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.

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+

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.

Do you want to get rich? To build real, lasting wealth that can change your family’s circumstances for generations?

Prepare to be disappointed because there are no get-rich-quick shortcuts or overnight secrets.

Building wealth takes time, discipline, and sustained effort.

But the good news is you can absolutely do it, no matter your current situation or starting point. All it takes is following some proven rules and principles to put you on the path.

I’m talking about 10 fundamental rules to help turn your financial dreams into reality. Joining me for this one is Robert Farrington, founder of the famous personal finance site The College Investor and a longtime guest on The Side Hustle Show.

This conversation is based on his article 10 Rules to Get Rich and Grow Wealth.

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1. You Have To Earn It (Your Money, Your Wealth)

No one’s gonna hand you a fortune on a silver platter. If you want to get rich, you gotta earn it yourself.

This is the whole reason Side Hustle Nation exists—to help you increase that income.

There are two ways to build wealth: make more or spend less.

Spend less – Finite. You’ll never spend less than $0, but you still to cover some basic costs, no matter how much you cut.
Make more – Infinite. There’s no limit to how much you can earn, so it makes way more sense to focus on that side of the equation.

Plus, it’s more fun to figure out ways to earn more than trying to cut an extra $100 out of your budget.

An entrepreneurial side hustle isn’t just about trading hours for dollars—it’s about building equity in something you own. That ownership stake can really accelerate your wealth-building journey.

And remember, wealth takes time. Your time frame matters. So if you want to be a millionaire by 35, it will involve more aggressive growth, risk, and developing an ownership mentality in a business venture.

But if you’ve got a longer runway, saving and investing steadily can still get you there, even if it takes longer. Getting started and keeping at it is what matters.

2. You Need To Save Until It Hurts

Your savings rate is the single biggest lever that you can pull to accelerate your path to financial independence.

The more you can sock away, the faster that money can compound and grow.

However, as a (recovering!) frugal person, I’m not entirely sold on the “until it hurts” approach. We’ve never really budgeted but kind of instinctively lived below our means.

There were and are certain purchases we’ve foregone, but I don’t know if I would say it hurts, or maybe we need to flip this to say save until “it feels good now” — by not buying the thing today, you’re helping your future self.

The old adage “mind the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves” has merit, but you also don’t want to sweat every little purchase.

So, what’s the magic number?

There isn’t one. The nationwide average savings rate is around 3.8%, but that’s obviously not the target for everyone. Your ideal savings rate should be aggressive enough to move you towards your goals but sustainable enough that you don’t feel constantly deprived.

Build the habit of holding onto your money, even if it’s just an extra $5 or $10 per paycheck to start.

Robert’s Tip: Find the best deal on purchases, using services like Rakuten or Cashback Monitor, and combining them with credit card rewards and coupons to save money.

3. You Need To Optimize Your Spending

There is no need to give up all fun things just because you want to “optimize your spending.” It is about spending money intentionally on what really matters to you.

Look at the services you’re already paying for and ask if there’s a better, faster, or cheaper alternative out there. We’ve done this with cell phone plans, cable/streaming packages, and more.

But you can also be strategic about spending on things that verifiably improve your happiness and life satisfaction. According to my brother’s site, BecomingBetter.org, there are five key areas to focus on:

Helping others – Support causes you care about
Eliminating a pain point – Solve those nagging problems that drain your time or energy
Experiences – Plan trips and events that create lasting memories
Buying back your time – Outsource chores to give yourself more room to focus on what you love
Self-development – Invest in yourself with therapy, coaching, or lessons

So spend on what matters! Maybe it’s hiring a cleaning service to buy back time for your side hustle. Or taking tennis lessons as part of your self-improvement journey.

Remember, optimizing your spending is about making conscious choices that align with your values and bring you the most happiness.

4. You Must Put Your Money To Work For You

Get paid over and over again for work you do once.

The classic way is through investing in the stock market and real estate.

But here’s my beef with a lot of the personal finance influencers out there: most people telling you to build wealth through low-cost index funds didn’t build their wealth through low-cost index funds!

A lot built their fortunes through entrepreneurship, business, and other alternative investments.

That’s why I’m intrigued by the concept of Coast FI.

Then you get to that point where your future is set, so you can take your foot off the gas a bit and actually enjoy your money along the way. In other words, they’ll be able to “coast” into retirement.

The key is putting your money to work in productive assets that can earn you income streams, rather than just letting it sit stagnant in a savings account.

5. You Need To Marry Smart

Divorce is devastating, and not just emotionally. It’s a financial wrecking ball. 

Studies show it can wipe out 75% of a family’s wealth—factor in legal fees, splitting assets, increased housing/transportation costs, and the list goes on.

That’s why it’s so important to find a partner who shares your financial values and goals. It’s a team sport.

Robert and his wife combined incomes early on—living off one while investing the other. They didn’t have a prenup (they were young and broke), but it all worked out in the end.

He has a riskier entrepreneurial income while she had a steady job.

As parents, it’s natural to want to give our kids everything, but you run the risk of turning them into helpless, entitled brats.

That’s why I loved Shaq telling his kids “We’re not rich, I’m rich.”

