Starting a new online business can be challenging, especially for people who don’t consider themselves “tech-savvy”. With a lot of different things to learn, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.
Thankfully, Podia makes this transition smooth and easy, so you don’t need to worry about the tech aspects of building a site and digital products!
In this article, we will list the most common terms used in Podia and what they mean.
Tip: Searching for a specific term?
Use CMD+F on a Mac or CTRL+F on Windows and type in the term you’re looking for!
General
Admin dashboard - The Admin dashboard is where you go to manage your Podia account. From there, you can create and edit products, manage your website, publish blog posts, send emails, and make other changes to your account.
Products - Products are the items you can sell to your audience, and you can charge for them either as a one-time payment or on a recurring basis (monthly or annually).
The types of products you can create on Podia include digital downloads, online courses, webinars, and bundles.
Plans - Plans are the main way to give paid access to your community and charge customers on a recurring basis. If you want to create a membership and charge a monthly or annual fee, you’ll use a plan.
Products
Digital Download - A file you can upload and sell. Customers will need to download this file to their computers in order to access it.
Online Course - A type of product designed for students to learn at their own pace. You can upload videos (streaming only) as well as PDFs, text lessons, links, quizzes, etc.
Webinar - A type of product that helps you sell one-time meetings and webinars hosted through Zoom or YouTube Live.
Bundle - A bundle lets you combine two or more products together and sell them as a package. A great way to generate additional revenue.
Draft Product - A state to be used while your products are still being created. Visitors and customers won’t be able to see or access products in Draft Mode.
Published Product - A product ready to be promoted and sold to your audience! You will only be able to sell published products.
Hidden Product - A product that will not appear anywhere on your Podia site but still could be accessed by visitors through its unique link. People can buy and/or subscribe to hidden products.
Waitlist - A product state in which you can collect email addresses from potential customers before you begin selling your product.
Customers won’t be able to access products while they’re in waitlist mode.
You also can’t sell products in waitlist mode. If you want to sell a product that’s still in development, you can use the start date feature instead.
Start Date - A feature to be used if you’d like to sell and collect payments for your product before it is finished. People won’t be able to access your product before the chosen start date.
Community
Built-in community - Community is now part of Podia instead of being a separate add-on. Built-in community means that anyone who creates an account on your site automatically becomes a member.
As a member, they’ll have access to the home feed, where they can see updates from all the products they purchased and spaces they're part of.
Free community access - Any member in your account will get free community access if they haven’t joined a paid plan.
With free access, they’ll only see updates on their home feed based on what you’ve made available to them — such as open spaces or activity from the products they have access to.
Home feed - The home feed is the first page both you and your members see after logging in. From there, you and your members can view updates, browse conversations, and navigate to chats, products, and more.
For creators: The home feed shows all activity across your account. You’ll have access to all your spaces and published products.
For members: What each member sees on their home feed depends on the products and plans they’ve signed up for, as well as the spaces they have access to.
Spaces - Spaces are organized discussion areas based on conversational topics. They help you keep posts and conversations grouped in a way that makes sense for you and your members.
Open spaces - Spaces that can be accessed by any member in your account.
Private spaces - Spaces only available to the members you define.
You can gate space access through plans, products, or by selecting specific members.
Space followers - Space followers are people who follow a specific space. They’ll receive updates from that space on their home feed and get notifications for activity in that space.
Anyone who has access to a space can choose to follow or unfollow it. This means someone can have access to a space but choose not to follow it, and they won’t appear as a follower.
Audience
Contacts - The number of Contacts you have on your Podia site. This will include all members and subscribers.
Members - Anyone who has created an account on your Podia site (meaning they've set an email and password).
Most of the time, members are individuals who bought/subscribed to something you offer. However, someone can join your Podia for free without purchasing a product or signing up for a free product.
"Subscribed" contacts - Those marked as "Subscribed" are part of your mailing list and can get email campaigns and broadcasts from you.
Contacts can become subscribers by buying a product and agreeing to receive marketing emails, subscribing through an email form on your site and/or to any waitlists as well!"Unconfirmed" contacts - Unconfirmed contacts are people who signed up to receive emails from you but haven't confirmed their email addresses yet.
Unconfirmed contacts will only show up if you have double opt-in enabled.
"Not subscribed" contacts - "Not subscribed" contacts are people who are part of your audience but haven't agreed to receive emails from you or have unsubscribed from your emails.
"Not subscribed" contacts won't receive email broadcasts or campaigns you send. They can re-subscribe at any time directly from their account settings.
Incomplete accounts - People who haven’t finished setting up their account by creating a password. This can include contacts who simply subscribed to your emails or people who were invited to a product but haven’t completed their registration, for example.
Incomplete accounts won’t be able to access spaces, appear as members, or show up as space followers.
Tags - Labels you can manually add to contacts in your audience that will help you organize them in different ways!
Filters - Audience filters allow you to filter contacts based on specific parameters.
You can use different filter combinations to narrow down specific groups of contacts from your audience.
Segments - Audience segments are saved filters of your audience.
For example, you can use filters to find audience members who have spent more than $500 on your site and create an audience segment called "Big spenders".
Email Broadcast - An email broadcast is a single email sent to a group of people at the same time. It’s a great option for things like weekly newsletters, product announcements, and upcoming promotions.
You can send a broadcast to your entire audience or use filters to target a specific group of contacts.
Email Campaign - An automated email series sent after subscribers perform a specific action, such as signing up for a product, purchasing an online course, or becoming a member.
You can adjust how many emails an email campaign has, as well as their sending interval. The schedule for email campaigns will depend on when each subscriber completes the triggering event.
Site
Site builder - This is the tool you’ll use to build and customize the look of your site pages.
Homepage - This is the first page your visitors/customers will see when they visit your Podia site.
Product sales page - Every time a new product is created, a page is automatically generated to showcase it. This page is commonly used as your product sales page, and you can build it to display its descriptions, benefits, etc.
Plans page - The Plans page is a built-in page automatically created by Podia that displays all of your published and public plans in one place.
It can also include an optional “Join for free” button, allowing visitors to get free access to your community by creating an account.
Sales
Invoices - Invoices created for your free and paid sales.
Revenue - The total revenue earned from product sales (incl. taxes and processing fees).
MRR - Your Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the total monthly revenue you're earning from people who are subscribed to your paid plans and products with subscription pricing.
Annual charges are divided by 12 and included in your MRR calculations.
Payment plans are NOT included in MRR calculations.
Pending - Total revenue you have yet to receive from product payment plans (incl. taxes and processing fees).
Misc
Delays - A feature that unlocks content on a regular basis over a previously set period of time. As your customers progress through the online course, content gets delivered to them, and eventually, they’ll have access to the full online course.
Coupons - A code you can generate to offer discounts for your products/plans.
Affiliates - Members that will help you promote & sell your products/memberships in exchange for a percentage (or dollar amount) of each successful sale.
Podia's Refer-A-Friend Program - A referral program that lets you earn credits for promoting Podia to your friends and fans.
Podia subdomain - A customizable free subdomain you’ll receive by default as soon as you sign up for Podia. It will look something like example.podia.com.
Custom domain - A unique branded name that identifies your website, such as “example.com”. Custom domains can be registered on domain registrars such as GoDaddy or Hover.
You can connect custom domains to your Podia site to replace your default Podia subdomain.
Have we missed something? Do you still have questions about any of these terms? Feel free to email us at [email protected] or click on the icon at the bottom right to chat. 😃