What do personal trainers make hourly or annually?
Personal trainers might make as little as $10.00 hourly in a public, county-owned recreation center or they might make $75 an hour in an up-scale, country club setting providing $25,000 golf club membership-guests with golf-specific personal training. The "norm" is $18 - $22 per hour while training clients in one of the "big box" clubs like 24-Hour Fitness or Bally's.
Training rates vary based on the club's policy for paying trainers based on the number of certifications, experience, and the compensation policy for years with the company, and pay while not training clients.
Expect to work hard building your client base in the first and second year (working 50+ hours weekly). You should make $35K - $50K a year if you work consistently, wisely, and building your business on referrals and "focusing."
You should expect to work 45 - 55 hours weekly with an established base of clients and you'll make $55 - $75K annually with an established client base "revenue stream".
With 5+ years in the business, consistently growing your referral business, perhaps training individuals as well as groups, performing nutritional assessments and counseling, and picking other fitness related forms of income (e.g. Check out John Spencer Ellis's Adventure Boot Camp training) you should gross $75K - $100K+ per year within five years.
Career personal fitness trainers (like Everett Aaberg in Dallas, Texas, listed as one of the top trainers in the country) have a waiting list of folks waiting to train with him for $150 + per hour. Phil Kaplan says with proper training, creativity, new client strategies, and focused energy, $200K per year is not unrealistic.
Find a problem (the bigger the problem, the better), fix it (and fix it better than anyone else can fix it), and focus on fixing that problem repeatedly, through many sessions, many clients, many partners, many locations, and many times better than the time you did before.
Listen to the career experts like Kelli Calabrese, Jim Labadie, Phil Kaplan, Ryan Lee, Everett Aaberg, and Bedros Keullian. Use resources like PTontheNet's "Personal Training Steps to Success", and you'll do very well in this industry. |
