The Membership Machine Show – Jonathan Denwood and Spencer Forman – for advice, tips, and insight on planning, running, and growing a successful membership website, plus what is the best technology solutions from WordPress and SaaS, plus interviews with membership industry experts.
This Week Show’s Sponsors
Sensei LMS: Sensei LMS
BlogVault: BlogVault
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
LaunchFlows: LaunchFlows
Episode Transcript
[00:00:03.840] – Intro
Welcome to the membership machine show. Talking you through your membership website, from the initial idea all the way to the finished product. Here’s your host, Jonathan Denwood.
[00:00:16.010] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back to the membership machine show; this is episode six. We’re doing this on the 12th of the second 22. Christmas is coming, folks. We’ve had Thanksgiving given. I love America, folks. It’s the only place where you literally get two Christmases, Thanksgiving and then Christmas, baby.
[00:00:36.660] – Spencer Forman
Don’t get out of the UK.
[00:00:38.020] – Jonathan Denwood
Folks. We’ve got a great show. We’re going to be talking about the best WordPress membership and LMS plugins that you should look at. I’m sure Spencer’s got some strong views. I’ve got some views, spencer. Would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?
[00:01:01.090] – Spencer Forman
It’s Spencer Forman from Wplaunchify.com, but you can find me now@spencerforman.com. That’s F-O-R-M-A-N. That’s my new hub to all things that I’m involved with.
[00:01:13.290] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s his new hub. He’s all over the internet.
[00:01:16.170] – Spencer Forman
I’ve got a hub.
[00:01:17.470] – Jonathan Denwood
He’s got a hub.
[00:01:18.850] – Spencer Forman
He got a great deal on gas and coffee. If you come over.
[00:01:22.470] – Jonathan Denwood
There we go. That’s fantastic, isn’t it, Spencer? We’ve got a diverse group of plugins. Let’s start off with one of my favorites. Let’s start off with one of my favorites. They also sponsored the show. The founders are friends of mine. Let’s start off with Lifter.LMS So, I’m just going to throw it over to you. How would you encapsulate lifter LMS? What are in your mind some of its strengths and some of its weaknesses?
[00:02:01.240] – Spencer Forman
Well, in the world of anything you’re doing with an online course or courses, you need essentially a librarian. So a learning management system. In my opinion, it’s first and foremost and probably indispensable feature is to be the organizer of your course content. If you don’t have courses with lessons and quizzes and other things, then you probably do not need an LMS. It is worth mentioning that many of the LMS that exist, there’s really two or three main leaders. Lifter learn there’s. A couple others arguably allow you to do much more like onboarding users taking money, membership, subscriptions. I argue you shouldn’t do that because you should use it for its highest and best feature, which is the organization of your course content and otherwise use the other components we talked about in our previous shows and we’ll talk about today. Beyond that, though, the key differentiator because I didn’t answer your question, is Lifter is free and then you pay for the chots keys. But it has a very, very, very high amount of personal interaction from its founders, Chris and Thomas, as well as its team, Will and Kurt and everybody else who’s now involved, who I know personally.
[00:03:26.770] – Spencer Forman
So what you’re getting with Lifter is the relationship as well as the things that go with it. And whether you’re using the free by itself or the free with the chat fees, when you pay for it, you really do get something that’s unique in the WordPress world.
[00:03:40.910] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I totally agree with you. There’s been some of my part is that what they offer for free? They do offer a lot for free. They’ve got then add ons, premier add ons, they’re about 120 each. You only need to buy one add on and that’s for Stripe. They do do add on for PayPal. So for $240 or for $120, you’re off and going. Like I say in the free pack, they offer a lot for free. And then they got Earth Pack, which I think is about three of their most selected addons for 149. They got a Universal, I think, that’s got more of the addons. And they’ve got the Infinity, which gives all the addons that they supply. It’s a mature product. They’ve been part of the WordPress ecosystem for over seven years. They’ve got a lot of integrations and they’ve basically done things the right way in my mind. The other strength which Spencer touched on is they offer a lot of support and a lot of training at different levels. You can’t expect to get too much if you’re just utilizing the free product, but they offer a Facebook group, other forms where you still get a fair bit of support even if you’re just using the free products.
[00:05:25.170] – Jonathan Denwood
And they’re very easy to engage if you pay for one of the paid packs. The Earth, the Universal Infinity, as you go up, you get more and more training from them, more engagement. They’re a really great crew, aren’t they? Really very honest people, aren’t they?
