There are so many good reasons to be in the fitness and weight loss industry that it’s hard to know where to start. Probably the best reason start a business here is that there’s something for everyone. There are an incredible amount of very focused niches and subcategories that can allow you to relate to people on a personal level, and provide highly specialized products or services. For example, just looking at the fitness niche, you have:
- natural bodybuilding
- bodybuilding for women
- bodybuilding without weights (or gym access)
- marathon running
- jogging as a hobby
- yoga for kids
- yoga for pregnant women
- yoga for men
- professional fitness coaches/trainers
- nutrition advice for diabetics
- nutrition advice for seniors
- ….and many more
Strong upward trend for people looking to 8216get fitNow let’s look at the weight loss industry. In some ways, it’s closely related to fitness, but losing weight is not always about running, biking, and lifting weights. Some people are just busy professions or stay at home moms that are not interested in breaking a sweat 5 days a week at the gym. More specific to this section of the population, here are some potential niche markets to look at:
- weight loss for stay at home moms
- weight loss for busy young professionals
- weight loss for diabetics
- weight loss for seniors
- losing weight naturally
- losing weight before a wedding
- quick + safe weight loss for events (class reunion, family event, summer vacation)
Higher volume of total searches, slight upward trend. Interest spikes in JanuaryClearly, there are tons of niche markets that you could target and build your business around. Obviously a stay at home mom that doesn’t have time to go to the gym and wants to lose weight is going to have different needs than a young college guy that wants to gain lean muscle to attract girls this summer. Same thing with a diabetic that’s 200 lbs overweight and just beginning a slow weight loss journey.
One more cool chart! There’s a growing interest in muscle growth exercisesIt’s An “Evergreen” Topic
Losing weight and being healthy are two topics that are never going to go out of style. There is always going to be a group of people that want to make life changes with regards to their level of fitness or weight, and there are always going to be groups of people that are enthusiastic about taking care of their bodies.
The methods how they do this, and who is doing it will change over time, but the idea will never go away. Thus, your business will never die.
There are always new markets opening up. Three huge industries that have taken the health and fitness world by storm are the paleo diet, the gluten free diet, and CrossFit. Ten years ago, no one had any idea what these were, but now there are entire websites and communities of passionate people dedicated to following strict dogma related to their fitness religion of choice.
Below are some very exciting screenshots! This displays the average monthly searches for a term. Normally, I look for anything in the 1,000+ range to build my websites. CrossFit and paleo diets both have over 200,000 monthly searches for this term alone! There are thousands of other related terms that you can see below, which means millions of people are interested and searching for information online.
EVERYONE Is A Potential Customer
Overweight people want to be thinner. Thin people want to be stronger. Strong people want to be healthier. Healthy people want to stay that wan and keep their families healthy too. Even folks that are already fit, happy, and healthy probably didn’t end up that way by accident, so they are very likely going to be interested in learning more about their bodies and keeping fit.
Kids, men, women, young, old, business people, stay at home parents… everyone is a potential customer if you just find a way to speak to them.
And the cool thing is that with the power of the internet, you can reach all those people right from your computer desk at home!
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How To Make Money In The Weight Loss And Fitness Industry
There are so many ways to make money in the various niche markets, that’s it’s almost overwhelming. Actually, I should have probably separated “fitness” and “weight loss” into two separate posts (and may still do at some point), but for now let’s take a look at a broader set of businesses plans that you can apply to whatever niche market you choose.
YouTube Channel + Branded Website
YouTube channels are HUGE because they are very visual. If you are comfortable in front of the camera, or at least comfortable being yourself and are willing to learn to be camera-friendly, then YouTube is a must.
I have seen man fat-to-fit success stories roll through my feed over the years, and there is a lot of support for folks looking to make healthy lifestyle changes. You will need a thick skin, since this video platform is known for its depravity as well, but if you can ignore the troll and learn to love your subscribers like family, then you can make big bucks here.
Bodybuilding and the different areas of fitness are also extremely popular because you can essentially be a private fitness trainer to hundreds of thousands of people at the same time. Cross fit, competition body building, strength training, distance running – these sports are all chock full of topics you can cover weekly.
One fitness channel I follow called Physiques of Greatness has something like 800,000 subscribers and they make well into the multiple six figures, and have several YouTube channels. In fact, another channel from two brothers known as the Hodge Twins have three different YouTube channels, each with a million subscribers. I wouldn’t be surprised if they make 1/2 a million dollars per year off of the advertising alone, not to mention sponsorships and other perks.
