Kajabi online education platform helps creators earn money by sharing their expertise

Kajabi, the video education and web hosting platform for content creators to sell, manage and market online courses, today announced that its 60,000 creators have earned a combined Gross Merchandise Value ( GMV) of $5 billion.

The company says its GMV has increased 528% since 2019 and has more than doubled since the end of 2021. The $5 billion figure is a significant jump from March 2020, when Kajabi had more than $1 billion. dollars in creator revenue, former chief marketing officer Orlando Baeza previously told TechCrunch.

Founded in 2010 by Kenny Rueter and Travis Rosser, Kajabi gives “How to”, Do-it-Yourself (DIY) and other skilled content creators the ability to monetize their online courses and other digital products such as virtual dating, coaching programs, membership websites and podcasts.

Kajabi is now valued at over $2 billion, according to the company.

The GMV milestone comes shortly after Kajabi launched its AI Creator Hub product, which gives users access to six AI-powered tools that help generate content such as lesson plans, landing pages, sales emails, course lessons, social media content, and sales videos. script. The tools, which are free for everyone to use, are based on GPT-3, the OpenAI language model.

Another AI-powered feature, Creator Studio, recently launched in beta and transcribes a video, reads the script, and identifies key phrases to create a summary of the video.

“What (AI) does for people who want to build businesses is nudge them in the right direction to actually get started,” Ahad Khan, CEO of Kajabi, told TechCrunch. “(The tools) actually get you started, which is, most of the time, what slows people down.”

Kajabi has found that it takes an average of over 80 hours to create an online course. By entering a prompt in the new AI Creator Hub, the company hopes content creators will be able to more easily brainstorm ideas and minimize time typing email campaigns and other content.

Besides helping users “sell their knowledge”, so to speak, Kajabi’s toolkit includes a website builder, email marketing software, sales funnel software, gateway payments, as well as analytical tools to help creators determine the best selling strategy. Essentially, Kajabi aims to be an all-in-one platform for users by consolidating the tools needed to run a video education business.

“This (software) toolset, historically, has been really fragmented,” Khan added. “You use X for your website, use Y for your (products) and use Z for your checkout. What Kajabi does is bring it all together in one easy-to-use platform…it’s much simpler to have it under one roof, and also much cheaper to have it under one roof.

In 2022, Kajabi launched an integrated live video feature with recording capability, so creators could virtually meet their clients face-to-face and have recorded sessions automatically emailed to them. The company also acquired community platform Vibely last year to roll out Kajabi Communities, where creators can chat with their followers (or students) in real time as well as live chat, challenges, leaderboards and more. .

The company plans to venture into the mobile world and eventually launch designer-branded apps, Khan told us.

The most attractive part of Kajabi is that users keep 100% of their earnings. That being said, Kajabi charges a pretty penny for its subscription plan, which has three pricing tiers: Basic ($149/month), Growth ($199/month), and Pro ($399/month). There is also a 14 day free trial.

For comparison, online course platform Thinkific also has 0% transaction fees but offers plans ranging from $49, $99, and $199 per month. However, Kajabi claims to have more in-house marketing tools than Thinkific, such as the ability to create sales funnels, create blogs, and use email marketing which includes built-in features such as autoresponder , customer relationship management (CRM), email templates. campaigns and more. Kajabi also offers a mobile app while Thinkific has yet to launch one.

While some creators continue to rely on ads or brand deals to make money, other creators are turning to additional revenue streams like online education, a market that was valued at 30 billion in 2021. According to a recent market research by Custom Market Insights, the size and value of the online education market is expected to reach approximately $200 billion by 2030.

Notable content creators who signed up for Kajabi include YouTubers Matt Steffanina, a dance choreographer, and Cassey Ho (Blogilates), a fitness instructor specializing in Pilates workout videos. Steffanina and Ho have around 30 million and 10 million followers respectively on social platforms.

“(Kajabi) has allowed us to place content where the rules will never change…ideally you want to have an element of social platforms that also generates revenue because ultimately you never know when the algorithm or the rules are going to change. And that’s something I’ve learned over the years because there were times when I was getting most of my income from YouTube… and now it’s Kajabi,” explained Stefanina in a statement.

Lesser-known creators have also found success with Kajabi. For example, Wendy Conklin joined in 2019 with a DIY chair upholstery course. At first, she had 114 students and made $34,000 in a week, Conklin told TechCrunch. “I got close to $100,000 in the first year of opening and closing that first class,” she added.

Since then, Conklin has launched various other courses and founded his company, Chair Whimsy. Currently, she teaches over 7,000 students and has earned a total of over $1.5 million on Kajabi.

Kenny Keller, a certified helicopter flight instructor, started his business in Kajabi in 2012. Helicopter Online Ground School (HOGS) offers training videos for people who want to become helicopter pilots. Keller has made over $2 million in revenue with Kajabi and has over 5,000 clients. HOGS has 37,000 YouTube subscribers.

The average Kajabi creator earns about $40,000 in annual income, according to the company, with one in three full-time content creators making more than six figures a year. Kajabi claims that most users who have reached $100,000 in revenue average a minimum of 400 customers.