How to Become a Fitness Influencer, Turn Your Passion Into Income

Okay, so you're familiar with what a fitness influencer is, but logistically speaking how do they actually make money? Who is paying them? That's what we're going to dive into in this section. 

So everyone is going to monetize what they are doing differently, and the type of platform your on, as well as the type of conent you create will play a role in how you choose to earn your money. So let's dive into some different ways fitness content creators or influencers earn their income...

Sponsorships

Many fitness influencers will be sponsored by a supplement brand, supplement retailer, or fitness apparel company. They'll often be given free products, free apparel and swag, and are expected to be a brand ambassador for said brand. If you ever see an Instagram profile with a supplement brands link or Instagram Bio in their profile this is likely a sponsored athlete or sponsored influencer. As far as what these agreements look like, they will all be different, however it may include something like the athlete or influencer is required to wear the brands clothing or swag in "x" number of posts per month, has to feature or mention the brand in "x" number of posts per month, etc. This will typically be an ongoing payment made month in and month out and will differ from an independent influencer who does a one off sponsored post. 

Sponsored Posts

Unlike sponsorships which we discussed above, a sponsored post is not an ongoing relationship but a single post. A brand or retailers may reach out to an influencer and say "we have a new protein powder we just rolled out and were looking to promote, would you do a sponsored post for us?" In this scenario a brand may say we'll give you $500 to make a post about our protein powder or to post a photo of a tub of the powder or you drinking the protein powder. Typically a cash payment is made for the post, however it can be incentivized by including an affiliate arrangement ie we'll also give you 10% of all sales driven by this post. 

Youtube Partners

If you've watched Youtube, which I imagine all of you have, you've no doubt seen ads on Youtube. When an ad is played on a video the creator of the video will earn money depending on how many views the video gets and how many people see the ad. This is referred to as being a Youtube Partner. In order to become a Youtube Partner you'll need to have 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 hours of watch time, and you'll need to apply to the program. This income is something you have very little control over and something which can fluctuate quite a bit so it's best to have other means of monetizing your content, however this is a nice little bonus and is very passive. 

Affiliate Marketing

We briefly explained affiliate marketing at the beginning of this post. We'll use our affiliate program as an example. You can join our affiliate program by filling out the application in the footer of our website. We'll approve you and you'll then be able to create custom links to our homepage, or individual product pages which have a tracking code which lets us know you sent that traffic and the sale is ours. We pay a 12% commission on each sale you drive to us, and have a 30 day cookie. A cookie is what allows us to track that a sale came from you. If you send someone to our site and they don't make a purchase, but come back 28 days later and buy, you still get credit for that sale. If you send someone to our site and they don't buy, but come back 35 days later and buy you will not get credit for that sale as it will be considered an unqualified commission. Affiliate marketing is nice in that unlike a sponsored post where your guaranteed a certain amount of money, but also capped at a certain amount of money, with affiliate marketing there's no ceiling on how much you can earn. Some of our affiliates make as much as $5,000 per mont and even outside of our program, there's affiliates making tens if not even hundreds of thousands of dollars per month.