Enjoy documenting your fitness journey on social media? Your passion could pave the way to a lucrative career.
Social media has evolved into a prime platform for self-exploration. By educating and engaging with your audience, you can generate income and positively impact people’s lives.
Fitness influencers have the potential to reach millions of prospective followers, influence entire markets, and rake in some big bucks. The trouble is, success stories can appear few and far between.
Though the lives of fitness influencers seem filled with dreamy escapes, choosing your own creative escapades, and working when and where you want, it actually takes a lot of work to thrive in this industry.
But, if you have a genuine passion for wellness, the right fitness credentials, and the desire to prosper, then we’ve compiled this handy guide that’s guaranteed to put you on the path to success. Keep reading below to find some top-class, expert tips, covering everything from finding your niche and building your following to monetizing your content and more.
What does a fitness influencer really do?

Before we jump straight into our guide, it’s important to understand the role fitness influencers play in today’s social media world.
A fitness influencer is essentially someone who has established a substantial following in the fitness space. In their daily content, they might share new images and videos with their audience, team up with various brands to promote products, and earn commissions from sponsorships and affiliate marketing.
Many fitness influencers develop their own products, including dietary supplements, apparel, or educational courses, and actively market them to their followers.
Pros and cons of being a fitness influencer
The role can come with a lot of external pressures, including an uncertain income, especially when you’re just getting started, so it’s important to examine the pros and cons before you decide if it really is for you.
Pros
✅ Making fitness accessible: Social media platforms including Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok can reach millions of people worldwide, allowing you to inspire and educate countless people.
✅ High earning potential: Fitness influencers have the potential to generate particularly high earnings, making it a lucrative career path for many.
✅ Flexibility: As a fitness influencer, you’ll be your own boss, with the creative freedom to showcase your unique personality and experiences through your content, working when and where you like.
✅ Receiving free products: Fitness influencers have the opportunity to collaborate with a wealth of various brands and prominent figures in the industry. This often means access to free products that come with a hefty price tag.
Cons
❌ External pressures: As a fitness influencer, you’re essentially building a brand around your own image, which can lead to feelings of pressure. Individuals in this industry are often expected to maintain a specific image and physique.
❌ Content creation: Though having the freedom to produce your own style of content can be a blessing, it can also lead to burnout if you’re not careful. Influencers are expected to produce fresh and engaging content on a daily basis, so having this drive is important.
❌ Negative publicity: When you put yourself out there on social media, there’s always a risk of negative publicity. Just like any other public figures, influencers can be subject to online abuse and criticism.
❌ Income: Though fitness influencers have the potential to rake in millions of dollars per month, things don’t often start out this way. You’ll likely have to deal with an uncertain income at the beginning of your career before your following grows.
Finding your niche in the fitness industry
The first step to getting started on your journey to social media success is finding your niche. Let’s face it, the fitness market is a crowded place, especially on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
Because the industry is so competitive and saturated by individuals with the same goal, it’s important to find your unique niche. By doing this, you can focus on a particular demographic, offer more tailored guidance, and establish a reputation for yourself.
Take Laura Roberts, for example. Laura is a fitness influencer on YouTube with a substantial 52.6K subscribers. Laura worked for many years as a business consultant and turned her challenges into a goal—proving that staying fit while traveling is possible.

Her target demographic includes busy professionals who don’t have time to hit the gym every day. In many of her videos, she can be seen working out in a hotel room, making the best of the resources at hand.
To make it in the industry, you need to carve out your own unique space, concentrating your efforts to effectively cater to a specific audience.
Many fitness influencers will also have particular areas of expertise, including weight lifting, pilates, bodybuilding, aerobics, CrossFit, marathon running, cycling, nutrition, personal training, yoga, etc…
Finding other influencers within these areas of expertise allows you to study how these brands engage with their audience.
Take note of:
- What type of content they post most frequently
- The brands they collaborate with the most
- Gaps in the market you could fill with your unique expertise and experiences
Take a look at our complete guide for building a fitness empire and growing your community.
How to identify and define your values
As we just discussed, the fitness industry can be incredibly competitive if you don’t have a niche to focus your efforts on. But this is only the first hurdle—next, you’ll need to identify and develop your brand’s values, and then stick to them.
Rachel Dietrich is a holistic health specialist whose passion for wellness led her to a bodybuilding career. Her content is a perfect blend of mindfulness and bodybuilding fundamentals. She’s gained a following of over 8,000 Instagram subscribers in an incredibly short time, appealing to individuals looking to care for their mental and physical fitness.