[00:05:50.760] – Spencer Forman
I mean, I would honestly just suggest that people think of it like that because I would be the argumentative one to repeat myself, but I don’t. Even when using Lift or recommend anybody sell their stuff with the Lifter integrations with Stripe and everything, you’re going to use Lifter with WooCommerce and or do things for free. But the difference between doing it with that and learned that and something else would be basically, if you need the kind of relationships that they offer and the help in the community, it’s a great place to start. And the software has been refactored recently and it’s always been upgraded by Thomas. But the point is, it gets you into something that wraps you with the kind of experience and other individuals. And I think that’s really the thing you’re buying. You really are.
[00:06:38.190] – Jonathan Denwood
If you’re serious about building a real business and you really want and you’re looking at WordPress, you could go do a lot worse than looking at this. But you got to be the type of person that really wants to build more than one course and you’re going to get a lot of functionality and it’s a great place to start because of all the support you get. Let’s move on, Spence. Let’s look at something totally different in a way, but member press. So I’m just going to throw it over to you what’s your views on member press?
[00:07:16.910] – Spencer Forman
Member press is the 1977 Chevrolet Corvette V Eight or the 1877 horse and buggy. It was and still remains for many people the only game in town. If you wanted an all in one plugin that back to our use of the term framework was like a framework and a plug in. It on boarded the users. It took the money. It does the subscription, it protects the content. It allows you to do basic courses. But it does so in today’s world at a very high cost. Kind of like the metaphor I use all the time of the kid who wants to learn to ride a bike and so parents buy a tricycle instead of a ten speed with training wheels. When you get into member press, you’re in member press and you lose some of the feature like Interconnectivity you would get from doing a different stack, where as I just mentioned, you’re only using the LMS for the features of organizing content and you use other more appropriate plugins like WooCommerce, Wpfusion and so forth for connecting to everything else. And if somebody comes to me in today’s world with member press, it’s usually because they are having a difficulty with, albeit an amazing plugin from a different generation.
[00:08:34.630] – Spencer Forman
They have a Tesla and they’re trying to figure out how can I connect my wagon to the back of my Tesla or where do I put the gasoline in my Tesla? And I’m like stop. You have to remember you’ve got something from a different generation of WordPress that’s got stuff that overlaps now with better feature only plugins. And I think that’s where the mindset has to be. Is it good enough? Yes, if you stick with just it very similar we talked about in the past, like other plugins that do one thing as a framework, but if you’re trying to make a Lego block or an Ikea kind of feature stack member press too much.
[00:09:12.790] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I would agree with what I think there are two reasons why people really look at this apart from all the SEO, all the content they’ve got out on the internet is the development team are really great people and they know what they’re doing. It’s good. Technically, it’s well coded if you’re just looking to just do one course and you’re not looking at some of the SAS products that we looked at last year, like Learnable, teachable, you want to do it in house. I think it’s a great alternative then utilizing Learn about thinkific. The other thing is it’s connection with learning. If you really want to sell subscriptions and you don’t want to go down the WooCommerce route, it’s got a lot of linkage historically through SEO, through article placement, with people looking at the learning solution. So that’s why people tend to go down that route when they are really looking at learning. Dash in my experience, I agree, but.
[00:10:33.660] – Spencer Forman
This is sort of maybe a good time to mention a really esoteric point, but something that people will probably acknowledge if they’re listening to this and go, that sounds like me. Integrations are great, except when you get to what you need with integrations and then you realize the other 20% doesn’t exist. And now you realize, God damn it, why did I do it that way? Because it’s sort of back to the metaphor of Legos, right? You can’t build something with Lego blocks and 20% Tinker Toys. It doesn’t work that way. It’s got to be 100% Lego blocks. They’re all compatible as features or it doesn’t work at all. And I think that’s what’s happening in the world we live in is that most of the people who are using one of these all in one things come across like, oh, I use the this, integration that, integration this, and they go, Why can’t I do this anymore? And now they have to create a Frankenstein monster or a Bandaid or an API webhook monster versus having chosen something differently as the Stack. Again, Blair, as a professional, outstanding, great founder, he’s one of the originals.
[00:11:39.250] – Spencer Forman
But listen, there’s still wagon makers out there and people that raise horses, too. Just understand what you’re buying if you’ve got a Tesla.
