Looking for a fitness-related side hustle to make extra money? The good news is there are lots of ways to stay active, help others, and get paid at the same time!
I compiled this list based on:
Interviews with dozens of fitness side hustles
My 15+ years of side hustle experience
Feedback from the 50,000+ member Side Hustle Nation community
Here are our top picks!
1. Personal Training
The requirements for personal trainers vary from gym to gym. Some require a degree or official certification.
Depending on the gym, you can also make commissions for bringing in new members. Most trainers connect with private clients through their network, NextDoor, or through a marketplace like FindYourTrainer.
Aside from training clients in-person, you can also do it online. For example, April Whitney took her passion for fitness online and created an online strength training program for petite women.
When we spoke, she was earning $1000 a month from it.
2. Sports Coaching
Channel your athletic glory days and help young athletes level up their game.
You can set your own rate and CoachUp private coaches report earning an average of $45 an hour. It doesn’t hurt to check your local school districts to see what coaching positions they have available.
3. Sports Officiating
School sports and recreation leagues always need officials and umpires to help out. If you have experience with a sport and know the rules, this can be a fun and active side hustle.
According to Zippa, referees get paid an average of $25/hr.
4. Teaching Fitness Classes
Gyms offer a variety of fitness classes taught by passionate and trained individuals.
If you are trained in yoga, Zumba, spinning, or more, check out and see if your local gym is looking for instructors.
5. Build a Health and Fitness Website
Write content on the health and fitness topics you care about and build an audience in your niche. As you build out your library of helpful articles, you’ll pick up more traffic and revenue.
Content sites earn money from affiliate partnerships, ad revenue, and your own products and services.
One common way to start is by creating in-depth product comparison content, like Tami Smith did with her fitness website, FitHealthyMomma.
Tami is a Certified Personal Trainer and a Nutritionist who took that expertise and applied it online. When we connected, she was earning up to $20k a month.
Want to start a website of your own? Check out my free 6-part video course on how to start your own site.
Pros:
Low startup costs
Great long-term earning power
Can sell the business down the road
Cons:
Slow to see results
Lots of skills to learn
6. Dog Walking
When homeowners travel, it opens up an opportunity to come by and take care of their animals. Or, they may just need some exercise in the middle of the day!
To set up shop, try Rover.com. Several Side Hustle Nation readers report earning $1000 a month watching other people’s pets.
7. Parking Lot Cleanup
Brian Winch equated his litter pick-up service as “making money going for a walk.”
Now a $650k a year operation, his business started as a side hustle performing the very basic task of picking up litter.
Check out Brian’s interview to learn more about how you can earn $30-$50 an hour picking up trash.
In bottle and can recycling redemption states, you can turn that trash into treasure as well.
8. Create a Walking Tour
Would you love sharing your city with others?
Alexandra Kenin built Urban Hiker SF into a $50k a year side hustle, guiding tour groups around the hills of San Francisco.
With Tours By Locals, you can offer private, unique, and customized tours to travelers in 162 countries.
9. Fitness Niche Newsletter
One of the side hustles I’m most excited about right now is curated email newsletters. Could you source the best articles on your health and fitness topic on a daily or weekly basis?
These are super valuable for readers since you help cut through the clutter in your niche. As your audience grows, you can monetize with ads, affiliate offers, or your own products or services.
Tools like Substack and SendFox make it super easy to get started.
10. Weight Loss Coaching
Nagina Abdullah turned her weight loss blog, MasalaBody.com, into a side business that consistently made $10k a month.
By day, she worked for a large consulting company. With a busy work schedule, a young family, and limited time to work on her side hustle, Nagina had to be very smart about her marketing and pricing.
After struggling with her weight for all of her adult life, she finally hit on something that worked and dropped 40 pounds!
She started her blog to share recipes and tips, and began offering one-on-one and group coaching programs.
This can be done remotely with Zoom and email, allowing you to help people remotely.
11. Start a YouTube Health and Fitness Channel
Creating content on YouTube is a fast-track side hustle, especially compared with blogging. It’s easier to “rank” videos for your target keywords, and once your channel reaches certain metrics, you can monetize with ads.
Some ideas of content you can create:
Workout Videos
Meal Plans
Equipment Reviews
Exercise Tutorials
For example, Nisha Vora built her Rainbow Plant Life YouTube channel about vegan cooking to over 1.2M subscribers!
(You can also use YouTube in other creative ways, like to sell a digital product or service.)
12. Host a Fitness Podcast
Podcasting is another unique way to build an income stream around your opinions. It can take a while to build an audience, but it’s a business that can scale really well.
