Blog Posts

Feb
08
Thinkific Vs. Teachable: Which Is Best For Your Online Courses?
By Nithya_CML

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Thinkific Vs. Teachable: Which Is Best For Your Online Courses?


So you’re thinking of creating an online course eh?


What has you tempted? The fat paychecks? The freedom it gives you? The time it saves you?


All terrific reasons!


Small business owners, bloggers, digital marketers, and entrepreneurs of all kinds are turning to online courses as a way of increasing revenues and getting more customers.


But with so many different platforms for creating courses out there, most people that want to start a course “hit the wall” before they even begin.


Trying to pick a platform and figuring out how to use it can be so frustrating, that many potentially amazing courses are never created.


I know because I fell into the trap myself.


I started three different online courses before finally launching my first one.


The problem wasn’t that I didn’t have the content. They problem was I just couldn’t pick a platform and stick to it long enough to make it till the end.


After multiple attempts and trials, I finally found the perfect platform for my online course and launched it with great success not too long ago.


Since launching, I have had a great response from my students and I’m earning butt loads of cash to boot. So today, I wanted to create a post to help those of you that are in the same place I was last year.


If you want to increase your passive income, build a bigger brand, and develop your team without creating extra work for yourself, this post is for you!


In today’s post, I’m going to cover:




  • The benefits and drawbacks of my two favorite platforms (Thinkific & Teachable)




  • The platform I chose to launch my first course (and why I’m in love with it)




  • Key things to keep in mind before and after you hit the launch button




Be sure to stick around to the end if you need some extra help getting started.


The Benefits Of Online Courses


These days, everyone is turning to digital content to learn about just about anything and everything. In fact, online learning and digital courses have become one of the most popular digital products of the decade.


Whether you are looking to increase your passive income, or need a more an easier way to train your team, online courses are a phenomenal asset to have in your toolbox.


Here are some of the main benefits of having your own online course:




  • Online courses build brand awareness




  • Online courses increase the effectiveness of sales funnels




  • Online courses automate your lead generation




  • Online courses train your team for you on auto-pilot




  • Online courses are an easy way to earn passive income 24/7




There are lots of other benefits that you will discover when you set up your first effective online course but I probably don’t have to convince you of that since you’re here to learn about the best platform for hosting one.


So now let’s dive into the differences between Thinkific and Teachable so you can decide which platform will be best for you and your business.


How Thinkific & Teachable Measure-Up


Teachable and Thinkific are both fabulous platforms for building your own course!


Once built, your courses are hosted on their platform (both of which have a user-friendly tools and dashboards), but you are in full control of the design aspects in terms of color schemes, images, link placements, etc. Having full control of those aspects of your course are great because it will allow you to stay on brand.


Here are a few key tidbits I think you should know about these platforms:




  • Teachable and Thinkific are NOT a course marketplace like Udemy and Skillshare–so people don't find your course in a digital catalog like they would on the other platforms. This means that self-promotion is ABSOLUTELY integral when using either of these platforms.




  • When you create your courses on Teachable or Thinkific, you are given a business URL that looks something like this: YourBusiness.Teachable.com or YourBusiness.Thinkific.com. You don't need a separate website to launch a course. You can actually use your Teachable or Thinkific website as your main website–which is what I did.




  • Pricing – With both platforms, you set your own pricing and it can pretty much be as much or as little as you want it to be. This is unlike Skillshare where your premium courses have no option for setting a price because they are included a la carte in the monthly membership fee that students pay.




  • Payouts – On Teachable, you get paid for revenue earned in the previous month at the end of the next month. The only way around this delayed payment is to enroll in the higher premium plan that allows your payout to process faster. Thinkific, however, offers a faster payout processing time because funds go directly to you.




  • Paypal or Stripe? Teachable allows Paypal payments starting with its free plan while Thinkific uses both PayPal and Stripe.




  • Customer Service – On the free plan for Teachable, you have limited access to customer service. When Teachable first launched, it was able to better service clients simply because the client list was smaller.




  • Teacher Community – Both platforms offer a Private Facebook Group for Teachers that allow us to connect with each other. Most people are very helpful inside the groups and are very encouraging towards new course creators.




  • Access to your student's email addresses – Another huge plus on these two platforms is that you get access to all your students' email addresses (not just a message system like on the course marketplaces.) This means that even if you leave the platform, you have the personal contact information for your students.




