Fitness is now an industry that’s worth over $100 billion, thanks in large part to the growing number of fitness influencers who continue to explore new ways to monetize themselves. In previous times, fitness influencers were not facilitated by the medium that we call the internet, thereby relegating them to operate on a very limited scale, say by being affiliated with a chain of local gyms in your hometown.
But due to the stupendous rise of social platforms coupled with amazing personal branding, these fitness influencers are now turning themselves into real-time entrepreneurs through powerfully unique ideas.
Many of them have become multi-millionaires in the process and if you too are a budding fitness enthusiast who wants to pursue a career as a fitness influencer, then here are 5 ways how fitness influencers are monetizing their presence that you can take a cue from:
Brand Endorsements:
For a very long time, fitness influencers had a very limited scale of products that they could endorse. This was because of the fact that not a lot of products were directly related to what they did, making them secondary choices for brands who were looking for influencers to market their products.
For e.g., fitness influencers could be considered to market healthy food products, but so can other more mainstream celebs like movie stars and sports athletes, making the former earn lesser amounts. But since the advent of niche-specific products like active-wear which are directly related to the fitness industry, fitness influencers can now earn a lot more money by endorsing them since these products are right up their alley.
Michael Lewin, a top fitness influencer with over 13 million followers, regularly endorses top brands in the activewear industry.
Fitness Tutorials:
Giving advice or sharing fitness regimens online was one of the most difficult things to do for fitness influencers some time back. Content, no matter how well written, can never give the kind of personal feelings or have the kind of impact that video content can.
Nowadays, fitness influencers don’t need any money to start imparting their fitness tutorials online.
They can just open up YouTube and begin for free, monetizing their videos as soon as the audience grows. This allows them to create much more comprehensive videos in which they can talk about anything they want extensively, ranging from fitness regimens, specific workout routines, diets to follow and more.
Fitness Blender, the most popular fitness-related account on YouTube, earns nearly half a million dollars each year just through the views it gets on its videos. The guys behind it even sell premium fitness content to subscribing audiences on platforms like YouTube Red.
Fitness Investment Portfolios:
The best example of this is a top-notch fitness influencer named Shear’Ree.
Shear’Ree has had a glittering career in the fitness and health industry, establishing himself as one of the best in the business long before things like social media took over the world.
In a career spanning several decades, Shear’Ree has done some commendable work like being selected as a special NFL strength and training coach, working with women to prepare them for PAT tests in order to make them eligible for entry in the Los Angeles Fire Department for the very first time and even dabbling with philanthropy through initiatives like Lift-a-Thons to generate money for victims and mass community engagement programs.
But his crowning career achievement of being the first person to cross the 700lb barrier in the bench press, helped him establish a world record that he is now monetizing in a very unique manner.
By taking part in a bid on their website, you can get your hands on “Shear’Ree World Record Plaques”, which are specialized mementos that immortalize his world record-breaking achievement.
These are a special piece of history, and for a sizeable sum of money, anyone can own them as a collector’s item and keep it as a safe investment.
This trend, started by Shear’Ree, is definitely one of the most unusual yet mightily effective ways that fitness influencers are monetizing their work online, and if you have something worthwhile to share with the world as well, you can follow his model and offer similar plaques or mementos of your own.
Starting Your Own Merchandise Line:
Fitness influencers can endorse fitness related products like activewear and make good money out of it. Some stop here, while others take a cue from it and start their own merchandise lines that consist of multiple products, including activewear, fitness gear, gym equipment and more.
And on top of this, they even go to the extent of customizing their merchandise for their unique audiences, making supreme amounts of money out of the whole enterprise.
Simeon Panda has a 4.5 million-strong audience on his Instagram profile and if you visit his feed, you can easily see how many of his posts are related to promoting his own activewear line to his audience.
Book Deals & Podcasts:
Fitness Influencers are mega-stars these days with such massive and loyal followings. This automatically makes them available to delve into initiatives that were previously walled off to them like book deals or podcasts. When you are popular or do something brilliantly well, people like to know more about different facets of your life, like your thought process, where you take inspiration from, what has your journey been like, etc.
Many fitness influencers these days are actively writing books that are a big hit with their audiences and on the other hand, they are also doing podcast shows so that they can open up another monetization stream by giving the audience what they want through a different medium. Podcast hosting platforms make it easy for influencers to earn income through advertising and/or subscriptions like this one: https://libsyn.com/podcast-monetization/.
Rachel Brathan or more popularly known as Yoga Girl, released a book by the name of “Yoga Girl” and it became a New York Times Best Seller, going on to show just how much potential this monetization niche carries for fitness influencers these days.
Wrapping Things Up:
Here you go with the 5 unique ways that fitness influencers are monetizing themselves globally. But this is not where it ends as these influencers deploy countless other ingenious techniques to profit off of their growing audiences, converting them into one of the most powerful social personalities of our modern times.