She often posts inspirational and encouraging mottos for her followers, displaying her personality, targeting her particular niche (bodybuilders interested in mindfulness), and sharing valuable information.
Here are some tips you can implement to find and define your values:
🏃 Share your own experiences: If you want to truly connect with your audience, start by sharing your own fitness journey. What led you to the path you’re currently following?
⭐ Unique value proposition (UVP): Define what sets you apart from the crowd and what services you have to offer your audience that they wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere.
🔎 Branding: Consider hiring a professional to design your brand’s logo. Aim for simplicity, strive for memorability, and ensure that the design is versatile to display across different platforms. Most importantly, make sure the logo represents you and your brand, making it instantly recognizable and unique for audiences.
🗣️ Tone: When developing your brand, consider your natural tone of voice. Social media users quickly sniff out inauthenticity, so make sure to keep things as real as possible, and display your true personality. A good way to do this when you’re just getting started speaking to a camera (which may feel a little awkward), is to simply pretend you’re chatting to a friend.
How to choose your platform
Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are all popular platforms among fitness influencers; however, if you’re just getting started, you shouldn’t focus on all of them at once. Instead, it’s best to choose one to put all your energy into.
Concentrating on producing content for a specific audience on a singular platform will help enhance your growth and establish your credibility. As your following grows and you gain more experience, you can start scaling your content to other platforms.
Don’t be afraid to experiment though. If you’re not sure which platform to pick, try out a few. Once you’ve figured out which one feels right and you’re gaining the most traction, you’ll have a better idea of where to focus your energy.
Further reading:
- How to get more Instagram followers: Hacks to skyrocket your fanbase
- How Do Influencers Make Money? Social Media Monetization Guide
- How to Get More Views on TikTok: Strategies for Success
13 steps to create valuable content

Now that you’ve defined your brand’s niche, identified your values, and chosen your platform, it’s time to move on to the nitty gritty of content creation.
When building your audience on social media, it’s not just a numbers game. Having a huge following doesn’t equal a thriving business. You need a sense of loyalty and community around your brand.
Chances are you’ve stumbled across a TikTok account with millions of followers, but when you actually examine the content, it only has 200–300 likes. Why is this the case?
Many brands purchase fake followers to enhance their visibility, or the audience might not actually be engaged with what the brand is producing. Yet, there are also brands with smaller followings getting a ton of engagement on each post.
Below, we take a look at some of the best ways to boost engagement AND grow your following.
1. Understanding your audience
If you want to produce content that will resonate with people, you need to gain a deeper understanding of your audience. If you’re only just developing your brand, it’s a good idea to come up with a ‘target persona.’ A target persona is a fictitious person marketers create to get a better understanding of their demographic.
You might consider the person’s age, occupation, income level, and preferred social media platforms.
So, for example, if you’re a fitness influencer focusing on the yoga niche, your target persona might look something like this:
- Name: Nicole
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts
- Occupation: Freelance photographer
- Income: $21,850 per year
- Yoga experience: 3 years (intermediate practitioner with a deep interest in Kundalini yoga)
- Core values: Wellness, self-care, sustainability, mental clarity, and mindfulness
- Challenges: Juggling work-life balance as a freelancer and finding the time to practice the craft
After you’ve defined your target persona (we’d recommended creating several and making them as detailed as possible), you can then start trying to solve each persona’s unique pain points.
So, for Nicole, subscription-based, flexible online classes available on demand would be a good option. This way, she can practice whenever her schedule allows for it.
Nicole, like many potential subscribers, would benefit from online resources that help to achieve a work/life balance. Specialized yoga sessions that are 15–30 minutes long and focused on breathing exercises (pranayama), chanting (mantras), or specific energy-boosting poses are perfect for this purpose.
2. Monitor your audience
After you’ve begun to gain a steady following, it’s important that you monitor your audience’s goals, struggles, and challenges regularly. There are several ways to do this, including:
- Analyzing previous content you’ve produced that’s performed well, and examining why it was such a hit among consumers
- Reading any comments and questions you receive from your audience
- Look at content produced by creators in similar niches to see what people are engaging with the most
- Check out community-driven fitness platforms like Reddit and Facebook to see what people are talking about

3. Follow a regular content schedule
One of the most important things when creating your content strategy is to stick to a regular posting schedule. If you continually post on the same day every week or at the same time each day, your audience will begin to expect to see your content, gradually becoming more engaged and loyal.
Posting regularly is also advantageous for SEO purposes, as it gives more opportunities for the algorithm to highlight your account and increase your visibility in potential searches.
Furthermore, brands want to work with influencers who have a steady mode of operation.

