7 Reasons To Sell Your Digital Products With Podia

Last week I officially canceled my accounts with Teachable.com and GetDPD.com and moved all of my digital products over to a new platform called Podia.

Once the new store was “live,” I sent an email to all of my customers to let them know how to access their products.

A student from my Email Copywriting Workshop named Paul replied with this question:

Hey Josh,

What a coincidence…

I literally just powered through the complete Copywriting Academy on Teachable today as a refresher (…Story, Lesson, Pitchツ).

Anyhow… never heard of Podia.com but would love to know the main reason you switched from Teachable to Podia.

The reason I ask is because I also have a Teachable account and was planning on using it for my courses.

I’m having a hard time narrowing it down to one “main” reason, so instead let me give you 7 reasons why I’ve switched:

– Podia makes it easy to sell both simple downloadable products like an ebook or a $5 “tripwire” PDF as well as full-blown online courses with videos, handouts, etc.

I sell both, and up until now I’ve had to use (and pay for) two different platforms: DPD for digital downloads and Teachable for online courses.

Now all of my products and customers are in one place, and I don’t have to pay for two services.

– Each customer gets a permanent account, so they can see all of their courses and digital downloads in one place, and they’ll always have access to the latest version.

With DPD, customers would just get a download link emailed to them.

This link would expire after a few days, and I frequently get emails from customers whose links had expired.

Podia provides a better experience for my customers, and less support headaches for me.

– The checkout process in Podia is optimized for more sales.

In Teachable, before a prospective buyer can actually give you money, they have to choose a username and password for their Teachable account.

This adds friction to the process—and friction means lost sales.

Podia starts by just capturing the buyer’s email address and payment info, minimizing the amount of typing they have to do. (I’ve been recommending this approach for years—it mystifies me why every checkout workflow isn’t set up this way.)

Podia founder Spencer Fry claims this bumps conversion rates by double digits, and I believe it.

– Podia includes built-in support for dripping out course content with an email autoresponder sequence.

I wanted to set this up for my Email Copywriting Workshop, and I was shocked to discover that Teachable couldn’t do it.

Instead I was going to have to set the emails up in my email software, then find a way to sync my Teachable students across. Absurdly clunky.

– Great support for custom analytics and tracking.

I am a geek about tracking. I want to know what I’m selling and where the sales are coming from.

Podia allows you to add custom tracking code to your shopping cart, so you can send information about new customers and purchases to your email software and tracking tools like Google Analytics.

Again, this seems like a no-brainer for every digital product sales platform.

Believe me, it’s not.

– The team at Podia is *hungry*.

This one is admittedly less tangible.

I’ve found that I really enjoy working with up-and-coming companies like this.

They’re past the “brand new product” growing pains—most of the bugs are ironed out, they have a solid customer base and they’re growing.

But they’re still small enough that they’re hungry and motivate.

That means you get awesome support, and even the opportunity to influence the direction of the product.

That’s what it’s been like for me working with Drip as my email provider, and now I’m seeing the same thing with the team at Podia.

Support has been *awesome*. Spencer personally migrated all of my products and helped me get my store set up.

The developers have already added a couple of small features I need.

And pretty much any feature on my wish list that isn’t already there is on the roadmap for near-future development.

– Finally, I’m saving a *lot* of money by Podia—$1,032 over the next 12 months.

Podia is MUCH less expensive than Teachable, and I’m saving even more by not having to pay for a separate service to sell my downloadable products.

I haven’t found anything that I could do in Teachable that I haven’t also been able to do in Podia, so I’m not sacrificing anything by switching.

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