging you to start putting the foundations of your business in place whilst you study your Level 3 Certificate in Personal Training.
We want to ensure that as soon as you are qualified you can start earning straight away in your Personal Training career.
This process is exactly what reflects our tagline:
LEARN – INSPIRE – SUCCEED
I hope this answers the question for now of “how much can you earn as a Personal Trainer” – feel free to contact us using our contact form with any questions, myself and my team will be more than happy to help.