Transcription
How do fitness influencers really make money? How much do they make? Why are they all so rich? Except me. Why aren't I rich? Let's find out. This is the economics of fitness influencing.
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By me, a semi-retired and increasingly obsolete fitness person on the internet. We'll go roughly in order from least to most profitable income stream. First, look down here. When you buy through those links, we get commission. Usually 10%, but sometimes a lot more or a bit less. It's a small proportion of total income, but it's still worth doing because really any amount of money is worth copy and pasting some links for.
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What's wrong? We had a hard day at work. It's just a lot of copy and pasting, you know, just a lot. But let's go back because before this video, there was probably an ad. Companies bid for that ad space based on how much money they think you've got. And the revenue is split between YouTube and the creator, the video creator, not like not God. So if this was a finance channel, they'd pay more for that ad space because people who watch videos about what to do with their money generally have money. So, finance has a high CPM. Fitness is mid to low range. This is how much YouTube paid me for a few different videos. And this amount increases when more people click on or watch the ad all the way through. People don't really get rich directly from this because by the time you get enough views to make crazy money this way, you probably already got rich one of the following ways.
But first, it's just time for a quick word from our sponsor. Uh, not really. This video isn't sponsored, but if it was, this is where I'd talk about a VPN or shaving your balls or something because most sponsors ask for a 90-second slot in the first few minutes of the video. Once you hit good numbers, companies will be emailing you like, "Yo, sell our stuff." And we'll give you some money. Sometimes a lot of money, and most of the time, you'll be like, "Thanks." But what does this even do? So, you say no a lot more than you say yes. Partly out of a healthy sense of shame because if you sell everything, people will think you're not cool. And partly just because most of it is kind of uninteresting, you know, like ball shaving utensils. It's not really living the dream, man. But sometimes you say yes and then you've got to tell them a price. And that's hard to come up with because there's no precedent for this. So I usually just keep asking for more until people say no. That does sound like boundless greed, but really it's the only way to gauge what's fair. And most of the ads I do, I get asked to do again, so it obviously is fair. Maybe I'm still cheap. Maybe that's why I'm not rich. I've done sponsored segments for a few hundred and I've done them for 10,000. Notice how I said the actual number there instead of saying five figures and everyone gets so mysterious, man. But these days 5K is pretty standard. Compare that to the YouTube ad revenue and see what I meant earlier. By the time you're making good money from that, you should already be making really good money from that.
Sponsored Instagram posts will earn a bit less than YouTube because even though the reach may be broader, it's also more shallow. I.e. views don't convert into sales at the same rate. By the way, guys, if you want to buy this thing, you can use my code at checkout for 10% off. Don't buy the thing. It's not It's not even for sale, unless for the right price, obviously.
Let's talk about the bread and butter of fitness influencer income, the long-term sponsorship. Most often taking the form of gym clothing and supplements. You sign a contract and commit to set monthly deliverables for a base fee plus commission plus product allowance. The sponsor gets a better rate than paying for individual posts and the influencer gets some steady income. Monthly fees depend on the number and type of posts, but commission will usually be circa 10% which can become substantial because it's usually big brands that lots of people buy from already and those people just have to like you enough to use your code which you convince them to do by a being a pleasant individual and b saying use my code, use my code, use my code at every possible opportunity. I don't have any sponsors right now but I have before and this is what my salaries and deliverables have looked like. I actually do now, but when I wrote the notes for this video, I didn't. So, there will be links in the descriptions.
Now, eventually, fitness influencers have a realization and ask themselves, what if instead of selling stuff for other people, I sell my own stuff? And this can take a variety of forms.
Option one, somebody else makes a batch of t-shirts with your slogan on the front and you sell them. No new company has ever incorporated, but people will still put CEO in their bio and say things like, "Been working so hard on this behind the scenes. Can't wait for you guys to see it because, you know, they're trying to build hype, but then you do see it and it's just a t-shirt." This is something like a 50/50 profit share, so it can be very lucrative considering how little work you actually have to do.
