Have you ever heard of the phrase, don’t put all your eggs in one basket? The same is true for making money within your business. It was true before COVID-19, but the last year really showed the impact of not having a backup plan (or 6!).
Multiple income streams are an essential part to scaling your business and they fall into two categories:
- Those that need your additional time/effort/energy
- Those that don’t
And to be honest, both of these categories count! Those that don’t need your energy once they’ve been set up are, of course, preferable but it’s also great to have a few feathers in your hat if you need to pivot.
So, what kinds of income streams are available for health coach businesses?
Affiliate Marketing
Your clients know and trust you; chances are, you are already recommending health and wellness products and services. Why not make some money from it? Affiliate marketing is where you market another company’s products or services to your clients and get a commission on sales.
Affiliate marketing isn’t a “hard sell” process. It usually involves putting a link on your website or social media account that directs your client to the company’s product page. Software programs running in the background can tell that the viewer came via your link and if they make a purchase, the commission is calculated and added to what’s due to you.
Amazon has an affiliate programme and attributes much of its success to it. Some websites like LuciesList are even set up entirely to generate income from affiliates like Amazon. It has a very efficient marketing team and is known for the quality content it provides to prospective mothers through the various stages of pregnancy. As a health coach you shouldn’t just redirect your energies to focus on affiliate sales – but if you build a following and are strategic, it can be an extra income boost.
Affiliate marketing commissions may be insignificant at first. Still, after the initial effect of applying and learning how to place links, it’s purely passive income that can build up over time.
What’s the first step? See if your favourite brands offer affiliate programmes, or check out these lists of the best health and fitness affiliate programmes on offer:
- https://empireflippers.com/fitness-affiliate-programs/
- https://www.wellnesscreatives.com/fitness-affiliate-programs/
- https://getlasso.co/niche/fitness/
Top Tip: Make sure you’re only pushing products or services that are in line with your brand, otherwise you could be doing more harm than good to your business.
Create Your Own Merchandise
The alternative to affiliate marketing is to create, market, and sell your own products. Introducing products to your service business will allow you to “up-sell” to existing clients.
Physical Products
Physical products that carry your logo can even promote your business – think branded clothing and sweat towels in a busy gym. Several companies specialise in “white label” health products. These are products that they produce and can be packaged under your brand name. Supplements can also be procured from companies like Wholesale Supplements and Time Health if your focus is on nutrition.
The only downside is that physical products usually require you to pay for their production upfront, essentially carrying all the risk. You also take the burden of selling them, storing them, and accounting for them. Listing them with a more prominent retailer like Amazon is possible but will be a distraction, and without a known brand name behind them, sales could be non-existent.
Digital Products
A far better idea if you don’t have an established audience yet is to work on creating digital products that can be sold over and over again. Examples of digital products include template training plans, access to resources like videos, training sessions, or articles. They can be a great way to maintain contact with (and revenue from) existing clients who decide they no longer need one-on-one coaching but would still appreciate some guidance. If they ever wish to start again, they will think of you first.
Top Tip: Digital products are independent of physical location – be sure to make your offering appealing to a global audience. This includes offering payment in foreign currencies like the Dollar and Euro.
Events
Adding in events to your schedule can not only give you additional income streams but also increase your brand reach and be a lucrative part of your marketing strategy.
Courses
Pre-recorded courses are a great supplementary income that if you get right the first time will keep on giving. You can use specific platforms like Udemy, or Kajabi to get you started, but they take a cut of your profits so ideally you should commit long-term into building a platform of your own.
Usually self-taught courses are done at a person’s own speed so are priced cheaper than your services. The upside to this is that you can promote one-on-one services at the end of your course as an upsell!
Top Tip: Make sure you handle a single topic in depth per course, rather than trying to do too much at once or your audience won’t stick to them.
Masterclasses
Usually masterclasses are done with a group of people so this can be an excellent way to expand your network when you’re first starting out. Get in touch with some experts in fields that compliment your services or who have the same target audience as you, and approach one pain point from a variety of perspectives.
For example, if you focus on mental health for stay at home parents, run a masterclass on living a healthy lifestyle as a stay at home parent and include a nutritionist with healthy family meal ideas, a personal trainer who can offer at-home workouts, and yourself who can approach it from a mental health perspective.
Live Events/Speaking engagements
Establish yourself as an expert in your chosen field (having a specific niche here is very advantageous) and you’ll be able to make bonus income that is higher per event than your services. Plus, live events have a huge marketing reach and the ability to get directly in front of your audience (literally!).
Top Tip: Capitalise on events further by turning recordings of your event/workshop/webinar, or masterclass into an opt-in, paid product, or supplementary resource for your services.
B2B Training
For those who have extensive experience, it could be time to pass that knowledge on and offer training for other health coaches, also known as business-to-business services (or B2B). Helping others to build their own businesses can be incredibly fulfilling and an additional source of income with a completely new target audience. But, there is a downside, you need to consider B2B as a completely separate set of services, which can require different branding, parts of your website, and messaging than your usual health coaching clients.
The important thing to remember is to keep things focused and simple to start with, so don’t try to appeal to everyone at once.
Top Tip: Narrow down your B2B niche in the same way, maybe start by picking a level of coach. For example, have they just started out? Are they established but need help with scaling? Think about what their focus is and why you can help them.
Other additional income ideas
The above aren’t the only additional income sources for health coaches, here’s some of my favourite other options you can use:
- Referral Incentives – create partnerships to boost referrals with other business owners, or offer incentives to your clients e.g. money off for them and their referral when they introduce someone new.
- Create packages with other professionals – rather than masterclasses, allow other health coaches to sell your services to their clients, in exchange they get a percentage of profit or a set fee, and you get introduced to more clients without any of the legwork.
- Email list advertising – if you’ve built your email list, offer advertising space (this also works if you have a website with plenty of traffic) for additional income. Just make sure the people advertising are in line with your brand.
- Write a book – if you have a tried and tested process for your business and a specific niche, a book can be an excellent idea! This can also be a great way to boost your reputation which leads into speaking events!
- Go corporate – training in a corporate environment where you coach office teams, offer group services, or coaching specifically for leaders or executives can be particularly lucrative but not always consistent income. That’s why it’s an additional stream you can pursue!
Make sure you have at least two or three options for generating additional income, especially focusing on one that will create passive income with minimal effort as these can take time to build up! Ultimately it can be a time consuming process to begin with but leave your business much more secure in the long run.
If you need help adding additional income streams into your business or establishing a branding that is consistent across all of your income streams, get in touch and I’ll see how I can help.
Leave a Reply