How Much do My Favorite Fitness YouTube Accounts Make?
With this post, I want to publish the written content of what I discussed in my recent YouTube video where I broke down the earnings of 3 very different individuals on YouTube.
First, a disclaimer. With these little breakdowns, I’m not trying to call any of these people out and bring out any negativity around these people. These are accounts I follow, ones that have added knowledge or entertainment value to my life and people who I view as having been successful at developing a business online.
The nature of how I am estimating is really guesstimating and the numbers I put on the screen are not accurate, but they are meant to be in the ballpark, and are meant to show the different avenues to revenue and how different ones are more scalable than others. Some stuff I can look up, like how much a seminar costs with Brian from Neversate. But I won’t know details, I won’t know the quantity of programs, merchandise, etc. that are sold. So, it’s mostly a big guess.
So, if it isn’t accurate, why even do it?
Well, I want to understand and breakdown a few different paths that somebody could pursue in the fitness world. And if I can nail down the unit economics and the few different streams someone was to focus on, I can get a sense as to how popular or how many of each unit I would have to sell (and fulfill) in order to achieve a desired income level.
How does one make money in the fitness world? The only clear answer is not just with YouTube. Everyone does some combo of all of these things:
- Make popular YouTube videos
- Sell cool apparel
- Get sponsored by a brand
- Coach individual clients (very time intensive)
- Do group coaching
- Sell lifting or nutrition programs (one time or ongoing)
- Sell e-books
- Sell a unique product (slingshot bench)
- Sell memberships to your gym
- Host events, seminars and competitions at your gym
- Sell non unique products (BCAAs, protein, pre workout)
Basically, everyone I see online does a combination of the things on the list above. Some of them do so with great success.
Breaking Down Existing Successful YouTubers
Now, I’m going to get into it. I chose these examples because they are each sole proprietors, not relying on a large organization or company, because that gets very complicated and even more assumptions have to be made.
First up, I want to talk about someone who has really grown quickly in the last few years: MattDoesFitness. He’s a charismatic british guy who is around 30-32 years old with a great physique, a powerlifting background and a very cute son who he creatively uses for very entertaining intros.
His videos are essentially a funny intro, plus some kind of eating challenge vlog, some training footage and that’s it. It is a pretty simple format really, but he is constantly coming up with ways to make it fresh. Matt has around 1.2mm subscribers as of today.
MattDoesFitness (MattDoesFitness)
Matt makes money from 3 primary sources: sponsorships, coaching/program sales, and YouTube.
The sponsorships Matt has is what really makes him successful. And I see him continuing to get more sponsorships at a faster rate these days. It seems like several Instagram posts a week are supported by sponsorships. He also appears to have achieved a high level of success in his online coaching / program business.
I saw him recently offer a 50% discount to his program subscriptions to the next 100 people who signed up. His programs are around $64/month, so let’s say for simplicity, he gained 100 new program subscribers with that sale, and they each paid $30/month. That’s $36,000 from the flash sale alone.
If he does a flash sale to add 100 users, it stands to reason he already has at least 200 or more existing paying subscribers to his programs. So, let’s say all-in he has 300 subscribers to his programming, at around $42/month per subscriber. In that case, he’s bringing in $150,000 a year from programming alone.
Matt is basically the pinnacle of what you can do to leverage your personal physique and personality to create income streams without creating a brick and mortar business. Christian Guzman is similar, but he built a gym and an apparel line. The interesting thing about Matt is basically he is a sole proprietor. The bottom line is I will never have the physique or the personality on camera to create something on the scale of these two, but it’s good to take note of them as a top end number.
So, all-in, I am going to estimate that MattDoesFitness makes $360,000 from YouTube, $350k from sponsorships, and conservatively $150k from training program business, for a total of more than $850,000. It’s probably going to be even more than that, given his instagram presence and sponsorship.
Brian Alsruhe (Neversate)
Brian has tons of credibility in the fitness community because of his strength and accomplishments in the strongman community. He is freakishly strong and has a really intense mentality when it comes to training. He also has a physical gym where he has members and where he offers in-person and online coaching for clients.
He also sells custom programs that use his own giant set philosophy. I have purchased one of these programs. He takes inventory of what equipment you have access to and he writes you a custom program. He’s said many times in the past on his channel that he makes a lot of his money from selling these programs. If he sells and writes 300 programs a year, less than 1 a day, at $150 a piece, that’s $45,000 a year from selling programs.
Then there is in-person revenue from training and seminars. I’ve assumed the gym itself is breakeven, so I’m not factoring in membership costs and drop-in fees that I assume cover the costs of the gym.
For in-person training, I am really just guessing at these numbers, but:
- If he has 20 hours of personal training a month at $130/month
- That would be around $31,000 annually
- Add in 4 seminars, which is a new thing he is trying more recently, which I have assumed net him around $1,500 per event, after he pays the other coaches
- So the very conservative assumption is that he makes around $37,000 in in-person training
I also assume he makes roughly $36,000 from online coaching, which he does at a premium rate of $300/month. Then I understand he has a merchandise deal with Loyal Brand that sells his Neversate shirts, which are awesome. I assume he makes $20,000 from that, which could be way off.
So before the YouTube ad revenue, he is already at more than $138,000 a year. But YouTube is a big reason he has those clients and program sales. Combine that with the ad revenue from YouTube at around $12,000 based on his most recent viewership numbers, and his annual total is around $150,000. Not bad.
Remington James
Finally, I want to discuss Remington James, who is one of my favorite YouTubers. As far as I can tell, he has no education qualifications in the fitness field. He’s just a guy who lifts weights, loves to make meal prep videos, and is really entertaining.
I include him because it highlights that even without an advanced degree in exercise science or nutrition, you can become someone who is relied upon by folks seeking fitness guidance.
He is a hustler and has developed several business lines that he is able to leverage his social media presence to sell.
- He offers online training and nutrition coaching, meal plans and such
- He has his own white label brand of pre-workout and BCAAs (Final Boss)
- He has recently launched his own white label apparel line (Final Boss Apparel)
- He dropped a rap album
- He has a popular YouTube channel
I won’t run through all of his businesses, but over the last 30 days, he got more than 950,000 views on his YouTube channel, which annualizes out to around $28,000 per year. Combined with the online coaching business and the low cost of living in Houston as a single guy with no kids, and he’s got a viable business.
