We’ve loved writing this Staging Diva review. The Staging Diva has been around since the early days of online home staging classes, and owner Debra Gould has been featured on a number of publications, including HGTV, CNN, RealtorMag and The Wall Street Journal. It’s been a home staging course we have been wanting to review for years, and now we’ll take a closer look. The Staging Diva ranked #3 in our best home staging courses analysis.
We knew we’d have a lot of material to delve through when writing this Staging Diva review. Their blog is one of the biggest home staging blogs on the internet, and there are countless media comments and appearances by Debra. Furthermore, the Staging Diva website is full of articles, FAQs, reviews, and more.
In our recent analysis of the best home staging courses, the Staging Diva course was in the top 3 positions.
Home Staging Courses at the Staging Diva:
The Home Staging Institute offers four different courses, each at different price points. The main difference between the courses is the number of lessons included, and whether or not you want to earn a certificate at the end of a small exam.
All three options contain the main 5 home staging business courses:
Instant Download
Instant Download PLUS
Mailed to your door
The Staging Diva offers three packages:
Course
Pricing Options
Instant Download
$995 + taxes
Instant Download PLUS
$1095 + taxes
Mailed to your door
$1295 + taxes
Since all three of these options contain the same 5 key courses, we’ll be looking at these one by one below.
Course 1 – Cash in Decorating Homes to Sell
Course 2 – The Business of Home Staging
Course 3 – Taking the Mystery Out of Home Staging Consultations
Course 4 – Sales & Marketing Secrets
Course 5 – Over 30 More Ways to Make Money in Home Staging
Note that Instant Download PLUS contains two extra pieces of bonus material (worksheets, and a Q&A audio file), and the Mailed to Your Door option is simply Instant Download PLUS, but you get it in the mail, not via an instant download.
Course 1 – Cash in Decorating Homes to Sell
This course covers the following topics:
How to learn what other home stagers charge
How to create your business so you can focus on the aspects you love (the creative side of things)
21 different services you can offer as a home stager
A blueprint for building confidence as you begin to grow your home staging business
How to get over your fears about starting a staging business
8 different ways you’ll benefit from joining the home staging industry
In a nutshell, this course sets the scene for what’s to come. It will get you mentally ready for entering the industry, and revved up to complete the rest of the course.
Course 2 – The Business of Home Staging
This course covers the following topics:
Ten cheap ways to grow your home staging business
How you could get discounts at retail stores
The pros and cons of owning a home staging inventory
How you should charge for your services
How to build trust and credibility
Our thoughts on home staging accreditation
Why you should register your home staging business
What you need to get started
For the creative ones amongst us, this course may be a little dry. Who wants to learn about registering a business?! But it’s all-important content, which is definitely worth learning before you go too far down your journey of owning a home staging business.
Course 3 – Taking the Mystery Out of Home Staging Consultations
This course covers the following topics:
What should be in your staging “toolkit”
How to generate future sales
Handy invoice templates for every situation
Getting paid on the spot (to avoid chasing money)
Building client relationships
How to communicate without offending your clients
How to start your client meetings
What to bring to a home staging consultation
Avoiding the “free estimate” trap
How to turn a potential buyer into a paying client
This course is important for beginner home stagers, as it can make one quite nervous taking their first home staging consultation. This course helps you know what to expect, so there are no surprises, and you will be confident to handle any situation.
Course 4 – Sales & Marketing Secrets
This course covers the following topics:
Pricing strategies for home staging
How you can use these to work less hours and earn more money
Knowing your 4 key audiences (and how to reach them)
The main questions you must answer before someone will become a paying client
Overcoming the top five reasons someone won’t hire a home stager
Defining what home staging success means for you, and what this means for your marketing plan.
Course 5 – Over 30 More Ways to Make Money in Home Staging
This course covers the following topics:
What is an “alliance” in the home staging industry?
How these can make money for you
Difference between an alliance and a partnership
How to find alliances, and negotiate commissions
Course 5 also wraps up the course. You’ll get an invitation to graduate-only home staging support, and some wrap-up questions from the training program.
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Staging Diva Review:
Price: The courses at the Staging Diva start at $998 and go up to $1295 (both with additional taxes).
The Staging Diva website claims their best seller is their $1095 “Instant Download PLUS” course, which we also agree delivers the most value. It is just $100 more than the basic course, and you get a few more bonus materials. The course is also instantly delivered, which is ideal.
The highest-priced course is the same as the best seller course mentioned above, but you get it in the post. Why someone would pay $200 more, to wait a few days, and have the hassle of physical digital media files, is beyond us. But hey, different strokes for different folks, right? We are sure it appeals to some people.
Payment Plans: We can’t see the availability of any payment plans at the Staging Diva.
Refund Policy: The Staging Diva refund policy is a money-back guarantee on the digital instant-download courses, if requested within 48 hours.
For the course which is mailed to your door, you have a 30 day money-back guarantee.
Material: As seen above, the course material from the Staging Diva is thorough, especially in terms of the business side of running a home staging business. If you feel you have your creative interior-design side of things under control, the Staging Diva will put you in a good position to start a home staging business with confidence.
If you don’t have much staging or interior design experience, you may need to supplement this home staging course with another course on that side of things.
Bonuses: There are five bonuses which the courses can come with (check the Staging Diva website to see what bonus comes with which course package). The bonus products are:
Home Staging Consultation Checklist
Home Staging Business “Quick-Start” Checklist
Staging Diva Network Discussion Group Access (2 months)
Training Program Action Guide
Q&A Audio Recording
Reviews: The Staging Diva has about 50 positive reviews on its website. There are also 16 reviews on Amazon, all of which are positive. We couldn’t help but notice most of the Amazon reviews are about 10 years old, with one or two within the past year.
As seen in the picture below (taken from the Staging Diva reviews section on their website), they claim to have had over 30,000 students in over 23 countries. Pretty impressive!
However, there are also some negative reviews out there.
I took the course last year and found the material very dated. I was very disappointed in the courses and regret choosing. The courses are so dated that there is very little discussion, if any, about many, current social media marketing opportunities, e-design, updated accounting and website programs, mobile apps etc. Most of the information in the courses is just common sense. There is much better training out there.
Julie (2019) on OpportunityChecker.com
That seems to be one of the more common complaints about this course – the information is a little dated. The course founder addresses this in a comment on another home staging course website and states “the program is updated when needed…these aren’t major updates because the Staging Diva Business Model still works”.
Value: The 5 core courses at the Staging Diva deliver value-bombs of information that are perfect for anyone wanting to get into the home staging business. For around $1000, we think the course is worth the money if you want a head start in the home staging business.
If you have time, curiosity, and a business-head, you could probably pick up a lot of the information by networking with a local home stager and shouting them 3 or 4 coffees over a month.
Final word
We hope you’ve enjoyed our Staging Diva review. You can, of course, learn a lot more about the Staging Diva on their website.
From the content and design of the Staging Diva website, we were a little concerned at first about the age of the material. Was it written 10+ years ago, and has it been updated? It seemed to us that the posted CD-ROMs, and audio recordings, were a little out of date.
When looking at the material, however, much of it is still relevant today. With the 48-hour money-back guarantee, we’ll leave it to you to be the judge.
What do we love (and not love) about the Staging Diva?
Business-focused training
Over 30,000 students
Content feels outdated
No Payment Plans
Short 48-hour refund window
Expensive for digital course
Lacks design/decor focus
Website feels a bit dated
Do you have something to add to our Staging Diva review? Please let us know at team@homestagingreviews.com – we’d love to add your comments, insights, and reviews to this page. We want our site to grow to offer the best home staging certification course reviews!
