How To Make Money Online Coaching: 9 Options To Consider

Can You Make Money Online Coaching?

The global online coaching market is one of the fastest growing in the world.

The 2023 estimated global revenue for online coaching services is $4.564 billion, a 60% increase from 2019’s $2.849 billion estimate.

Looking at the statistics, we can safely claim that online coaching will remain a lucrative venture for years to come.

How Much Can You Make by Online Coaching

Your expected revenue will depend on your coaching business’ chosen niche.

As examples, we’ll use business coaches and life coaches as the two most common online coaching roles.

According to ZipRecruiter, the national average revenue for online business coaches in the USA is $75,229/year.

Meanwhile, the average revenue for online life coaches is $63,089/year.

Generally, the expected yearly income for online coaches ranges between $50,000 and $100,000.

This is an excellent sum for online gig standards, especially considering that most online coaches don’t have it as a full-time gig.

Beyond that, a part of online coaching revenue can also be earned through passive income streams.

What You’ll Need to Make Money Online Coaching

Before becoming an online coach, you will need to prepare the following things:

• Device With a Camera, Microphone, and Stable Internet Access: It’s essential to have a device you will use to directly contact your clients and create online courses.
• Personal Brand: To attract potential clients, you must build a strong personal brand, usually through social media.
• Self-Confidence: Coaches who are unable to convince their clients that they know what they’re doing won’t get anywhere. In this business, having social skills is a must.
• Coaching Certification: While it’s not 100% necessary, having official proof of your coaching skills and topical education goes a long way when building a coaching career. This is especially important for niches like health coaching.

Where to Make Money Online Coaching

To start making money as an online coach, consider applying to one of the following platforms:

1. Satori
2. Mighty Networks
3. Kajabi
4. Noomi
5. Thinkific
6. Udemy
7. CoachAccountable
8. Paperbell
9. Coaching Loft

1. Satori

Satori is an all-in-one coaching solution that lets you tailor your coaching packages for groups or individuals.

What makes it unique in comparison to most other platforms on this list is that it’s designed as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool for coaches.

How Much You Can Make

Satori boasts a 10x increase in value to businesses in terms of time savings alone, with 16-25 hours of work saved every month.

At a rate of $25/hour, this translates to over $600/month.

What Makes This Option Great

Satori’s biggest strength is its ability to simplify the administrative/business management side of running a coaching business.

Its neat, simple interface is an excellent shell for CRM functionalities, featuring extra business intelligence features to boot.

• Fees/Commission: Plans are available at $9/month, $39/month, and $79/month. 30-day free trial.
• Payment Methods: Paypal

2. Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks is among the top white-label solutions on this list, meaning that you can easily customize the software environment to build your ideal coaching platform.

Mighty Networks stresses the community aspect of coaching, letting you expand your client network and engage them through various methods.

How Much You Can Make

The platform lets you set the price for your courses and packages all the way up to $10,000 per course.

It’s also possible to set up a monthly or yearly subscription plan for members of your community.

What Makes This Option Great

Mighty Networks offers an incredible variety of community features to help you interact with your coaching clients.

This extends to group coaching as well as individual coaching.

With a native mobile app, both you and your clients can use Mighty Networks while on the move with zero functional limitations.

• Fees/Commission: Plans are available at $39/month, $119/month, and a custom price for the Mighty Pro plan, geared towards enterprise users. 30-day free trial.
• Payment Methods: Stripe

3. Kajabi

Kajabi is a platform designed for building and hosting courses, as well as landing pages for your presentation.

It lacks community and group features, instead focusing on helping coaches create robust courses for individual clients.

How Much You Can Make

The average Kajabi creator makes about $40,000 annually.

A third of Kajabi’s content creators make over six figures – most of them have a minimum of 400 clients.

What Makes This Option Great

Kajabi’s strongest suit is its built-in marketing tools which let you find clients and make sales from the same workspace.

Other nifty marketing features not commonly found in coaching suites include e-mail campaigns, welcome flows, etc.

• Fees/Commission: Plans are available at $149/month, $199/month, and $399/month. 14-day free trial.
• Payment Methods: Stripe and Paypal

4. Noomi

Marketing itself as a “professional coach directory,” Noomi is less interactive than most other platforms on this list.

It works as a straightforward database of coaches, where you can create your profile by going through a personal onboarding process with the Noomi team.

Afterward, you can record a video that will be showcased on your profile as your personal ad.

How Much You Can Make

As a Noomi user, expect to make $50,000-$100,000, the average expected revenue for online coaches.

You may even reach over $100,000 in annual revenue with a clever enough approach.

What Makes This Option Great

Noomi is excellent for newbie coaches who wish to build a portfolio from the ground up.

Without an established reputation in the field, it may be difficult to stand out on your own.

Getting featured in a directory such as Noomi makes it way easier for a prospective client to discover your coaching program.

You may also join the Referral program so Noomi can match you with prospective clients at the cost of a 30% monthly commission.

