In this pandemic, more and more people are opting for online classes. Inadvertently so, this has helped expand the revenue-building possibilities for academicians, tutors, and gurus.
If you want to take advantage of this opportunity, then you should think outside the box. It’s not enough for you to go viral on YouTube or Facebook. You need to find a way to sell them well. For this, you are going to need Thinkific.
What is Thinkific?
Thinkific is a platform that allows you to create, market, and sell your online courses – as well as your membership sites. Statistically speaking, Thinkific is the home of 40,000 content creators, who have authored more than 53 million courses
Thinkific allows you to have a worldwide reach, as it is currently being used in 164 countries. With this, Thinkific has helped the creators generate more than $200 million in revenue.
Features
At Thinkific, you don’t have to worry about limiting your creativity. You can easily craft educational courses with the help of the following features:
a. Course Building
Thinkific allows you to make and customize classes that are aligned with your brand. All you just need to do is upload the material – no confusing codes needed. With its drag and drop feature, you can easily create courses even if you are not a techie.
What’s great about Thinkific is that it can support different types of media. Here, you can use videos, text, surveys, quizzes, and discussions.
You can also customize your courses as needed. As the moderator, you can make some of your classes private or hidden. You can even require pre-requisite lessons – or enable a certain class to be taught by multiple instructors.
Here are other customization features offered by Thinkific:
- Drip schedule content
- Cohorts
- Evergreen or expiring content
- Membership sites
b. Site Design
After uploading your course, you have the freedom to design your own website. You can easily organize content with the help of the drag and drop builder.
You can even utilize your own domain name for easy brand recall. If you are a seasoned coder, you can develop your site with the use of CSS.
c. Marketing and Selling
Once your content and website are ready, you can go ahead and sell your courses with the help of Thinkific’s business tools.
You have the option to create a membership site with its respective subscription courses. You can even improve your sales through free trials, promotions, and easier payment plans, to name a few.
As a user, you can also:
- Incentivize affiliates who share or market your courses
- Connect to your e-mail provider
- Enhance marketing campaigns with tools such as Google Adwords or Facebook.
- Integrate your site with over 1000 marketing apps
d. Student Support
Thinkific is more than just selling your programs. It also makes sure that your students achieve success through every step of the way.
As the home of 16 million students, Thinkific has what it takes when it comes to enhancing the learning experience. Student support features include:
- Optimization for all devices
- Easy course navigation
- Site language option
- Goal setting
- Dedicated tracking (automated check-ins)
- Customized learning experiences
- Course landing pages
e. Update Access
Thinkific works to improve its platform every day. Should newer updates and programs surface, you’re sure to be one step ahead with its update access feature for members.
Pricing
Thinkific offers 1 free and 3 paid plans. The free account comes with 3 courses, an unlimited number of students, quizzes and surveys, content hosting, and instant funds access.
The Basic plan costs $49 a month or $39 if billed annually. This allows for an unlimited number of courses and students, as well as manual student enrollment, scheduled content, e-mail integrations, and coupons.
The most popular package, Pro plan, costs $99 monthly ($79 on the annual plan). It boasts of additional features, including 2 site admin accounts, 5 course admins, advanced customizations, and communities.
The highest-tier package is Premier, which costs $499 a month ($399 on an annual plan). It allows you to have 5 site admins, 15 group analysts, and 50 course admins. It also comes with a growth package that provides access to high-powered features. As such, it is best for accounts that continuously gain more audiences.
Pros and Cons of Using Thinkific
Pros
If you are thinking of getting Thinkific, these features could help you decide:
a. Secure Design
With Thinkific, you don’t have to worry about the security of your courses. It has secure cloud hosting with SSL certificates.
b. 99.9% Uptime
You don’t have to worry about Thinkific bugging down, even if millions of students access the site. With its 24/7 monitoring, you are assured that your course site is always up and running.
c. Student-Friendly Design
Thinkific is dedicated to improving the overall learning experience. It allows your students to learn any which way they want. You can even reward their dedication with the use of completion certificates.
d. SEO Feature
Ranking high in search engines is a good way to generate more potential buyers. With Thinkific’s SEO feature, you can boost visitor traffic into your website.
e. Secure and On Time Payment
With Thinkific, you get paid immediately. It accepts all credit cards and processes over 100+ currencies. Because of these features, payments are guaranteed to be 100% secure.
Cons
As with most programs, using Thinkific comes with some disadvantages:
a. Lack of Course Marketplace
There’s no place for you to display your online classes. It’s up to you to market and promote your courses.
b. No E-mail Marketing Tool
Although your Thinkific account can be linked with third-party e-mail integrations, the process would be much easier if it has a built-in e-mail marketing tool.
c. No Live Chat Support
If you have any questions or concerns with your Thinkific account, you need to send an e-mail and wait for a few days for the response. Sadly, the program does not come with live chat support that can help address your problems immediately.
The Verdict
Despite the cons mentioned above, Thinkific’s many pros and good features make it a good option for content creators.
For instance, it comes with a free account that works well for newbie tutors.
With its instant payment access and a thick layer of security, Thinkific proves to be a great platform for academicians, craft gurus, and everybody else in between.