Pricing is one of the most important things to get right with any product or service, let alone online services like coaching. Whatever the situation, a too-high rate will see potential customers walking away, while a too-low rate might lead to more demand for your service than you can fill—and thus the danger of accepting all of that business anyway, and overworking yourself.
So, how can you go about pricing your online coaching efficiently and ensure that you reach 6 figures and beyond in a reasonable amount of time?
We’ll unpack all of that and more in this guide.
Why pricing matters for online coaching
It goes without saying that you need to price your online coaching services at a level that you can live off, pricing in your desired share of your revenue as well as any expenses along the way.
This floor figure is easy to quantify and set, but how high could you go? You wouldn’t want to undercut yourself, after all, and once you set a certain standard for your own prices, it’s hard to change those down the line without upsetting existing customers.
As such, it’s wise to be strategic about pricing, and indeed to try and signal your strategy to your clients when possible.
For example, as a new online coach, you may decide to price your coaching services quite low just to get the ball rolling and make sure you have those first sign-ups sooner rather than later. This is called penetration pricing, and while you don’t want to call it that, you might label it as some sort of “introductory” pricing scheme or offer.
That way, your first customers will understand when your prices go up later on. You might have to grandfather them in at their original rates, but that’s not a bad thing since these first customers are so valuable—without them, your business might not even get off the ground.
You can also look at the market and see what’s out there before setting your own prices based on the other online coaches in the business.
This is competitive pricing, but it’s something you can avoid if you’re strong on the marketing side of things—emphasize the value you’re providing and the benefits your online coaching confers, and you’re engaging in value-based pricing.
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3 Pricing strategies for online coaches
1. Package fees
Coaching packages allow you to set a fixed rate and sell your coaching as a product, with the main advantage being that you can bundle your content together and offer clients options that make sense toward the achievement of their own goals.
Your experience as an online coach might suggest that you put together different packages with different quantities and frequencies and indeed the sort of service you might include.
For instance, as an online skills coach, you might sell a four month package with one-on-one contact once a week for review plus self-study materials.
From a sales standpoint, you might also choose to offer different tiers of packages, or make your package rate a little cheaper than any other options you choose to offer to give clients the feeling that they’re getting a great deal.
2. Retainer
Another approach that you can consider trying is the retainer, which is a model usually employed by people like lawyers—they get paid a fixed amount every month with the understanding that there’ll be consistent support at hand as needed, though with clearly communicated upper limits.
This is a good way to go as a coach too, getting clients lined up with a fixed fee that counts as stable, relatively predictable income on your books and providing them with a set amount of sessions or consultations every month.
This can let you optimize your schedule and plan your coaching business going forward. When your capacity fills up, you can then decide whether you need to hire some help or you’re happy with the status quo.
3. Hourly rates
Hourly rates are often quite popular in a variety of businesses beyond just coaching because they put a monetary value directly on the time that you put in. This is quite a neat and tidy solution because it begins with you assigning a value to your own time, and is followed by clients paying you on the basis of how much time you put into working with them.
However, there are significant inefficiencies to this model beneath the surface.
For one thing, clients could start to focus on the duration of sessions spent with you, or view the value you give them from the perspective of how much time you spend with them. This isn’t ideal, because the value of a coach tends to lie in the results that they are able to bring about.
That being said, if you’re truly considered an expert in the field or a superstar coach with plenty of almost inelastic demand for your time, then hourly pricing might indeed be the way to go.
Online coaching pricing: 3 real-life examples
Let’s look at a handful of online coaches and their pricing strategies, just to show you how people are applying the above strategies as well as value-based and penetration pricing in the real world.
1. Sean Foley
This is Sean Foley, and he offers a single lesson for $460, as well as a monthly package that includes two online lessons every month for a whopping $690 per month.
As you can see from his profile, he’s not done all that many lessons on this platform, but at over 200 that still means total earnings of around six figures from this platform alone.
We’ll come back to him in a moment, though.
2. Giles Gill
This is Giles Gill, and he’s done markedly more lessons on the same platform. He shows up on the website’s “Most Popular” section, and is probably a decent benchmark to aim at if you’re going down the competitive pricing route.
His high ratings score suggests he’s worth every penny, and he’s clever about it too—it’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere at the time of writing, and along with his free consultation and $88 single lesson offering, he’s got a winter package listed for $148 and a plan that’s a lot like a retainer with even more client attention for $198.
3. James Wiltshire
Finally, here’s James Wiltshire. As you can see, his premium lessons start at just $34.50 with a more detailed lesson available at $69. Given that James also has a YouTube channel with over 75k subscribers, it’s reasonable to guess that his $34.50 lesson is something like an introductory offering on this platform (he’s only clocked 29 lessons in all) and may not continue into perpetuity.
Back to Sean Foley for a moment. He’s an example of value-based pricing, with customers coming to him with the perception that they’re going to get ultra-valuable minutes from one of the very best online coaches in the world.
And they’re probably right, given that all of these three examples are online golf coaches, and Sean Foley has an extremely illustrious client list… including a certain Tiger Woods.
