How to Start Training Clients Online: Creating an eBook

Have you ever thought about creating an eBook but didn’t know where to start? Or perhaps you suffer from imposter syndrome and think you don’t have enough knowledge or expertise to market published materials?

The way the world is going, more and more people are looking to the internet, social media, and online programs to get fit and healthy as opposed to walking into a gym. As Fitness Professionals, this is nothing to fear – online training programs will never (or not anytime time soon anyway) replace in-person/face-to-face fitness. What we can d, however, is utilize this to our advantage. It has never been easier to start training clients online. The technology has never been easier to use, more affordable or more readily available as it is now.

There are many different ways to start training clients online and they usually fit into one of 4 categories

• Online Coaching
• Virtual Classes
• Digital Products
• Nutrition Coaching

In this blog, we are going to focus on digital products and more specifically “eBooks”.

What is an eBook?

eBooks are a great way for a Fitness Professional to start creating digital content and a great way for a Fitness Professional to deliver valuable information to their clients.

At its most simple version, an eBook is a Microsoft Word document saved as a PDF.

Providing you know how to open Microsoft Word and press “save as PDF” you have the technological knowledge to create an eBook.

What sort of content should I put in my eBook?

Short answer, you can put anything you want in an eBook.

The most common mistake Fitness Professionals make is they put everything in the one eBook. Your better option is to break down your content into smaller, more specific eBooks as opposed to one big eBook.

Two types of eBooks that are relatively easier to create when starting off are

• Nutrition eBooks
• Recipe eBooks

When it comes to creating Nutrition eBooks, what’s important is that you stay within your scope of practice. Your qualifications will determine your scope of practice but generally speaking – it’s usually considered within the scope of practice of a Personal Trainer to provide basic nutrition information, consistent with the national guidelines.

Some examples of nutrition eBooks that would be within scope for a Personal Trainer include

• How to eat healthy on a budget
• How to eat healthy when eating out
• How to read food labels

When it comes to creating Recipe eBooks it’s essential that the recipes are your own or if you’re sharing someone else’s recipe you need to credit the source and make sure you have permission.

Some examples of recipe eBooks could be

• Clean Eating Recipe eBook
• Healthy Breakfast Recipe eBook
• Healthy Deserts Recipe eBook
• Clean Eating Recipe eBook (plant-based version)

An easy and quick way to create a recipe eBook is to ask your clients/network to provide a recipe for the eBook and in exchange, they get a free copy.

When someone is sharing the recipe, ask them for

• Name of the recipe
• Ingredients
• Method
• Original photo

Even if you only have 5-10 people provide a recipe, that’s enough to get started. You can repeat the process in a few months’ time and add another 5-10 recipes and your eBook will be constantly growing.

How much do I charge for my eBook?

It’s quite rare these days for a Fitness Professional (or anyone for that matter) to create an eBook and charge for it but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth creating one. An eBook is usually used as a “value ad”.

Let’s compare two Personal Trainers.

Personal Trainer A charges $80 per week and the client gets:

• 1 x Personal Training session a week

Personal Trainer B charges $80 per week and the client gets:

• 1 x Personal Training session a week
• A FREE copy of your clean eating recipe eBook which contains over 20 healthy recipes
• A FREE copy of THREE of your nutrition eBooks “How to eat healthy on a budget”, “How to eat healthy when going out” and “How to read food labels”

Personal Trainer B’s service is so much more valuable and assuming all else is equal – 99% of people will choose Personal Trainer B. Personal Trainer B may even be able to charge more for their services.

The best of using eBooks like this – you only need to create the eBook ONCE and you can use that same eBook again and again and again.

How do I create a mock-up/cover image for my eBook?

I personally like the website Mock Up Photos to create the cover for my eBooks. It’s free to use and they have plenty of options. I just create a basic image in Canva based on the size recommended by Mock Up Photos and that’s it.

Summary

That’s the 101 of creating eBooks for Fitness Professionals. The best advice I can give here is to think of a simple topic and create your first eBook – you’ll see it’s not that hard and a great way to add value to your clients.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to start training clients online, at Fitness Education Online, we have a CEU course for Personal Trainers that covers this topic “Online Essentials: How to start training clients online” – click here to check it out.