One of the best ways to make sure you’re sticking to a regular posting schedule is to create a content calendar. This will ensure you’re allocating your time and resources in the most efficient manner.
Content calendars help you keep track of some of the most important events in your industry; for example, there might be some big news about to drop that your channel could benefit from weighing in on.
It’s also a good idea to examine stats regarding the best times to post on social media platforms. You can then work these times into your calendar. For example, research shows that the best time to post on Instagram during weekdays is typically a small window in the morning before users head off to work. This time slot extends further on weekends, ranging anywhere from 7 AM to 12 PM.
4. Focus on short-form video content
According to Meta, Reels receive 140 billion plays across Facebook and Instagram each day. They’re an easy, digestible way to engage with your audience in a matter of minutes while allowing you to showcase your personality and creativity.
@livewellwithapell, an online fitness coach and body positivity advocate is a great example of this. She often uses surprising images, paired with intriguing questions and captions to gain viewers’ attention, instantly making her content more clickable. Take the following reel as an example:
Here, she posted a seemingly contradictory image of herself working out at the gym, paired with a text overlay that read, ‘This is not healthy.’


Once you click on the reel, it cuts to another frame that reads, ‘Without this,’ showing a clip of her indulging in some french fries, highlighting the importance of balance.
One of the handiest features of Reels is that they can be cross-promoted on different platforms. So if you own a TikTok account, they can be easily shared to Instagram and vice versa.
If you’re looking for some ways to monetize your Reels, why not check out our handy guide? We take a look at the best ways to get paid for Instagram Reels.
5. Share useful information
To thrive as a fitness influencer, sharing useful, practical advice that people can incorporate into their daily routine is important. It’s all well and good discussing various hypotheses, study findings, and theoretical takes, but if it does not apply to your wider audience, it’s basically useless.
The most pertinent content is often the most simple. Sharing things like training tips, nutritional guides, and workout guides are all examples of actionable content your audience can benefit from.
6. Q&A sessions
Once you’ve begun to build a following online, it's useful to participate in some Q&A sessions. These are something you can schedule into your calendar to partake in regularly.
You can prepare for a Q&A session beforehand by looking through previous comments left by users on your social media accounts. These can then be listed into pre-prepared topics. Or, you can simply ask for questions directly on your Facebook/Instagram stories.
Live sessions on TikTok or similar platforms are a great way to humanize your brand and foster more meaningful connections with your followers.
7. Keep your branding consistent
Make sure your branding is consistent throughout. Maintaining a consistent brand aesthetic enhances your page's visual appeal, increasing the likelihood of engagement.
It goes without saying that if you want to become a successful social media influencer, fitness-related or not, you need to post high-quality photos. Pixelated, grainy images are an instant turn-off for prospective followers, who are far more likely to engage with clean, visually compelling, and eye-catching content.
Treat your profile like a portfolio; prospective brands will know that you’re serious about your work and be more likely to reach out to you for collaborations.
An influencer who does this particularly well is Kayla Itsines, an Australian personal trainer and author.

