Chances are, you became a nutrition expert or health coach because you enjoy helping people achieve their goals.

And chances are, you want to make a living doing what you’re passionate about.

Whereas it’s entirely possible to make 6 figures as a health coach, most coaches aren’t doing it. And the reason for that is simple: they haven’t figured out how to scale their businesses.

Making multiple figures as a health coach is simple, but it’s not always easy. You need a system to make sure you get there, you need the drive to make it happen, and you need to know how to diversify your income streams.

There are many ways to earn money as a health coach. Most coaches who are struggling to earn a desirable income are concentrating on just one way: one-on-one, in-person coaching. And while that’s the staple for coaches of any kind, if you want to truly scale your business, it can’t be your only source of income.

Here’s why.

Suppose you charge $100 per 1-hour session with clients. Now suppose you work full time at 40 hours per week as an entrepreneurial health coach.

You’ll need time to have lunch and you’ll need transition time between clients. If you take just one hour each day for these (based on a 5-day workweek), you’re now looking at 35 income-earning hours per week.

But you’ll also need about an hour a day for administrative tasks. So now you're looking at 30 income-earning hours per week.  You'll also need at least another hour per day for researching and creating plans for clients, and other non-income earning tasks. So take out another 5 hours, and now you're looking at 25 income-earning hours per week.

If you could fill every single one of those hours with paying one-one-one health coaching clients, you’d be looking at the ability to earn $2,500 per week.

That sounds like a lot… but don’t forget: you also have business expenses, and you need to set aside money for taxes. In the beginning, at least about 50% of your income will go to business expenses, so now you’re looking at closer to $1,250 per week—and we haven’t accounted for taxes yet. And we're assuming filling every available hour, which is unlikely to happen at the very beginning. Throw in unexpected expenses... you get the picture.

Being a health coach is starting to look pretty grim, eh?

A lot of work for not a lot of returns. Because when working one-on-one with clients is your only source of income, you get trapped in diminishing returns. But don’t worry! There’s a simple way to solve this income trap: commit to creating multiple sources of income as a health coach.

There are several ways for health coaches to earn money for their work. It all depends on who your audience is, what niche you’ve chosen, and the time you can devote to creating more ways to raise your income. Here are some ideas to get you started.

1. The obvious: One-on-one, in person coaching

This is the standard for most health coaches: Coaching people one-on-one, either in your own office or on location. Definitely keep this as one of your sources of income, as it’s what the heart of health coaching is all about.

Once you have some training, you need little more than a notebook and pen to provide in-person coaching; however, adding certain tools to your health coach toolbox will make life easier and automate tasks for you. This is especially important for record keeping and billing. And since you’re already online for that record keeping anyway, why not coach people online too?

2. One-on-one, online coaching

This is quickly becoming more common for most successful health coaches, as it opens up their market and makes life easier for clients who want to work with you from anywhere in the world.

To coach people online, you can use a variety of tools, from simple Skype calls, Google Hangouts, or Zoom to using a coaching-specific app. But coaching people on-one one, whether in person or online, can't be your only source of income if you hope to scale your business.

If you want to help several people at once while adding to your income streams as a health coach, consider public speaking.

3. Public Speaking

Do you love being in front of an audience? If you have knowledge about healthy living and are good in front of a crowd, you could put together health-related motivational talks for events, and earn in that way.

The first few talks you do may need to be free, but once you start building an audience, you can start charging, and sometimes a pretty penny, too. Here’s a great tool to find conferences that you could join as a speaker.

While speaking to a large audience is a great way to help people and earn money, doing hands-on workshops could be even more rewarding and have greater impact.

4. Conference Workshops

You know you love helping people, and you know that most people learn best by doing. Why not create an hour-long workshop that you can use again and again, and head to you nearest conferences as a speaker? You could do a tour of conferences, too!

This is different than motivational speaking, because attendees would take a more active role: you’d have exercises for them to complete to ensure the material really sinks in.

Some conferences don’t pay speakers, but many do, so budget your time according to what you’re looking to accomplish by speaking.

At all these conferences, when clients register for your workshop, you can collect email addresses to add to your mailing list. That way, you can keep in touch, help your audience further, and potentially, when the time’s right, sell more services and products. Which is why you should consider writing eBooks.

5. eBooks

If you’re comfortable writing, a great way to add to your income streams as a health coach is to write eBooks. eBooks can be as short as 30 pages or fewer, so you can write several about different aspects of health and how to improve it. Creating eBooks thave teach a process for clients to follow usually works well, and can lead to sales of other services also.

Write books related to the services you offer, so that the products you sell represent your brand and everything ties together well.

Once you’ve written one, two, or more eBooks, start promoting them on Amazon (if you choose to sell through them), Pinterest, and your social media accounts. You can also sell directly on your website if you don’t sell through Amazon. And speaking of websites...

6. Affiliate Marketing

You have a health blog, right? If you don’t, get on it pronto, and start building your mailing list, too. You’ll be glad you did! The Internet and the opportunity for global marketing means that having a blog is no longer an option.

And the best part is, if you do your blogging right and start growing your audience, you could add another source of passive income to your wage earning arsenal: affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing allows you to share your love of brands and products with your audience, and to earn a commission when your followers use your link to buy the things you recommend.

