How To Start A Fitness Blog And Make Money (2024 Guide)

Looking at how to start a fitness blog and become an influential voice in the industry? Starting your own blog can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. With the proper knowledge and tools, anyone can create a successful fitness blog to help them reach their goals.

In this ultimate guide on starting a fitness blog, I’ll discuss how to choose a niche, pick a name for your website, choose the best blogging platform for your needs, design an attractive layout and write content that resonates with readers.

I’ll also look at how to promote your posts effectively and monetize them so you can make money from starting a fitness blog.

How To Start A Fitness Blog And Make Money (Step-By-Step Guide)

Fitness blogging is not much different from book blogging or any other niche. The underlying principles are the same.

You might be a personal trainer wanting to start a health and fitness blog or just a gym enthusiast wanting to document your fitness journey on your own blog. Whatever the reason, the following step-by-step instructions will help you build a fitness blog that stands out in the fitness space.

1. Choose a Fitness Niche

Choosing a niche is one of the most critical steps in starting a blog. It’s essential to pick an area that you are passionate about and have knowledge in so that your content will be exciting and engaging for readers.

For example, you may be a fitness expert looking to write informative blog posts about nutrition. Or maybe you want to focus solely on building muscle, weight loss, and exercise routines.

On the other hand, you might be a more conscious personal trainer that incorporates yoga poses into your exercises. In this case, you could start a yoga blog including vegan recipes and other mind-body connections.

Additionally, narrowing down your focus to topics such as nutrition, exercise routines, or mental health is a good start. However, it’s always best to deepen a specific niche first and then broaden it to other areas related to fitness within the same blog.

How To Select a Fitness Niche

When selecting a niche within this field, it’s essential to consider what sets your blog apart from other fitness blogs. You want to make sure that there is enough demand for content related to the topic but also enough room for creativity and originality on your part.

Once you decide on a specific subject matter, consider how broad or narrow it should be. If it’s too broad, you may get overwhelmed with what to post. On the other hand, if it’s too narrow, readers may become bored with the same topics over time. Finding the right balance between these two extremes can help ensure success with your blog long-term.

You should also research any existing blogs covering similar topics before committing yourself fully to yours—this way, you can get blog ideas and see what kind of content has already been created by other fitness sites so that yours stands out from the crowd.

Additionally, consider your target audience—understanding their interests and needs can help inform which direction you take when creating content around this particular niche topic.

Finally, keep track of trends within the industry—staying up-to-date with current events related to health and fitness will give more ideas for potential post topics while keeping readers engaged with fresh information each week. This, combined with thoughtful planning ahead of time, should set any new blogger up nicely for success when choosing their own niche within this popular field.

Choosing a niche for your fitness blog is important to ensure that you are targeting the right audience. Now, it’s time to pick a name that will set it apart from the rest.

2. Pick a Domain Name

Your fitness blog name should be memorable, easy to spell, and relevant to your niche. Before you decide on a domain name, make sure it isn’t already taken on social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram. Check domain availability to ensure your branding remains consistent across different channels.

When picking out a name for your blog, think about what words are associated with fitness and health. Some examples include “fit,” “active,” “healthful,” or even just something fun like “gym-bunny.” You want to pick something that will stand out from other fitness blogs, so try not to use generic terms such as “fitness” or “exercise.”

For example, No Meat Athlete chose a blog name that targets a specific audience—fitness enthusiasts that don’t eat meat.

And while they have various sub-niches, such as nutrition, losing weight, workouts, supplements, and more, the central niche is a plant-based diet. Instead of creating a general fitness blog, they targeted a specific audience with their blog name.

Also, consider using puns or wordplay when coming up with ideas for names; this can help create something unique and memorable without having to come up with entirely new words. For example, if you were writing about running, then maybe combine two related words together, such as ‘Runnersize’ or ‘Fasterista.’

Additionally, if you want to start a fitness blog revolving around your experience, you could use your own name, as Steve Pilot did. He’s a fitness professional providing training advice and coaching to anyone interested in becoming fit and building muscle without eating animal products.