Notice how she uses similar tones and color palettes throughout her posts, right down to the workout gear she’s wearing. She also uses the same fonts in her Reels for text overlays and tries to keep things as neutral as possible to maintain uniformity.
Aesthetic consistency creates an air of professionalism, making your content instantly more click-worthy in the eyes of potential subscribers.
8. Reach out to sponsors
Once you’ve started to build up your following, you can reach out to potential sponsors. This is one of the most exciting parts of the job, as it can transform what you’ve created into a steady income source.
Your main objective is to connect with businesses that offer products and services relevant to your audience. Do some research and compile a list of companies you’d like to work with.
Here are some important tips to follow before choosing your prospective sponsors:
👨👨👧👧 Consider your audience: First and foremost, you should consider your audience and their needs. Will the products/services offered by the company benefit them?
📝 Research the company: Be thorough in your investigation of the company. What are their values? Do they have any reviews? How do they treat their current partners? Avoid brands with negative reviews and questionable tactics.
🎯 Aligning with your brand: Your prospective sponsor should align with your brand and its values.
🤝 Negotiate: Make sure you’re getting a fair deal from potential sponsors, and don’t be afraid to ask for appropriate compensation if their offer doesn’t seem good enough.
Next up, you’ll need to create a media kit to send out to your list of sponsors. A media kit essentially sums up your brand, audience, and what you have to offer.
This will contain:
- Company information: Your brand’s profile, along with its history, objectives, and contact details
- Audience demographics: Information about the composition of your audience
- Social media metrics: The number of followers you have, as well as engagement rates
- Website information: Information about your website traffic and demographics
- Social media: Social media profile links
- Goals: Your brand’s future goals and objectives
Before you send your kit to the potential sponsor, make sure you’re following them on social media.
Bear in mind, you might not hear back right away—but that’s okay. Depending on their reach, they might receive hundreds of requests each day, requiring time to sift through all of them before reaching yours.
Don’t be afraid to reach out and send a follow-up email as a reminder if you don’t hear back within a few weeks. If your proposal is rejected, use any constructive feedback to make your next even better.
If you want to learn more about making big bucks as a social media influencer, take a look at our social media monetization guide. It will help put you on the right track to hitting the big time.
9. Track your progress
Your work doesn’t stop once you’ve hit ‘post’ on that new video. You’ll need to stay on top of your account’s progress to make sure it’s performing as it should.
This is one of the key steps in brand growth and involves monitoring:
- Likes
- Comments
- Shares
- Post engagement rate
- Impressions made
- Organic mentions
Keeping track of these metrics will help you determine content that’s performing well and what’s falling short. For example, if you notice body transformation posts get a ton of likes on your social media profile and food-related images get significantly lower, you’ll know what to post more of, informing your future content strategy.
You can also put metrics like these in your media kit so that brands can determine how engaged your audience is with your content.
If you want to evaluate where your community is lacking and gauge areas you can improve, check out our guide to learn all the ins and outs of your community’s engagement rates.
10. Invest in production value
If you’re just getting started in the fitness influencer community, chances are you might be overwhelmed by the high-production workout content circulating on YouTube. These seemingly perfect, glossy videos can appear almost impossible to replicate, especially for a novice.
That’s why it’s a good idea to invest in the production value of your content. After all, the higher the production value, the more likely people are to click on your posts or videos.
Learning new techniques like how to shoot videos, design graphics, and edit can all make a huge difference to how your content is perceived. Some of the ways you can invest in these new skills include:
- Taking workshops
- Joining creator groups
- Signing up for online courses
Once you’ve mastered the art of video content, there are a number of ways to monetize this skill.
Check out our complete guide on monetizing video content, including advice to capitalize on your viewership with brand partnerships, affiliate marketing, ad placement, and more.
11. Start blogging
If you want to build your credibility and gain thousands of followers in the process, blogging can be an incredibly lucrative way to establish yourself in the fitness influencer community.
You can dedicate your blog to producing tailored advice in your specific niche, delivered with your unique ‘voice’ and style of writing.
Nerd Fitness is a great example of a fitness blog that’s catapulted into internet stardom. It’s built up of a self-proclaimed team of 20 supportive nerds “providing the best health and fitness advice in the galaxy since 2009.” The blog receives over 300,000 visitors each month and has been featured in prestigious publications such as the Washington Post, CNET, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.

Along with a bi-weekly newsletter, the blog contains an online coaching program that people can subscribe to, made up of 15+ credentialed trainers, with custom workout programs and nutritional advice for busy people.
As well as designing online coaching programs like Nerd Fitness, you can make money blogging in numerous ways, including:
🎬 Advertising: There are a couple of different ways to run ads on your blog, including display ads or native advertising. Ad networks such as AdThrive or Google AdSense are great options for high-traffic blogs.
💸 Selling physical products: If you already have some fitness-related products you’d like to sell, whether they’re physical or digital, blogs are a great place to show what you have on offer.
🔰 Subscriptions and memberships: If you’ve unique content that you want to sell to your fitness audience, setting up memberships or subscriptions is a great monetization option. You choose your own subscription rates and can set up a monthly or yearly fee for users to gain access to exclusive content.
🔗 Affiliate marketing: This is another easy, popular way to generate money from an online blog. As a creator, you can sign up for affiliate programs provided by different networks or brands, like Amazon or eBay. These links will be added to your blog, and you’ll receive a commission every time someone clicks them to make a purchase.
12. Connect with other fitness influencers
Consider connecting with other fitness influencers, especially those related to your niche, to grow your following. You could start by sharing their posts on social media or on a blog to build their trust. After this, you can reach out to them personally and build a rapport.
This is an important step as you continue to build your reputation, as having successful influencers in your niche talk about you can help grow your follower base.
13. Create an online fitness community
This is one of the best ways to establish yourself as an authority in the fitness community, all the while generating a reliable, long-term revenue stream.
Some of the benefits of creating an online fitness community include:
- A predictable, recurring revenue stream
- Low startup costs
- A business that can scale and grow easily
- Community becomes a team of advocates to help you grow
The way you create your online community will depend on your circumstances. If you already have a large client base and online following then you can set up a paid community with a sense of exclusivity, but if you’re just starting out, you could opt for a free community with paid add-ons.