[00:11:47.960] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. And that’s one of the purposes of this show. We’re going to go for a breakfast. A couple of messages from our major sponsors. Much appreciated their support. We will be back in a few moments.
[00:12:00.720] – Speaker 5
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[00:12:34.160] – Speaker 6
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[00:13:05.510] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back. I’d like to point out we’ve got some great special deals from our sponsors. Also, if you’re looking for a Pacific Plugin or SAS service to help you with your membership website, I’ve created the Best of the Breed. They’re all listed on the WP Tonic website. You can get these special deals and the recommendations by going over to Wptonicdeals, WP Tonicdeals. So let’s go on to the next thing. Spencer? Learn. What do you think of Learn?
[00:13:46.990] – Spencer Forman
I mean, we just discussed the idea that Learn is probably, along with Lifter, one of the granddaddies of the whole LMS thing and prior to it being sold, I always make a mistake of it’s. Liquid Web or one of their companies.
[00:14:00.630] – Speaker 3
It’s very confusing. They got so many names, so much going on. Don’t you think it’s confusing.
[00:14:08.260] – Spencer Forman
They got Stellar, either Stellar WP or it’s Liquid Web or it’s one of the sub.
[00:14:14.220] – Jonathan Denwood
Well’s, the other one.
[00:14:15.790] – Speaker 3
What’s the other one? Well, I think it’s hilarious myself, but there we go.
[00:14:21.560] – Spencer Forman
I know almost all of the players.
[00:14:24.340] – Speaker 3
Is almost as bad as you.
[00:14:27.790] – Spencer Forman
I won’t say who has said these things, but I’m friendly with professionally and otherwise. Most everybody who works there that’s in charge and they’ll say the same thing to me.
[00:14:36.820] – Speaker 3
They’re like everyday sheet today products and.
[00:14:44.320] – Spencer Forman
The services are fine. The management is a very unusual because it’s a family owned business at the top end and so there’s a lot of moving stuff. Anyway, to the point learn is probably our number one use plugin for anybody with a business with LMS. We just discussed Lifter and while there are instances where we may recommend Lifter first and foremost for most businesses that are established with the product, market, fit or Enterprise we tend to lean on Learn first and foremost because it’s well known that there was over a million dollars spent on refactoring the code. There’s an infinite amount of add ons. The way that it works has certain key features, one of which I can mention because I’ve discussed this openly with Thomas and Chris and I’m not sure why they don’t do it. Learn allows you to set the permissions required to view a course. Now, what does that mean? It could be free? Anybody can see all the stuff. It could be free, requires registration after you’ve logged in, but otherwise free. It could be closed. It could be you have to buy something. You have to be put in via an API.
[00:15:53.320] – Spencer Forman
But the ability to do that means that we have the ultimate flexibility to create the kind of use only this feature of Learn dash and connect the person’s membership by some other means. Whereas unfortunately, in Lifter and this is a little nuance you got to enroll in everything. It’s either open or it’s enrolled. And I find that quite frustrating because I have to create like a false zero amount accessibility kind of a place.
[00:16:25.160] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re absolutely right. There are some workarounds, but why they don’t sort that out, I have no idea.
[00:16:32.210] – Spencer Forman
I mean, I’ve discussed this and it’s just the nature of how it came to be. But like, for example, some of the lighter plugins we discussed might be on our list. But LearnPress LearnPress is a plug in that is quite attractive to me for many things because of the fact that you can just set it like Learn. But if I was honestly saying where we’re going to start? 99% of people, I’ll just start them on Learning. And if they’re my client, I’ll let them use my license or something. Because the point is, Learn has all the other ecosystem stuff. LearnPress is quite clever if you got one or two courses, and it solves that one problem that if you guys are listening, please. Thomas chris. Make an option in lifter that you could just have a course that’s protected with the tag and don’t have to be enrolled or any of the nonsense or whatever, because the accessibility option is sort of a drag. And that’s unfortunate because I’ve been doing testing lately on how to deliver these WordPress as a service solutions that’s one of my main business focuses for this year and beyond.
[00:17:35.970] – Spencer Forman
And I find it very difficult to use Lifter for that reason.
[00:17:41.440] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m not going to respond.
[00:17:42.420] – Spencer Forman
I’m going to say it because it’s nuanced, but it’s like if you want to set up a generic, here’s a baseline right. There’s a certain number of steps that you’re going to go through. It doesn’t change any of the positive things we’re talking about. But I’m saying for many people, they just want an experience like turn it on, put my courses in and I’m done. Right. And for that, it’s nice to have those options. Yeah.