Once you have some potential names written down, check them against existing websites and social media accounts—there’s nothing worse than finding out someone else has already taken the perfect domain name.

If none of these steps seem appealing, why not take inspiration from other sources? Look at popular books, films, or songs related to fitness topics – often, they contain great phrases that could work perfectly as titles for your blog posts.

Choosing a good domain name is vital when starting any blogging journey, so don’t rush into anything without doing proper research first. Once chosen correctly, it will be much easier to build brand recognition later down the line.

3. Choose a Hosting Provider

The files on your fitness blog must be stored somewhere—web hosting servers.

Many hosting companies abound in the market, but the one I truly recommend for beginners in terms of features, quality, and pricing is DreamHost (that’s how I started my blog).

Choosing the best hosting company is critical to having a functional website. Unlike other hosting companies, DreamHost is officially recommended by WordPress as the best web hosting company for using it.

Many website owners, including myself, started off with DreamHost for their hosted sites. I couldn’t recommend it enough for beginners looking to start their blogging journey.

Get started with DreamHost for $2.59/mo (68% off).

4. Choose a Blogging Platform

Choosing the right blogging platform for your fitness blog is essential to ensure you have all the features and tools you need to create a successful blog.

There are mainly three different blogging platforms to start a successful fitness blog:

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform, and for a good reason. It’s easy to use, highly customizable and offers plenty of features that make it perfect for businesses. Plus, WordPress offers a paraphernalia of free themes and plugins to help you customize your website the way you want.
Blogger is another great option if you’re looking for an easy-to-use platform with basic features. It has a simple interface and allows users to create blogs quickly and easily. However, Blogger doesn’t offer as many customization options as WordPress, so if you’re looking for something more complex, this might not be the best choice for your business blog.
Squarespace is also popular among bloggers due to its user-friendly design tools and intuitive drag-and-drop editor. Squarespace makes creating beautiful websites quick and easy, but there are some limitations when it comes to customizing your site beyond what’s offered in their templates which could be an issue if you need more control over how your website looks or functions.

The best advice any successful blogger can give is to use a self-hosting platform like WordPress. Moreover, the top web hosting platforms like DreamHost include it for free.

WordPress is the best content management system (CRM) you can use for any website domain. It allows you to scale and monetize your website in the long run without hassle.

5. Design Your Blog

Designing your blog is something you can do with time. Don’t make the mistake many new bloggers do (myself included when I started): wasting precious time choosing the “right” color and layout instead of writing content.

The most important thing you should do in your fitness blog is to create content. The design can wait as you can do it with time. However, here are some tips for creating an attractive and functional website.

I. Choose a Theme

Selecting the right WordPress theme for your blog is essential to creating an aesthetically pleasing design. Not only that, but you should look for a lightweight and fast theme, such as GeneratePress, one of the fastest themes available for WordPress.

A fast website is crucial for higher rankings. Fortunately, GeneratePress lets you customize all aspects of your blog while keeping bloating to a minimum.

II. Customize Fonts & Colors

Once you’ve chosen a theme and a cool logo, it’s time to customize the fonts and colors of your blog. Choose legible yet eye-catching fonts, and select colors that complement each other without being too overwhelming or distracting from the content itself.

IV. Add Images

Adding images can make your blog more visually appealing and exciting for readers. Use high-quality photos or illustrations related to the topic of your blog posts whenever possible, as this will attract readers more effectively than generic stock images would.

Optimizing your blog for mobile devices is important, as most people now use their phones as their primary source of internet access. To ensure that all text is readable on smaller screens, select appropriate font sizes and use responsive design techniques such as media queries or adaptive layouts when necessary to make sure images display correctly across different devices.

Fortunately, GeneratePress optimizes your website for responsiveness on tablets and mobile devices automatically.

Once you have designed your blog, it’s time to start writing content that will engage and inform your readers. Next, we’ll look at how to write content for your fitness blog.

6. Write Content

Any blog lives from its content. This is true no matter what type of blog it is.

Learning how to start a fitness blog includes learning the different blog posts you can write and how to write quality content to engage readers.