In terms of where to host your community, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram still appeal to certain demographics, providing an easy and cost-effective way to reach your target audience.
However, for a paid community, platforms like Whop, Telegram, and Discord are a better option. They facilitate the creation of invite-only communities complete with moderation features and a range of apps.
If you want to create a more premium feel and exercise more control over your brand, bespoke communities are the best option. Whether they’re run via your own domain or one of the many digital marketplaces that offer course- and community-management features, (Whop being our top choice), these can help showcase your brand in the best possible light.
With Whop, you can easily create and manage your platform using tools like paid memberships, recurring subscriptions, member forums, and promo codes.
Additionally, Whop offers features like feedback forms, giveaway apps, analytics, and reviews to help you manage and engage your community.
Build your fitness brand with Whop
If you want to build your fitness brand, there are plenty of ways to make money as an influencer with Whop.
For one, you can become a Whop Affiliate. But to really maximize your income as an influencer, creating your own whop and setting up paid subscriptions for your content can skyrocket your brand.
With Whop, you can focus on creating great content and engaging with your members, while Whop handles all of the technical aspects of managing a community. You’ll have access to a wealth of features, including:
- Showcase your product on a bustling online marketplace
- Sell courses and digital downloads
- Accept one-off payments for digital products
- Set up subscriptions and recurring payments
- Process payments with just a few clicks
- Gate your community behind membership tiers
- Create and run affiliate programs
- Integrate with a variety of other apps
- Get detailed analytics and information about your memberships
Whop has aided countless fitness influencers, coaches, and content creators who want to monetize their following, just like you.
Unlike many marketplaces out there, there are no monthly fees to pay. Whop takes as little as a 3% fee on any sales you make, and you’re completely free to set your own prices.
It only takes a few minutes to create your account, list any digital products or services you have, and be seen by millions of potential new members.
To launch your own online fitness empire, sign up and start selling on Whop.
FAQs
How much money do fitness influencers make?
Earnings are completely dependent on the level of engagement the influencer has and the number of people following their accounts.
On average, new influencers can expect to earn approximately $600 per sponsored post. Additional income can be sourced from ads, merchandise, online coaching, and community building.
Can you become a fitness influencer after 40?
Yes, of course, you can become a fitness influencer past the age of 40. Just because you’ve surpassed a particular age bracket, this doesn’t mean you can’t provide value to people.
There are many successful influencers out there past the age of 40 who can provide you with some inspiration, including Davina McCall, Bret Contreras, and Tracy Anderson.
Who is the best fitness influencer?
There are a number of fitness influencers out there who have captivated audiences and catapulted to internet stardom. Some of the top fitness influencers today include:
- Joey Swoll
- Jen Selter
- Massy Arias
- Emily Skye
- Chris Bumstead
- Chris Heria
- Ulisses Junior
How many followers does a good fitness influencer have?
Influencers, fitness or otherwise, can be broken down into several categories based on their social media numbers. These include:
- Nano influencers: 1k–10k followers
- Micro influencers: 10k–100k followers
- Macro influencers: 100k–1 million followers
- Mega influencers: 1 million+ followers
How many influencers does Gymshark have?
Gymshark is one of the top sponsors for fitness influencers, having become a $1.4 billion-plus valued brand. Gymshark pays over 80 fitness influencers like Lévesque anywhere from $6,000 to more than $100,000 to sell their products on social media.
What are the 3 R's of influencer marketing?
The three R's of influencer marketing are relevance, reach, and resonance. They are designed to help brands expand their visibility, build lasting connections with audiences, and create lucrative partnerships. The three R’s include:
- Relevance: How well an influencer's content aligns with the brand voice
- Reach: The number of people who can be reached through an influencer’s follower base
- Resonance: The potential level of engagement the influencer has with the target audience
How much does YouTube pay for fitness content?
The amount of money you can make uploading your fitness content to YouTube varies. Some fitness influencers only make a few hundred dollars per month while others are raking in thousands or even tens of thousands.
Is fitness a good niche for blogging?
Fitness is considered one of the best niches for blogging because it’s such a lucrative industry. There are millions of products out there to promote, covering everything from diet to weight loss to muscle building and more.
Do I need qualifications to become a fitness influencer?
The simple answer is no, but having a fitness qualification could benefit you hugely. Technically, anyone can become a fitness influencer. All you need is the drive to succeed and access to a computer.
However, having the appropriate qualifications will give you authority over your field. Your qualifications allow you to offer reliable and accurate guidance on health and fitness, grounded in real knowledge and expertise. Before starting their influencer journey, many online fitness personalities are qualified as L3 personal trainers. Qualifications help increase your engagement and potential for online success.