The fitness industry is a billion-dollar industry. The market size of the health and fitness club industry in the United States alone was estimated at over $35 billion and is expected to reach almost $36.5 billion in 2022. (Source: Statista) Above all, the fitness market is growing rapidly worldwide. By 2024, the health and fitness club market (worldwide) is estimated to be worth over $136.6 billion. So if you want to get a slice of the fitness market, this is the right time to dive into the world of fitness blogging. In this post, you’ll discover;
How to start a fitness blog for just around $35/year How to find a niche in the fitness industry (with a quick tutorial) How to make money from your fitness blog and much more
Are you curious to know how to become a fitness blogger? Let’s get started.
How to Start a Fitness Blog And Make Money [5 Simple Steps]
1. Find your niche market
Your first and most important step before starting a fitness blog is to identify your niche. We all know that fitness is one of the most popular blogging niches. That means you’ll face huge competition. That’s why you need to differentiate yourself from others to succeed. Here’s where picking a relevant “niche” matters A LOT. What is a niche? In simple terms, a niche is a specialized segment of the market for a particular product. For example, “leg workout for weight loss” is a specialized niche of the large market for the “weight loss” industry. The “fitness” industry itself is a niche. But you can’t start a blog on a broad topic like “fitness”. The easiest way to build and grow a successful blog is by narrowing it down to a small segment (or market). The best way to pick a niche for a fitness blog is to do PROPER keyword research. Here’s where you need SEO tools like Semrush. Semrush is one of the most popular SEO toolkits in the world used by over 10 million people. It gives you access to over 50 tools including the Keyword Magic tool which has a database of over 22 billion keywords. If you don’t have access to Semrush yet, use the following link to try it for free. Grab Semrush Pro 30-Day Free Trial In case you’re curious about using Semrush to find a niche for your fitness website, here’s a quick tutorial for you. Firstly, make sure to come up with a list of topics related to fitness that you want to blog about. Let’s say you want to start a fitness blog on the niche “weight loss”. Enter that keyword term on the Semrush Keyword magic tool. See that? Semrush generated over 720,000 keyword variations for the topic “weight loss”, which is HUGE! Now, you can simply start filtering out the keywords so you can pick a small niche that has less competition. To do that, you can simply choose the “KD%” filter (KD = Keyword Difficulty). Here’s what it looks like; As you can see above, you’ll find a few options in the KD filter including;
Very hard (avoid these keywords as it will take a lot of on-page SEO and link building efforts) Hard (avoid these keywords as well as you’ll need a ton of high-quality links to rank) Difficult (you still need a lot of links to rank) Possible (you can consider these keywords as you’ll need well-structured and unique content to rank) Easy (these are the BEST keywords as you’ll need quality content to get better rankings) Very easy (these are GOLDEN keywords as you can start ranking new pages with minimal efforts)
So let’s pick the “Very easy” KD% option and see how many keywords Semrush generates. Have a look; See that? Semrush still generated over 3500 “very easy to rank” keywords for our example niche which is “weight loss”. Now, you can analyze those keywords based on various metrics like keyword difficulty, trend, CPC, search volume, etc to pick a NICHE that’s extremely easy to rank and is still profitable. All in all, Semrush is an essential tool for anyone who wants to start a fitness blog and make it successful from day one. So what are you waiting for? Try Semrush Pro 30-Day Free Trial
2. Choose a perfect domain name
Having a great domain name is extremely important for your fitness website. A domain name is just like your house address on the internet – it’s how customers will find you online. Just like a physical address, a good domain name can help customers remember your fitness blog and find it more easily. That’s why it’s extremely important to choose a catchy, relevant, and easy-to-spell domain name. Make sure to spend enough time coming up with different names for your blog. If you’re struggling to pick the perfect domain, here are some effective tips for you. Short & simple: First things first, try to keep your domain short and simple. Why? Long domains can be hard to remember. It’s always a good idea to pick one or two-word domains like;
BloggersPassion (two words) Facebook (one word) Nerd Fitness (two words)
Also, try to avoid using common words or numbers as they’ll make your domain harder to find in search engines like Google. Make it relevant: Make sure your domain is relevant to your fitness website – customers should be able to tell what your blog is all about just by looking at your domain name. A few examples of such domain names include;
Men’s Health (we can easily assume this blog covers health advice related to men) Breaking Muscle ·(related to exercise and muscle) The Healthy Foodie (related to a healthy diet)
Are you getting it? Make sure to brainstorm the domains that can easily convey what your website is about. Use domain name generators: Last but not least: if you’re still finding it hard to come up with good domain names, make use of domain name generators. You can use a free tool like Lean Domain Search which can help you generate a ton of domain name ideas instantly. Have a look; See that? For the example keyword “weight loss”, the tool is suggesting over 2800 available .com domains that contain that keyword. Once you’ve found the perfect domain name, be sure to register it right away before it’s gone.
3. Pick a reliable web hosting provider
Once you have the perfect domain name, the next step is to choose a web hosting provider that’s reliable. Your web host is extremely important because;
It impacts your website page loading times It is what makes your site secure from malware or security threats It affects your website user experience and the list goes on
But there are dozens of web hosting companies out there, which one is better? We recommend you go with Bluehost. Bluehost is officially recommended by WordPress and is used by over 2 million websites across the world. Another BIGGEST benefit is Bluehost offers a shared hosting plan called “Basic plan” which costs just $35 a year along with a free domain. Here’s a quick tutorial on using Bluehost to start your fitness website in 2023 for just $35! First of all, click on this special link to visit the Bluehost website. Once you’re on the Bluehost site, go to their pricing plans which look like this; As you can see above, you’ll find three different shared hosting plans from Bluehost which are listed below.