6. You Always Need To Minimize Your Taxes

Taxes are probably your single biggest annual expense. 

No matter where you live, the less the government takes, the more you get to keep and build that wealth!

So let’s talk strategies:

Defer, Defer, Defer with Investments – accounts like a 401(k), 403(b), IRAs, or Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) aren’t just about future savings. Money you contribute goes in before the taxman gets his cut, lowering how much you owe right now. Plus, that money grows tax-deferred, meaning a bigger nest egg down the line.

LLC taxed as an S-corporation – with an S-corp, you pay yourself a “reasonable” salary and avoid paying self-employment taxes on remaining profits. It’s a totally legit hack, but listen to your tax pro on setting it up right.

Get a tax advisor – people mix up tax preparation (filing those returns every year) with tax strategy. Not the same thing! A tax pro can advise you throughout the year. They know the rules, spot deductions, and can help you make smart moves so the following April isn’t a nasty surprise.

Taxes may be unavoidable, but there’s no need to give the government more than their fair share.

7. Insure Yourself and Protect Your Family

This rule isn’t sexy, but it’s absolutely important. It’s about peace of mind.

A little planning today can prevent a financial disaster tomorrow.

Accidents, illnesses, and even a rogue rock bouncing out from under a truck (a lesson I learned the hard way) can wreak havoc on your finances. Disability insurance and car insurance are there to catch you when things go sideways.

Term life insurance can be shockingly affordable (can be as low as $20 a month), offering millions of dollars in coverage for a price tag that might be less than your monthly phone bill.

For Robert’s family, they pay $1,500 per month for a high-deductible plan from Covered California.

So don’t let all your hard work get wiped out by an unexpected event you could have prepared for.

8. You Need To Take Care of Yourself First

Self-care isn’t selfish, it’s essential. You can’t show up as your best self for your business, family, or wealth-building goals if you’re running on fumes physically or mentally.

You know that safety speech they give on airplanes about putting on your own oxygen mask before helping others (i.e., your kids)? The same logic applies to taking care of yourself.

It was a harsh reminder that if you don’t feel well, you simply can’t perform at your best.

If you don’t have your own life in order—financially, emotionally, physically—you might just burden your loved ones. You won’t be able to work and provide. It’s a slippery slope once you start neglecting yourself.

The key is getting right back on track if you slip up like James Clear says: don’t miss two days in a row of your good habits.

Here are ways to take care of yourself through simple habits:

Prioritizing that morning workout to start my day right
Hitting my daily step goal through walking habits
Trying to eat well 80% of the time through meal prep (80% healthy food, 20% indulgence)

Invest in your health and well-being first, then let the other dominoes fall into place.

9. Surround Yourself With People Better Than You

They say you become the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Cliché? Maybe. But there’s undeniable truth to the idea that your environment shapes you.

The people you surround yourself with, whether it’s friends, family, coworkers, or communities you’re part of, they all rub off on you. Their habits, mindsets, and behaviors start shaping your own over time.

So if you want to level up, it’s time to take a hard look at your inner circle.

Find your growth tribe with these methods:

Events: Conferences (like FinCon), meetups, and masterminds put you face-to-face with potential mentors, partners, and cheerleaders.
Coaching + Communities: You can get the help you need from a coaching program or paid community. Find programs that match your goals.

You might have to upgrade your peer group along the way. But having people around you who inspire you to aim higher makes such a difference.

10. It’s Okay To Go Slow

I get it, the wealth-building journey can be painstakingly slow at times. You wish you could wave a magic wand and achieve all your financial goals overnight. But that’s just not how it works.

It’s perfectly fine to go at a slower, more sustainable pace. After all, you’ve got a long life ahead of you.

The average millionaire in the U.S. doesn’t hit that milestone until age 62! So don’t get caught up in trying to achieve all your goals by 30 or rushing from one accomplishment to the next.

Learn to enjoy the season you’re in rather than constantly chasing the next milestone. There’s no finish line for happiness or fulfillment.

Focus on getting just 1% better every day through small, consistent habits and actions. That’s how the biggest transformations happen—not through random spurts of motivation, but through never-ending small refinements.

What’s Next for Robert?

It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster with all the recent Google algorithm updates. Robert’s site wasn’t affected, but it also hasn’t seen major growth either.

So where is he finding traction these days?

Facebook groups are absolutely crushing it lately. All the great discussions and engagement seem to be happening in those community spaces now.

Reddit has been another consistent traffic source, though you have to be careful about self-promotion over there. Don’t be a spammer.

Short-form video content is also continuing to pop across TikTok and YouTube Shorts.

If people aren’t finding what they need from regular Google searches anymore, you’ve got to meet them where they’re actually consuming content.

The College Investor site and brand are still going strong at the center of it all. But Robert understands he has to adapt to how people are gathering information in today’s fragmented media landscape.

Episode Links

The College Investor
Episode 10: How to Earn $3000 a Month Blogging in Your Spare Time
Episode 166: $10k a Month Blogging Part-Time
Episode 482: From 6-Figure Blog to 7-Figure Online Business: Catching Up
Rakuten
Bigger Pockets Money
Lyft
Robinhood
FinCon

Serious About Making Extra Money?

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.