The biggest difference though?


Teachable no longer offers its free plan. Access to the platform starts at $39 per month.


Teachable has restructured their plans and $39 monthly plan is now the lowest cost option on the platform. Thinkific still offers a free plan, but the lowest premium option is $49 per month (it's less for both platforms if you pay the fee annually rather than monthly).


Why I Chose Thinkific For My Online Course


I want bound and determined that I was going to launch my first course on Teachable.


After totally flopping with SkillShare and Udemy, I thought I had finally found everything I had been looking for in Teachable.


I went in with the best of intentions, and spent a lot of hours trying to build my course.


In the end though, I found that the platform just wasn’t as user-friendly as it seemed in the beginning. It felt like it was taking FOREVER to build the course and eventually I just gave up.


At least for a while anyway.


Then one day I stumbled on Thinkific.


I will admit that I still had a very sour taste in my mouth from all of the previously wasted hours trying to build online courses but the income potential tempted me yet again. Or maybe is was all that chardonnay…?


Anywho, I ended up signing up for Thinkific on Christmas Eve, assuming I would get frustrated after a couple of hours.


To my surprise...and absolute delight...I actually finished my first online course in just a few hours on Thinkific.


I’m not kidding.


I already had most of my content prepared from previous courses that I had failed to launch. All I had to do was make some tweaks and pull everything together on the Thinkific platform.


I found Thinkific to be the easiest online course platform of everything I had tried up till that point and i have become a huge fan!


They offer all of the bells and whistles you need to build a beautiful course and market it too.


At this point, I don’t care if it was the wine or the potential for extra cash that made me sign up for Thinkific, but I couldn’t be happier that I did.


Which Platform Is Best For You?


To be honest, I do like both platforms.


I just think that Thinkific ended up working best for me and my time constraints.


However, you may find that Teachable works better for you.


If you budget and timeline are not a concern for you in launching your first course, I would say you should sign-up for both and see which one feels better to you.


If you don’t want to spend anything up-front to launch your course, Thinkific is the best place to start because it offers a free starter option (Teachable does not).


Give Your Online Course A Competitive Edge….


There are thousands and thousands of courses out there for people to choose from.


So why would they choose yours?


Some of the best courses out there never sell a single seat, while many crappy courses are raking in the cash.


Ultimately, when it comes down to it, it is the sales funnel and the sales page copy that make the biggest difference between courses that make millions, and the ones that never make it anywhere.


If you want to give your online course a competitive edge, you need to have powerful copy that can both capture and keep the attention of your target.


Even more than than, you need to have copy that can sell.


If you don’t have savvy copy on your sales page that compels people to purchase your course, you will end up wasting a lot of time building a field of dreams that nobody will show up to play on. Not to mention, you will probably throw a lot of money down the drain to get them there in the first place, only to have them bounce off your landing page.


Do you have a ton of extra time and money to waste just for fun?


If not, then you better make sure your sales page copy seriously motivates people to purchase.


So what is it that makes people buy?


Well, there are two main ways to motivate someone to do something.


The first is to offer a reward. The second, and more powerful, is to inflict fear.


You need to make people afraid of not buying your course, AND excited to buy it all at the same time.


To do this, you will need to use a lot of psychology, clever wording, and research about your target audience.


So the way I see it, you have three options at this point:




  1. You can throw your hands up and walk away from more passive income.




  2. You can spend dozens of hours and thousands of dollars learning how to write powerful copy that creates true believers in your brand and compels people to buy from you.




  3. You can spend just 6 quick hours on this course that will teach you to write copy that can sell anything, to anyone, better than the Wolf of Wall Street.




Which option do you think will benefit you the most for the least amount of effort?


If you are like most people, you selected option number three to take the Competitive Edge Content Creation Masterclass.


When you sign up for the course today, you will receive:




  • Free downloadable templates




  • An in-depth look at how to get anyone to buy anyone with just a few words




  • 2 Free Bestselling books from top digital marketing experts




  • Over $15,000 in exclusive access to tools and resources you need to create a profitable course




  • Discounts and early access to all other competitive edge courses




The best part?


You can start the course right now FREE and get access to discounts & freebies to see if you like it! Whoop whoop!


There’s just one catch…


That free access is only available for a short time, so if you don’t want to miss out on all those amazing discounts and learn how to create content that can sell anything, grab your free seat now.