[00:18:02.470] – Jonathan Denwood
I could be very careful with my words, listeners and views. I can easily upset Uncle Spencer. So my position is, one, one of the things you got to understand, folks, when you’re going to build something in WordPress, one, it’s bit for flea market. Two, it’s reliant about how it integrates with other products, other elements in the WordPress ecosystem. Learn, the founders, Justin and his wife, really, especially Justin, were from a training background. They also did like Spencer remark before they sold it, they did spend an enormous amount refactoring the code. In my mind, it’s got a slightly better UX design than Lifter LMS. The people that refactor the code are well known. Ten up. I think I’m correct that. They did the work. They’re great. It’s a great WordPress. Devoted agency. Jack, the founder, they know what they’re doing, but it’s got the strong linkage with Buddy Boss, which lyft LMS doesn’t have. And a lot of our clients who are looking at Buddy Boss when they go to the Buddy Boss site, it talks all about Learn Dash. So they’re trying to persuade them to look at something else is a waste of time.
[00:19:45.420] – Jonathan Denwood
They’re committed to Buddy Boss Learn Dash. And it’s a great product. If you’re not going to use WooCommerce with it, you’re going to have to use another system because it hasn’t got a sophisticated payment. Internal shopping cart. That Lifter. And I know Uncle Spencer hates me for saying this because he’s totally committed.
[00:20:14.760] – Spencer Forman
To where I’m saying I’m not interrupting you because what you’re saying is valid, but it’s 180 degrees from what I recommend.
[00:20:24.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and he gets very annoyed with me.
[00:20:27.360] – Speaker 3
But try not to upset him because he’s very calm.
[00:20:31.920] – Spencer Forman
Not upsetting me. We’re offering I think today’s show is very balanced. I’m saying we’re offering a balanced 50 50 on this one. You’re saying A and I’m saying B and they’re opposite records.
[00:20:42.510] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s not that, actually. I totally agree with you. Actually. I’m just pointing out, trying to persuade somebody that has been bombarded by out of date blog posts and YouTube videos and they’ve spent two days and they’ve already made their mind up and trying to persuade them that they should use whatever we’re discussing with WooCommerce is a bit of a wasted discussion to some extent, Spencer, but you are totally correct.
[00:21:14.440] – Spencer Forman
I mean, I’ll clarify to the extent it’s useful. So if somebody needs to directly sell access to a course, it’s six of one half of those and the other because whether they use the stripe or the PayPal integration, both Lifter and Learn Dash have it. If you are going to build a stack of things that I’ve been recommending, obviously I’ve made it clear a thousand times, WooCommerce is essential to that and it costs somebody actually very little extra time compared to the benefits. So your points are valid. I support you in saying that and I appreciate you being sensitive to my hair trigger, but at the same time, I don’t want anybody to misunderstand. We actually just did say almost the opposite recommendations. Learn Dash has a really nice WooCommerce integration that when you’re doing tags, means you can essentially have one product in WooCommerce. And you could say that if somebody buys this, they immediately get access to this that the other courses. And if you want, you can give them a tag that’s so powerful. And again, a similar feature exists in Lifter. But the difference being is if it’s not a free course, you have to have sort of this free proxy enrollment placeholder thing where you don’t need that.
[00:22:36.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Onto the next one. Paid membership pro. Really, if you’re looking just to do one course and you’re committed just to use a membership plug in, I would suggest Paid Membership Pro myself. Great team, great husband and wife team. Just great people. Basically, the Coleman, they’re just great people, really. It’s a great plug in. What’s your feelings, spencer?
[00:23:12.640] – Spencer Forman
The Coleman’s, and I think it was really Jason and his wife maybe came on, but as it grew, she’s really outspoken now. She does all the outreach and stuff, so they’re outstanding support, really personal relationship with the customers. The plugin was always being updated in the early days, back when we were carving stuff out of wood. I really appreciated how they would share snippets and interact in their forums. I mean, that was the heady days when all of us were figuring out what to make and they still maintain that. So with the caveat that you just put if you got one course and you just want to sell it right away, then that would be fine by me. Just use a simple WordPress site. This plug in and be done with it. That is about the extent to which I can recommend it because otherwise everything else that I said kicks in. You’re buying a tricycle in a world of features and I don’t yeah, it’s.
