By Mike Mahler www.mikemahler.com
Ten Common Mistakes With Fitness Websites
- Too much focus on how it looks rather than content
- Too much focus on trainer credentials rather than what are the benefits to visitors.
- Too generic. No emphasis on what makes you special as an individual.
- No content and as a result no reason to visit the site more than once.
- Content is not updated often enough. You need to add new content every month minimum.
- When products are listed, no ad copy/promotion material to explain the benefits to the customer.
- No newsletter program to capture customer information and offer an opportunity to reveal more of the benefits to the prospect.
- No passive income opportunities. Most trainers focus on making money offline with private lessons, bootcamps, workshops, classes etc. That is great and your website should be used for that. However, your site should be making money for you when you are not working. If you have a website you should have affiliate programs, your own information products, and offer online consulting.
- Focusing on your locality rather than the global market. Your website should attract visitors from all over the country and world. This is why products are critical to monetize this traffic.
- Too desperate. Too much focus on trying to get everyone to be a customer rather than attracting the clients that are best for you. You need to be comfortable turning away prospects that are not a fit. Otherwise, you devalue your offerings.
Examples of content:
- Articles: 500-1500 words.
- Free reports: 5-10 pages on various topics. Use these to collect visitor info.
- Interviews with fitness experts and even clients
- Audio files to place on your site. Use skype to make the calls and record the interview.
- Word files
- Video files of you demonstrating exercises or discussing a topic.
- Newsletter or online magazine (send out no more than once a week. Twice a month is better. Focus on high quality information rather than pitches)
- Case studies with clients (what regimen worked well for them and before and after pictures)
- Fitness Tips (training, nutrition, restoration info)
- Your training journal (shows people what you are doing)
- Updates on what you are doing with clients that is working
Why is content important?
Content demonstrates your value and indicates why the consumer should work with you. It sells the customer on why they should work with you without selling. Content such as articles position you as an expert.
Content must be updated regularly. If you do articles, you must have a new article every month.
Get content from others to diversify your site.
Get articles published on other sites with links back to yours. Get your articles on as many other sites as possible.
Passive Income Options
Affiliate programs
You are missing out on potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars without affiliate programs.
Powerful source of passive income and that supplements what you do. Some make their entire income off of affiliate programs.
With affiliate programs you sign up for free to sell a companies products such as books, DVD’s, and fitness equipment. You are given links that you place on your site. When one of your visitors clicks on your link and makes a purchase from the vendor’s site, you get a piece of the action. You do not have to stock inventory or be involved with the sale process. The vendor takes care of that.
Good affiliate programs offer 25% to 50% for each sale. I would not bother with affiliate programs that offer less than 15% unless it is a high price item that you think your customers may be interested in.
Sell products that make sense for your site. Do not just randomly add products and slap them up on your site. You should only sell what you use and personally recommend.
Write a review for each product that you offer. Explain why you benefited from it and how it will benefit the customer.
What ever you sell you need to write ad copy for each product. Ad copy conveys all of the benefits of the product and the longer the better.
Affiliate programs that I used in 2007 and what I made from each one.
- Lifelineusa.com: $40,614.13
- Centerpointe.com $1,920.00
- Defensenutrition.com: $3511.24
- Johnberardi.com: $2,117.00
- Sandbagtraining.com: $2,100.00
- Ringtraining.com $651.51
2007 Total: $50,913.37
2006 Affiliate income was: $19,071.92
The Benefits Of Personalized Program Design
- No geographical boundaries so you can have clients from all over the world.
- Less time consuming than doing in person private training
- Essentially 100% profit per customer.
- No long distance calling involved. Thus, no wasted time on the phone.
- Can be from the comfort of home and you can work at a time that is convenient to you.
- Great supplement to your income or even the focal point of your business. Yes you can make a great living just being an online trainer.
How it works
New clients pay you in advance for a designated length of time such as one month, three months, six months, and one year.
You email the client a profile questionnaire to get some background info such as bodyfat, training goals, what equipment they have access to, and how often they can train.
Design a personalized program for the client and email it to him or her.
Have the client keep a training journal and require the client to send you the training journal every Friday for you to review. Make modifications based on how they did, provide suggestions and tips, and email it back to the client.
The training journal allows you to track the client’s progress and get the client committed.
2006 Personalized Program design income: $52,276.19 (full time)
2007 Personalized Program design income: $33,089.49 (part time)
Your own information products
A real money maker for your site are you own products such as e-books, books, DVD’s, and CD’s. That will be discussed at the lecture on Saturday.
Examples of solid money making websites:
and of course my site 😉