• Fees/Commission: $447/year. 30% commission for referral leads.
• Payment Methods: Platform-independent

5. Thinkific

Thinkific is a lightweight WordPress plugin that helps coaches add course functionalities to a WordPress site.

It makes up for its lightweight and rudimentary course features with a powerful network of integrations, such as a Zoom integration for coaching sessions or Calendly for scheduling.

How Much You Can Make

According to Thinkific’s statistics, the average Thinkific user makes $1,200 per month – or $14,400 per year.

What Makes This Option Great

As a white-label solution, Thinkific lets coaches use its functionalities to create a custom platform on a WordPress site.

While the course-building features are fairly basic, and there’s a notable lack of marketing features or integrations, the ability to build an online coaching program from scratch is useful to many budding coaches.

The simplicity of the software is another boon — everything can be done through a simple, intuitive graphic interface that requires no coding or design skills.

Thinkific notably includes a free plan that includes features that most beginner coaches should be perfectly content with, apart from being limited to a single course.

• Fees/Commission: Paid plans are available at $49/month, $99/month, and $199/month. Free plan available.
• Payment Methods: Thinkific Payments, Stripe, Paypal

6. Udemy

Udemy is a well-known online education platform used by thousands of teachers, coaches, and instructors around the world to host their courses.

Apart from serving as an online education platform, Udemy also offers educator certificates.

How Much You Can Make

Depending on factors such as the number and quality of courses, the size of their audience, and the time they’ve spent on the platform, Udemy educators make lifetime earnings anywhere between $1,000 and $3,000,000.

What Makes This Option Great

The biggest pro of Udemy is its reach — with over 50 million users worldwide, you are guaranteed to find an audience as a Udemy coach.

Robust analytics tools make it easy to identify a target audience and tailor your courses accordingly.

Udemy educators pay no fixed membership fee, which will be appreciated by beginners in the field. Instead, instructors get paid according to a revenue share model.

• Fees/Commission: 63% commission for sales that do not occur through an instructor promotion, 3% for those that do.
• Payment Methods: Paypal, debit card

7. CoachAccountable

CoachAccountable’s flagship feature is the ability for coaches to get more actively involved in the coaching process by being able to check on various aspects of their client’s progress.

These features are helpful not only for clients but for coaches, too, since they give direct insight into how their technique impacts clients and help identify specific pain points.

How Much You Can Make

Apart from a coach’s expected average earnings, CoachAccountable features a referral program that helps them earn some extra money.

Referring new coaches to CoachAccountable will also pay you 50% of their first monthly payment plus 5% of all future payments.

What Makes This Option Great

Among CoachAccountable’s main strengths are its rich administrative features that automate most of the everyday administrative drudgery.

The rich arsenal of coaching tools combined with deep insight into your clients’ progress helps get the best out of the coaching process.

• Fees/Commission: Granular subscription model that scales between $20/month and $400/month, depending on the number of clients.
• Payment Methods: Paypal

8. Paperbell

Paperbell is primarily marketed as a coaching management tool, but the scale of its features effectively pegs it as an all-in-one coaching solution.

The administrative features still take most of the cake.

While it’s perfectly possible to use Paperbell as a stand-alone tool, you can also integrate it with another solution to enhance content creation and delivery.

How Much You Can Make

As a Paperbell user, expect to earn between $50,000 and $100,000 per year: the average annual income for online coaches in the USA.

What Makes This Option Great

Paperbell helps easily deal with all troublesome everyday aspects of running a coaching program by streamlining them into fast and easy processes.

The most interesting feature is the ability to directly handle contracts and agreements, which is something most coaching platforms require a third-party solution for.

• Fees/Commission: Fixed rate of $57/month. Free version available, but limited to one client.
• Payment Methods: Stripe, Paypal

9. Coaching Loft

As another platform with a primarily administrative focus, Coaching Loft takes all essential administrative tools and packs them into an elegant all-in-one management system.

The biggest issue is a lack of course creation or community features, which have to be handled through a separate solution.

How Much You Can Make

Coaching Loft users can expect to earn the average revenue for online coaching between $50,000 and $100,000 per year.

What Makes This Option Great

Coaching Loft integrates all administrative features, including agreements and invoicing, into a single package.

The package also includes other tools designed to make your coaching program more immersive, such as progress monitoring, note-taking, or a library of coaching questions.

A mobile app is also available, making it easier to coach no matter where you are.

• Fees/Commission: Plans are available at $1/month, $25/month, $55/month, and $95/month. 14-day free trial.
• Payment Methods: Paypal

Why You Should Consider Online Coaching As a Side Hustle

There are multiple perks to starting an online coaching business.