[00:24:07.710] – Jonathan Denwood
Very similar to last week’s episode in the SAS world. I had to take a very long.
[00:24:13.840] – Speaker 3
Shower after that episode.
[00:24:15.690] – Spencer Forman
Actually.
[00:24:15.960] – Speaker 3
I felt a bit dirty.
[00:24:20.360] – Spencer Forman
I cried myself to sleep.
[00:24:24.640] – Speaker 3
I know you do. You seem nice to me folks. Isn’t he? Buddy.
[00:24:31.780] – Jonathan Denwood
I hate you.
[00:24:32.610] – Speaker 3
Out.
[00:24:33.430] – Spencer Forman
The audience sent me roses after that.
[00:24:37.090] – Speaker 3
But after that you said it was bright day after that.
[00:24:46.540] – Jonathan Denwood
But it’s very similar to what we discussed last week with the SAS. If you’re looking just one course maybe look at thinkific if you’re committed to SAS solution and you’re going to have multiple courses, look at Kajabi and a couple of the other ones that we were talking about. It’s similarly in the WordPress world if you’re just looking for one course and you’re committing to a membership website and you won’t look at Lifter, I personally think you’d probably be better off this year’s using Lifter with the stripe add on. But people don’t even it’s not on disagreement with your Spence, it’s just that people to go online and do a big dive and it’s very hard to persuade them when they’ve got a set. They’ve already told themselves where they’re going.
[00:25:43.240] – Spencer Forman
Well, somebody has told them.
[00:25:44.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, somebody has told them.
[00:25:46.480] – Spencer Forman
But see to a certain extent let’s back up the truck and let’s look at the automotive industry for a moment as a comparative because now that we’re in electrics, right, there’s a guy, Rich rebuilds who used to talk about rebuilding Tesla’s from parts and now he’s moved on. But he recently had a video I saw about buying a Rivian but he lives on the Far East coast and there are none of the Tesla network of chargers. So he had an hour and a half video where just to go 200 miles a couple like six days because of all the complications. But here’s the point let me finish please. The point is in WordPress we’ve evolved really quickly just like the automotive market is for electric to a situation where I think there’s now two legitimate trains of thought. You either are going to do a simple site where you just need like a SaaS solution like WordPress is a service in which case there are look, we’ve got a dozen competing products that are framework like plugins. Just pick one of them, put them on a website, you’re done. And somebody could legitimately as a freelancer or make a business just here’s a website with everything set up using paid memberships pro.
[00:26:53.770] – Spencer Forman
Done. Lifter already does that on Cloudway. But the other option is I kind of know that I need more than just what this framework plugin does. So I better just use a different stack where the features and the reason that that’s similar let me just round, I’m almost in. The reason it’s similar is you buy in today’s electric car, you think, oh, everything must be like a Tesla, but the devil is in the details. Guy buys an $85,000 truck and he can’t get it home from Florida because there’s no charging stations that work with it. Similarly, you buy this plugin and you think, oh, everything’s set. You get all your content in. You spend a month, you pay a designer, you realize, damn it, I should have done it differently. And that’s what we’re talking about.
[00:27:37.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Did you have to swear when you say that?
[00:27:40.260] – Spencer Forman
Sorry, is dam.
[00:27:42.490] – Jonathan Denwood
I swear no cloud waste. Did you have to say that?
[00:27:48.410] – Spencer Forman
I’m not recommending them here. I’m saying that and Lifter have a thing with cloudways.
[00:27:55.150] – Speaker 3
How can you say that? You got a Paige leaf bloody page.
[00:27:58.420] – Spencer Forman
I have this because I went to Wordcampus and it’s an awesome fitting shirt and it’s got neat little bling, but I’m keeping the logo below. Paisley doesn’t exist anymore anyway. It’s already part of GoDaddy.
[00:28:09.560] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re going to go for our breakfast. We’ve cut all the sponsor messages. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:28:17.660] – Spencer Forman
Hey, it’s Benz from Launchflows.com. If you’ve been looking for a fast and easy way to create powerful sales funnels on WordPress, then look no further than Launch Flows. In just minutes, you can easily create instant registration, upsells, down cells, order bumps, one click checkouts, one time offers custom thank you pages. And best of all, no coding is required. For as little as $50 per year, you can own and control your entire sales funnel machine with Launch Flows. Get your copy today.
