How Much to Charge for Nutrition Coaching
One of the most common questions I get from nutritionists and health coaches in my community is “how much should I charge for my nutrition services?”
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to nutritionist pricing, and it depends on factors like your niche, your services, your experience and so much more.
The prices you charge will differ based on many factors, including what products or services you are offering, like:
One-off sessions
Digital products
A signature nutrition program
How long is the program?
What is included?
Although prices will vary, there are a few ways to determine a baseline for what you should be charging based on many different factors.
In this blog post, I’ll share a framework that you can use to determine how much to charge as a nutritionist.
Research Competitor Pricing
A great place to start when you’re deciding how much to charge in your nutrition business is to research competitor pricing to see what is being charged by your colleagues.
This will help you get a general idea of what other nutritionists within your niche, industry, or local area are charging for similar services.
When researching your competitor’s pricing, I recommend keeping track of important information that will help you to set your own prices:
Competitors business name
Social media handle
Website URL
Services offered (list all of them)
Cost per service
Keeping a record of your findings while you’re doing your competitor research will help you easily compare each competitor and save you from having to go back and forth between social media pages and websites.
Now that you have your spreadsheet all set up to track your findings, start researching!
Instagram is a great place to look for competitors within your niche.
Head to the search section of Instagram and look up, “(your niche) nutritionist”. For example, if you specialize in gut health, you’ll search for “gut health nutritionist.”
Take your time looking through each search result and document the competitors that best match your nutrition business and offers.
You’ll likely find quite a range of different prices, from low-cost items to high ticket programs, and that’s okay!
Not only will this activity show you some pricing patterns, it will also make you aware of what you’re personally comfortable charging for each service.
Breakdown Your Nutritionist Pricing
Now that you have a better idea of how much to charge for nutrition counseling, you can start to break down your pricing.
To understand how much you should be charging for your own services, you need to:
List out your expenses
Decide how much you need to make
Figure out how many clients you can work with at once
Figure out how much to charge
List Out Your Expenses
In order to figure out how much to charge in your nutrition business, you need to know your total monthly expenses to run your business.
This number is important as it will help you to stay on track and make more than you’re spending in your nutrition business!
Some typical nutrition business expenses are:
Domain and email hosting
Website
Email service provider
Client management software (such as Practice Better)
Meal planning software (such as That Clean Life or Meal Garden)
Video communication software (such as Zoom)
Cloud storage (such as Google Drive)
Graphic design software (such as Canva)
Team members (such as a Virtual Assistant, Copywriter etc)
Once you have all of your business expenses listed, come up with a monthly expense number. This means that you will have to divide any yearly business expenses by 12 to get a monthly cost.
Now that you know what your business expenses are per month, you can move on to the next step of deciding how much you need to make.
Decide How Much You Need to Make
Deciding how much money you need to make in your nutrition business depends on several factors and is going to be different for each person.
Not only do you need to figure out your monthly business expenses, but you also need to know what your personal expenses are so that you can ensure your total income covers them.
Write out a list of all of your personal monthly expenses, including:
Rent or mortgage payments
Car payments
Insurance costs
Gas
Utilities
Groceries
Investments
Personal spending
Savings
Once you have these expenses listed and you know what you need to make in order to cover both your business and personal expenses, you can move on to the next step of figuring out what to charge in your nutrition business.
Figure Out How Many Clients You Can Work with At Once
While having a good handle on your nutrition business and personal expenses is crucial, you can’t forget about your time!
How much time do you have each week to work with clients and how much time do you want to spend in each session?
When figuring out how many clients you can work with at once, don’t forget to take into account the time you’ll need to spend on other aspects of your business, such as:
Marketing
Bookkeeping
Administration
Networking
Once you decide how many hours you can set aside for client work each week, you can figure out how much you need to make per hour.
Figure Out Your Nutrition Cost Per Hour
Now that you’ve broken out your business expenses, personal expenses, and the time you have available to work with clients, you can figure out how much you need to make per hour.
An easy way to do this is to add your business and personal expenses together, and then divide it by the number of hours you have available for client work per month.
Take this scenario, for example:
Business expenses: $500/month
Personal expenses: $2000/month
Hours available per month: 40 hours
($500+$2000)/40 hours = $62.50/hour
Remember that this is just one way to figure out your nutrition cost per hour and it’s not set in stone!
If the number you come up with doesn’t feel right to you, you’re welcome to find a number that feels best to you and takes all of your personal factors into account.
Another important thing to remember when setting your prices is to account for income tax.
As a business owner, it is your responsibility to put a portion of your income aside each month for income tax purposes.
The amount you put aside will depend on the income tax laws where you live, so you will want to keep this in mind when figuring out your hourly cost as well.
How Much to Charge for Different Offerings
Now that you have your competitor pricing in hand and your hourly cost figured out, you can decide how much you want to charge for the different services you offer in your business.
You could keep it simple and multiply your time for each offering by your hourly cost, but I suggest using your hourly cost as a guideline as many different factors need to be considered when setting your prices.
