Getting Paid as a Fitness Instructor

Working as a fitness instructor means spending your working life helping people to get fitter, but your business isn’t going to survive unless your own finances are in the best possible shape. That means working hard to set up the best instructor pay system you can, making it easy for you to get paid whether that means taking payment from individual clients or from the owner of a studio you work in. An effective system will be based on a realistic instructor pay scale and technology that enables you to take payments in a seamless manner.

In order to keep as many clients as possible happy you’ll need to offer the widest possible range of payment methods. Cash and cheques may once have made up the majority of payments, but the widespread take-up of digital technology means that most clients will want to meet their fitness instructor pay demands using electronic means. Methods such as Bacs payments – which transfer money directly from a client’s bank account to yours – remove almost all of the friction from the payment process, enabling you to maintain cash flow and deliver an enhanced client experience. 

Another thing to bear in mind is that in the post-covid era, many fitness instructors offer their services via online classes, so taking payments in person isn’t even an option. In cases such as this an alternative electronic transfer method becomes a necessity, but even before choosing a method you need to decide how to charge your clients. 

Deciding on a charging model

As a fitness instructor you need to decide whether to charge your clients per hour, per class or as a flat rate. The decision may be taken out of your hands by the owner of the studio in which you work, although if you offer online classes you will, in effect, be working without needing a dedicated studio space. 

The first thing you need to calculate is the fitness instructor hourly rate you want to charge. Researching into the fitness instructor hourly rate charged by other fitness instructors in the locality could help to give you a rough idea of what the local market is able to support, but you also need to factor in your individual circumstances. For example, you may have specialist training or a track record which enables you to charge a little more than the average fitness instructor hourly rate, or, alternatively, you may be just starting out in the fitness instructor industry and so want to pitch your price at the lower end of the scale in order to attract clients and build a longer term client-base.

Whatever approach you take, you need to remember that the hourly rate you charge has to cover all of your expenses with room to spare if you’re going to be making any profit. That means factoring in costs such as renting a studio space, travel to and from the space, any equipment you provide or – if you’re delivering fitness instruction online – the cost of a first rate broadband connection. 

Accepting payments 

Once you’ve decided how much to charge each client you need to decide how often you want them to pay. Some fitness instructors charge on a class-by-class basis, and while this maximises flexibility for you and your clients it can make it harder to plan for the longer term. If you never know exactly how many clients you’ll be working with each week – because fitness lessons are the kind of appointment that clients often cancel at short notice – then it will be tricky to manage your own income streams and deal with overheads.

One alternative could be to sell fitness lessons in blocks of 10, with clients asked to pay either all of the fee or a percentage up front. That way you’ll know exactly what you’ve got coming in when clients sign on to your fitness classes. Another approach could be to sell memberships, meaning that clients sign on for a period such as 12 months and pay a flat monthly fee in return for a set number of fitness lessons per month. Once again, this type of payment plan offers a degree of certainty which isn’t matched by one-off payments. 

GoCardless

No matter what payment plan you opt for, working with GoCardless can simplify the actual process of taking the payments. We make it easy to take Bacs payments, for example, whether that means one-off payments direct from a client’s bank account to yours, using the direct deposit system, or a monthly Direct Debit agreed for a 12 month period. GoCardless also links seamlessly with other business software, enabling you to automate across the board and streamline processes such as invoicing and billing. 

We can help

GoCardless is a global payments solution that helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of financial admin your team needs to deal with. Find out how GoCardless can help you with one-off or recurring payments.