[00:28:50.510] – Speaker 7
This podcast episode is brought to you by Lifter LMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any kind of online course, training based membership website, or any type of elearning project, lyfterlms is the most secure, stable, well supported solution on the market. Go to lifterlms.com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code podcast 20. That’s podcast 20. Enjoy the rest of your show.
[00:29:28.390] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back. Just want to point out, if you’re looking to build a membership website on WordPress, you need great hosting. That’s what WP Tonic offers. We offer suite of plugins, over $10,000 worth of plugins, plus we set everything up for you. We make the experience of utilizing WordPress for your membership. LMS just really easy and painlessly. So go over to WP Tonic and buy our hosting and you won’t be disappointed. On we go. Spencer sensei. MMS. Talk about the devil in that it’s totally the opposite, because if you go utilize saying MMS, you’re committed to WooCommerce. It’s like from one extreme to the.
[00:30:22.870] – Speaker 3
Other of this flea market that we’re discussing. It’s quite fascinating, really, isn’t it
[00:30:29.400] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s your thoughts about Sensi LMS?
[00:30:34.990] – Spencer Forman
Ronnie Burt and his team of 17 people were put in charge of fixing what’s wrong with sunset.
[00:30:43.610] – Jonathan Denwood
They’re happy crew.
[00:30:46.760] – Spencer Forman
Ronnie is the nicest guy. Ronnie and Chris are at the same level of super chill people.
[00:30:55.990] – Speaker 3
I wish you would.
[00:30:57.060] – Spencer Forman
Yes, I was the same thing. Like getting to be the get off my lawn kids. Old man that I am, I’ve come to recognize that my personality is based upon a certain difference between how they seem to be in public and in person. And I am very, you know all right, so to the point. Sensi is like the wagon that somebody found in Grandpa’s barn and they got left some money by the rich uncle to try to dig it out and dress it up like a Tesla. And maybe they’ll succeed. But right now, I can’t see why anybody would use the Sensei pro for $149 a year on that old wagon when there are far better choices. Now, is it possible that Ronnie and his team are going to pull a rabbit out of a hat? Maybe. I was actually trying to get them involved in a relationship where I helped them to revive it by making it a feature type plugin. That was the same advice they gave. Here is what I gave to him and his team. But somebody higher up the chain didn’t want to buy into the cost of my involvement in that.
[00:32:06.490] – Spencer Forman
So as it is, I hope they still do it independently, but I would love to see Sensei become that thing that we’ve been discussing, which is it’s a feature of WordPress and it works as an accessory without essentially forcing you to buy their special connectivity plugin to WooCommerce. Because the connectivity plugin to WooCommerce essentially breaks all of the benefits of using it as a feature with, as I was suggesting, in marketing automation. So, like as an organ. Remember back at the beginning of the show a million years ago, an LMS should be an organizational feature. And if it does that, well, it’s worth paying for. But when they try to add in the stuff and make it complex and all these other things they’re doing, they’re breaking its primary benefit, which is keep it simple, make it work with what already exists and people will pay.
[00:32:57.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s really fascinating because Ronnie really has got a history and they learn in LMS. He really knows his stuff. Like I say, what Spencer said, he’s one of the nicest people and their sponsors of this show and they’re doing interesting stuff, but he’s dealing with it was a plug in that was allowed to kind of semi dine on the vine and then suddenly automatic decided, somebody said, well, we got to revive this. And they hired Ronnie and his team and they’re doing some really interesting stuff. But at the present moment, if, you know, it has strong integration with WooCommerce, that’s all I can say.
[00:33:49.760] – Spencer Forman
I can add to my thoughts. It’s my thoughts. He never said this, but my thoughts are. The reason that they’re spending money on trying to revive it is because we’ve discussed in other shows how everybody is racing to have WordPress as a service and a vertical stack. And if you look to the other hosting companies, like whatever it’s, LiquidWeb Stella, whatever.
[00:34:13.840] – Speaker 3
They’Ve got.
[00:34:14.890] – Spencer Forman
So I’m saying, like, every vertical has to have an LMS in it. And, oh, we’ve got this old dog in the barn. Let’s bring it out and throw a couple of dollars at it, like Tumblr or something. And TADA.
[00:34:27.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you think I should give WP Tonic four names? Do you think that would confuse people?
[00:34:32.670] – Spencer Forman
Your microphone just went very quiet up. Say it again.
[00:34:36.710] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you think I should rename WP Tonic, give it four different names? Do you think that would be useful?
