7 Fitness Blogging Success Strategies For Growth & Income

When it comes to fitness blogging, life’s not always an easy ride. The internet is full of neglected fitness websites that started with high hopes but didn’t get enough visitors. So, what sets the thriving wellness blogs apart from those that struggle? 

In this article  – we share 7 effective strategies for growing a successful health and fitness blog.

We’re a specialist fitness marketing agency with 15+ years of industry experience, so we know first-hand what works (and what doesn’t!). We’ve helped health and fitness bloggers to successfully grow their businesses, so our website strategies are tried and tested.

Whether you’re starting a new fitness blog or want to grow your online business, this article will help. Here’s a quick overview of the elements we’ll cover…

1. Consistency
2. Multiple income streams
3. Integrity
4. Repeat visitors
5. Defined customer journey
6. Promotion
7. Inspiration

Now let’s dive into each of these in more detail…

1 – Consistency Matters

Let’s start with the fundamentals – the most popular fitness blogs are ones that post regularly.

Consistency is important for a number of reasons as it…

1. Improves your blogging abilities
2. Trains your audience to return regularly
3. Helps your Google rankings

When starting a fitness blog, it can be helpful to set yourself a schedule for posting content. This helps you to build a habit of writing or vlogging regularly.

It also improves your content creation skills which results in a better experience for your audience.

Providing great content means visitors are more likely to return regularly. Doing it consistently trains your audience to expect posts from you on certain days.

This means they’re likely to check back expecting new content, so make sure you deliver on time!

Google looks for consistency and rewards this with higher rankings. We’ve been blogging for 10+ years and have experienced this for ourselves numerous times. Whenever we take a break and don’t post for a month, our visitor numbers start declining 🙁 

Google wants to be sure that it’s sending visitors to legit, up-to-date websites. After all, they want to provide the best possible experience and results for their customers. So, it’s worth focusing on consistency if you want your health or fitness blog to be successful long-term.

Learn more… How To Blog Consistently For Busy Fitness Professionals.

2 – Combine Multiple Income Streams

Experts always advise businesses to ‘diversify’ and ‘spread their risk’. After all, you don’t want all your eggs in one basket.

In fitness blogging terms, this means having a number of different income streams that contribute to revenue (or whatever your goal is). 

Having 3+ sources of income gives you more stability and means you aren’t completely reliant on just one thing for money. If one source dries up, you can still rely on the other two to tide you over.

Here are some approaches you can take…

• Services – sponsored content + online courses + adverts
• Price points – $30 ebooks + $100 online courses + $200 personalised coaching
• Audiences – beginners + intermediates + advanced clients

There are lots of different ways to monetise your fitness blog. So, pick a couple and focus on those for a few months. Then add more over time until you have a well-balanced income stream coming from multiple sources. 

3 – Create Content with Integrity

The best fitness blogs create content with integrity. The health and wellness industry can be pretty shady at times, preying on people’s insecurities and making false promises. If you want your blog to be successful over the long term, then it’s important to give honest, realistic advice in your posts.

• Do your research into claims made by brands that you recommend.
• Review scientific papers and reputable sources that reflect balanced perspectives on health and fitness.
• Be honest about what clients can realistically expect from your training programs or products.

As a fitness blogger, people will look to you for information, advice, and inspiration. Don’t do anything that might put your readers’ health at risk. You have a responsibility to operate with integrity.

4 – Generate Repeat Visitors

A sure-fire way to build a successful fitness blog is to generate repeat visitors. If you’ve done the hard work of attracting a new person to read your content, it’d be a shame for them not to stay and look around. Or return for more of your great stuff in the future. 

It’s easier to sell to someone who already knows you than it is to chase new clients. So encouraging repeat visits will help improve conversations and increase income.

It’s easy to do this with some small tweaks to your blog content and setup…

• Recommend related articles throughout your blog posts and at the end so people don’t just read one and leave straight away.
• Capture their email addresses so that you can communicate with visitors even after they’ve left and drive them back to your site to read new articles in the future.
• Pixel your visitors so you can retarget them with Google and social media advertising, driving them back to your site.

Repeat visitors are loyal visitors. They get to know you, like you, and trust you. Interacting with your content frequently helps you to establish a strong relationship with your audience.

Return visitors will also boost your ad income and sponsored content fees. The more visitors and unique views you have, the more money you’ll generate from both. 

