Education is an ever evolving phenomena and it constantly witnesses a lot of additions in its mannerisms and such. For a very long time, children and students have been studying off books and papers and have become accustomed to it. But with this technological time and age, even education has integrated with the digital platform and e-learning has become a known and appreciated concept. Not only is it less money consuming, but also saves people the time and effort into building an infrastructure, even the recruitment and such do not happen as much as a school would need. Even students benefit a lot from it, and simply do their lessons in the comfort of their home. Also, it is just not related to educational knowledge as per se, and one could share their knowledge about whatever they are an expert at, be it fashion, culinary, a language and more. Similarly, Podia is a platform that helps in one creating their website and is known to help people do what they love and make a living from it. It is completely remote and gives you the freedom to work and play as you see fit. It was started in 2014 as Coach which now, as Podia has become a site for sellers of online courses and digital downloads and has had more than 7,500 creators on its site selling their digital wares directly to customers. With the rebranding, the platform started to associate itself more with being a creator friendly alternative to the subscription-based crowdfunding site Patreon, and unlike the latter, Podia does not take 5% of the fee that you earn. All you need to do as a creator is set up a Podia account and you’ll be able to start selling memberships, digital courses, and digital downloads as soon as you complete the account setup process. Here, we would explain in detail as to why Podia is an excellent choice for a platform and why it is not.
Podia Review: The Comprehensive List of Features Available to Podia Instructors
Podia has a remarkable list of features that helps it stand out and they are not just unique but are also well integrated with each other to make it the one step solution to what your demands are and an exceptional platform.
Podia Features- Online Courses
They help you create and sell with the easiest platform available in the market and you need to create, sell and manage your online course in one place. Not just that, they assure that all plans that they offer come with no limit on bandwidth, file size, number of courses, customers, sales or anything else. Even with no design and development skills, you can make beautiful course with a simple content builder, easy branding customization and support for content of all kinds, be it video or audio or more. They help you make money out of sales pages that have been tested and fine-tuned for conversions and allow you to add extras like testimonials, an intro video, FAQ’s or coupons to help instigate people toward purchasing. Other than that, they accept Stripe, PayPal, and most international currencies, making it easy, safe and secure to sell to your audience, wherever they are. Their policies are creator friendly with instant payouts, no limits on number of products or file size, and zero transaction fee. Also, they provide live chat support which is incredibly helpful.
Podia Features- Membership
Getting a membership with Podia can make your business a breeze because they make it easy to build an manage an online community of engaged individuals without having to go through a number of different software tools for payments, content delivery, email updates and everything else. They allow you to create different membership levels with differing perks, content, and prices.That means, you get to choose at which levels individuals get to see any piece of content you create, giving you total control over what you build for your members. For instance, you could create a free membership plan, plus a paid plan with access to exclusive content that free members don’t see. They make sure that they are the one stop solution and that everything that you would need would be provided by them, so they have it all in one interface, from taking payments, uploading members-only content, interaction with comments, scheduling live online events for your members to sending email updates. Also, they allow you to seamlessly add access to any of your existing online courses and digital downloads as a membership perk. They aim to help you cater to the expectations your members have from you and so, guarantee that your site would look very pleasing on all the devices and you can upload content in any format, and personalize your community with a custom domain, logo and branding.
Podia Features- Digital Downloads
They guarantee all the tech support when it comes to uploading files and so and assure that they would handle everything for you and all you have to do is upload and sell. They help you sell digital downloads of whatever kind you wish which includes eBooks, PDF’s, cheat sheets, checklists, video files, audio files and text. They also support a variety of file types and just to name a few, MOV, MP4 and MP3, PNG, JPG, GIF and PDF, EPUB and MOBI, .sketch, AI and PSD. They assure that they would be your all in one storefront and not only can you sell digital downloads, but you can sell online courses, membership subscriptions, and send email newsletters to your students, all from one online store.
Podia Features- Email Marketing
They understand that your email list is essential and extremely valuable and helps you build that list, nurture it and create one-on-one relationships with your users. They allow drip campaigns which is a great way to build your entire sales funnel within the platform. So, once someone subscribes to your email list, your drip email campaign will do the work of nurturing them until they’re ready to buy and they provide the flexibility to edit the drip campaigns whenever you wish. They also understand that the subscribers are looking for thoughtful messages, not complicated designs and assure email templates that are clean and simple, which means that your emails will look great without any coding or design skills needed.They make personalization extremely easy and a priority and allows you to segment your list by what they’ve purchased from you, or send automated emails based on event triggers.They also provide details analytics to pinpoint exactly what is working and what is not and you can see your list by what they’ve purchased from you, or send automated emails based on event triggers.Their email reports help you make better decisions about the emails you send, whether you’re sharing a weekly newsletter or selling an online course, membership or digital download.
Podia Features- Podia Editor
The Podia Editor is an excellent tool that gives you complete control over the look and feel of your Storefront and Sales Pages. They make it easy to customize your Storefront and Sales Pages to look exactly how you want them to, with no design expertise required and allows you to easily add, edit and re-order rich text, images, videos and testimonials. They have an an easy-to-use Product Builder and support for content of all kinds.
Podia Features- Affiliate Marketing
They allow you to build you own sales team and increase your sales. It has a very simple setup and they allow you to customize your own terms and choose your commission structure and they will handle the math from there.
Podia Review: Pricing Plans
Podia has pretty simple and straightforward pricing to get your online business up and running. Also, they offer a couple plans to you to choose from.
Their Mover plan would cost you about $39 per month and if you pay annually, you would have to pay $390 and you would get 2 months free. In this plan, you would get all the tools to build, sell and manage your online course easy by putting everything you need in one place. They allow digital downloads, email marketing, zero transaction fees, unlimited everything and 24*7 support.