[00:34:43.990] – Spencer Forman
I think the thing that’s interesting is that I think back on how I get started in WordPress, it was from being outside in the SAS world, where we essentially in a world of freemium. SAS took all these old PHP scriptlets. They were little scripts, they were script lets. And we just went to an audience of people who had never seen them before, and we branded them and made them work on that particular free platform. And everybody thought we had just invented Sunlight. Okay, so what I’m saying is, in WordPress, most of the end users could give a darn about it being WordPress plugins or the names of the brands. That’s only a fraction of the users. So I’m saying, yes, create a new product that takes existing stuff, white labels it, and gives it to an audience of customers as a really refined thing. And I think you’ve got a business model that’s been proven by freelancers for 16 years. But as a service in general, I think that’s where the future is a WordPress. And I’m finding that that’s where most of my interest lies. Why do we need to sell the parts anymore?
[00:35:48.130] – Spencer Forman
Why can’t we just roll the cars off the showroom to an audience of.
[00:35:51.450] – Jonathan Denwood
People who want them on to the next one? This is going to drive him I’m going to drive him absolutely deeper on this one.
[00:36:00.040] – Speaker 3
He’s going to lose his vibe over this.
[00:36:03.860] – Spencer Forman
I had a vaccine last week, jonathan Dunwood booster shot.
[00:36:09.660] – Speaker 3
You’re going to go bonkers after this?
[00:36:12.490] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, sure.
[00:36:14.040] – Speaker 3
Bembers oh, I don’t mind that you are.
[00:36:19.390] – Jonathan Denwood
Sure.
[00:36:19.900] – Speaker 3
Members, what’s your view about this?
[00:36:23.500] – Jonathan Denwood
It comes from Adam and it comes from the Astra people. Adam Pete, it’s a smart cookie, knows what he’s doing and he knows how to market. What’s your thoughts about this?
[00:36:41.060] – Spencer Forman
First of all, Adam is one of the smartest, most influential people in the WordPress space. I think I love that he’s partnered with several people, not the least of which is Sujay Powell, over who does Astra and everything else. But basically, everything that they’ve created together is now under what anybody with eyes can see is part of AI don’t really care that it’s WordPress ecosystem. So, for example, whether it’s presto player or share members or cart flows or blah, blah, blah, all of these things are designed for the exact reason that I’m discussing with people here. It’s that he’s selling these either work as a system or work as a SaaS, irrespective of a WordPress solution. But if you happen to be in WordPress, they’re also very selective features. Now cart flows in particular. I had to build a competing product called Launchless because I felt they went too far with it. Sure, members in the shore cart are my redemption because sure cart in particular, which we didn’t mention, but it’s kind of the same. But in a complementary way for Adam, it validates that he understood the original problem of Cartflows that is too much, too integrated, too framework.
[00:38:12.220] – Spencer Forman
So he built an alternative the second time around, and shore card and sure members are exactly what I’m talking about. And I would venture a guess that even though, technically speaking, these are not cloud-based, it’s 100% sure. In my mind, he’s building a whole empire around recurring revenue with a cloud option coming down the road for all of these things.
[00:38:36.190] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, I’ll be into these products.
[00:38:38.810] – Spencer Forman
But anyway, just one last thing about the product. Same answer. You’re buying into a tricycle. Now, the neat thing is that your members are more of a feature, and it still works with other stuff. But when you do it, I ask you, well, wait for a second, if you’re still going to sell your normal WooCommerce stuff. And you’ve got the ecosystem of every bazillion things that work with WooCommerce. And now you’ve got sure members in Shekhar. Now, you’ve got two sales systems running off at the same business, and you’re kind of like back to the 80-20 rule. Like you got 80% of the way, and now you bumped into yourself. So please, you know, think it through. If you’re just doing one thing, though, it’s a nice alternative. And by the way, Adam and CJ are a superhero duo. I just feel that they cater more to the starting audience, which is appropriate because that’s what his audience is for, versus the mature ongoing business and enterprise because the products are always kind of hit a limit at a certain point.
[00:39:37.320] – Jonathan Denwood
We’ve bought in big with them because of who they are, and I have the deepest respect for Adam. And basically, the thing is if you’re going down the learn dash route, you’re going to need some membership, and a lot of people are exposed to a lot of negative propaganda about WooCommerce. And so when you mentioned he’s going to hate me, say this, he’s got a couple of bulls off after this. When you try and persuade them that WooCommerce would be a great solution, they have just been exposed to lots of online YouTube propaganda that you shouldn’t touch WooCommerce because that’s why it’s on paper. The other problem with WooCommerce is this insane policy of the owners.
