Abridge Academy Connects Teachers to Independent Educational  Entrepreneurship

Some people are born to teach, and some teachers go on to be “teacherpreneurs″—educators who transition to teaching outside of the traditional classroom. Teacherpreneurs may develop their own digital courses, or use other teaching resources to enrich their curricula…. Others may be education consultants, or even teaching influencers, sharing ideas, advice, and resources for independent teachers to use.

For those teachers who want to expand beyond the brick and mortar classroom to online teaching, the award-winning Abridge Academy is a goldmine of a resource bank for teacherpreneurs. Educator Katie Prescott created the academy in 2018 with a focus on in-person teaching in Asia. The platform went digital in 2020, with new ESL (English as a Second Language) training and tutoring programs.

However, after struggling to find high quality teaching materials for the academy’s ESL tutors, Katie decided to create her own professional curricula. Her platform is designed for online education, with an emphasis on younger students. It’s available to independent teachers and small businesses. She especially wanted to make the lessons fun.

The result is a wealth of interactive, engaging, step-by-step teaching materials that are optimized for online teaching. Abridge Academy currently offers some 400 lessons that empower ESL teacherpreneurs. The platform saves them time and, more importantly, facilitates and enriches the online experience with their students.

Teaching materials range from interactive slides to homework workbooks, printable PDF flashcards, downloadable PDF worksheets and lesson previews. To accommodate as many teachers as possible who may already be using online video tools, lessons are tested on wide variety of online video conferencing and teaching platforms. This includes Zoom, Zhumu, Voov (known as Tencent Meeting in China), ClassIn, DingTalk, Koala Go, Surfly and SuperTeacher.

To make the program manageable for recurring income, and keep it both scalable and affordable, Katie wanted to allow access to the academy website dependent on a membership subscription model. It was important to keep lessons behind a paywall, and to have payments and cancellations fully automated. To do this and the other priority features on her wishlist, Katie chose Paid Memberships Pro.

Challenges

One of Abridge Academy’s initial challenges was how to make the educational materials affordable for their teacher clients and small schools. Katie opted for a pricing model based on a monthly subscription. A monthly subscription, opposed to selling a one-time upfront cost, keeps those end-user costs down. 

It was critical that the resources be protected against unauthorized access should a teacher cancel their membership. She also wanted to stop teachers from sharing links with non-members. It was important that someone who canceled their membership would not have access to the materials.

She was also impressed by the fact that unlike other membership plugins, Paid Membership Pro offers a free version that is fully functional, including payment processing capability,  allowing her to test the app before committing to it.

PMPro features that Katie likes include its:

• flexibility 
• scalability
• affordability
• user friendliness
• ease to set up
• integration with WP and other plugins
• metrics and reports
• a fully functional free version 

More specifically, PMPro’s built-in features and optional Add Ons allow for even more flexibility; for example, the academy takes advantage of:

• the option to generate coupons and discounts
• the ability to offer a trial period
• the “Refer a Friend″ (affiliate) Add On
• custom menus and visibility options according to member level

Katie adds that from the administrative side PMPro is easy to use, manage and integrate with other plugins. Meanwhile, for teacher members it provides customized homepages, an easy registration process, and accessible subscription and invoice records. Communicating with members and upselling to paid membership tiers is also a breeze thanks to PMPro’s ability to integrate seamlessly with the academy’s email marketing plugin of choice, FluentCRM.

With PMPro automating payments, cancellations and other administrative tasks, Abridge Academy’s small team can focus its time on creating and testing new lesson materials. Plus, they can spend time on important marketing tasks and providing customer support. 

Finally, Katie gives high marks to PMPro’s support team which provides clear and detailed guidance on any questions or technical issues that might come up. The team has offered invaluable advice on how to best optimize the Abridge Academy website. She’s already seeing major improvements in accessibility and conversion rate, after following their suggestions.

Impact and Success

In addition to its lesson bank, free webinars, and informative blog posts, Abridge Academy also offers a course that guides ESL teachers. The support teachers, focusing on the Chinese market, on how to market their lessons on social media. However, memberships form the core of Abridge Academy’s revenue, which underscores how critical PMPro is to its business model. 

Impressively, membership at Abridge Academy has doubled in the past year. They now serve around 3,000 curriculum memberships, while many more teachers take advantage of the academy’s free webinars and marketing training. 

Even more growth is expected this year. Plans to sell corporate group memberships are in place to further scale the business, as are additional subject areas and expanded student age ranges.

Ultimately, it’s Katie’s passion for education and for empowering other teachers that drives Abridge Academy’s mission and methods. When asked what she would advise other teacherpreneurs starting out, she stresses the importance of listening to one’s community. The faster you respond to your community’s needs, the faster you will develop a product that will serve them best.