After all, it takes the same effort to produce an episode that 100 people listen to as it does to produce one that 100,000 people listen to.
For example, Shawn Stevenson hosts the popular Model Health Show.
Top podcasts earn up to $100,000 for a single episode — but even smaller shows can thrive with a niche topic. We’ve seen successful side hustle examples from a range of podcast niches, including:
Parenting
Dinosaurs (for real!)
App marketing
This could be a good fit as a fitness side hustle if you love to talk!
13. Write a Book
One of my favorite and most passive side hustles is self-publishing. Passive — after the whole book-writing part, that is 🙂
My books are on topics like:
how to work with virtual assistants
the most important items every website should have
how to start a side hustle
Over the last decade, my collection of titles have earned me over $80,000.
I can’t call myself a full-time author, but it’s a fun way to get paid to put your ideas and opinions out into the world.
For example, physical therapist Sean Sumner wrote this guide on how to get rid of your back pain.
It’s got over 150 reviews on Amazon, and has led to paid speaking gigs on top of his author royalties.
You can set your own prices and collect a 70% royalty on all Kindle book sales priced between $2.99 and $9.99. (Amazon makes it easy to create a print-on-demand paperback as well.)
14. Freelance Writing
Many companies hire freelance writers to create:
website content
sales copy
marketing newsletters
product descriptions
brochures and training material
And yes, even in the age of AI, there’s still a strong demand for real human writers who have experience, voice, and an opinion on what they’re writing about.
Freelance writers command anywhere from $50-500 or more per article, and can connect with clients on platforms like Upwork and Fiverr.
For example, Georgia Austin started her freelance writing business on Fiverr, and got her first orders right away. The more you practice your writing, the faster you’ll get.
Start by deciding which health and fitness topics you are interested in and would love to write about.
You can then see what companies are hiring writers. You can also look at writing job boards or Facebook groups for websites needing health and fitness writers.
15. The Amazon Influencer Program
My latest side hustle is as an Amazon Influencer. This is an offshoot of the Associates program designed for content creators with a following on social media.
Once your Influencer account is approved, you’ll be able to upload short product review videos.
In turn, Amazon displays those on the relevant product pages, and rewards you a commission when someone makes a purchase after watching your video.
I made a little over $100 doing this in my first month, with very little effort!
If you love reviewing workout equipment and accessories, this could be a good fit to start.
16. Get Paid to Lose Weight: $500+
HealthyWage
4.1
Bet on yourself to hit your weight loss goal, and win an average of $1300 when you achieve it.
Get paid to build healthy habitsSet your own goals and timeline
You’ll lose money if you don’t hit your goalPrize may not be motivating enough
If you are looking to lose weight yourself, you might want to check out HealthyWage. This cool service lets you put a friendly wager on your weight loss.
If you meet your goal, you can cash in — to the tune of $500 or more! (Here’s our full HealthyWage review.)
If you are looking to get healthy this year, why not make some money at the same time.
Click here to see how much your prize might be.
17. Instacart
Shopping for people’s groceries will certainly boost your daily steps with all that walking up and down the aisles. Instacart connects customers with shoppers to deliver fresh groceries to their door.
As an Instacart shopper, you shop and deliver orders as an independent contractor (car required).
Check out my full Instacart shopper review for more details.
18. CashWalk
CashWalk is a popular “get paid to walk” app that uses the pedometer function on your phone to track your steps throughout the day.
Those steps convert into CashWalk coins — up to 100 a day — which can then be redeemed for gift cards to Amazon and other stores. For serious walkers, that translates into $5 every 6-8 weeks.
The only drawback is you have to open the app every day to claim your coins. (That’s how they get you to look at the ads that pay for your gift cards!)
Get 100 coins as a sign-up bonus w/ referral code MR9W5.
Check out our full CashWalk review to learn more.
19. StepBet
A friend of mine reported earning around $150 a year with StepBet, which gamifies your walking goals with group step challenges.
Bet on yourself to meet your walking goals. If you hit your own step goals every week for the entire game, you divide the “pot” with the other winners. That means you win back your own investment plus profit.
If you miss your weekly goal, you’re out of the running.
The Best Fitness Side Hustles: Your Turn
The good news is are lots of fitness-related side hustles available. You may even be able to combine several on this list to help others get in shape or meet your own fitness goals.
The best thing to do is pick one and get started today!
Looking for More Side Hustle Help?
Start Your Free $500 Challenge. My free 5-day email course shows you how to add $500 to your bottom line.
Join the free Side Hustle Nation Community. The free Facebook group is the best place to connect with other side hustlers and get your questions answered.
Download The Side Hustle Show. My free podcast shares how to make extra money with actionable weekly episodes.
