Will I get rich being a PT?

No.

Sorry, but there it is. You'll get $10-$50,000. 

Typically people pay $50-$80 an hour for one-on-one PT here Down Under. How much the PT gets depends on how they're employed and how successful they are, but $40/hr is reasonable and common. Most people who have money for PT are working 9-5, so they want to work out 6am-9am or 6pm-9pm; the split is about 40% of all PT clients in the mornings, 40% in the evenings, and 20% during the day. Given this, we can extend the mornings and evenings by an hour, 6am-10am and 4pm-9pm. 

Most clients will want to do 2x 30 minute sessions a week. If the trainer works five mornings or five evenings a week and is completely booked out with all 20 hours (40 sessions), they'll be doing 20hr of PT a week with 20 clients, which is $700-$800. This happens to be 125-133% the minimum wage in Australia, but of course that minimum wage assumes you're working 37.5hr a week, and we're talking about 20hr, so it's not too bad.

More determined trainers - usually the single ones under 30 - will work both mornings and evenings, doubling their potential PT income. 

In practice of course nobody is going to be solidly booked with every possible session each week, nor would they want to be - 3-4 clients back-to-back is generally your limit, after that you're just going through the motions and everyone starts getting the same workout. And of course you do need to eat and go to the toilet and so on. And about 1 in every 6 scheduled sessions just doesn't happen, for whatever reason. Thus the 8 available sessions in practice becomes 4-6. 

Some trainers boast of how much money they make doing bootcamps. 12 people at $15 each for an hour, etc. That's nice, but you won't be doing bootcamps from 6-9 five days a week, you'll be lucky if you do five hours of them weekly. 

PTs can also act as gym instructors doing gym shifts for the introductory appointments people get at most gyms. $25-$30 an hour is common, as are 4 hour shifts. Notice that you actually end up earning about the same money over the 4 hours. For example,

• 0600 Anna
• 0630     -
• 0700 Bob
• 0730    -
• 0800 Cara
• 0830 Dan
• 0900 Erica
• 0930    -

The 2.5hr of PT over 4hr earns me 2.5hr x $40/hr = $100. Or I could do a gym shift 6-10and earn 4hr x $25/hr = $100. In those 4hr there'll usually be 3 different appointments and 1hr set aside for breaks, cleaning and administration. And usually 1 of the 3 gym appointments won't be booked in or won't show up. Trust me, 2 introductory gym appointments and a bit of dusting and stats are a lot less work than 5 PT clients. 

Why then not just do gym shifts, forget PT? Well, the gym shifts are all casual, so could be taken from you by the gym manager at any time, whereas 5 clients are not going to disappear at once; PT gives you more income resiliency. Secondly, you cannot choose your co-workers or the gym members, but you can choose your PT clients. You may or may not like your co-workers and gym members, it's just luck, but you should like all your PT clients. And you get to see their progress. 

And of course you can do both, you could do PT 0600-1000 and then do a 1000-1400 gym shift, or vice versa. 

Many PTs will also do group classes such as circuit, boxing, Zumba, kettlebells, etc. Most management roles will be permanent part-time, a PT team leader doing 10-20hr and a gym manager 20-30hr. Roles may also be available at the front desk signing people up for memberships, and so on. 

And you can also have a second job at another gym. This sometimes leads to farcical situations, where two staff are each employed at two separate gyms in the same chain and working 10-20hr at each instead of each of them just staying at one gym for 20-40hr a week. 

Thus, very few PTs work full-time training people, but are either part-time during their careers, or make it into a full-time job by combing several smaller jobs. In Australia, around $50,000 annually is about the upper limit for a personal trainer employed by a gym. $30,000 is more typical. Now you know why so many trainers are in their 20s and living at home, or stay-at-home parents, etc. 

Self-employed trainers are another matter, of course, with income varying from "losing money, going bankrupt like a thousand other small businesses, woops," to... sky's the limit. 

Why is the industry like this?

The fitness industry is like the hospitality industry. For most of the jobs there's a fairly low barrier to entry, you don't need years and years of education and experience. It thus attracts a lot of people with a casual attitude to it, people who do not see it as a long-term career: university students, people who've been unemployed for years or failed at every other job, etc. 

Like hospitality, most members of the public don't value the expertise offered (remember: two-thirds of new gym members refuse the free appointments offered to get them started, and about two-thirds of those who do accept the appointments ignore the routines given them). Since they don't value it, they won't pay for it, so gym owners can't offer high pay. 

As well, gym owners and managers are wary of relying too much on a few staff. A typical gym is open 100hr a week, even with 2 staff on the floor almost the whole time you could staff it with 5 full-time people. But what if one is sick? You're screwed. Much much easier to have 20 casual part-timers who do 4-12hr each. 

Of course this is a vicious circle, the employers making it all casual means people with casual attitudes are attracted to it, which means the employers will not give them full-time jobs, and so on. 

"Doesn't sound like much..."

It's not. You won't get rich training people, the rich ones do stuff other than train people - like teach PT courses, write books, sell DVDs, supplements, quit training and just make money from spruiking their mates' stuff in their blogs, etc. Some of them invent certifications which you have to pay to be retested in every two years. Oh hi there, Pavel. 

You do PT not to make money, but because you enjoy it and it fulfills you. 

But do you need to get rich?

It's a lot harder to find a job that makes you happy than one that makes you money. Sometimes that's not so bad - you use the money to do things that do make you happy. There's more to life than money, money is just a tool to get you the things you need (food, shelter, etc) and want (dinners out, movies, trips overseas, etc). If you're doing a job you hate then some of the wants become needs - to keep you sane - if you love your job, maybe you don't want as much other stuff.

WonderGirl tells us that it's wrong to even think about money, you should do it because you love it. Of course, she's 24 and apparently single and childless. Money does matter, money must always be your first priority - because if you have an income of $0, you can't do anything else. "I want to help people!" Me, too. Can I help anyone if I'm homeless and hungry? Money must always come first. Of course, after money coming first, the questions will be: but how much money? And those other priorities I have, what are they? And how far below the first priority are they?

This is why I work for a community gym rather than a commercial one. Both have "make money!" as their first priority, and "help people!" as their second. At a community gym, this second is only slightly below the first, at a commercial gym it's way below the first. For example, a community gym which has spare cash will put it into programmes offering cheap or free access and training to stroke victims, people with mental illness and so on. A commercial gym will never have any programmes like that however much money they've made. 

Up to you, really, whether you become and stay a trainer, and where you go to work. I love my job. It's my work, the activity which makes me feel creative and productive and useful. As Dan John said, "If you get this right... you can change people's lives with weights."