Becoming a Personal Trainer Gym V Home (Mobile)

One of the first key decisions you will likely make is whether to become a gym based personal trainer or a home based personal trainer. Each has their own pros and cons and we will take a look at these below. But as a quick take away if you can get into a gym it is usually easier to get clients, I have met PTs who would never get a client on their own be 'given' clients because they are in a gym. Home based PT offers more freedom and if successful more pay - but it is harder. 

Key Advice: Unless you already have a good and unique specialisation, with experience, then try to attain employment in a gym ( Government/ Council is usually better.) first.

While it can be beneficial to start off in a gym first, essentially to gain much needed experience being a personal trainer, I would still advise against a gym position if you can go mobile, here’s why

Pros

No Personal Trainer 'Gym' rent

Let’s start with the biggest reason to avoid gym based roles. Many will charge you the pleasure of being in their gym. The sell of this is that you are in the very place where people might want a personal trainer, and for use of their equipment etc. Now, wether you get clients or not you are still expected to pay the gym - a mobile home personal trainer doesn't have to pay this, and can easily use this money as their advertising budget.

Full Autonomy as a Personal Trainer

Despite being your own boss, you still have to answer to the gym manager and usually the team leaders. So you have all of the risks of the self employed but fewer of the pros like really being your own boss. You are also working for their brand, you wear their clothing, and have to abide by their standards. If a client switches to a new gym, thats a lost client for you, where as a home based pt will only face this problem if someone moves house to a different area. 

Specialise

While it is possible to specialise in a gym with things like GP referrals (highly recommended to earn extra money and make yourself valuable) etc. You have a much broader scope to work with when you are self employed. You can focus on areas and people that are underserved such as junior fitness, speciality sports, or a certain demographic (women, bodybuilding etc).

Benefits of gyms

Being where people want a Personal Trainer

This is easily the main reason why many personal trainers pay rent or get a job in a gym  being where your potential clients are  and should you make good personal approaches ie network properly you can earn a good income from it  

On going Training

Many gyms will either provide training or offer a discount on training courses in partnership with training providers. If not you should encourage this as this will be mutually beneficial, you receive added skills while the gym can provide extra services especially classes. 

Classes

Classes are a great way of earning some bonus income but they can also be a great way to get new personal training clients as you showcase your fitness knowledge and your personality. Don't forget to give a call to action at the end of your sessions informing people of your rates and availability - you may also include any offers you may do or free sessions.

The old practice for gyms used to be that you'd pay rent each month and then be told that you are your own boss / self employed yet still have to answer to middle management, do cleaning jobs etc. Nowadays this is becoming increasingly rarer in favour of working part time in the gym as an instructor then doing PT outside of those hours. While this is much better you still should be looking to cut the 25 hours you would be working out as as possible in favour of working less hours but more money as your own PT. Just be sure to use your time in the gym correctly. Focus more on engaging and upselling your brand rather than meeting the gyms requirements for your part time role.

As a rule if you can it is much better to get a paid PT job if you have no clients or experience. 

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How do I improve my Personal Training Website's local SEO (UK)

Improving your SEO is a fine experimental art. As with anything there is no right answer, but there are good practices. So how do you improve your local SEO?

 
The first step is to get a well designed website for your business. Then use the below steps to improve your websites Local SEO

List yourself in directories as a Personal Trainer

The main areas are Google & Bing, then you should look to local directories in your area. 


After getting a website , this is the second best thing you can do, not only will it improve your SEO but give you a communication line to your clients. Makes sure to link your website and include your contact information. This will help the search engines to place you in local searches and the more links you have to your site the better for your SEO in general.

Sow Personal Trainer Keyword Links on blogs and Websites

This is the third best thing you can do. But also the first! After you have taken care of the above, this will be your main tool for SEO. Reach out to blogs and websites and get articles written about your service with links in the blog post! Links outside the post count for less with search engines. The more of these the better, on more sites the better. Nothing else from this point will beat links inside of posts and articles. So get a press release sorted, anything. Remember - there's no such thing as bad press.

Distribute Leaflets offering Personal Trainer

Either find an online printer or take a look at buying your own, but a tried and true tool for increasing SEO indirectly is to go door 2 door posting leaflets through. 

Instead of putting your number or web address on the leaflet your call to action should be ‘search for Daniel Craig personal trainer’ or whatever your pt service is called. This way google will find that many people searching for a pt in your area are searching for you and clicking on your website. 

Local Advertisements 

Local billboards, screens, newsagents and adverts in public spaces should fallow the same principle. People don’t always have time to stop and write down your number or website address so having a call to action as search [this] is a great way to mitigate any obstacle to people finding your pt business. 

Encourage people to share

Another great way to boost your seo is to encourage people to share your site on social Media. So, remember to put a call to action on your site asking people to share with their friends and family. Help hem. Do this by giving them something to share. Either get them to express an opinion, have fun fitness challenges, or publish content that makes people share it, with information that helps them or perhaps just validates thief fitness journey or universal experiences. Build a movement around something like toxic gym behaviour in an effort to build a positive gym culture. 

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An effective method for Providing Online Personal Training - Mega

For those looking to provide online personal training one of the main considerations is going to be how are you going to deliver the content to your target customers.

One of the biggest most obvious solutions is to provide online PT through YouTube - relying on advertising revenue and sponsorships. This option is by far the easiest to get started and should be part of your solution to provide online PT. However you lack control over your content and lack control on what and who advertises on your videos.

Other options include services like WordPress, amazon and vimeo which allow you to make money via paid subscription or selling individual videos.

Other alternatives include using zoom or Microsoft teams, allowing you to provide live classes without downloads.

A great option could be mega, an online storage and video sharing platform with good chat and video meeting functions. Allowing you to provide a hybrid video download and live teaching service that can help set you apart from services like apple fitness 

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Using TikTok to build your Personal Training Career

Social media is a great way to build PT career. However it can take a while to get started and you may want to consider purchasing ads not expressly for YouTube but in your local area with a qr code link to your videos. 

TikTok is a great way to boost your chances as it can be somewhat easier to be discovered due to the nature of how TikTok works. Provide good clean and useful tips or funny observations and you could easily build up a loyal following. 

Younger People are moving to TikTok from Google Search

If you tailor your content to younger audiences you may be able to create a successful sales funnel as more and more young people are dropping Google Search in favour of TikTok. The biggest reason for this is when you search on Google at the top of the list are mostly adverts. Whereas at the top of the list in TikTok are genuine results, they are visual and usually entertaining. Video has long been considered the biggest drive for sales success online which is why you should use TikTok to your advantage. This also applies to YouTube with many people now directly searching on YouTube as opposed to Google Search for the information they want.

 

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