Of course, it does take time to grow a channel, and not everyone wants to invest time to appear in front of the camera. If you have a job that monitors your social media activity, you might not be able to appear and ‘be yourself’ anyway. However, I would really consider making this part of your marketing plan.
Write An Ebook Or Digital Info Product
Perhaps the simplest way to get you own product onto the market is by creating an ebook, also known as a digital info product. If you have specialized knowledge or area of expertise, all you need to do is write that information down in PDF format, then choose an advertising platform like Clickbank, Amazon Kindle, or your own website.
Any subject is possible, and it doesn’t have to be unique. Here are some possibilities:
- 101 exercise you can do at home with no gym equipment
- How to lose 10 lbs of belly fat in 30 days for for men
- How to lose weight for the stress eater
- Gaining muscle without getting fat
- How to lose weight before a wedding
- Mental an physical fitness for college kids with busy schedules
- …and a lot more
You don’t have to recreate the wheel to have a successful product. You just have to get it in front of the right audience. Part of doing that is having a website and driving traffic to that website. There’s a lot being published on line these days, so you definitely need a site so separate yourself from the pack.
Creating an ebook can provide you with income for many years, especially if you hire affiliates to promote the book for you.
Amazon FBA + eBay
This is a pretty broad concept, and what you choose to promote here will depend greatly on what your interests are. A lot of people don’t realize that the stuff you buy on Amazon isn’t actually owned or sold by Amazon. They just play the middle man!
The stuff you buy is actually sold by boutique shops from around the US (or world), and they ship the items to Amazon’s warehouses. When you order something, Amazon ships it for them. You get the advantage of fast shipping and easy ordering, they get to use Amazon’s amazing distribution center, and Amazon gets a cut of the payment. Everyone wins.
same product sold by multiple shopsYou could specialize in fitness supplements, shoes, clothing, health foods, meal replacements or specialized diet programs, paleo foods, gluten free foods, or all of the above.
The tough part would be sourcing the inventory and learning how to ship everything to Amazon properly. You’ll also have to be more physically engaged in the business, boxing things up, taking them to the post office, plus dealing with returns and customer service.
White Labeling Or Supplement Development
Another potential avenue for revenue in the fitness industry is white label supplements. This is where a larger company will produce one kind of supplement, and allow multiple smaller companies put their own labels on it and sell it as their own product.
Just one example company. There are many places that offer this serviceA lot of the stuff you already buy is done this way, and you just don’t know it. Marketing and advertising plays a lot into which companies make money from the venture, and which don’t. Two different companies can sell one fat burner pill, and one will be profitable, while the other one not.
For example, if the supplement contains caffeine you could market your pill towards students as a source of energy during fat burning days when you’ll have low energy due to a cut in calorie intake. You could take that same pill, and instead market it to busy stay at home moms who don’t have time to diet and need to be going full speed all day long.
Same pill, same ingredients, different market.
To be honest, I don’t know a whole lot about the industry and how to get started because I’ve never done it.
What I do know is that to sell your own supplements you’ll need a medium to sell them online so you’re not just selling diet pills on the corner the street from a plastic bag. Being able to create your own website is essential to getting your brand in front of the right people. You can choose to use the website as your main point of sales, or you can just drive traffic to your Amazon store.
Affiliate Marketing! (What I Do)
This is going to be the easiest entry point to online business for anyone without experience. Even if you are still a newbie to the fitness and weight loss industry as a whole, this is going to be the “walking marathon” version of building a business. You’ll get there – guaranteed, but it’ll take some time and motivation along the way.
Why do I say that?
I started my first affiliate marketing business promoting computer software that I knew nothing about. 2 years later I was making six figures doing it because I spent the time to learn. It wasn’t a straight shot A to B, rags to riches journey, but it’s pretty crazy to think that I was able to do it with no experience at all.
Anyway, so what makes affiliate marketing so newbie friendly?
All you need is a simple website to get started. WordPress websites are easy to build, and you can even get help building your first website. Once that’s set up, your entire business is built on writing articles and driving traffic to your website.
The main thing that I do for my software websites is research online by reading articles, then write my opinions on various topics on my website.
Within the content of my website I may have affiliate links to products that I talk about or recommend. I may do some full on promotions, or just causally mention them. This “affiliate link” give me credit for any sales produced through my website, and the company that sells products pays me a commission.
I don’t have to keep inventory, deal with customer service, handle credit cards, or anything like that. I’m basically a freelance advertiser, and get paid on commission for sales that I produce though my website.
