How to Make More Personal Trainer Income in a Down Economy

The traditional wisdom is that when the economy is down everyone suffers. Yet, that does not have to be the case with the savvy personal trainer. You can make an even greater income if you play your cards right. It just takes a bit of ingenuity and restructuring to create an entirely new business model that will lead you to success in a down economy. Amazingly enough, offering less expensive services can truly save your business.

Some of your current clients might be feeling the pinch of economic hard times. You do not want to lose them for two main reasons. First, it costs more money to get new personal training clients and start them out than it does to retain the ones you have. Second, you want them around when their fortunes improve and they are ready for a full-fledged personal training program again.

A good solution is to offer them services at a reduced rate. This would actually cost you money if you gave them the same service for the same price as before, but the idea is to offer different services for a different price.  Your current clients will be happy to be able to stay on with you even though they cannot have the same level of training they originally had because they blame the economy and not you for their inability to pay for full services.

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One of these less expensive programs might just be one that is shorter in duration. That way, you could fit more clients into each hour, and in some cases you would make even more money. Less time would be spent on each exercise and the client would be expected to do more at home.

This is one case where training videos on your website would be a big help for reinforcement of new techniques. Also, rather than spending a large amount of time discussing nutrition, the nutrition portion of the personal training might be limited to a quick discussion of their food diary and suggestions on ways to improve.

Another cheaper alternative to the usual personal training program would be to offer group programs at a lesser cost per person. Although you would be getting less money from each client, you would receive more money for each hour. The work would not be any harder; in fact, it might be easier because it would not be so intensely focused on one person.

Online personal training is also another great way to increase your personal income while training more clients in less time.  This is a new market that focuses on an entirely different kind of client.  You can literally train hundreds of clients online.  Having the right website and the right software is key to success with online personal training.

When each person pays less, you might have to recruit more clients. That is why you should not cut costs by eliminating your marketing efforts. You can, however, find cheaper ways to market your business online. Between free and inexpensive Internet marketing and offering less expensive services to more people, your business can survive and even grow despite the unfortunate state of the economy.