How to Sell Online Courses as a Personal Trainer

How do you sell online courses as a personal trainer?

You pick one narrow result you already get for clients, turn it into a short course of video lessons, and sell it either on a course platform such as Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific or Podia, or inside the coaching app your clients already use. A course platform fits when you sell to a large audience that will never be coached; a coaching app with courses fits when the course supports or upsells your coaching. On monthly billing, the entry plans of those four course platforms cost $39 to $179 a month before payment fees (checked October 2026).

The platform is the smaller decision. Whether the course sells depends on the topic, the promise and who you offer it to first.

What makes a fitness topic work as a course?

A topic works as a course when it has one clear outcome and the buyer can get there without you checking every rep.

Coaching is personal: you adjust the plan every week. A course is the opposite: the same lessons for everyone, in a fixed order. So the best course topics are the questions you already answer the same way for most clients. In practice, the courses that sell for trainers are a slice of their coaching, not a replacement for it.

Course platform or coaching app: where should you sell?

Choose by who buys: a large audience of strangers points to a course platform, while your current and future coaching clients are better served in the app they already train in.

Course platforms are built around selling: checkout pages, product limits, email and payment options. A coaching app with a course feature is built around delivering: the course sits next to the client's training plan, check-ins and chat. Here are the entry points of the four best-known course platforms, from each vendor's pricing page, checked October 2026: Kajabi pricing, Teachable pricing, Thinkific pricing and Podia pricing.

One detail that matters for trainers: Thinkific's Start plan ($109 a month, or $82 billed annually) includes unlimited Zoom sessions, bookable calendars and attendance tracking, so it covers a course plus live calls. If live calls are the bigger part of your offer, read our guide to running live group sessions for online clients first.

What does selling a course cost in a real month?

At low sales the monthly fee decides your cost; as sales grow, the percentage fees decide it.

Here is one example with our own assumptions: you sell 10 copies of a $100 course in a month, all paid by US card, before taxes and refunds. Card processing at 2.9% + 30¢ on 10 sales comes to $32.

Two break-even points fall out of this. Teachable Starter costs more than Builder once you sell more than about $667 a month, because 7.5% of that equals the $50 difference in plan price. Podia Mover and Shaker cost the same at $1,000 a month; above that, Shaker is cheaper. So do not buy the top plan before the first sale, but do the math again once sales are steady.

Where Trainera fits

Trainera is coaching software with a course feature, so it fits when your courses are for people you coach or want to coach, not when the course is the whole business.

Trainera's Education feature (online courses with lessons, quizzes, certificates and scheduled release) is on the trainer Business plan, with up to 20 courses, and on Enterprise, with unlimited courses. It is not on Free, Starter or Pro. Business is $99 a month in US dollars on trainera.fit/pricing, and prices differ by country. It is a flat price for the plan, covering up to 75 clients, not a fee per client. The course lives in the same app as training and nutrition plans, check-ins, habits, chat and the community feed, so a client who finishes your "first 8 weeks" course is already in the place where you coach.

When clients pay you through Trainera's Stripe or PayPal, the platform fee on Business is 3%; cash and bank transfer carry 0%. If you plan to sell one course to thousands of people who will never be coached, and your sales run on checkout pages and email lists, Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific or Podia are built around that job and are the better pick. Gyms and studios get Education on every gym plan and can include courses in membership packages; see Trainera for gyms.

How do you build your first course in two weeks?

Write the promise first, film short lessons around it, and test it on a few real clients before you set a price.

1. Write the promise in one sentence. For example: "In 4 weeks you will set up and perform a squat, bench press and deadlift with confidence, without a coach watching."
2. List the lessons that get there. One skill per lesson, short enough to watch between sets. Six to ten lessons is plenty for a first course.
3. Film on your phone. Good light, one camera angle that shows the joint that matters, one main cue per lesson.
4. Add a checklist or quiz to each module. It shows you where people get confused and gives them a reason to finish.
5. Release one module a week. Scheduled release stops people from binge-watching on day one and dropping off by day three.
6. Pilot with a handful of current clients. Give it free in exchange for honest feedback, then fix what confused them.
7. Decide the next step. Every course should end with one clear offer: coaching, a group, or the next course.

If you are not sure how a course sits next to your other offers, our guide on how to structure an online coaching offer walks through the levels.

How should you price and announce it?

Price the course below a month of coaching, sell it first to people who already trust you, and say exactly what result and format they get.

Your coaching price is the anchor. A course that costs as much as a month of coaching competes with your own best offer. One that costs clearly less becomes the entry point for people who are not ready for coaching yet. Collect payment the way you already do; if you have no website, our guide on taking recurring payments without a website covers payment links and in-app subscriptions.

Which mistakes stall a first course?

Most first courses stall because of what was promised and who was asked, not because of the software.

• Building everything before anyone asked for it. Pilot or pre-sell first; a month of filming nobody wants is the most expensive mistake.
• Promises you cannot back up. The FTC says advertising claims must be truthful, not deceptive and backed by evidence (FTC advertising and marketing guidance). "Learn to deadlift safely" is a promise you control; a guaranteed number of pounds lost is not.
• Ignoring the percentage fee. On entry plans with a transaction fee, the fee can cost more than the plan itself once sales pick up.
• Teaching outside your scope. Rehab, pain and medical nutrition belong with the right professional.
• No next step. A finished course with no offer at the end leaves the buyer with nowhere to go.

If you want course buyers to keep talking to each other after the last lesson, see our guide on building an online community for coaching clients.

Your first-course checklist

• One topic you already teach the same way to most clients.
• A one-sentence promise you can back up.
• Six to ten short lessons, one checklist or quiz per module, weekly release.
• A pilot with a few current clients before the price is set.
• A platform chosen by who buys, with the fee math done at your real sales level.
• One clear next offer at the end of the course.

Want your courses in the same app as your training plans and check-ins? See how Trainera works for personal trainers.