Looking to get started with Thinkific, but not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered. Read on to learn the essential steps in getting your online learning business launched with Thinkific!
In this article:
Sign Up for a Thinkific Account
Step 1: Create an Education Business Plan
Step 2: Create a Lead Magnet to Grow Your Audience
Step 3: Create an Entry-Level Paid Product
Step 4: Start Selling Premium Products
Before You Begin
In this guide, you'll get an overview of how to start building your business on Thinkific and how Thinkific's tools and features can help in every step of your journey.
As you move through the sections in this article, you can click the dropdown menus to view information that is specific to the type of learning product you are building (either a course, or a community).
Once you've worked through the steps below, don't forget to bookmark this page so you can come back to it again later.
Now, let's get started!
Sign Up for a Thinkific Account
Excited to dive in? Let’s start by signing up for a Thinkific account so you can follow along with ease.
If you want to try Thinkific before committing to a monthly or yearly plan, you can sign up for our free trial. Browse Thinkific pricing plans here to compare features and decide on the right plan level before getting started.
Step 1: Create an Education Business Plan
The first unskippable step when it comes to growing your education business on Thinkific: you need to have a plan!
Sign up for our free webinar that will reveal the business model all successful Thinkific customers use. You’ll learn how to plan your business out along a value staircase, accounting for marketing, selling, and serving customers with high-quality products and services.
Step 2: Create a Lead Magnet to Grow Your Audience
Now that you have a solid understanding of your business model and your offering, you will need to grow your audience and turn them into leads!
Leads are email addresses you have captured from potential customers - these are people who expressed interest in what you offer. Leads in Thinkific can be emailed to follow up with.
To do that, you will need to create a lead magnet. Your lead magnet should be something of value that gives potential customers an example of the transformation that you offer with your paid products.
Thinkific’s Digital Downloads or Coaching & Webinars products can be set up as lead magnets.
Option 1: Create a free digital download
With Digital Downloads, you can create and offer downloadable files to your audience. Common digital downloads include eBooks, PDFs, templates, workbooks, guides, and spreadsheets - it can be just about anything you can think of!
You can follow these steps to learn how to create a Digital Download with Thinkific.
Option 2: Create a free webinar or coaching session
With Coaching & Webinars, you can create and offer access for your 1:1 or 1:many live events to your audience. Coaching sessions, webinars, or office hours - it can be just about anything you can think of!
You can follow these steps to learn how to create a Coaching or Webinar live event with Thinkific.
What's Next?
Now that you have created your free lead magnet product, you can promote it and start building your audience! For every lead magnet, you should create at least five different pieces of content promoting it. These can include Facebook posts, Instagram posts, TikTok videos, blog posts, podcast episodes, Instagram reels, etc.
Personalize Your Site Name and URL
Your site's name and Thinkific URL can be changed at any time, but it's best to set this up before launching to avoid confusing your students. You can change the site name and URL from the Settings page.
Agonizing over a name? Enter a brief description of your business and any relevant details, and this AI tool will generate 9 possible names for you.
Use Thinkific Creator Tools to Create Social Media Posts
Discover the power of AI with our suite of tools! Get help creating the perfect social media post and craft a series of social media post ideas in seconds with AI.
- Go to AI Creator Tools by Thinkific
- Select Social Posts Generator
- Answer all prompts - the more information you provide, the more accurate the social media post will be!
- Click Generate Posts
- Edit the generated posts as needed
Now you are ready to share the posts to your social networks!
How to Share Your Product
Thinkific makes it easy to share your products directly from your Admin Dashboard! You have the option of sharing your Digital Download or Coaching & Webinars products on social media when publishing them.
You can also find and copy your product link by following these instructions: How to Find and Edit Your Product Landing Page URL.
Great work! After you start capturing leads and growing your audience, you will be ready to move to the next step!
Step 3: Create an Entry-Level Paid Product
You have grown your audience and got people interested in your brand. Now it is time to create an entry-level paid product that can help convert leads into paying customers!
Entry-level paid products are a fast way to start earning revenue, so you can begin growing your business sooner.
The key thing to remember when building an entry-level paid product is that you do not need to have a perfect and complete product. We recommend starting with a minimum viable product - an early, basic version of a product that meets the minimum necessary requirements for use but can be adapted and improved in the future, especially after customer feedback.
To start selling, you will need to connect to a payment processor first. A payment processor is what allows you to get money from your customers, deposit money into your account, and manage customer subscriptions.
Connect a Payment Processor
Thinkific Payments is available to creators in these countries: Thinkific Payments Supported Countries.
TCommerce, powered by Thinkific Payments, is our proven selling and payments solution with features to help you boost sales, process payments, streamline business admin and track success — all in one place. Customers on TCommerce sell more, earn more, and have larger transactions.
Follow these steps to set up Thinkific Payments.
Now that you've connected a payment processor, you can create a paid entry-level product.
Here are some great entry-level products that you can create in Thinkific:
- Digital Downloads
- Coaching & Webinars
- Online Courses (Not big courses. Think about creating a presale course, live course, or mini-course instead).
Option 1: Sell a Digital Download
With Digital Downloads, you can create and sell downloadable files to your audience. Like we mentioned before, you can offer just about any kind of downloadable file you can think of!
You can follow these steps to learn how to create a Digital Download with Thinkific.