5 – Define a Clear Customer Journey

Whatever the purpose of your fitness blog, you’ll need a clear customer journey. If your aim is to sell online programs or exercise ebooks, then you’ll need a sales funnel that converts visitors to customers. If your goal is simply education, then you’ll want to ensure that visitors consume your content in the right order.

This doesn’t need to be complicated. You just need to create a clear pathway for visitors to follow. And the first step is getting clear on what the end goal is – then you can work backward from there.

If your goal is to generate revenue from ads, then you’ll want people to visit as many pages as possible. More impressions mean more ad revenue for your blog. So encourage people to consume other articles once they are finished and read related content. 

You might also like… How To Create a Sales Funnel For Your Fitness Business.

If your goal is to sell an online workout program, then you’ll want to educate them about the benefits, sign them up to your email list or free fitness challenge. This means structuring your fitness blog in a way that directs people from one step to the next.

You can learn more about website conversion strategies here.

Example – Say you sell a 30-day program of HIIT workouts for busy parents…

1. You could write several blog articles on the benefits of HIIT, how to perform specific exercises, the correct techniques for HIIT movements, common mistakes newbies make, and so on.
2. These should all direct people to A) your online program sales page and B) your email sign-up page (to capture people who aren’t ready to purchase just yet).
3. You’ll then need a persuasive sales page that explains the features and benefits, addresses common objections, and includes client testimonials.
4. Having an email sequence that nurtures people towards purchasing will enable you to convert more visitors into paying clients over time.

For fitness bloggers that want to earn money from sponsored content, it’s helpful to showcase your media kit so businesses can find it easily. You’ll also want to structure your site in a similar way to the ads example above, so you maximise visitors and page impressions. This, along with strong social media engagement, is what brands are looking for in an influencer.

6 – Promote Your Fitness Blog

Creating quality content is a vital cornerstone of fitness blogging. But it’s equally important to promote your awesome articles or vlogs so that people hear about them!

A common mistake that bloggers tend to make is neglecting the promotion of their content. It takes a lot of effort to research and write awesome articles, so it can be tempting to stop after hitting ‘publish’.

But the most successful health and fitness blogs put time into promoting their posts.

Here’s a checklist for promoting your blog posts and vlogs once you’ve published them…

• Optimise for Keywords
• Add Internal Links Back to the Article
• Schedule Multiple Shares on Social Media
• Post on Pinterest
• Post on Q&A Sites
• Share on Linkedin if B2B
• Promote via Google Ads
• Invest in Social Ads
• Write a Guest Post That Links Back
• Create a Promo Video
• Email to Your List
• Post in Facebook Groups
• Mention it in Blog Comments

You don’t need to do everything on it, just focusing on a couple will help extend the reach of your blog and turbo-boost your visitor numbers!

7 – Stay Inspired & Innovative

The longevity of your fitness blog is directly tied to how inspired you are. It’ll keep you motivated to produce more content, even when you’ve been doing it for a while.

Inspiration also helps you innovate and try new ideas which helps keep your audience engaged.

If you have blog writers’ block, then it can be helpful to have a bank of ideas to draw from. We keep a list of blog post ideas on Trello and add to it every time inspiration strikes. Then if we’re ever stuck for ideas down the line, we’ve got lots of themes to choose from. 

It also helps to be an avid consumer of online content. Watching YouTube videos and TED talks, reading fitness articles, and scrolling Instagram can all give you new ideas for your own blog.

You don’t need to stick to the fitness niche either, some of the best ideas can come from outside of the industry. 

You might also like… Fitness Blog Post Ideas To Inspire New Articles.

Fitness Blogging Growth Strategies & Resources

So, there you have a comprehensive overview of successful fitness blogging strategies. Being consistent, having multiple income streams, and creating content with integrity will set you up for growth. Repeat visits, defining a customer journey, promoting your content, and seeking out inspiration will ensure you achieve your goals.

We’ve also got some resources that’ll help… Our marketing library makes it quicker, cheaper, and easier to promote your fitness blog. It includes fill-in-the-blanks blog post templates and content ideas to keep your articles fresh and creative!

Our ready-made fitness marketing templates make it quick and easy to promote your fitness business effectively. Generate consistent leads, sign-ups, and sales revenue for your gym, fitness studio, or personal training business.

You’ll get 30+ resources covering…

These affordable templates are the same resources we use with our own clients. The bundle includes all the essentials you need to promote your business and sign up more customers. Learn more here.