Health Update: What Fitness Influencers Really Earn and What the Job Is Actually Like – What Experts Say

Perfect body, perfect routine, perfect life. That’s the image most fitness influencers are selling, and many make it look like they’ve achieved the trifecta. But is the lifestyle really that dreamy?

According to some influencers, yes. For one thing, the job comes with a lot of autonomy. Influencers are the poster children for the gig economy. They get to choose who they work with and when. Their product is their own personal brand, and most build it by doing what they love: working out.

Many fitness influencers also use their platforms to start personal training businesses—a side hustle that brings in extra cash and opens the door to fulfilling mentor-mentee relationships. Secure the right combo of brand partnerships, online courses, and coaching sessions, and you could make six figures per year. Some celebrity influencers make north of $1 million. However, most are making far less.

Influencers who are new to the space (or picky about sponsors) often make just $100 or $200 per month—even if they have hundreds of thousands of followers. A bigger brand deal might net $10,000 to $20,000 for a set number of photos, posts, or reels, but those deals are extremely competitive.

There are other downsides, too. In the vast and fickle world of social media, influence is power. But no matter how many followers you have, you’re never guaranteed a place at the top of the food chain. Fads come, and fads go, and even small changes in platforms’ nebulous algorithms can drop you off the map overnight. As much as it might feel like you’re working for yourself, you always answer to a higher power: the whims of the Internet.

On top of that, a fitness influencer’s product isn’t just their worldview; it’s also their body. Even amid a cultural push for authenticity and relatability, it can be hard to monetize your image unless you’ve got flat abs and a perfect tan. Posting photos of your body online comes with an inherent pressure to look a certain way. Slip even a little, and trolls are quick to let you know.

That said, if you can develop a thick enough skin and the right business savvy, fitness influencing can lead to a fulfilling career—or at least a fulfilling side hustle. That’s according to one online creator who has more than 300,000 followers on TikTok and more than 100,000 on Instagram. Here, she explains how she fell into the industry by going viral by accident—and then learned how to make it work for her.

The Gig at a Glance

Job: Fitness influencer

Age: Early thirties

Years in the Business: 3

Annual Income: $90,000 (a mix of coaching, brand deals, and part-time work)

How Did You Go Viral?

I posted a video of me doing a lot of reps of a hard exercise, and women started reposting it. The video went viral overnight. It got 80 million views just on Instagram in a month. I gained 100,000 followers very quickly.

At the time, it felt intrusive. Suddenly, everyone knew who I was, and that wasn’t something I was pursuing at the time. I didn’t have time to process it. It took about a year for me to get used to the idea of being an influencer and decide to lean into it. Now it’s the biggest blessing. I love that I have the opportunity to inspire people and share content I think is going to help them.

Do You Make Enough to Do This Full Time?

No. I don’t think many fitness influencers do. One of the hardest parts of the job is figuring out how to monetize your platform. You don’t get paid just for having a lot of followers—you have to make deals with brands, and those deals don’t happen every month. Most people have to do something else to make money on the side.

Where Does Your Money Come From?

I work in social media marketing and advertising, so I’ll do a contract job for a client for a month or two, and then social media for a month or two. I’ll also do a part-time job in between if I need it. I also have some income from coaching—usually $90 to $120 per session—and some prize money from the competitions I participate in, but that’s a smaller percentage of my income.

Has “Influencer” Become a Dirty Word?

I personally don’t tell anyone I’m an influencer. When I first meet people, I don’t even tell them I have a big social media following because once they hear that, they immediately have a preconception of me. People think of influencers as very surface-level—like they didn’t earn it, or they just promote other people’s ideas instead of having their own.

Instead of influencer, I usually say creator, which tells people I have a skill set, I come up with ideas, and I can execute them. I tend to think of myself as an athlete or an entrepreneur rather than an influencer.

Are There Any Kinds of Brands You Absolutely Won’t Work With?

It would be so easy to make money if I started promoting protein powders or other supplements. Those companies have a lot of extra cash, but I don’t believe in supplements, and I don’t think you need them to perform well. So I’ll accept a free sample of pre-workout or whatever, but I won’t use my platform to promote it.

Is It Hard to Stick to Those Moral Boundaries?

It’s always hard when there’s money involved. But actually I think the best way to monetize your following is to start a business. If you build a product you can sell directly, then you don’t have to rely on promoting other people’s stuff.

That’s one of the reasons I started my coaching business. I mean, the biggest reason is that I really like coaching. But also, if I think of myself more as an athlete and coach than an influencer, then it’s easier to say no to selling supplements and other things I don’t believe in.

What’s Your Average Screentime?

I just checked on my phone, and it’s about six hours a day. Which, honestly, is way better than I thought it would be.

Do You Feel Pressure to Look a Certain Way to Succeed?

No, not anymore. I was heavily influenced by social media when I was young, and not in a healthy way. When I was in high school and early college, I would screenshot photos of other women’s bodies and make them my screensaver for motivation. I would follow all these influencers to try to look like them, and it led me down a really dark pathway of disordered eating behaviors and not feeling comfortable in my own skin.

Since then, I’ve learned a lot about fitness and female confidence, and that’s changed the way I talk about body image. People tell me all the time that as a fitness influencer, I need to show my physique, but I’ve gotten this far without doing that. At this point, I want to prove them wrong. Yes, I’ll post a photo of myself in a bathing suit if I’m on a trip with friends or something. But the way my body looks is not the focus of my platform.

As women, we’ve been told for years to eat a certain way and look a certain way. My goal is to show women that you can use fitness to build confidence—not to change the way your body looks.

How Bad Are the Trolls?

Honestly, most of the trolls are men who can’t do the exercises or the reps that I can do. The ones who’ve done it are the ones who are supportive, because they know how hard it is.

Some commenters tell me I can only do a lot of pullups because I’m lightweight, or they try to downplay my accomplishments in other ways. I don’t know if those comments will ever not bother me. It’s hard to post something and feel awesome about it—and then have someone come along and say mean things.

But at that point, you have a choice: You can archive the comments or put energy into responding, or you can use them as fodder for a new post about a broader problem. I think it’s more effective to do the last one, but it’s hard to know which battles to fight and which to let go.

Is Influencing a Job You Have to Worry About Aging Out Of?

Personally, I could never have been an influencer when I was younger. I didn’t do anything athletic until I was 22. As I age, I know I’ll become a different person. I’ll have a different lifestyle, and I’ll have to find a different audience. I’ve only been doing this for a few years, but my approaches to training and feminism and other things have already changed since then.

Sometimes your audience grows with you, but a lot of the time, you grow out of them. They follow you because of the person you were in that moment. Two or three years later, you might be someone different. I’ve seen influencers get trapped in their past personas. They don’t want to change their messaging because they’re too afraid of losing their audience. But I think you have to continue to be authentic, even if you lose followers because of it.

Very few people get rich doing social media. It has to be a labor of love. It won’t be if you’re trying to be someone you’re not.

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity, as well as to preserve the source’s anonymity.