Cutting-edge business advice for fitness professionals. Learn how to maximize your income as a personal trainer, gym owner, or nutritional consultant. Host and money-making expert Ben presents high salary tips and tricks each week, from the website www.trainfortopdollar.com.
If you’re a fitness professional, personal trainer or nutrition consultant who is serious about enhancing your web presence, then you must know about how to get your fitness website ranked on Bing, the new Microsoft search engine, over at http://www.bing.com.
As you probably already know, getting high search engine rankings in Google is “The Holy Grail” of internet marketing and is crucial in helping your online and local customers to find you quickly and easily. But by this time next year, getting ranked in Bing will be just as, if not more important.
I’m going to turn the tables. It is possible that the internet police may prosecute me for this, but rather than providing you with instruction, advice, and tips on having a career as a personal trainer, how to make money as a personal trainer and how to profit in the fitness business…
…I instead need advice from you.
You see, I want to give away a copy of a few of my DVD’s: “100 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism”. But I don’t just want to throw them to the wind. I know how to make a fitness DVD and I know how to sell a fitness DVD. But I want to actually profit from the publicity generated by a free fitness DVD giveaway, in this particular case, one which features me walking the viewer through 5 different body-weight workouts.
Here it is (and after reading this, let me know if YOU have a Craiglist tip…just leave a comment!): the three simple steps to posting your ad on Craiglist and including an image in the actual body of the ad.
This is an incredibly useful way to keep Craiglist from “banning” your bootcamp or fitness class ad because it is the same as the one you posted a few minutes earlier. Just change the post title, put the ad code in, and you’re set.
Important: this is much different than just “adding an image” to your Craiglist posting. I know you’re smart enough than to have to read an article to figure that one out. Instead, this technique actually allows you to place an image in your ad BODY, as the primary content.
You know what it feels like. That headache back behind your orbital lobes that sometimes makes you feel like throwing up after you’ve been staring at web pages or word documents hours.
It makes you not want to workout, or makes your workouts feel like crap.
It makes you grumpy, and your family knows to avoid you after you’ve spent the day in front of a computer.
“It” is called Eye Fatigue or Computer Vision Syndrome, and you’re not alone. It happens to alot of internet marketers, computer workers, and anybody who stares at pixels and digital screens on a regular basis.
Check out this video. I initially recorded it for a nutrition company called “Impax” who wanted their members to make bigger money blogging. It’s in a “GoToMeeting” style format and I guarantee, you’re going to pick up TONS of cool tricks about how to launch your first blog…and now it’s yours. For free. You can download this straight to your computer as a Quicktime movie to watch later, if you want (or just right click here to do it). There’s a little button on the right side of the player below that lets you do that.
If you care to count, I list 17 different benefits during the video, on why you need to blog for your fitness business and exactly how to do it, from initial set-up all the way to your first post.
The month of May has been declared the official “Exercise is Medicine” month by the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Health Association.
What does this mean for you as a fitness professional?
Well, to start, here’s an e-mail I received a few weeks ago from the ACSM:
Exercise is Medicine™ Month 2009
Thank you for your continued support of Exercise is Medicine™! We’ve been working on numerous exciting initiatives to advance the promotion of physical activity, and are once again gearing up for an important event: Exercise is Medicine Month.
1. Local Clubs – Free. Public speaking is credibility on steroids, and you’ll average 1-2 new clients per talk, guaranteed. Every community newspaper or community magazine has a local calendar of events that lists meeting places and topics for local clubs. Check it out, then contact the club president or listed representative and offer to speak at their next meeting. Here are some ideas:
Alcoholics Anonymous: How Fitness Can Be a Positive Addiction
Breastfeeding Mothers: What Type of Foods You Can Eat to Have a Smarter Baby
In this March 5, 2009 podcast episode, I teach you exactly what to say and how to conduct your initial meeting and consultation interview with a potential fitness, wellness or personal training client to win their trust, identify their goals and create a road map that results in a win-win situation!
I literally tell you exactly how I do it, and give complete instructions for creating a client interview form template.
Can of Worms – Legal Considerations in Nutrition Consulting
Welcome to the nasty, smelly can of worms in the personal training industry. Can personal trainers legally and ethically dispense nutrition advice? For that matter, can “certified nutritionists” legally and ethically dispense nutrition advice? As a fitness professional, you are a gatekeeper of information on exercise and nutrition, but there is a great deal of disagreement over how you can actually share that information. Part of the disagreement is due to highly differing state laws that govern nutrition practices (to view state laws in more detail, visit www.super-super.com/nsca) , as well as a lack of consensus on the definition of diet prescription.
Here’s a guarantee: If you don’t have something like I’m about to tell you, there are a few dozen potential fitness or nutrition clients a day who are not calling you because they don’t want to use their cell phone minutes or they think your cheesy local number doesn’t look professional enough.
OK, get ready for a very cool and highly affordable tactic for giving your personal training or nutrition consulting business a more corporate feel and a higher degree of credibility, while giving yourself a very quick and convenient way to get voicemail automatically delivered to your e-mail inbox as an instantly playable .mp3 file. For 10 bucks a month. I know – I was also floored at the price.
