According to Forbes, by the year 2025, the online coaching industry will grow to $350 billion a year. If you have a passion for helping others and want to share your expertise…why not turn your skills and interest into a business? This is a great time to make money online coaching. With the power of the internet, you can reach a global audience, and help others achieve their goals.
People need help with fitness, health, nutrition, business, career, relationships, parenting, and lots of other areas. You don’t need to be a tech wizard. With a bit of know-how and the right strategies, you can create a profitable coaching business. Work anywhere – from the comfort of your own home, a tropical island, a ski lodge, or a treehouse!
Let’s dive in and see if this is the right choice for you…
1. The Perks of Online Coaching
- You choose your niche and target market based on your passion, experience, and knowledge. Whether you want to be a life coach, business coach, or fitness coach, there’s likely demand for your services online.
- Set your own hours and work from anywhere. You may not need a physical office or location to run your online coaching business. So, you’ll save on rent, power, and other business expenses. You won’t need to travel so that saves money. You can use Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet to connect with your clients and deliver sessions.
- Lower start-up costs. You don’t need to purchase inventory or store it. So, the start-up costs for a service business are typically lower than those for a product-based business.
- Less risk. Since you don’t have to worry about inventory that may not sell, the risk of loss is lower for a service business.
- Scale your business and increase your income. As your business grows, you can hire more employees to provide the service. You can also create online courses, programs, and memberships. This way you use your content over and over. You’ll help more clients without increasing your workload. This is called passive income.
2. How to Find Your Coaching Niche
Your niche is the specific group of people you want to help and the problems you want to help them solve.
What are your passions and interests?
Do you have any expertise? Or are you willing to research and train in a niche? You’ll need to know what you’re talking about!
For example, your years of gym membership and interest in healthy living can grow into a fitness business.
Match the ‘who’ and the ‘what’.
You need to identify who your ideal clients are and what problem you can help them solve. You can use this formula to craft your niche statement: I help (who) to (what). For example, “I help women lose weight”.
Is your niche specific and focused to stand out from the competition?
Narrow down your niche by adding more details to your niche statement. For example, instead of saying “I help women lose weight”, you can say “I help busy moms lose weight with herbs”.
Is there market demand?
Do your market research. Choose a niche that has enough potential clients who will pay for your services. Also, they need to have a clear and urgent need for your solutions.
Use tools like Google Trends, Keyword Planner, or Facebook Audience Insights to see how popular and profitable your niche is. For example, here’s Google Trends’ interest by subregion for ‘Executive Leadership Coaching’. As you can see the top locations are New York and California – so you could target these areas for your marketing.
I’ve put together some profitable coaching ideas for you – see these further on…
- 10 Beginner Affiliate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
- 10 Indoor Gardening Niche Ideas with Less Competition
3. Five Essential Things You Need to Do
1. Identify your Ideal Client and their Pain Points, Goals, and Challenges
Ask yourself these questions:
- Who are your helping?
- How can you help them solve their problems?
- How can you help them achieve their desired outcomes?
To make money online coaching you need to identify the pain points you can help with. Show your potential clients that you understand their problems and challenges. And that you have a solution for it.
In your communications use stories, statistics, and testimonials to illustrate the pain points. And illustrate how it affects your clients’ lives.
2. Build your Online Presence and Authority
For example, create a website, your social media profiles, blog posts, podcasts, and videos. Create content that showcases your expertise and personality. You need to attract your ideal clients and build trust and rapport with them.
3. Create a Clear and Compelling Offer
List the benefits, values, and outcomes your client experiences as a result of using your service in detail. Communicate what problems you solve, what results you deliver, and how you deliver them.
In your marketing and your online presence add your specific numbers, results, and/or testimonials to demonstrate these benefits and the impact of your service. Focus on what matters most to your clients and align with their goals.
4. Create a Marketing Plan
How will you reach your target audience? There are many ways to market your business, including online advertising, social media marketing, and networking.
Think of the common objections your potential buyer might have. These could be a lack of time, no money, lack of trust, or fear of failure.
In your marketing strategies cover these objections and remove them from your potential clients’ minds.
Create a compelling offer and a clear message. Showcase your value proposition and why you are different from other coaches.
You need to communicate:
- Your target markets. Who are you trying to reach?
- The benefits of using your service. How you can help your clients, and what results they can expect
- Your unique selling proposition (USP): What makes your product or service different from the competition?
- Your call to action. What do you want your target market to do? E.g. sign up for a newsletter
Examples of Value Propositions are Nike’s “Just do it”. Digit, a personal finance app, is ”Save Money without thinking about it”. Canva, an online graphic design tool, is “Design anything, Publish anywhere”.
Columbia Sportswear’s founder, Gert Boyle had legendary perfectionism. From that came their Value Proposition: “It’s perfect. Now make it better.” This guides every message like the one here…
5. Generate Leads and Sales
The hardest part! Use marketing strategies such as email marketing, webinars, referrals, testimonials, youtube videos, podcasts, and targeted paid ads to generate interest.
Use sales funnels to sell your services. A sales funnel is a system that guides potential customers through the buying process. From the moment the customer learns about your services to the moment they book an appointment.
