Google "how much does a private soccer trainer make" and you'll get Glassdoor telling you $44 to $67 an hour. That's employee thinking — and it's the reason most trainers stay broke.

Here's what trainers who run it like a business actually make. Real numbers, real coaches.

The real range

• $18,000/year — where Hector started his first year. Solo, no systems, selling sessions.
• $200,000+/year — where Hector ended up a few years later. Same coach, different business.
• $500,000/year — Coach Marcus. Started part-time. Fully implemented the model, now does half a million a year.
• $59,000 sales months — Brendon Vella, stacking record months back to back.
• $51,845 in a single month — Nick Aldiero. One month.
• $80,000/month — my highest-earning coaching client right now.

That's the range I've seen across training businesses: $18K a year on one end, half a million on the other.

What separates the two ends

It isn't coaching ability. The $40K-a-year trainer and the $200K-a-year trainer of...

Most private soccer trainers charge somewhere between $50 and $100 a session. And most of them are broke — or one canceled week away from it.

That's not a coaching problem. It's a pricing problem. More precisely, it's a what you're selling problem.

The session trap

Do the math on $75 sessions. Twenty sessions a week — a full calendar — is $6,000 a month gross. Then subtract field rental, gas, the sessions that cancel last-minute, the slow months when club season eats your schedule. And you're capped: the only way to make more is to coach more hours.

That's the trap. Your income is chained to your calendar. Every dollar requires an hour of your life, and there's a hard ceiling on both.

Being fully booked and still stressed about money is the signature experience of the session-selling trainer.

Sell programs, not sessions

The trainers making real money — six figures, full-time, without living on the field — sell programs. A 12-week developmental program with a defined outcome. A f...