If you listened to Podcast Episode #12, then you heard Phil Kaplan speak about the growing importance of “curing the disease” for your personal training clients. For some, this may include a focus on the wellness coaching component, because being a personal trainer involves so much more than simply helping your client achieve individual aesthetic fitness goals.
In thisPodcast Episode #13, “How to Become a Wellness Coach”, Ben Greenfield interviews Margaret Moore from Wellcoaches about how personal trainers can become lifestyle and wellness coaches, a growing profession that is going to see huge demand in 2009 and beyond.
The past year has been a financial and business roller-coaster ride for most industries. Do you want specific suggestions on how personal trainers can ensure success if economic turmoil continues in 2009? In this January 2, 2009 Podcast, Ben Greenfield interviews Phil Kaplan about how personal trainers can approach the 2009 economy and still experience massive success in the fitness business.
OK, so the first thing you need to understand is that online personal training is your answer to this so-called “Recession“.
Case in point:
Just lastnight, I received two separate e-mails. Both were from individuals who “couldn’t afford” face-to-face coaching but who both wanted to sign up immediately for online training.
You’ve heard of online personal training and sports coaching, but how does it practically work? And is it really the answer for fitness professionals to still make money during the financial recession in America? In the upcoming series of 10 articles right here at this website, you’re going to learn how to:
If you could hack into my computer and log-in to my Entourage calendar, you would find that I’ve created a simple task for each day – just something small that takes only about 5 minutes to accomplish. These tiny, seemingly inane habits add up to massively boost my online presence, search engine ranking, and productivity as a fitness professional, personal trainer, and triathlon coach.
I want to share 5 of these tasks with you. WARNING: After 2 or 3 weeks, you will begin to notice your website hits and interest in your personal training programs begin to skyrocket!
In this November 3rd, 2008 podcast, Ben Greenfield interviews John Santagate of Go Talk Fitnessabout how fitness professionals can enhance marketing presence, increase search engine rankings, meet new clients, and profit from a wide array of social networking options.
Distribution of your articles to multiple online and print sources can vastly improve your search engine rankings, website hits, and business. Just imagine if the latest article that you wrote on “How to Tone Your Triceps” was appearing on 120 different websites just 10 days after you wrote it. You’d have instant expert status!
I was recently approached by a company that wanted to help distribute my articles to online and print publications, and also provide full press release and marketing for each article.
My first thoughts?
Fantastic! A better way to manage time and enhance marketing visibility!
My second thought, after hearing the cost?
You’re kidding.
This service was being offered for a grand total of just $4975.
In this October 16, 2008 podcast, Ben Greenfield explains how to automate your lifestyle, finances, and communication via simple and free web tools. Train For Top Dollar is all about the concept of “time as money”, and this podcast is crucial to saving you hours each week. Very helpful websites mentioned in this episode:
http://www.basecamphq.com
-manage projects, keep track of correspondence, archive files and make, assign to-do lists, and interact with outsourced employees
http://www.skype.com
-free skype-to-skype calls and dirt cheap national and international calls, including video to interact with your online clients
In this September 21, 2008 podcast, Ben Greenfield discusses how nutrition consulting can provide your client with instant results and exponentially increase your salary. Includes information about certifications, websites, and legal implications of enhancing your fitness business income with nutrition consulting.
In this interview, Ben Greenfield has a conversation with personal trainer Danna Snow about how she trains 30 people in a single session, and nets an entire day’s profit in a single hour via her boot camp. Ben and Danna discuss fee and business structures, online automation, and boot camp workout styles. The bonus? ZERO overhead!
In this week’s Train For Top Dollar Podcast Episode #6:how to use an online print-on-demand to service to save time and inexpensively produce your books and DVD’s.
Remember, the entire eighth chapter of Train For Top Dollar is devoted to teaching fitness professionals a step-by-step process for designing and producing information products! Check it out today at http://www.trainfortopdollar.com.
In this interview, Ben Greenfield talks with Training Peaks Chief Marketing Officer Dirk Friel about what features are available in online software programs, how many clients a trainer can work with, what type of legal considerations exist in the virtual training environment, and the practical aspects of how technology can significantly enhance a coach or trainer’s income.
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“Who Else Is Tired of Staring at A Blank Screen Trying To Figure Out How the Hell to Sell Your Information Product?”
Stare no more. Ben Greenfield is now offering creative solutions for copywriting, sales letter and e-book design for fitness professionals. Simply e-mail ben@trainfortopdollar.com, and include subject line "HELP ME WRITE MY COPY.".
About Ben Greenfield
Ben Greenfield, the author of this blog, is the 2008 NSCA Personal Trainer of the Year, a worldwide expert on triathlon coaching, a published sports nutritionist, and a fitness business guru. In his spare time, he hangs out with his twin boys, River and Terran. To find out more about Ben, just go to
http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com.. To find out more about Ben's book "Train For Top Dollar", just click here.
About This Site
Each week, we release cutting-edge tips, tricks and high income-producing business strategies for personal trainers, nutritionists, gym owners, and coaches.