A sales funnel typically has four stages:
- Awareness: This is the stage where potential customers first learn about your service. They may see an ad, read a review, see a youtube video, or social media reel, or hear about you from a friend.
- Interest: In this stage, potential customers want to know more. They may visit your website, read your blog, and sign up for your free Ebook.
- Decision: In this stage, potential customers are ready to make a decision about whether or not to buy your service. They may compare prices, read testimonials, or speak to a salesperson.
- Action: In this stage, potential customers make a purchase. They may buy your product online, over the phone, or in person.
A well-designed sales funnel can help you increase your sales and make money online coaching. By understanding the buying process and guiding potential customers through each stage, you can increase the chances of them making a purchase.
You need to convert your prospects into paying clients. So, deliver an amazing experience that leads to repeat business and referrals.
ClickFunnels is a very popular funnel software
Here’s a customer review: “I dove into the ClickFunnels software. A few months later, our family made more money in 1 day than we had ever made before. We cannot believe we get to not only make money, but we get to change the world doing what we love.”
Click here to get The ClickFunnels Traffic Secrets Book
4. Online Coaching Courses
Become a Certified Self-Confidence Elevation Coach. Impact Your Life and the Lives of Others. Taught by Dr Joe Rubino and the course includes: Five essential secrets to developing emotional well-being and greater self-confidence. How to boost self-confidence in just 30 days. The secret to standing up and being heard and lots more. See more
Fast Track Life Coaching Certification Course. Consists of 30 videos totaling 10 hours of instruction that enable you to understand and apply exactly what you need to help others take their life to the next level. Taught by #1 best-selling author Mike Litman and celebrity hypnotist Steve G. Jones and is only $39. See more
5. 18 Profitable Coaching Niches
Common coaching niches are business, life, relationship, health & fitness, and career. Check out these ideas:
- Helping employees who want to quit their job and start a coaching business
- Supporting people to lose weight with the help of herbs
- Advising people on how to invest in real estate
- Coaching ambitious men to date better
- Helping Millennials to land better jobs
- Coaching introverts to improve their public speaking skills
- Showing entrepreneurs how they can improve their mindset and earn more
- Small Business Transformation Coaching for businesses that are struggling
- Startup Transformation Coaching for entrepreneurs who want to start and grow their business
- Helping busy professionals de-stress and achieve work-life balance
- Helping couples improve their communication
- Helping parents raise happy and healthy children
- Helping students succeed in school and get into their dream college
- Helping people lose weight and get in shape
- Helping people quit smoking and improve their overall health
- Helping people overcome anxiety and depression
- Helping people cope with grief and loss
- Helping people find their purpose in life
6. Overcoming the Challenges of Online Coaching
A. Challenge: Finding clients.
To Do: This is a BIG challenge that you’ll face. You have to put yourself out there! Create a clear marketing strategy and a strong online presence. So you can attract your ideal clients and stand out from the competition.
Get out, network, and build relationships in the real world and online. Join forums, and groups that are potential referrals. Make videos or podcasts with helpful tips and build a loyal following. Create quick, helpful reels and post them on Linkedin, Tiktok, Instagram, or Facebook.
B. Challenge: A lot of work, not enough time
To Do: Choose the right technology tools to speed up your processes more efficiently. For example, GetResponse is an excellent e-mail marketing tool. Video conferencing software like Zoom, Scheduling software, and payment processing all help with your business.
C. Challenge: Sales-o-phobia.
To Do: Many online coaches (and small business owners) struggle with selling their services. So you must overcome the fear of promoting yourself and selling your services.
Develop a confident sales mindset and showcase your expertise and value. Focus on the help you can provide and the positive outcomes. Then you won’t sound pushy or salesy.
D. Challenge: Coach the issue and not the person.
To Do: Connect with your clients on a deeper level. Understand their emotions, motivations, and values. Avoid focusing too much on the surface-level issue or goal. Instead, coach the whole person behind it.
Use powerful questions, active listening, empathy, and feedback. Help your client explore their situation, gain insights and take action.
E. Challenge: Building trust.
To Do: It can be difficult to build trust with clients when you’re not meeting them in person. One way to overcome this challenge is to build a strong online presence. So, create a professional website, and social media accounts, and include testimonials from past clients.
F. Challenge: Staying organized.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you’re juggling multiple clients and sessions. One way to stay organized is to use a scheduling tool and keep detailed notes of each session.
G. Challenge: Providing value
It’s important to make sure you’re providing value to your clients. Be prepared for each session, offer helpful advice, and follow up after each session.
You may encounter some of these challenges on your journey. But with the right mindset, skills, strategies, and support you’re sure to overcome them!
Wrapping Up – How to Successfully Make Money Online Coaching
Online coaching is a rewarding business option. Why not make a positive impact on others’ lives while living your dream lifestyle? Make money online coaching and utilize your passion for helping others and share your skills and expertise. If this sounds like you then online coaching might be the perfect business idea.
Photos by Samantha Borges, Wolf Zimmermann, and Rinke Dohmen on Unsplash