Types of Fitness Blog Posts

There are mainly three different types of blog content any fitness blogger could write:

Informational posts provide helpful information about a particular topic without trying to sell anything directly; think tutorials or educational pieces about exercises or nutrition plans for beginners. Such examples could be “How To Lose Weight With The Right Carbs” or “How Personal Trainer Software Helped Me Start a Fitness Career.”
List posts offer helpful advice through numbered lists such as “5 Exercises You Can Do at Home” or “7 Healthy Snacks That Taste Delicious.” You could even write a blog post about the “5 Best Product Alternatives.”
Reviews give honest opinions about products after testing them out firsthand. For example, reviewing different types of running shoes available on the market today based on comfort level and price point would be a great review topic for a fitness blog.

You could also interview personal trainers or other fitness bloggers and feature them on your blog. Furthermore, repurposing those interviews into YouTube videos is a great way to expand your reach.

Creating engaging content for your fitness blog is essential to draw in readers and keep them coming back.

Tips For Writing A Great Blog Post

Here are some tips on writing content that will capture your audience’s attention.

I. Keyword Research

Before writing your first post, you should do keyword research to find the best content ideas to write about. As a new blogger, it’s best to focus on keywords with low difficulty scores and some search volume.

For example, when researching the keyword “vegan workout,” Ahrefs prompts the following results:

When starting your first blog, the best content ideas should have a low keyword difficulty (KD). As a new fitness blogger, and in the example of the keyword above, ranking for “vegan workout diet” would be much harder than “vegan workout clothes.” You could still create a “Vegan Workout Diet Guide,” but your chances of ranking high on search results until your fitness blog’s domain rating increases would be minimal.

As a result, when you choose the right target keywords, you’ll create fitness content that gets you traffic, and making money becomes a possibility.

II. Headline

Crafting headlines that grab attention is key. Your headline should be interesting, relevant, and SEO-friendly so it can easily be found online. Use power words like “amazing” or “incredible” to make it stand out from other titles in search engine results pages (SERPs).

III. Storytelling

People love stories. Try weaving personal anecdotes into your posts or creating a narrative arc throughout the article. This helps create an emotional connection with readers and keeps them engaged until the end.

For example, you could write about the first time you used fitness equipment and share that story with your readers so they can relate to you.

IV. SEO-Friendly Content

SEO stands for search engine optimization and relates to everything bloggers do to increase their visibility on search engines.

Writing SEO-friendly content means using keywords strategically throughout your post while still making sure it reads naturally for humans.

Research popular topics related to fitness and include those keywords in headings, subheadings, body copy, meta description, etc., as appropriate.

Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP), you can leverage SEO content writing tools that suggest relevant keywords semantically related to your target keyword. Not only that, but these tools analyze the top-performing content on Google and suggest the most relevant content structure and keywords, so you have a higher chance of ranking high.

Adding internal links is also an SEO best practice to structure your website’s content better.

Creating content for your fitness blog is essential to getting readers and building an audience. Once you have the content, it’s time to promote your blog so that more people can find it.

7. Promote Your Fitness Blog

Promoting your blog is essential for growing an audience and reaching more readers in the health and fitness industry. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest are great tools for promoting your fitness blog posts.

Facebook: Create a business page on Facebook and regularly post links to your blog posts. Use relevant hashtags to reach a wider audience. You can also join Facebook groups related to health and fitness topics that allow you to share content from your blog with other group members.
Instagram: Post images or videos related to the topic of your blog post along with a link back to it in the caption or bio section of each post. Use relevant hashtags so people searching for specific topics can find you easily. You can also run ads on Instagram if you want more exposure to your content.

Email Marketing

When you first learn how to start a fitness blog, you might be enticed to create a newsletter to share your latest blog posts with your subscribers. This is great, but you’ll only build an email list when you get lots of traffic.

Nonetheless, with free email automation tools such as Mailerlite, you can create drip campaigns and send a series of emails to your subscribers to keep them engaged longer.

Guest Blogging

Along your fitness blogging journey, you might want to reach out to other bloggers who write about similar topics within the health and fitness niche, offering them free guest blogging opportunities where you can submit articles written by yourself.