It’s a great way to make money online without having to learn too much about ‘business stuff’. Just write what you think, and make money from your opinions!
Get Started With Affiliate Marketing Here!
Affiliate marketing is what I do best, and it’s how I make my money so that’s what I’m going to show you so you can make money in the fitness and weight loss industry. You can however, use some of the same principals of getting traffic to a website outlined below to to use as a base for any business model.
Reaching Fitness Enthusiasts And Weight Loss Clients With A Website
Whatever your business is, it starts with a website, and it grows with a website. Can you imagine a brick and mortar store that was open 24/7 and could serve any person in the world at any time? Maybe companies like Starbucks, McDonalds, and large franchises can do that, but it took them many decades to grow that large and get that wide of a reach.
Helping people find great products and services is the core of your affiliate businessYou can essentially gain that same reach (or even more) simply by launching a website. The second your site is launched, your business is accessible on the internet, and visible in Google, able to be searched and found by billions of people online (more than 2 billion and growing).
Plus, the number of people that actually shop on the internet right now is just a fraction of the folks that actually use it. As developing countries get easier internet access and use of the internet becomes even more ubiquitous in our home countries, more people are going to be using this medium to make purchases.
Not only that, but imagine how many internet-savvy teens there are right now that are set to get their first credit cards in the next couple years.
It truly is an exciting time to start an online business.
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How To Get People On Your Website
Let’s talk about some real methods to getting people onto your website, because building a site is just the first step in the process. There are already thousands of health and fitness companies online, so we need to look at how to get your new company in front of people that want to buy stuff.
The secret is keyword research
There are essentially three main ways to get traffic to our website:
- paid traffic with ads
- social media traffic
- search engine traffic
Paid traffic can be expensive, especially for newbies, and social media traffic tends to have a low ROI for the time you spend. The vast majority of my traffic for my websites comes from the big 3: Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
To get traffic from search engines, you need to be producing content. And the secret to producing content that gets views is knowing what people are searching for!
We can do this with a keyword tool.
Because there’s a such a wide variety of topics within fitness and weight loss, I’m just going to pick a few interesting ideas to demonstrate my point about keyword research and how to get traffic to your fitness or weight loss website. These are all ideas for what to write about on your website so people can find you in Google. There are thousands of other topics that you can discover write about daily.
But the topics you write about are of course not limited to what you find in the keyword tool. New and hot topics are always popping up, and for this, we can turn to Google Instant to find what people have been searching for recently. In fact, there are literally thousands of topics you can find in just a few minutes of research
5 Ways To Make Money From Your Website
Affiliate Promotions
The best and most profitable method of making money from your fitness or weight loss website is going to be affiliate promotions. There are many ways that you can do this, as well. I’ll list a few, but I don’t want to overwhelm you. If at any point you want to learn more about one of them, you can leave a comment on this page and I can clarify. Alternatively, you can go ahead and sign up to this online business training center and send me a message and I’ll get back to you.
The first method is to review products you’ve tried or have knowledge about. The setup is simple: try a product, then give your opinion. If it’s good, people can follow your recommendation and purchase it, in turn giving you credit for the sale, and thus earning you money.
Another method is to simply create discussion topics around a product or service. You can compare similar services, using affiliate links for both. You don’t have to give a hard opinion whether Product A or Product B is better. You just compare their advantages and disadvantages and let the buyer decide.
You can also start an email list, then send weekly promotions of related products to peoples inbox. If people trust your website, they will trust you product recommendations!
Sponsored Content
One potential source of revenue on your website is sponsored content. Sites like Buzzfeed do this because millions of people visit their website every day.
Companies that want to advertise will either write a post for the website or pay the website manager a fee to write a post targeted towards their product.
For example, you may create a “Top 10 Ways To Lose Weight After The Holidays” post, and it could be sponsored by Planet Fitness. Although you are not promoting their product in any way, because people read your website, their brand now gets more exposure, and your faithful visitors get to read interesting content!
Display Ads
This is a super easy one for beginners because there’s only really one thing you need to do to make money…get traffic! Rather than doing product promotions, or anything related to ‘selling’, you just write articles for your website. The ads you place on your website make money per click, and it doesn’t even matter if the person buys anything.
The articles you write attract traffic, and the ads make the money automatically as visitors click them. All you have to do is focus on getting traffic. You can even use social media to get traffic to your site!
The downside to this method is that you need A LOT of visitors to make good money. You can grow this over time of course, but it can be a frustrating journey if you are impatient.
