The coronavirus pandemic may be hurting the travel influencer industry, but it might be a different story for fitness influencers.
Kelli and Daniel Segars are the couple behind home workout YouTube channel Fitness Blender, which has nearly 6 million subscribers. They told Business Insider that they saw their daily new subscriber counts double in the first five days after the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic on March 11.
That day, they received around 1,200 new YouTube subscribers, according to analytics the couple provided to Business Insider. That was already slightly above the 800 to 1,000 new daily subscribers analytics show they had been averaging since the beginning of February. Less than a week later, on March 16, the daily number of new subscribers jumped up to 2,400.
Kelli and Daniel founded Fitness Blender as a side project for extra income in 2008 during the Great Recession, according to The Seattle Times. Today, they have a total of 886 videos on their YouTube channel. Their videos run from five to 90 minutes in length - typically around 30 minutes - and feature one or the other of them leading viewers through a variety of exercises. Among their most popular videos are a 10-minute ab workout featuring Kelli, which has gotten 68 million views since it was posted in January 2012, and a 37-minute cardio workout, also featuring Kelli, which has gotten 58 million views since it was posted in April 2013.
In addition to these videos, Fitness Blender offers two- to eight-week workout programs for purchase for those who prefer a schedule rather than a single workout. It also offers a paid membership, Fitness Blender Plus, which includes extra features, such as exclusive workouts and access to personal health and fitness statistics.
The membership program also saw a spike in new subscribers under each paid subscription option - one month ($11.99 for pay-as-you-go), monthly recurring ($8.99), and yearly recurring ($79.99) - according to internal analytics that Business Insider viewed. Kelli and Daniel declined to comment on specific subscription numbers for Fitness Blender Plus.
The increase in people looking for access to both free and paid workouts says a lot about quarantine life right now. As social distancing becomes the norm in many places, fitness junkies are trying to make the best of their gym game at home.
Daniel and Kelli said there isn't a need for them to change much of their production strategy to cater to this increased demand. "We're always locked into what we can do to make fitness as accessible to everyone as we can," Daniel told Business Insider.
They already have a vast range of at-home workout content to fulfill the desires of any exerciser. According to analytics site Social Blade, Fitness Blender's daily video views increased from 287,163 to 448,999 in the same five-day time period after the WHO's announcement. By March 19, just over a week after the coronavirus was declared a pandemic, those daily views more than doubled to 613,482.
Kelli said that on YouTube, they've seen the biggest viewership jump among their no-equipment workout videos, specifically for strength training and HIIT (high-intensity interval training). Considering that many people may not have weights or machines in their homes, these bodyweight workouts and cardio alternatives are a natural alternative to hitting the gym.
The one adjustment Kelli and Daniel said they are making is to remove the barrier of cost on some videos. To make fitness more financially accessible, they're putting some of their home workout programs on sale. Several four-week $14.99 programs have been cut to $4.50. "Our goal is to kind of hopefully use this as a positive thing, to help provide a sense of normalcy for people," Daniel said.
On social media, talk from the Fitness Blender community has shifted to trying to figure out how to cope and sustain through the pandemic, he added. It's about "focusing on what's within your control and doing what you can where you can," he said.
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