The sole purpose of writing a guest post is to gain backlinks to your site. Ensure you insert a contextual backlink to an article in your fitness blog.

This way, both parties benefit since one gets free content while another receives increased visibility through backlinks. This increases your domain authority, increasing your chances of ranking higher on Google and other search engines.

8. Monetize Your Blog

Monetizing your blog is important in turning it into a successful business. There are several ways to monetize your health and fitness blog, each with its own advantages and drawbacks.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is all about promoting products or services from companies or brands and earning a commission when someone purchases through the link you provide.

You can insert affiliate links on product reviews, tutorials on using a product, or links to the product in relevant posts. When choosing the best affiliate programs, ensure they’re related to fitness and offer quality products that will benefit your readers.

For example, the best blog posts to write with buyer intent keywords in mind are:

“Best” posts.
“Best Alternatives” posts.
“Reviews” posts.
“Product A vs. Product B” posts.

Additionally, you can insert affiliate links throughout your email marketing newsletters and campaigns.

Affiliate marketing is the best way to generate passive income with your blog.

Selling Products/Services

If you have expertise in fitness-related topics (such as nutrition advice), consider selling digital products like eBooks or online courses that teach people how to improve their health and wellness goals.

Alternatively, if you have physical goods such as workout equipment or apparel that appeal to your audience, those could also be sold directly from your site using a sales page or sales funnel.

By offering free lead magnets such as eBooks, you’re gathering potential clients that might buy your premium product somewhere in the future.

Advertising

Displaying ads on your website is another way of monetizing it without having direct involvement with brands yourself—all you need do is sign up for an ad network like Ezoic or Monumetric and let them handle the rest.

Remember that too many ads can turn off readers; try not to overdo it, so visitors don’t get overwhelmed when visiting your site.

As I always state, ads only work to make money when you have lots of traffic. Initially, you should focus on creating and monetizing content through affiliate marketing.

How to Start a Fitness Blog FAQs

Starting a fitness blog can be rewarding if you have the passion. However, you might still have some questions.

Do fitness blogs make money?

Yes, fitness blogs can make money. Many bloggers have successfully monetized their content through affiliate marketing, selling digital products such as eBooks and courses, sponsored posts, and advertisements.

Additionally, some fitness bloggers have leveraged their blogs into full-time businesses by offering personal training or nutrition coaching services.

With the right strategies in place and dedication to creating quality content, any fitness blogger can generate income from their blog.

Can anyone start a successful fitness blog?

Yes, anyone can start a fitness blog. It is relatively easy to set up and requires minimal technical knowledge. Starting a fitness blog requires reliable web hosting, a fast WordPress theme, and quality fitness content.

You may also consider investing in SEO tools and software to help you grow your audience and monetize your blog.

Is fitness a good niche for blogging?

Fitness can be an excellent niche for blogging depending on the content you want to create. It is an evergreen topic with a large audience and plenty of potential topics to explore.

Additionally, there are many opportunities to monetize fitness-related blogs through affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, and selling products or services related to health and wellness.

What should I post on my fitness blog?

If you want to grow your fitness blog, you should consider a few key strategies when writing a blog post.

Focus on creating high-quality, informative, and engaging content for your readers. Write “how-to” posts, and list posts with your favorite fitness equipment, supplements, meals, or other fitness-related matters. You can also write about your experience, as this will engage your readers more than anything else.
Make sure to include plenty of visuals like photos, videos, interesting facts, and stories about health and fitness topics.
Don’t forget the importance of SEO optimization to increase visibility for your blog’s content on search engines like Google.

Conclusion

Learning how to start a fitness blog can be an exciting and rewarding journey. With the right knowledge, tools, and dedication, you can create a successful platform to share your passion for health and wellness with others.

By taking the time to choose a niche, pick a name, select a hosting company, design your blog, write content that resonates with readers, promote it effectively, and monetize it strategically, you will have all the ingredients necessary to start your own fitness blog.

Remember not to spend too much time designing your blog initially and start writing content as soon as possible (you can constantly update it later).

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How To Start A Fitness Blog And Make Money On The Side Following Your Passion