People learn using online video courses, watching a video with infographics. Banner or background for a site with a distance education theme. Vector illustration
Image: jenny on the moon/Adobe Stock

I spent several years teaching at different universities. I’ve also spent nearly a decade helping other fiction writers navigate the waters of writing. During those periods of my life, I would have greatly benefited from a platform that makes it easy to monetize the courses and coaching that I offered instead of piecing it all together.

Podia is such a platform, and it serves as one of the best content selling services on the market. With Podia, you can monetize courses, webinars, coaching, community and digital downloads.

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Podia’s free plan

If you’re curious about what Podia can do to help you sell your digital content, the company is releasing a new free plan that gives users:

  • One free website builder.
  • One free community.
  • Free email marketing.
  • One digital download product.
  • One coaching product.
  • Draft courses, webinars and product bundles you can begin selling right away.

Podia’s premium plans

After monetizing those first digital products, you might want to do more. If so, Podia offers three premium plans.

  • Mover: $33/month for a custom website, email marketing, customer messaging and unlimited courses, downloads and coaching products.
  • Shaker: $75/month for everything the Mover plan plus unlimited webinars and affiliates.
  • Earthquake: $166/month for everything in the Mover plan plus priority support, onboarding calls and a monthly creator call.

How to create digital assets with Podia

The best thing about Podia, besides the ability to monetize your work, is how easy the service makes it to create consumable content.

After you create an account, log in and click New Product in the upper-right corner. In the resulting window, select the type of product you want to create and then click Create Product (Figure A).

Figure A

Creating a new asset in Podia is incredibly simple.

The type of asset you create will dictate the configuration options you need. For example, when creating a Webinar to sell, you must have either a YouTube Live link or you must connect your Zoom account to your Podia account, which is handled by clicking the Connect Your Zoom link on the Webinar creation page (Figure B).

Figure B

Creating a new Webinar to sell via Podia.

If you go the Zoom route, scheduling is handled through Zoom and not Podia. If you’re using YouTube, the scheduling is handled through the Podia interface.

After you add the necessary configuration options for the Webinar, click Publish, and the webinar is ready for monetization. Note that some services, such as Coaching Sessions, require a third-party booking calendar such as Calendly, SavvyCal, Acuity or YouCanBookMe.

To promote your asset, you must set up an email subscriber list; Podia makes this simple with just a few quick steps. Note: To create your mailing list, Podia requires you add your mailing address to comply with communication laws.

You can import a list of email addresses from a CSV file and even upload multiple lists and ZIP files. All of this is very easy thanks to some of the better instructions, documentation and assistance I’ve seen for such a service. Because of that, anyone can get up to speed selling online courses, memberships and digital downloads in no time. Where other platforms make this process a bit difficult at first, Podia holds your hand through the entire process.

Podia review: Pros and cons

Pros to using PodiaCons to using Podia
Outstanding and simple interface with modern designLack of customization and features for some assets
Built-in real-time chat widgetCannot create a standalone community area
PayPal and Stripe integrations for paymentNo mobile app
New single-page checkout experienceLimited reporting tools
Upsells can be added to assetsBasic web page builder
Replay availability once webinars have endedSales funnel requires third-party platform
Customer/client remindersNo phone support
Assets are simple to createNo course marketplace
Courses allow you to add text, embedded videos and documents, quizzes, coaching, files and unlimited sections
Outstanding customer support
A built-in email marketing tool
Multiple payment options

Is Podia right for you?

If you’re looking for a simple way to monetize your educational content, you would have a hard time finding a platform that is easier to use than Podia. It might not have every feature you need, but the company is constantly rolling out new pieces to the puzzle, so if there’s something you don’t see, give it some time, and the feature might appear soon enough.

But if you need to be able to monetize webinars, courses and other types of digital content, and don’t want to have to struggle to get it up and running, Podia is one of the best in the business.

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