They also offer a Shaker plan which would cost you about $79 per month and if you pay annually, you would get two months free and would have to pay $790 annually. In addition to what Mover plan has to offer, they offer Memberships, Embedded checkouts, Affiliate marketing, Third Party Code and Free Migration.
Podia Review: Pros and Cons
Every coin has two sides and so does Podia, and it has its share of pros and cons which makes it stand out and which pulls it back respectively. Here, we discuss in details all of those.
Podia Pros:
- They have a beautiful design and such and it is quite aesthetically pleasing, no matter what. So, one does not necessarily have to worry about how their website looks, because they assure that it would look appealing.
- They allow live chat with the support and it is incredible because not only do they make it a point to find solutions to the issues but also reply real quick and are available at all hours.
- The interface is incredibly easy to use and it is equipped with everything that one would need to build an online course. Not only that, they make it a point to bring in new features consistently Not just that, they also have all that you would need to sell an online course, be it monetization, marketing, affiliate program and more.
- Not many course creation platforms assure this, but Podia is not one of them and guarantee a great interface on the students’ side and make sure that they have an enjoyable experience.
- Their pricing is very fair and reasonable and unlike a number of course creation platforms, they do not claim any part in the money that you make. Also, they integrate easily with Stripe and PayPal to make money transferring a breeze.
Podia Cons:
- Many other platforms offer a variety of ways to teach, which includes quizzes, but Podia does not have that yet.
- They do not provide much of the details in their analytics, for instance, which portion did the student stop reading or watching and so. So, that makes it difficult to improvise on the same platform.
- They allow customizations but they often do not give out results that you had in mind and sometimes, not even close to it. There are some limitations with the customizations of the sales and course pages as well.
Podia Review: Success Stories
Some people have had an incredible journey and they owe it solely to Podia, for it is an excellent platform and it has been highly instrumental in the creation of a course or a membership. They are inspiring and motivational.
Nora Conrad, the creator of The Conrad Hub, that teaches people how to simplify life says that before her daughter was born, she hustled to create products that would help her grow her business without working full time and she required a platform that would grow with her and such. She tried a number of platforms before Podia, but Podia had her hooked. The simplicity of the platform is what makes her stick to it and they offer all the features that she has been looking for.
Karen Delgado, the creator of The Location Independent Entrepreneur, which as the name suggests, is all about entrepreneurship, says that Podia is the best platform they could find to host their online course. Instead of them spending hours on the creation of a course, Podia provided everything they could possibly need to successfully launch their course.
Leanna Hoekstra, the creator of The Best Sweet Green Juice Recipe says that between her ideas and digital products, the thing that pulled everything together for her was Podia. The fact that it housed everything in one place amazed her and it was all that she needed.
Podia Payments
For your payments, all you have to do is connect your Stripe or PayPal account and anything you earn on Podia will be deposited directly into your bank account. If you are worried about the safety, you data is always safe with Podia. All online transactions are encrypted and processed through 128-Bit SSL encryption technology, ensuring total security of all data. Also, about credit card or PayPal fees, Podia doesn’t charge any fees, though the payment processor, Stripe or PayPal, depending on whatever you choose, will charge a standard transaction fee of 2.9% + 30¢. The fees are charged by the processor and not associated with Podia’s pricing plans.
How to Create Your First Course with Podia?
Here, in brief we would explain to you everything you need to know about creating, launching and selling a course with Podia. It would holds details about what you have to do to make launch and create your first course.
You should start with deciding the genre or the niche that you wish to work on and make it go the way from inspiration to conceptualization. You should then think about the probable best content type for that particular idea, if it is videos, workbooks, PDF or something else.
Once you have made a decision about the aforementioned, you can proceed to the creation of your content. So, basically now your idea or the concept would develop into a course or a PDF or the particular format that you want. You could do screen recordings or the awesome talking head videos that everyone seems to love or whatever manner in which you wish to deliver content.
On the completion of the production of the content, you need to think about the three major P’s of course creation or business for that fact, that is, Pricing, Packaging and Pitching. It is essential to know what price would you sell your course for, what it would look like and how you would sell it.
Prior to that, you need to decide if you wish to sell on the basis of launches or keep evergreen sales. Once you decide on that, you need to move to one of the most important part of it, marketing or email marketing, which is the most efficient form of the same.
Once that is done, you need to write a sales page that promises conversions and upload your course.
Podia Review- G2crowd- 5/5
Podia is one of the very few platforms to have received that excellent a rating. It is known and appreciated for being a beautiful tool and having all the designs, offers and features for course hosting and payment management. They do not charge for each sale like some platforms and charges a fixed amount per month and seems perfect for people who make a high volume of sales each month. It is super streamlined, very easy to use, way more affordable, and beautiful for the user, not only the creator.
Podia Review- Capterra- 5/5
Their designs are better than most other Learning Management Systems’ that people have witnessed and ade use of and easy to use. Not just that, it is an all in one solution and includes all you need to make a online course and to sell your course: monetization, marketing, affiliate program and such. Despite being so fulfilling, they do not stop improving and innovation and consistently add on to the features. They have an exceptional chat customer service. If you have any problem, you can just ask them and they answer really fast. Also, the pricing is reasonable and at that cost, their services is quite a steal.
Podia Review: Final Verdict
Podia offers a 14 days free trial so that you can check the platform before you finally make your mind. One of the unique features of Podia is that it offers an all-in-one storefront where you can sell your Online courses, Digital Downloads and Memberships in one place, plus an Email Marketing platform that lets you engage your audience and convert them into paying customers. Added to this, Podia doesn’t charge any transaction fee in addition to the flat monthly fee (unlike other online course creation platforms). These are some of the factors that makes Podia one of the best online course creation platforms of 2019.
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