How to Make Your Online Fitness Business Successful

You love helping people get healthy, and the thought of building an online fitness business feels like a great next step. So what’s stopping you? For a lot of instructors or studio owners, it’s not the commitment to fitness. They have enough of that to hand out to a football team.

It’s the business side. The stuff they’d love to ignore. But they can’t. They worry about being able to make enough from doing what they love. They’re also nervous that they’re going to spend all of their time behind a screen, fumbling with tech instead of interacting with their students. And if you’re feeling that way...we get you. That’s why we’re dishing out our 5 favorite fitness business tips so you can set your new business up for success and grow it from the get-go. 

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1. Build a memorable brand

What makes you, you? What is your special sauce? It sounds like a crazy question, but your personality is the secret to your personal brand. When you lean into what makes you who you are, you can easily attract those who want to soak up your energy (and subscribe to your content).

If you’re struggling to figure this out, ask your original students, friends, or family members. Maybe they love the way you shout affirmations throughout class or how your cat always interrupts your Vinyasa flow. It could be your fun workout outfits or hilarious sense of humor. Maybe it’s your sequencing, great playlist choices, what you talk about in class, or your ability to always remember your students’ birthdays. All of these aspects of you make up your personal brand. 

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2. Focus on your pricing  

We see a lot of fitness instructors rely on donations to stay afloat. You don’t see your grocery store asking for donations in exchange for coffee beans. You have valuable skills, so it’s important to work out a pricing model that pays you fairly. If you’re using a sliding scale, make sure you’re transparent with your students about why you’re using this model. You can always make note of your sliding scale to show your inclusivity if a student needs help paying for access to your community.

One Arketa partner, Andrea, was nervous about moving from a donation-based model to a paywall. But when she did it, her students came with her, and said it was ‘the best choice [she] had made.’ She also said this switch helped eliminate content-stealing and comments on her videos. Charging a fair price will establish you as a pro and is a must for growing your fitness business. 

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3. Create GREAT class

Your content, energy, and enthusiasm are what’s going to keep your students interested in your content (and gushing about you!) That’s why focusing on your online fitness programs, and on-demand video library is key. And good news...this is what you’re awesome at.

Some things that make a great class are a clear sequence, solid warm-up and cool down, and strong activation of muscles groups. Feel free to use other instructors, IG hashtags, social media, and Tik-Tok for sequencing ideas.

Garth, an Arketa partner, struggled to create great classes because he was overwhelmed with all of the logistics of using individual platforms. He was always dedicating time to the back office stuff that didn’t matter. When we centralized his business on Arketa, he went back to doing what he loves most --- making awesome fitness videos! 

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4. Set your business up for growth 

There are no bonus points for making your life harder when it comes to growing your fitness business. By setting up systems from the get-go that support your growth instead of hinder it, you can build your community with ease through your online fitness programs.

Graylon, a partner of Arketa’s, liked how he could swap out all of the tools he was using and put everything on one platform using Arketa. Centralizing the process made growing his business much easier. So he could focus on the thing he loves!

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5. Prioritize your time

Lastly, prioritizing your time is a must when you’re growing your business. That’s because there aren’t enough hours in the day to do a bunch of little tasks. We’ve seen businesses grow on Arketa, simply because we made setting up your fitness business and fostering a fitness community super accessible.

Tasks like sending an email to students after class, reminding students about payment, emailing class reminders, drawing attention to certain aspects of your library, distributing Zoom links, requesting funds on Venmo, and scheduling private classes are GONE. All of your energy can go into growing your business.

When Missy moved to paid classes online, she was shocked at how easily she could use the specialized tech tools on the platform to make the process easy. When Rachel stopped spending time uploading her workout videos to Google Drive, and created an on-demand fitness library...she was able to make fitness her full-time job. Cutting out the admin tasks and making growth easy can be the difference between surviving and thriving. Just think of what you could do with this added time when technology isn’t sucking up your time. 

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Even if growing your business feels a little overwhelming right now, know that you can do this. With simple tips like optimizing your time, creating a consistent brand and investing in systems that make the business side easy, you can build online fitness programs that keep your community coming back for more. 

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