While people in western countries have long been make money through their online endeavors, people in India have only recently started realising the benefits of offering their services online. Here’s everything you need to know about setting up your own online fitness business.
Online Business Seems Less Risky to Most New Entrepreneurs
Start-up costs for digital ventures are extremely low, averaging a few hundred dollars, which is also one of the reasons that most choose to go online.
You can get an online business set up really quickly, even from home, and the overheads are very low as you don’t have to pay for an office or retail space.
There has been a democratization in the technology start-up space, and you can now make products/apps despite having NO programming skills. There are plenty of skilled programmers available online who can be hired to do the job and you can still safely retain the copyright.
Websites such as eLance, oDesk, continue to see a rise in the number of projects (on offer by small businesses) and there’s an equally robust number of freelancers bidding for such work.
- Even though the fitness/wellness market in India is booming, the number of trainers available in the market are also increasing, which means there’s more competition for you.
- Most potential clients opt for inexpensive, do-it-yourself exercise routines, including checking out freely available YouTube videos or phone apps. You will realize that once you get into the market trying to get clients for yourself.
- Working for a gym is not a long term option because of the long working hours. Many do it to gain experience and once they make enough contacts, most trainers go out on their own.
Setting Up your Online Fitness Business
So how do you get started in the online world?
Start With the Niche
The word ‘niche’ is commonly used in the online world. It means identifying a sub-market within a broader market.
So while ‘Exercise’ is a wide niche, ‘Kettle Bell exercise’, ‘Cycling for fitness’ are examples of a narrower niche.
The advantage of focusing on a narrow niche is that its comparatively easier to get traffic to your site.
If you choose a broader niche, you will be competing against well established players (with deeper pockets), and you will struggle to get traffic to your site (or you will have to wait a long time to see traffic to your fitness site).
So selecting the right niche is important (especially if you are new to the online marketing thing).
Also read: Profitable niches for affiliate marketing
Build the Website
You will need to register a domain and build a website, where you can post content.
You can contact us for more information on building fitness related websites.
Build Content for Your Site (Articles/Blog)
You will need lots of informational content on your site, along with good pictures, so that visitors can see you as an expert (authority) on the subject.
In your niche, you will need to find out the various keywords that people are using to find information; you will need to write content around those keywords.
Make videos that demonstrate how to do the various exercise with the correct form. Build a catalog of exercise instruction videos.
What to Sell? (How to Make Money)
Once you setup your website, there are several ways in which you can make money (you will also need lots of write content for that.
- Provide your own services: So if you’re a fitness trainer, you will write about various exercises, how to do them the right way, on your site. Once you have enough traffic to your website, you can ask them to avail of your personal fitness services for better results.Same goes for nutritionists. Have a website around diet and nutrition, and you can sell your ‘expertise’ (consulting or one-to-one advise).
Do your organize cycling tours or adventure tours? Promote your services!
- Sell Fitness Products: Have fitness equipment or nutrition products to sell? Setup a site with lots of reviews about your products. People who are interested in the products will buy the products, and you take care of the delivery.To scale up your project, you will need to set up an e-commerce site. Alternatively, you can start small; just providing your phone number and discuss with the client how they wish to pay.
- Ads & Affiliate Marketing: In this model, you build a website with lots of content and make money through ads (google Ads, Media.net) or affiliate marketing. Once you have decent traffic, apply for Google Adsense and Media.net ads. You can then place several ads on your site. When visitors click on those ads, you make money.
- Affiliate marketing is a commission based revenue model where you send your visitors to other sites such as Amazon, Flipkart or any other big site and you make a commission when the visitor buys a product on that site.
Also Read: Top Health and fitness affiliate programs.
Market Your Online Business
Once you have the site, and have a clear idea about what you’re going to offer, you need to promote your online business.
Few ways to do that.
- Write more content, target more keywords
- Promote on social Media (Make a Facebook Page, Post on Instagram, Post on YouTube)
- Go for Paid Ads (most newbies skip this part as they are short on budget, but this can quickly get you traffic)
Also, try to grow your Email list. For most hungry health and fitness markets, you can grow your email list be simply asking people to sign up to get free advice.
Here are the top online business ideas based on my observation and experiences:
Website or blog flipping business
Yes – just like in real estate, you can flip websites or blogs. The typical is to buy low, renovate, and sell high, but you can definitely go as a broker – you sell someone’s website to others and receive a commission.
Website building business
The conventional – you build a website for a client with $10 in domain name, $50 in web hosting, your time and creativity. Your client could pay you anywhere from $200 to $2000 and if you host your client’s website in your own reseller account you could possibly earn more.
Create a startup web business, sell it on online marketplace
Also the conventional, with a twist – you outsource to your partners for $30, sell your website or blog for $300.
Create an established web business, sell it on online marketplace
Create a site with good concept, outsource to your partners, market the website, make some profit, and sell it for a higher sum of money. From the $30 case on #3 idea, you could even get more than $1000 if you delay gratification.
Web hosting reselling business
A bit saturated market, web hosting business is still offering something today. You can purchase a $25/month reseller hosting, such as HostGator, create hosting plans, which can give you 50 spaces to rent. Times that with $5, you will get $250/month – That’s 10 times operating cost, monthly.
Review sites
You can review almost about everything – web hosting, credit cards, health products,etc. – But first, you should join the available affiliate programs or networks to be able to market them. You should choose high-paying niche, such as web hosting and credit cards that could pay you more than $50 per lead, but beware of the stiff competition.
Content writing business
Content quality is more and more important today, as it can help your web business rank better, visited more and eventually make more money. Article writing can be outsourced for as low as $2, and be sold for $20 per article.
Membership sites
If you have relevant expertise in your niche, you should definitely think to build a membership site. It is basically a site that offer “insider information” or online training for paying members. A successful membership site can makes thousands of dollars a month with only a several hundreds of dollars in operating cost.
Blog network
This is not easy to do, but doing it right can make you considerable amount of money. Consider this – if you manage a 50 blogs network right and attract the right kind of advertising, you could easily make hundreds of dollar monthly cash flow, each blog.
Build Niche Sites
Selling fish tanks online can make you hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month. A card collecting marketplace site can make thousands of dollars per month with only several hundreds of dollar operation cost! Going after a particular niche helps you set up a successful business.
Summary
Starting an online fitness business from scratch is easier than you think, now that you have read so far. Here is a summary of the key steps that we discussed:
- Find a niche market
- Identify your customer’s pain points and how you intend to solve them
- Develop services and products that solve your ideal customer’s problem
- Set up a website to sell your services and products
- Market your website to get more traffic
As your online fitness business grows, you will have more control our your life and have a more flexible schedule, when compared to working full-time face-to-face training.
Also Read: How to promote health & fitness products online as an affiliate
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