Let’s go into detail about how much you need to charge for the following offerings in your nutrition business:
Nutrition session packages
Signature program
Online course
Digital products
Nutrition Session Packages
When deciding how much to charge for nutrition counseling session packages, there are a few things to keep in mind:
The number of sessions that are included in the package
The length of each session
What else is included (protocols, handouts, videos, etc.)
The reason I don’t suggest only using your hourly cost to figure out the pricing for your nutrition packages is because you’re likely offering other things besides your time that provide value to your clients, such as protocols, handouts and additional resources.
Putting a value on these additional resources can help you when pricing out your nutrition packages.
When figuring out your pricing, take into account how long it took you to create the materials and how much additional value they bring to your clients.
Then use your hourly cost and competitor pricing research to help you figure out how much to charge!
Pro tip: offering a small discount when clients purchase more sessions guarantees that you make a little more money and makes it more likely that the client will continue to work with you!
Typically, nutrition session package prices range anywhere from $100-$1000.
Learn how to create your nutrition packages in this blog post
Signature Program
A signature nutrition program often comes with a bigger price tag because of the nature of the offering.
You can typically charge more for a signature program than you can for nutrition packages because of the length of the program, what’s included, and the transformation you’re providing in this timeframe.
When coming up with a price for your signature program, take into account:
The number of sessions that are included in the program
The length of each session and any time you’re providing between sessions
What else is included (protocols, handouts, videos, accountability, etc)
The cost of a signature program can range anywhere from $600-$3000+.
Online Course
Online courses are usually offered at a lower price point than 1-1 nutrition sessions, as most courses are self-paced and don’t require much on-going time commitment from you. They can be an amazing source of passive income if they’re priced and marketed right!
When coming up with a price for your online course, take into account:
The time it took you to put the course together
Any expenses associated with the course, like course platform software
The value your course brings to your students
The cost of an online course can range anywhere from $200-$800 on average.
Digital Products
When it comes to digital products, you might be wondering how much to charge for a meal plan, a recipe collection, a workshop, or a guide.
Digital products are commonly priced under $100 as they are an affordable way for your community to get support without the typical price tag.
As with nutrition session packages, signature nutrition programs, and online courses, you always want to take into consideration the value that the product brings.
The price of digital products varies widely depending on the product and can range anywhere from $10-$100.
Things to Avoid When Deciding How Much to Charge as a Nutritionist
Now that you have a roadmap to determine how much to charge as a nutritionist, there are a few things you’ll want to avoid when setting your prices:
Not taking your expenses into account
Undercharging or undervaluing your offerings
Copying what other nutritionists are charging
Always offering a discount
Not Taking Your Expenses into Account
One pro about running an online nutrition business is that business expenses and overhead are usually quite low. You don’t have to worry about leasing commercial space, getting insurance, furnishings, hiring a receptionist, etc.
One mistake I see a lot of nutritionists make is not taking their business expenses into account. Even though they may be low, you still want to make sure your revenue can cover them!
Remember to always set your prices high enough to cover your expenses (both business and personal) so you can continue running your business and get paid for all of your hard work!
Undercharging or Undervaluing Your Offerings
As nutritionists, our main goal is to help people live healthier lives and it’s easy to want to give our services away for free (or at a super low price). This might be great for your clients and their wallet, but not for you as a business owner.
If you want to continue doing what you love as your career, you need to charge what you’re worth. And you’re worth a lot!
You know what you’re talking about when it comes to nutrition, and you have the power to help so many people! The clients who see the value that you bring will be willing to pay what you’re worth to help them.
Please don’t undervalue yourself or your offerings. Your clients deserve your help and you deserve to be compensated for all of your hard work!
Copying What Other Nutritionists are Charging
Although doing competitor research is important, you should not be copying what others are doing without evaluating your situation!
Remember that every single nutritionist is different, and will have different:
Expenses
Offerings
Geographical locations
Niches/expertise
Education
These all need to be factored in when coming up with your pricing! So don’t copy and paste what your colleagues are doing and take the time to figure out pricing that works best for you and your business.
Always Offering a Discount
I know, this is a tough one. It’s so easy to want to discount all of your offerings to make them more accessible to more people. But ask yourself, “is always offering a discount benefiting my business?” I bet the answer will be, “no!”
Always discounting your offers can:
Show a lack of confidence in your offerings and risk damaging your reputation
Cause your community to lose trust in you
Make clients question the value of your services
Hurt your revenue
Be confident in the value of your offerings and the price you’ve chosen, and stick with it! People will see that confidence, gravitate towards you, and want you to help them solve their problems.
When it comes to figuring out how much to charge as a nutritionist, use the above roadmap to help set your prices, but remember that this is your business and you get to make the final decision based on what works best for you!
If a certain price point you’ve chosen doesn’t end up working out, you can always change it, and that’s okay.
In fact, you should take the time to reassess your pricing strategy on a regular basis. When it comes time to increase your pricing, remember that your experience is super valuable too.
Ready to launch your nutrition business?
Launch Your Nutrition Biz is my self-paced online course to help you start your nutrition business and sign your first paying clients.
Get lifetime access to the course and go through it at your own pace and keep referring back to it as you grow your nutrition business.