- Basic: This is the cheapest hosting plan from Bluehost which costs you just $2.95 per month and you’ll get the following features.
- Plus: This plan costs you $5.45 per month and offers the following features.
- Choice Plus: This is the most recommended plan from Bluehost which costs you $5.45 per month where you get access to the following things. Quick note: If you’re on a tight budget, we recommend the Basic plan from Bluehost as it costs just around $35 per year with a free domain. Have a look; See that? The 1-year Basic hosting plan only costs you $35.40, which is amazing. Once you’re done with the payment, you will get a confirmation email from Bluehost. Then, you can use Bluehost’s 1-click WordPress install option to start a fitness blog on WordPress. That’s it, you’re done. If you need any help related to installing WordPress on Bluehost, feel free to email us at [email protected]
4. Decide how you’re going to produce content
Once your website is set up, it’s time to create content. Hands down, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the best way to generate traffic to a fitness website. Why? SEO is free, sends you highly relevant visitors, and converts really well. The best way to increase search traffic is to create high-quality content. So you need to decide how you’re going to publish content for your fitness blog. You can either create content by yourself or hire someone to write for you. Most experienced writers charge anywhere between $100 to $500 (or even more) per article on topics like fitness. You need to publish at least 100 high-quality articles to start seeing decent results from Google. If you don’t have that kind of budget, create content by yourself. Fortunately, with the rapid growth of AI-based writing tools like Jasper, content creation has become so much easier. In case you’re curious, here’s how you can use AI tools like Jasper to automatically create content. To get started, you can pick any copywriting template from Jasper (Jasper offers over 50 copywriting templates). Let’s pick the newly introduced template “One-Shot Blog Post” which generates a full blog post with an intro, body, and conclusion. All you need to do is to enter a topic, pick a writing tone (friendly, angry, polite, professional, etc.), and select the intended audience. Hit the “Generate AI Content” button and it will automatically create a blog post for you. Have a look; See that? Jasper created a 400-word blog post within a few seconds. If you want to write detailed articles or product reviews, you can use Jasper Documents or other templates like Paragraph Generator to expand your topic or paragraphs.
5. Create a monetization strategy
Fortunately, there are a number of ways to make money from fitness websites. Here are THREE solid monetization sources MOST fitness websites use to make money.
1. Promote affiliate products
The reason we put affiliate marketing #1 on the list is that it helps you generate passive income. You can make money even while you sleep with affiliate marketing. There are literally thousands of full-time fitness bloggers who’re using affiliate marketing to make thousands of dollars every month. Although we’re not in the fitness industry, we’re generating over $16,000 every single month from the blog you’re currently reading (most of that income comes from affiliate marketing). Here’s one of the earning reports from the Semrush affiliate program. As you can see, we generated over $430K from just one affiliate program. So affiliate marketing is an amazing way to generate huge earnings from a website. In case you don’t know, affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which you get paid whenever some purchases a product using your affiliate links. Affiliate marketing can be a great way to earn extra income, but you need to put some effort to make money. The first step is to find good fitness affiliate programs to join. There are many different programs out there, so it’s important to do some research and choose one that will work well for your fitness site. Once you’ve found an affiliate program, the next step is to promote the products through your blog. The best way to promote your products is by writing product reviews, comparison posts or even creating videos. If you’re looking for more tips, here’s a HUGE list of ways to gain more affiliate sales.
2. Sell eBooks or online courses
If you know a lot of stuff about the topic you’re blogging about, you can make money by creating premium content such as eBooks or online courses. In addition, platforms like Gumroad and Payhip offer similar services and allow you to set your own price for each book, giving you even more control over your earnings. In fact, we also sell premium eBooks on our blog and make decent sales from eBooks. You can check out our premium eBooks section to see the landing pages, pricing details, etc. Besides eBooks, you can also create online courses or membership sites. There are many fitness websites that offer paid memberships or online courses, which give users access to exclusive content. By charging a monthly or annual fee, you can create a steady source of income from your fitness website.
3. Offer one-on-one coaching sessions
If you’re a trainer or fitness consultant, you can easily make a ton of money by offering 1:1 fitness training sessions. Just make sure to publish regular contents that talk about the importance of personal training or 1:1 training, so you can build a specific set of audience who’s interested in them. You can offer training sessions where a person can book a 30-minute video chat or phone call to discuss their fitness goals. Then, you can start offering suggestions or creating specific videos to help them with their current lifestyle. Above all, if you build up a large enough audience for your fitness website, you could even create your own line of fitness products where you can make huge profits in the long run. Here are some of the most commonly asked questions about fitness blogging and how to make a fitness blog. Related Posts: – Make money online– Help people get fit and healthy– Build a solid online business– Become an expert in the fitness niche
How to Start a Weight Loss Blog And Make Money 13 Most Profitable Niches That Really Make Money 17 Best Fitness Affiliate Programs that Pay Hefty Commissions
Final thoughts on starting a fitness blog
Starting a fitness website is the BEST way to build a following and make extra income online. By sharing your insights on everything from exercise routines to healthy eating habits (or the topic you want to blog about), you can attract a loyal following of readers who are eager to learn more from you. In the process, you can also make money from your fitness website. So what do you think about fit blogging? Did you find this guide on how to create a fitness blog helpful? Do you have any more questions? Let us know in the comments.