Create an Info Product
This method takes a little more focus, and a little more finesse. Creating the product itself is relatively easy if you have specialized knowledge in some area. We discussed this above in the ‘digital info product’ section.
The difficult part is actually marketing the product. The health and wellness arena is already very saturated with products and it can be difficult to push you way into a market where there’s already experienced people with a budget and a marketing team already vying for attention.
However, it’s not impossible. There’s always new markets being created (who hear of Paleo diets 10 years ago?), and there’s always room for someone that’s passionate about the topic they speak about. The big guys tend to get lazy after a while, which means they leave room for the small guys to scoop up the dollars they forgot.
Who knows, in 5-10 years you could be one of the big guys!
Selling Your Website
If you are getting traffic and earning money from your website, then you can sell it for a profit. You can generally earn 10x-35x the monthly earnings of an online business. If your site earns just $500 per month, that means you could sell it for a cool $17,000.
Can I Make My Website About Something Else?
You might be reading this page right now thinking, “Hm, I thought I wanted to make money in fitness or weight loss, but now I think I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be writing and talking about this stuff all the time. I’d rather make my business about something else”
That’s totally fine. The beauty of affiliate marketing and online business is that you can use these same principles and apply it to any passion or interest of yours. If you enjoy something, there’s definitely a group of people out there that enjoy the same thing.
I’ve seen websites created about anime, video games, organic dog treat, beer making, photography, science projects, glass blowing, and even scrapbook making.
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Learn How To Start An Online Business About YOU
When I started my first online business, I tried a few things like horse care products, coffee stuff, and even video game plush toys. However, I found that my true interest was talking about cool types of computer software.
In just 2 years I was able to make enough money from my site to quit my job and work from home.
You can do the same thing by starting an online business about something you care about. What’s your passion?
Even if you don’t know that answer right now, the Wealthy Affiliate Online Business Community can help you answer that question.
This is a community of people just like you that are starting businesses in a huge variety of industries, but all following the same reliable training that has produced results for many people before (including myself).
Here’s what you’re going to do inside the community:
- choose a topic for your business
- learn how to rank your website in Google
- find products to promote for your business
- share ideas on how to grow sales and increase earnings
Over time, as you follow the lessons, you’ll learn how to grow your website from the very first page to an true authority on any topic. Some people choose to star ta business as a hobby and supplement their income in the evenings and weekends.
Other people have decided to make big changes in their lives, and created a full time business so they could start working from home.
Whatever you goals are, Wealthy Affiliate can help you achieve them.
Here’s how they (and I) can help you start a successful online business:
- community support, including 24/7 live chat
- two free websites
- 1-on-1 support any business or technical problems you run into
- personalized feedback from peers and professionals
- brainstorming with me, a full time marketer with multiple six figure businesses
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FAQ
Is it hard to build a website?
Building your basic website is very easy! Adding graphics and learning the interface will have a slight learning curve but all of the lessons come with video training so you can follow along withe the instructor.
Can I change my topic later?
You can build up to 25 websites with your membership, so you can have 25 different topics if you want! However, if you pick a new topic, you will need to purchase a new domain ($11). You should not have more than one topic for a website because it will confuse your visitors.
How much does is cost to run a business?
The one basic thing you need to run your internet based business is a domain name. This costs $11 per year to register. There are many extra things that are optional, but none are required. How much you invest in your business is up to you.
How much does Wealthy Affiliate training cost?
Wealthy Affiliate is free to join, and you are not required to upgrade. If you decide to continue beyond the beginner lessons and maintain access to the support network within the community, the cost is $47/month. They also offer a discount for your first month which means you only pay $19 for the first month of membership.
If Wealthy Affiliate hosts my website am I still the sole owner?
Yes, you own 100% of your website! If decide to leave Wealthy Affiliate at any point you can move your website to a new host.
How long does it take to earn money?
This is a tough question to answer because it’s different for everyone. Some people see earnings in just a few months. Others take more than a year. It really depends on how much time you spend growing your business each day.
How much money can I earn?
This is the cool part – there’s no limit! Because you are building an internet based business, the sky is the limit. There are billions of dollars being spent online every day. All you need to do is find a small slice of the pie and you can be making really good money.
Some people have businesses that earn a modest $30,000-$80,000 per year. Others grow to six figures and beyond. The really hard workers have multi-million dollar internet businesses.
Whoa. Wait a minute. Before you make a million bucks, let’s begin with the first step – creating your FREE Wealthy Affiliate account and starting your free website!