$500+ Average Revenue Per Member: Secrets Revealed

A graphic showing a person peeking behind a bright red stage curtain.

How do you earn more per client?

By delivering more value.

Many gym owners severely undervalue their services. Call it a “self-esteem problem.” They just don’t realize that the coaching they provide and the results they produce are incredibly valuable.

Other gym owners don’t undervalue their services, but they don’t know how to generate more value.

Here’s an example: Let’s say a gym owner focuses on group coaching and charges $250 for a monthly membership. This is well above the industry rate of about $160—but the members are happy to pay the fee because they’re getting results and they love the classes, the facility and the coaching.

The owner does a small annual increase to cover inflation, but she’d still like to earn more per client. She’s confident that her group prices reflect her value for group coaching, and she isn’t prepared to increase them.

What can she do if she wants to earn more?

She can deliver more value and solve more problems faster for clients.

Instead of charging more for group coaching, she can add higher-value services, such as personal training, nutrition coaching, habits coaching and semi-private/small-group coaching. Service packages with these elements can generate huge average revenue per member (ARM).

To see how much value a gym owner can create every month, review our April 2024 ARM leaderboard:

A top 10 leaderboard for average revenue per member, from $508 to $1203.

Here’s what the leaders had to say when we asked them how they posted these numbers (note the “value” theme):  

High-value services: “We offer PT and small-group PT, so we are selling a higher-value service.”

High-value services: “We’re good with getting people pain-free and finding ways to safely work around injuries so clients can keep making progress. We’re able to ‘fix’ a lot of issues other gyms might refer out to a physio or chiro, but we still do refer out at times.”

High-value services: “I don’t do classes—personal training and small group only.”

Value: “We provide as much value as possible for our clients. We are in a high-cost-of-living area (San Diego), so our average member likely averages over six figures a year per household. But they have lots of options for training, with box gyms, Pilates, yoga, F45 and the like in close proximity.”

Value through results: “We emphasize professional development and program design as being important to keeping clients engaged and helping them get long-term results.”

Value through results: “Our approach to fitness is a bit unique in that most of our clients are not necessarily chasing an aesthetic but injury prevention, pain-free movement and performance enhancement—as opposed to weight loss or just looking good.”

Simple focus on value: The keys are “clean bathrooms and attentive personal training sessions!”

Personal development: “I have invested an extraordinary amount of time and money into continuing education: over $150,000 and approaching $200,000 in nine years.”

Staff assistance: “Trainer pay is based on commission rather than salary, so they are incentivized to increase client attendance and drive up ARM. Coaches are paid on a sliding scale, where the percentage they make goes up the more hours they train, so their pay incentivizes them to retain more clients, push for referrals and encourage attendance.”

Knowing the avatar: “We use a lot of what Two-Brain teaches in our vetting process for clients (price is often the deciding factor for leads that we do not close).”

Knowing the avatar: “I don’t let clients do one time a week. If they insist, I refer out. Or if they aren’t coming consistently anymore, I ask them to recommit or I ask them to take a break from training (if I like them). Or I fire them as a client.”


Do This Today


To drive up your ARM, deliver more value.

Your starting point: Take your five best clients out for coffee. While you’re with them, ask this question: “What’s your greatest challenge outside my gym?”

The answers will tell you how you can serve your clients more and create more value for them.

Solve their problems, and your ARM will go up.

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One more thing!

Did you know gym owners can earn $100,000 a year with no more than 150 clients? We wrote a guide showing you exactly how.