Here are some of the best ones:

• Passive Income Streams: Creating and publishing an online coaching course warrants a steady source of passive income.
• Working Anywhere, Anytime: If you’re interested in coaching online, all you need is a device with steady internet access and appropriate software. You are 100% free to set your hours, too.
• Unlimited Income Potential: There’s theoretically no cap on your coaching income streams. Once you find a system that works, it will keep generating revenue, and you can continue improving it.
• Use Your Skill or Knowledge: If you have a skill or knowledge that you’d be happy to share, online coaching allows you to earn money to give advice.

Problems With Online Coaching for Money

Despite all the perks, online coaching is no walk in the park.

Here are some challenges that all online coaches have to face.

• Finding Clients: Discovering new clients can be an issue for many new coaches. This can be alleviated by finding the right platform that can help your marketing.
• Commission Fees: Many coaching platforms have high commission fees or subscription costs, which may take a good chunk of your beginner income away.
• Uneven Demand: Some niches are in much higher demand than others, leaving many coaches in need to adapt to the market.
• Technical Issues: Sudden technical issues are the curse of all online gigs, and coaching online is no exception. In worst-case scenarios, a technical issue out of your control can cost you money or a client.

How to Make Money Online Coaching: Step-By-Step Instructions

While each coaching platform has a different boarding process, here is a set of general guidelines that apply to most cases.

Step 1: Apply at Your Platform of Choice

Choose a coaching platform that you feel fits your needs the best. Make sure that you fit the platform’s requirements, agree with the guidelines, and that the platform represents your niche and expertise.

Step 2: Pass the Check

Most platforms will want to know if you are qualified to be a coach before they decide to host you. They may demand a set of documents and qualifications and/or a personal interview.

Step 3: Create an Online Course

The steadiest passive income streams come from creating an online course. After publishing the course, every client purchase or subscription will contribute to your passive income stream.

Step 4: Make Yourself Be Known

After making a coach profile and at least one coaching program, you’re finally ready to market your coaching services.

To gain exposure, make use of both the native platform’s marketing capabilities and social media marketing.

Offering live services, such as group coaching and one-on-one coaching sessions, is another great way to boost your reputation.

Things to Consider When Online Coaching for Money

Before starting your coaching business, consider the following factors that may make a crucial difference:

1. Decide On Your Niche

Your most important choice is to come up with your coaching focus and target market.

Will your coaching services be focused on life coaching, personal development, business coaching, health coaching, money coaching, or something else entirely?

Having a solid idea of your niche will easily help you identify your ideal clients and tailor your content and marketing strategy to make for effective outreach.

2. Research Coaching Platforms

There is no universal golden choice regarding coaching platforms. A life coach may find a particular platform to fit their needs more than an executive coach would.

You may find some features lacking in one platform to be a complete dealbreaker and look into an alternative.

Coaching platforms are expensive, both in terms of subscription costs and commissions.

An expensive platform that offers features way above your current needs may prove to be a foolish investment, so don’t underestimate the cost factor.

3. Consider Your Business Model

A strong business strategy will require you to plan out a business model.

After settling on a niche and platform, think about what options are the best for you — will you focus on group coaching or one-on-one coaching?

Maybe you want to hybridize and combine coaching online with in-person coaching?

Not all of your income needs to come directly from coaching.

It’s common for people who do business coaching to branch out into business consulting services, for example.

Many coaches also join an affiliate program to gain extra revenue.

4. Consider Your Rates

Setting a perfect rate for your courses and services is a tricky but essential part of successfully making money from coaching.

Don’t overprice your coaching package or coaching session, but don’t underprice them, either.

Do a deep research dive into your competitors’ rates, and take the purchasing power of your coaching clients into account.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why Are Passive Income Streams Vital for Online Coaches?

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a sudden drop in coaches’ active incomes, and coaching online was hit just as hard as in-person coaching.

Meanwhile, passive income streams such as courses stayed largely unaffected.

As a result, many switched to passive income as their preferred revenue model when coaching online.

Why Is Coaching a Mastermind Group More Profitable?

A mastermind group is a group of experts in a certain area who meet up to “coach” each other by sharing insights and solving problems.

These groups are often more profitable than regular client groups or one-on-one coaching due to their participants’ higher profile and stronger peer connections.

Similar Ways to Get Paid

If this gig just doesn’t sound right for you, check out the following alternatives:

• Get Paid to Talk to Lonely People: If you enjoy helping people solve their issues, consider applying to talk to lonely people in need of support.
• Get Paid to Read: Do you like books, and would you enjoy reviewing or narrating them for others to listen to? You may find getting paid to read right up your alley.
• Get Paid to Go to School Online: Are you more comfortable being a student than a teacher? See how to brush up on your education and gain money while doing it.

Wrapping Up

If you’re looking for a way to apply your skills, knowledge, and talents to a lucrative gig with excellent potential for growth, online coaching presents a perfect opportunity.

It’s one of the most immersive and profitable online gig industries, to the point where many coaches make it their full-time job.

We hope this article helped you learn more about the industry, especially about how to get started as a coach as easily as possible.

If you have any extra suggestions, feel free to comment below.

If you find it helpful, don’t hesitate to share it with others.

‍