Skool is gaining some serious momentum. But is it worth it?
In this review we’ll look at:
- Skool’s best features
- Skool’s worst features
- How Skool differentiates itself
- Whether or not I recommend it
- Lots more
What is Skool?
Skool is an online learning platform that serves creators looking to engage and build their audience.
There is really two sides to Skool, the creator side and the learner/student (member) side.
Skool offers a tremendous amount of value for students with a myriad of topics and many courses at low cost or no cost.
But, for the purpose of this review, I’m going to take you through the platform from the creator side.
There are a ton of aspects to Skool.com. It has the capability to help you build a community, build a marketing funnel, earn you money – both directly and indirectly, so let’s dive in to some of the best features.
Community
Skool is an interactive community that will allow you to engage with your target market.
In the above image you’ll see the membership area of a breathwork community.
The following areas are available to everyone:
- General Discussion
- Personal Wins
- Resources
- Questions
- Introduce yourself
- Announcements
This provides everything your audience needs to get started and engage with.
These categories can be customized in the group settings section.
You can create the categories however you like. The default account starts out with only general discussion.
When you’re creating the category, you have the ability to set permissions. You can make it so anyone can post and view, or only admins/mods can post, and anyone can view.
Skool: A Platform Designed for Marketers
If you join Skool and you delve into it, you’ll discover that Skool is really a platform for marketers.
To put it another way, it’s a marketing funnel.
Now, I don’t say this in a negative way at all.
In fact, it is very much a positive thing.
It’s positive because the platform, and the content, have the ability to add tremendous value to the members life.
So, that being said, let’s look at how Skool really works, from the marketing perspective.
Marketing Funnel and Lead Generation
Skool is designed to help creators generate revenue and build their member base (community).
They do this by offering courses, paid or free.
When you create a community in Skool, and you go to select a course, it gives you the ability to choose if all members have access, only some members have access, or members of a certain level have access.
This level of control allows you to design a course that is valuable for your audience, and creates massive engagement.
For example, Skool does an exceptional job at offering a platform that engages its user base. This would be what they call gamification.
Gamification (how to get users to spend more time with your content)
Here, community creators can create custom names up to 9 levels.
You don’t necessarily have to use all 9, but they’re there if you need them.
The levels are designed to unlock after completion. This incentivises users to complete the given material in order to get access to remaining content.
Joining Skool Communities
When you are looking to find or discover communities, you get access to their main landing page.
This landing page has images on the front, followed by information about the community.
You’ll see whether the community is:
- Public or private
- The number of members in the community
- Free or paid
Along with this information is a description that can hook and intrigue people to join the community.
In this description for Fit Friends, it uses scarcity in the form of “Hurry, only a few spots left!”
This is compelling and invokes potential members to click the join button when they may not have wanted to initially.
Plugins for Marketing and Automation
Skool offers a variety of plugins to help creators invite members as well as onboard them and integrate them into their business.
As of writing, Skool offers:
- Membership questions
- Zapier integration
- Webhook
- Auto DM new members
When members request to join your group, you have the option when you enable membership questions to ask up to three questions.
These questions have up to 150 characters to create the question and three options for response types: text box, multiple choice, and email address.
Capturing email addresses is critical. It allows you to reach out to your community members and continue to communicate, send reminders, and add value.
One of the tools to help effectively capture and store email addresses is Zapier.
Zapier is an automation platform that provides no-code automation to over 6,000 apps.
It’s got a variety of use cases for applications such as project management, customer support, lead management and marketing campaigns.
Skool highlights three use cases for Zapier:
- Invite a member to your group with custom course access
- Unlock a course for a member in your group
- Invite members, unlock/lock courses, and send membership questions to your CRM.
Each one of these use cases has clear instructions on the Skool site so if you’re using or going to use a CRM to manage your community – you’ll have an easy time setting things up.
Note: you still have easy access to your members email addresses even if you don’t setup Zapier.
From the members section you have the ability to filter and export your members information they provided to you when they requested access (member questions).
You can then take this CSV and manually upload it to Hubspot, your autoresponder, or wherever you’re managing your community or mailing list.
Video and Media Management
For video management Skool utilizes third-party platforms. It doesn’t host your content.
You will need to sign up and upload your video to YouTube, Vimeo, Loom or Wistia.
Once you upload your content on that platform, all you need to do is paste the link/URL in and it will automatically recognize it in the module.
Below the module you can add a description along with additional attachments including:
- Resource links (URL to things your members might find helpful)
- Resource files (materials that might go along with the video)
- Transcript
The course you’re creating is structured into sets and modules so you can break things up however you want (e.g. top-level category of resistance training, and modules about strength training, hypertrophy training, endurance training, etc.).
Skool Pricing
Skool charges creators $99 per month for 1 group. This group gives you all their features, unlimited courses and members and a 2.9% transaction fee for members who sign up for your paid courses.
Note: Skool uses Stripe to send payouts from subscribers to your bank account. But they have their own preferred rate.
When a creator signs up to start a 14-day free trial, it lists the transaction fees of the competitors which are:
- Skool: 2.9%
- Stripe: 4.9%
- Kajabi: 4.9%
- Patreon: 14%
- Gumroad: 14%
- Disscord: 16%
Course Prices – Earning Revenue from Your Courses
You can choose to create free courses for your members, or you can choose to charge them, it all depends on the strategy you’re using.
Take a look here.
TakHere you have two different situations.
You’ve got a high dollar price tag with The Project. They’re charging $75 per month for their membership.
Right beside them is The RROC. They’re charging $1 per month.
Typically a marketing funnel will start with a free offering, then a low cost option and build up to higher ticket items after you’ve built trust and delivered value.
You will need to design your marketing funnel based on your goals.
Skool Referrals
Skool provides the opportunity for you to make some passive income.
If one of your members creates a group using your referral link, you’ll get paid 40% of the revenue.
So, the Skool platform is $99, you’ll receive $40 per month (MRR).
MRR means monthly recurring revenue so you will get paid as long as the creator is running the community.
Skool: Things I like
Let’s cover some of the things I liked using the Skool platform:
Gamification: the websites use of gamification will help drive engagement and time on site. This setup will allow members to take action with the courses and content allowing them to derive more value from the material.
Platform Fees: the Skool platfrom has extremely low fees. This helps creators keep more money in their pocket which they can use for other aspects of running their community and business.
Marketing lens: You can tell this was built with marketers in mind. Providing Zapier as an integration tool allows you to build out your mailing list and CRM easily.
Skool: Things I Don’t Like
The main thing that stands out in Skool is the third-party video hosting requirement.
It’s not the end of the world but it would be nice to be integrated into one service instead of having to have another subscription.
The Bottom Line: My Skool Review
I really like the community premise that this product brings to the market. Its taking a unique angle and building what has made other social network platforms successful (community and engagement).
The pricing justifies the value and utilizing this platform is a great way to build your brand, disseminate your content and grow your business.
Take it for a spin and use the free trial.