Education, self-development, and a healthy lifestyle are modern trends, and fortunately, you don’t even need to leave your home – neither to receive these services nor to provide them. Therefore, if you know how to do something useful and needed, and want to share these skills with other people, then modern technologies offer an excellent opportunity to become an online trainer. In this article, we talk about everything you need to get started.

Find a Niche

As always, it all starts with choosing a niche. Most likely, this niche has already been determined by your knowledge and skills, but nevertheless, it is better to return to this issue again and analyse the demand in this segment. To do this, it’s best to start with Google Trends and check the frequency of using keywords and word forms in your segment; for example, how to practice yoga online.

Draw a Portrait of Your Potential Customer

Now, you need to understand who your target client is, so that later it is possible to develop the most targeted advertising campaigns. For example, if you teach yoga for pregnant women, then everything is obvious – your target audience is pregnant women, plus you can set an aging framework, for example, 25-35 years old. And if, for example, you offer services for teaching Spanish to children and adolescents, then their parents will be your target audience, and in this case, you also need the most detailed portrait.

Analyse Your Competitors

It is necessary to know your competitors and analyse their actions. Firstly, it will help you develop your unique proposal, and secondly, it will protect against mistakes made by someone else. Therefore, let’s start the search.

• You can start with Google and write a query like “hire an online fitness trainer” and analyse the top ten results.
• And the same can be done on social networks using hashtags, for example, #hirepersonalfitnesstrainer.

Hint! Pay attention to the sites of your competitors and their social profiles. Write down your most successful ideas so that you can further refine them and make them even better. Analyse what content they publish and how they interact with their target audience. Also, try to find weaknesses in their strategies and come up with something better on this basis.

Come up with a Questionnaire

A questionnaire or survey will help you get the first leads and determine at what level of knowledge or skills a particular user is. And at the same time, this is the key to personalisation. Having received user data from interactive forms on the site, you can offer everyone a personalized training plan, taking into account existing skills, abilities, goals, and desires.

Select the Most Suitable Promotion Channels

The Internet is full of opportunities for promoting and developing a personal brand. However, you need to find what works best in your case. We will describe only the must-have channels.

• Social networks. Social networks are the best place to promote yourself as a personal trainer because people want to know you not only as a professional but also as a person. Plus, this is the best opportunity to work closely with the target audience that you have at the moment. 
• YouTube. The presence on YouTube is also mandatory because the video is a strong trend, and an additional opportunity to get to know you personally before deciding on the order of your services.
• SEO promotion. SEO is a long term perspective. By filling the content on your blog with relevant keywords, you will automatically be promoted to the top organic results. This is a one-time investment in a long-term result, so be sure to think through the articles for your blog and the keywords with which you will be promoted.

Use Modern Technologies and Specialised Apps

Of course, online user training involves the use of technology for remote interaction. The most common example is the study of foreign languages ​​on Skype. But there are more advanced and specially created opportunities for interacting with your customers and their training.

For example, if you want to be an online yoga trainer, then pay attention to specialized two-way applications for teachers and students. They make it possible to plan your schedule, set training timers, request and receive payments for services, create events, and much more. Yes, this functionality costs money, this also needs to be taken into account.

Decide on the Price for Your Services

Remember, we talked about the need to analyse competitors? So, no one forbids you to find out how much money they ask for their services. Your task is to find the average indicator in a niche, and on its basis to establish your price.

We highly recommend not to significantly reduce the cost, even if you are a beginner coach. It will be much more sensible to give some free lessons to your friends to gain confidence and then start looking for cold clients.

However, remember that the price of your services must cover your personal promotion costs, plus being comparable with the standard of living in the city or country in which you live, and also give you opportunities for self-development.

Offer Flexible Payments Opportunities

If you use a specialised application, as in our example with yoga above, then its developers have already thought through some of the most popular payment methods. But if you decide to organise your work independently, be prepared that your customers will expect flexibility in payment methods from you. Money transfer to a card and PayPal will probably never lose their relevance, but think about alternative methods too, for example, a bitcoin wallet.

Calculate Your Budget to Get Started

In general, you can begin to take the first steps towards your development for free. However, to advertise yourself more effectively, plus provide a better service, you still have to allocate a certain amount for promotion and specialized services to educate your customers.

And even if at the moment you do not have free resources to start, this is not a reason to abandon your idea. 

BIO

Mónica is a writer, art historian, and editor at LendGenius. She specializes in Art History, Art Conservation, History, Literature, Finance, Tech, Wellness, and Travel. In her free time, she’s usually roaming the halls of the museum or the local bookstore surrounded by stacks of books.