How to price coaching packages and services: Is it better to offer low-priced short-term options or high-cost long-term packages?
Whether you offer low-priced, short-term packages or high-cost, long-term ones will very much depend on what your coaching content revolves around, and what your aims with the package are.
On the question of content, let’s consider coaching for careers and job hunting as an example. Right off the bat, offering too long of a package signals immediately to your client that you expect them to be unemployed for an extended period of time. In more cases than not, job seekers are looking to get back on the employment wagon as quickly as humanly possible.
As such, the most suitable courses for them are, by and large, going to be short ones. A week or two to help them refine their job hunting strategies, polish up their resumes and cover letters, and interview prep. Besides, most people don’t take career courses. Those that do are probably doing so as a last resort, and need fast results.
Longer and more pricey courses on the other hand speak to clients needing a premium experience when it comes to content as well as support. You’re going to be going deep with them, delving into all areas of your expertise and giving them the time and care needed for them to get where they want to be—and a lot of the time, they’re looking for a transformational outcome.
Ultimately, your choice of target market may also have a big impact on where and how you price your online coaching services and packages.
Doing your customer behavior analysis should reveal enough information about your clients to price accordingly, and if your customers are value conscious then yes, you might have to promise those transformational results at a cheaper rate.
How you can make more money as an online coach
If you thought pricing was all there was to it as an online coach, think again! There are a ton of ways to add to your revenue without too much extra work and while maintaining your online coaching as your flagship business.
Here are a few of them:
Create a members-only coaching community
A community can become a brilliant source of income in many ways, whether premium or free. With the latter, people who join to check out your community and content may become coaching clients, while premium members naturally create a source of passive income for you—and premium also means less work on the moderation front.
However you manage it, a community can be a huge source of revenue, feedback, ideas, content, and all of that good stuff.
Publish a newsletter
Much like with a community, you can go down both the free and premium newsletter route. You might even have an advantage with the latter, since as a coach, your entire thing is to impart knowledge to your clients.
This can be done in snippets for a paid subscriber list, and it’s worth considering since most other types of creators struggle to come up with content that’s worth paying for.
Sell a course
Courses can be an extremely valuable revenue stream since, unlike coaching, you don’t have to be there and doing your thing in order to be paid. You can create a course and upload it, then sit back (or get busy coaching) while the dough flows in.
And if you don’t want to create a course on your area of specialization? Sell a course on coaching itself!
Host a paid webinar
Paid webinars are one-off events that many people will pay for if you’re able to put up a significant value proposition. They’re a great idea if you want to do a collaboration with another top coach or expert in a specific field.
Publish an eBook
With all of the value you’re giving people on a daily basis as an online coach, it might be possible to distill all of that knowledge down into eBook form. People who like your book might even hunt you down and be more likely to buy your high ticket coaching options.
If you don’t have the time or energy to create an eBook yourself, just work with a ghostwriter—it won’t break the bank, and will be an even more polished, professional product upon release.
All of the above!
To really maximize your online coaching income, create multiple streams of revenue.
At first you may think that this could be overwhelming as you navigate multiple systems and platforms for your business. But with Whop, you can do it all in one place.
Create your whop (your online hub) and you can create a private community where you host video calls, create a chat channel, sell add-ons like ebooks and online courses, and even send emails using the forums app.
The secret to making six figures as an online coach
There isn’t one tried and true formula when it comes to making serious money as an online coach—which is good news, since that means there’s plenty of ways to go about it.
As a rule, though, making six figures as an online coach is a matter of getting all of the big calls right. Pricing strategy, which we’ve gone into in considerable depth already, is one of those components. If you’re able to monetize your coaching effectively and combine the strategic application of lower cost offers with effective high ticket options, you’re likely to do well.
The same goes for add-on products. Once students are done with their coaching, give them a nudge to subscribe to your newsletter. Or buy your eBook. Or join your coaching community. Each of these products could link to the others too, and act as funnels for your main online coaching business.
Don’t underestimate the power of sticking to it, either. As you continue to provide your services as an online coach, you’ll start to see former clients recommend you to others. Developing an online presence also really helps, and putting out content such as blogs or videos also can really help to get your name out there.
And, of course, managing your business effectively is a must. Possibly the most crucial call you’re going to take in this regard is with your coaching platform of choice. If you ensure that your platform is giving you all the features you need while not eating into your revenue with too many fees, your journey to six figures and beyond will be even quicker still.
Online coach? Make even more money with Whop
So, if you want to take your online coaching business seriously, consider coaching on Whop!
It’s absolutely free to use, and Whop's commission start at only 3% on payments you take, which is as low as you’re going to find for a platform that lets you coach however you want to.
With one-to-one as well as group video calls, communities, newsletters, an easy-to-use course builder and your own landing page all controlled via your very own whop, it’s never been easier to launch an online coaching business.
Check out Whop today and launch your online coaching business on Whop for free—it’ll take no longer than a few minutes before you’re live and ready for your first batch of clients.
