What: CoachUp is a marketing platform, where you can advertise your availability to work as a private coach
Expected pay: $15 – $75 per hour
Husl$core: $$$
Commissions & Fees: graduated, from a high of 43% to a low of 6%, plus a $10 annual fee.
Where: Nationwide
Requirements: Be over the age of 18 and have some coaching credentials
Review: CoachUp connects athletes and private coaches in pretty much any sport. In addition to creating the forum where you can advertise your services, the site covers coaches and kids booking through them with $1 million liability insurance policy. Coaches are paid by direct deposit within a week of marking a coaching session complete. Coaches set their own rates. The site says that their average coach charges $45 per hour. All good.
The bad part is how much CoachUp charges. The site hits each new client (the person you’re coaching) with a $20 “placement” fee. Coaches pay $10 annually, plus commissions on each gig they book. The commission schedule is graduated, with those who have earned the least money paying the highest commissions. Specifically, on the first session you book with any individual athlete, you take home just 57% of the gross. The site takes the rest. However, the CoachUp commission drops with each subsequent booking with that same athlete. After five sessions, the site takes just 6% of the booking amount. But. this same commission schedule repeats each time you add a new athlete.
Given the high commission taken by this platform, coaches may be better off just printing up fliers for their coaching business and posting them around local fields. Another alternative would be to place free ads on neighborhood sites, such as Craig’s List and Nextdoor. However, if you want a way to get started without doing your own marketing, CoachUp may be worth a shot.
What their coaches say: (from Yelp)
I have received over 50 new clients via Coachup over the past 3 years and they handle all promotion, payments, and background checks. I have the ability to set my own rates and accept/decline any clients requesting my services. I also look forward to seeing each client improve after each one hour training session. This is really a great service that I recommend to any private coach who enjoys 1 on 1 training or group training. I have also recommended friends to sign on as coaches so that they too can help train athletes in the NY/NJ area.
From the Better Business Bureau:
Coachup does not understand what their own policies are. They falsely accused me of manipulating their system to get a higher percentage of a coaching session I offered and they blamed me for offering an incentive that they have stated on their website, for new and existing clients. Their program allows people to invite new clients into Coachup so that you would have more clients for sessions. As an incentive, it clearly states that Coachup allows the initial initiation fee on the client’s end to be waived. As part of their incentive program to get people to participate, they waive the new client’s fee and also give the coach a higher percentage from their session fee, provided that the new client signs up with them. That is what happened. I recruited a new client and she signed up. Coachup proceeded to restrict my account, without notifying me. I didn’t receive any calls, emails, or texts that I, according to Coachup, violated their terms of agreement. I didn’t even receive a notification when I logged onto my Coachup dashboard. I only received a reply after I had to email them regarding payment that I did not receive from them for the session. Their payment policy stated that I would be paid after 3-4 days. It’s been 5 days. Had I not reached out to them, I wouldn’t have known my account was restricted.
I am a sports coach in Baltimore, MD. I use CoachUp as a registration platform to collect payments from parents. I was told they would only take 3% of my registration fees, as long as my event was private (not publicly listed via their website) and parents registered via my direct link. When I… received my payout, it was short $306, b/c they did not stay true to the 3% that was promised.
Staff are all incredibly rude and unorganized. There pricing is ridiculous for essentially being a third party messenger platform. They end up costing the client more money and taking money out of the coaches. Would you accept only 50% of your paycheck for the first pay period?