Option two. Let's take a second to talk about option two because you might find this interesting. So there are these companies, one example being Gemflow, but there are others. And they build businesses for influencers, whether it's apps, clothing, courses, supplements. Many brands you recognize will actually be partially owned and or largely operated by GenFlow or similar companies. Usually the company owns a minority of the brand and basically does a lot of the boring and difficult stuff. Manufacturing products, dealing with shipping, customer support, whilst the influencer focuses mostly on what they're good at, selling the thing. Use my code. So, it's a pretty good deal for the influencer and it's a large part of the reason why you find yourself looking at people online, people who should be pretty busy on account of all the CEO activities and you think, how are you on holiday all the time?
Option three, actually just start your own business without any help. Whilst you have the potential to make the most money this way, you can still make a lot of money, definitely enough money, and with way less stress, risk, and hassle, one of the other ways. So most people don't actually choose this option unless they're a control freak or they just particularly enjoy entrepreneurship. Although I personally chose it out of an aversion to corporate jargon and a fear that any other route might necessitate my engaging in it at some point. You know what I mean? Just don't want to have to email people and talk about scaling or other terms that cause me deep spiritual distress.
Then eventually eventually eventually many fitness influencers and influencers in general start asking themselves what if I stop selling stuff altogether and start selling the ability to sell stuff. Enter things like courses, masterminds and business coaching. These tend to be quite high ticket i.e expensive and they are becoming more and more common. So I can only deduce that it must have huge earning potential. I haven't really mentioned it yet because it's just not something that particularly interests me for a few reasons. Mainly because I just like making videos, not PowerPoint presentations. So, I don't know much about it. But the general gist is people started selling shovels in the gold rush or people stopped selling protein shakes and gym clothes and started selling the ability to sell protein shakes and gym clothes.
So, why haven't I mentioned fitness coaching yet? Because although most fitness influencers do this at first, once they amass some followers, they realize it's just not viable to make it worthwhile for you, you'd have to charge people so much that it wouldn't be worthwhile for them. It's very time-consuming unless you know you have chat GPT do it for you. And why spend time coaching people when you could spend it on holiday whilst somebody else runs a business for you? That sounds like I'm joking, but I mean really like why, you know? Like I've coached people and I've I've also been on holiday and like being on holiday is is better.
So a typical example for a mid-range fitness influencer, Mr. Influencer gets 5 to 10,000 likes on their Instagram posts, 50 to 75,000 views on their stories, and 50,000 views on their YouTube channel where they upload weekly. They could have a supplement and gym clothing sponsor earning a 4,000 base salary plus 2,000 commission for each. They could do one sponsored YouTube video per month for 2,000 and one sponsored Instagram post per month for 1,500. At this point, they'll probably have a white labelled app or some set of ebooks or guides which will make them another 2,000. They'd easily make another,000 from YouTube AdSense and 500 from affiliate links. That's 19,000 per month and probably an underestimate. Somebody with this kind of engagement could quite easily be in the 20 to 25,000 a month range depending on how prolific they are with content, how much selling they're willing to do, and how good they are at selling.
So, if we now say they're getting 200,000 views on YouTube and 20,000 likes on Instagram consistently and they have their own company, you can imagine this gets pretty crazy pretty fast. Somebody with these numbers could quite easily be hitting 100,000 plus some months. This is GBP, by the way. To reiterate, this is completely hypothetical. Most of these don't apply to me personally right now, but I'm quite confident these figures are reasonably accurate.
Now, I know some of this might seem a bit obscene, but I made this video because I thought people might find a peak behind the curtain somewhat interesting, not to instigate a witch hunt where we all say influencer bad and I get your approval for saying agreeable things as if I'm not one of them. I'm also just going to skip the part where I say that I hate the term influencer and try and disassociate myself from all the negative connotations of the word because, well, it's just a bit pick me, isn't it? In my experience though, fitness influencers at least are no more or less flawed than every other person. Highly flawed still, but no more or less than anyone else. Those flaws are certainly more under the spotlight, which is just an occupational hazard, and they can even be exacerbated by the circumstance. There is inevitably more opportunity for greed, self-importance, ego to infect an individual. But what you have to remember is if you're disgusted by how much money influencers make, you're not really mad at them. You're mad at the general population, and that's a lot of people to be mad at because every rich influencer is rich off the back of thousands and thousands of decisions. You guys get the personal responsibility of exercising your independent judgment and deciding who to follow, what to watch, whose discount code to use, and ultimately who you make rich and who you make. Go get a real job. So, you decide me. Pick me. Pick me, please. I don't want I don't want a job. All the links in the description. Jordan, Lenny is my hero.