Several pricing options are available for your Digital Download product. Learn more here: Price Your Digital Download.
Optio 2: Sell Access to a Coaching Session or Webinar
With Coaching & Webinars, you can create and sell access to your 1:1 or 1:many live offerings to your audience. Coaching sessions, webinars, or office hours - it can be just about anything you can think of!
You can follow these steps to learn how to create a Coaching or Webinar live event with Thinkific.
Several pricing options are available for your Coaching & Webinars product. Learn more here: Price Your Coaching & Webinars Product.
Option 3: Sell an Entry-Level Online Course
Online Courses are an ideal entry level digital learning product - Thinkific makes it easy to get started creating courses with our AI Course Outline Generator and intuitive Course Builder.
You can follow these steps to learn how to create and sell online courses with Thinkific.
If you need help with pricing your online course, see this guide here.
Remember that you are creating an entry-level product: keep the price low and experiment with increasing prices over time. Make sure to research what the industry and your competitors are charging.
Once you created an entry-level product, you can start reaching out and converting your leads! Thinkific's Email Automation feature makes it easy to set up your first series of emails that are made to help you turn leads into paying customers.
Well done on creating your entry-level product! Do not forget to iterate, experiment, and continue building your audience. You are now ready to take things to the next level and start creating premium products!
Step 4: Start Selling Premium Products
You have built your audience, established trust, and gotten your first sales from your entry-level products. Now you are ready to level up and create a premium product.
Premium products are high-value digital products that customers are happy to pay a premium for. They allow you to scale your revenue and enhance your influence as a creator.
Here are some great premium products you can create with Thinkific:
- All access memberships with subscription pricing
- Private learning communities
- Time or cohort-based online courses
- Bundles of multiple learning products
Option 1: Create a Premium Online Course
High-value, comprehensive courses designed to be the pinnacle offering in a subject area can go for a high ticket price. You can build on an existing entry-level course or create new course. Often, time-limited or cohort-limited courses where a group of students moves through the content together are considered premium.
To create a premium online course, consider building on an existing entry-level course or create a new course that incorporates some of these Thinkific features:
- Completion Certificates
- Drip Schedules
- Complimentary Learning Communities
- Live Lessons via Zoom
- Community Live Events
- Assignments with Instructor Feedback
- Private Courses
- Additional premium lessons like exclusive downloads or interactive content
Option 2: Create a Community
Thinkific Communities can engage your students in meaningful conversations — both with yourself and with each other. Communities can also be used to help drive engagement, and keep your students around longer! They can work in tandem with your courses or as a standalone product.
To create a Community on your Thinkific website, follow these steps here.
Option 3: Create a Membership
A Membership is a way to offer your customers access to one or multiple products, all in one package that costs a recurring subscription price.
With a Membership package, you can create content that builds on itself - for example, if you are adding new courses every month, you can simply add these to your existing Membership for subscribers to automatically receive new content!
To create a membership on Thinkific, follow these steps here.
One of the key elements of membership is Subscription pricing, where users pay a recurring monthly fee for access to your content. Learn more about it here: Create a Subscription Price for Your Product
Option 4: Create a Bundle of Learning Products
Learning product Bundles in Thinkific are collections of your products that you (typically) sell for a one-time price.
Many successful creators use this option to bundle their most popular courses, digital downloads, and sometimes access to a community space into one high-ticket price point. This price is often accompanied by a special discount for buying in bulk.
To create a product bundle on Thinkific, follow these steps here.
As mentioned, discounting is a common tactic when selling Bundles. You can learn more about offering special discounts via Coupons here: Create Coupons.
What's Next?
As you build out your library of products, you can also start building out your website.
Every Thinkific site comes with a Website that allows you to create and edit Website pages. If you already have a website, you can integrate it with your Thinkific Website quickly and easily — here’s how to do it.
Thinkific's Site Builder allows you to fine-tune your website pages with images, branding and more. For a quick setup, we'll take you through the essentials:
- Customizing your product's landing page, and;
- Updating your website home page
Customize Your Landing or Product Page
Each product has a landing or a product page (sometimes called a sales page) created for it automatically. You can edit this page in Site Builder, which can be accessed from the Admin Dashboard.
To edit your product page:
- From the Admin Dashboard, select Channels
- Select Website to edit course, community, membership, or bundle product pages
- Find the product page you want to edit and click on it
- Now you are in the Site Builder
Digital Download and Coaching & Webinars landing pages can be found under Channels > Landing Pages.
When editing a product page:
- Click Theme Settings to change the theme, add a logo, add your brand colors, update fonts, etc.
Any changes you make in Theme settings will apply to your whole website!
- Customize the Header for your product website
- Customize the Banner section
- Customize the Footer for your product website
- (Optional) Add, reorder, or delete sections on the page
Check out Site Builder Sections for a full overview of section types, and learn more about setting up your landing page here:
Customize Your Website Home Page
Home pages direct your website's visitors to the right place. They're useful if you plan to create and offer more than one product.
If have multiple products, you will want to edit your home page in Site Builder:
- From your Admin Dashboard, go to Channels
- Select Website
- Locate your Home page and click on it to open Site Builder
For an in-depth guide see: Build Your Home Page.
If you have one product only, we recommend creating a home page redirect: Home Page Redirects.
Nice work! You have now built your business on Thinkific!