Remember to always have a disclosure on your blog posts to keep things legal and to be transparent with your readers. Transparency is extremely important, so that you start building trust with your audience. And as your audience grows, so do your opportunities to work with larger brands.

7. Consulting

One way in which a health coach can make a good income, whether in person or online, is by offering corporate consulting services.

To automate the process and work with more than one corporation at once, you can create a generic, customizable staff wellness plan, so that when clients sign on with you, all you have to do is tweak the program based on what you have learned about each client.

As you continue to become more and more skilled in different income streams, it's time to start thinking about how you can offer related services to diversify your income even further.

8. Use your extra skills to offer related services

You probably have many skills that are transferable to the health coaching niche. You can use mind maps to find these connections, and then start brainstorming other services you can offer to current and prospective clients.

Were you a personal trainer in a previous work life? Do you have a nutrition certification? Do you have training in other related health fields?

If you have a personal training certification, you could offer exercise routines as an add-on or stand-alone service for your clients.

If you have a nutrition certification, you could provide meal plans for your clients, or create an entire program that you can sell via your website or as an add-on service to in-person clients. If you choose to create programs, you can offer group coaching based on them.

9. Group Coaching, in person or online

Group coaching has been used by the fitness industry for many years, since personal trainers realized that a larger number of people would sign up for a group setting where they could still get training while saving money. It’s no different for the health coaching industry.

You can offer group coaching programs for people with similar interests and goals. You could design a program that meets once a week for a number of weeks. Some examples of programs a health coach could offer might be:

The Power of Meal Planning for a Healthier Lifestyle

In a group coaching session such as this, you could create a 6-week program with each week focusing on one aspect of meal planning.

For example, week 1 could be about nutritional requirements at different ages and stages, week 2 could teach how to batch cook dinners, week 3 could talk about budgeting for meal plans, week 4 could touch on specific tools to help with meal planning, on week 5 you can create meal plans together depending on clients’ needs, and week 6 can be a recap of everything learned in the series, plus extras such as sharing personalized meal plans based on the collective group’s interest.

For a program like this to work well, you would need to ensure you have clients with similar beliefs around nutrition. An easy way to do this that can offer you even more potential for multiple income streams would be to offer a series about Meal planning for a healthier lifestyle. Each part of the series can focus on a different nutrition style, like this:

Meal Planning for a Healthier Lifestyle: The Vegetarian Way,

Meal Planning for a Healthier Lifestyle: The Vegan Way,

Meal Planning for a Healthier Lifestyle: The Keto Way,

Meal Planning for a Healthier Lifetsyle: The Gluten-Free Way, and any other “ways” that your target market would be interested in learning more about.

Of course, you don’t have to stick to just meal planning. You can create programs based on any aspect of health that your target market is interested in.  For example, you could combine healthy eating, active living, and body image to provide a program that combines physical and mental well-being. Here’s an example:

Love Your Body: Exercise, Healthy Eating, and Body Image

This can be a program centered on positive body image that teaches clients to take care of their bodies by exercising and eating healthily, not to achieve a certain body shape, but to feel good.

Week 1 could include tips and mindset work about body positivity, week 2 could include exercises to modify harmful behaviours, week 3 could focus on simple exercise programs that can be done anywhere, week 4 could focus on healthy recipes, week 5 could focus on putting it all together, and week 6 could include a commitment to change and acceptance of our bodies.

This program would work wonderfully in a group, as people could have the support of one another as they navigate through the materials and mindset changes.

You could also focus a program on clearing clutter and organizing your life. Here’s an example:

Organize Your Life for a Healthier Vibe

In a program like this, you could focus on organization and planning skills to help participants feel more in charge of their lives.

Week 1 could address any emotional issues that are keeping people stuck in clutter and disorganization, week 2 could focus on creating a plan of action for what the group wishes to accomplish in the next 5 weeks, week 3 can focus on teaching process and outcome goals and breaking tasks down into smaller chunks, week 4 can focus on resources for accomplishing those goals, week 5 can include a review of how organization will help clients become healthier (e.g. less stress), and week 6 can include a recap and some self-care tips and tricks.

There's no end to the types of group programs you can create to help your clients. Market research will help you find the best programs to create for your target audience. Surveying current clients would be another great way to find out which programs would sell best.

Adding group programs to your health coaching income is awesome because you get to reach a larger number of people who can support one another in their pursuits, and you also have the potential to increase your income.

Suppose you charge $300 for each 6-week program. That’s more doable for most clients (versus 6 individual sessions for $600). And you can earn more, too. Even if you limit the number of clients in each session to 6 people (to ensure you can help them well), you’ll still be earning $3,600 for each 6-week period.

Although it sounds like less than what you’d earn with individual clients, keep in mind you just opened up 5 hours for each of those weeks, and if you can continue selling programs for each of those hours, you’ve opened up your schedule for income growth. And once you've created those group coaching programs... you can sell them individually and earn passive income from them as well.

10. Sell individual, "DIY" programs online

Once you've created a few programs, you can package them and sell them to individual clients online at a reduced price (because there’ll be no involvement from you).

If you create an excellent program and find the “do it yourself” audience, you can help a tonne of people with your content, while earning passive income to boot.

Want to try creating and selling health coaching programs online? Sign up for your FREE Meal Garden trial today and get started!

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