[00:40:40.690] – Spencer Forman
If.
[00:40:41.020] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re doing a subscription; you’ve got to buy the add-on, the subscription add-on for $199. And it seems significant.
[00:40:51.410] – Spencer Forman
It’s insane at one level, though, and I want to bring this out. We’re very rapidly coming up to where the value proposition and buying them on their own plugins is going away. I’m not saying it’s going to go away permanently, but I’m saying that when you’re talking about utility plugins and if they’re overpriced, people will just do things to get around it. And one of the ways to legally get around it is just to acknowledge you don’t need to be registered to use the plugin. It’s open source. So if you have a client who is using, let’s say, WooCommerce, and hold on, this conversation is 16 years old, as an agency, as a person building stuff for certain utilities, the person is never on their own going to get the support directly from WooCommerce. And if you have an ongoing, recurring relationship with them, a lot of times what we say is, look, buy the license for unlimited sites, or buy the license for five sites and be the intermediary for yourself or otherwise, when you’re buying it on your own for your own business. I mean, even for that, $199 is a very small amount of money because it opens up so many doors.
[00:41:59.080] – Spencer Forman
So don’t let the 197 scare you off. Many of these other plugins we talked about are 247, 297, and much more.
[00:42:06.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s true, but I’m just WP-Tonic because we offer all this as part of our hosting package.
[00:42:16.010] – Spencer Forman
You’re an intermediary. So why do they need to worry about buying all the licenses? They just go through you and pay.
[00:42:21.510] – Jonathan Denwood
You and you give because it’s a one-site license. It’s a one-site license, basically. So we offer short members with shortcuts.
[00:42:33.810] – Spencer Forman
Because support and updates are what you’re buying. When you get a license, you are doing the support and updates. So they’re buying the license from you. The software is being supported by you and updated by you.
[00:42:45.430] – Jonathan Denwood
All right.
[00:42:46.300] – Spencer Forman
Which is a model we use as well.
[00:42:48.070] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, we’re going to wrap up the podcast part of the show, folks. We got another few plugins to discuss. You can watch the rest of the show on the WP-Tonic YouTube channel. So Spencer, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and you’re being happier and rude because you’re not dealing with me as well.
[00:43:10.540] – Speaker 3
What’s the best way for people to find out more about you?
[00:43:15.940] – Spencer Forman
Go to Spencerforman.com. Spencerforman.com. It’s got a hub for all my other stuff and my latest content. I would also ask everybody to go actually sign up for my newsletter because of what’s going to happen for me; I’m trying to show this as well; we’ve got a lot of things changing in the social media social network space. And as a result of that, I feel that there’s going to be, mark my words, a resurgence back to the good old days of blogs and newsletters, okay? Because we’re seeing all kinds of crazy stuff on Twitter, Facebook, this and that, and LinkedIn and whatever. So what I’m saying to everybody is I don’t spam. I typically send out once a week, a very informative, very short newsletter. And in doing so, you’ll allow me to also take you out of my banging you around Facebook in a feed because you’ll get that one thing a week. So please sign up there.
[00:44:09.730] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, Spencer knows a ton of stuff. He’s one of the smartest people in WordPress, and he didn’t pay me to.
[00:44:16.710] – Speaker 3
Say that I said something nice about your spending. For God’s sake, give me shame.
[00:44:22.410] – Spencer Forman
If my sponsorship suddenly ended. That’s all I’m saying.
[00:44:25.200] – Jonathan Denwood
I didn’t say just for the sponsorship. I’m not that reliant on money. All contributions are most welcome.
[00:44:34.750] – Spencer Forman
Everybody who’s listening to it, I’ve known Jonathan now 15 something years, maybe 14 years. And Jonathan, I met originally. He was a client and a student, and then we switched roles. And I’m very happy to sponsor and participate with them, but we joke around that the money goes both ways.
[00:44:49.930] – Jonathan Denwood
It does. We’re going to wrap it up now, folks. We can continue the discussion on the WP 20 YouTube channel. Subscribe to that as well. Subscribing to the podcast is getting very popular very quickly. Thank you so much for your support. Please join us live as well. We do this at 08:30 a.m.. You can join us on the YouTube channel and on the Facebook group, and if you’ve got any questions about membership ship, we will help you. We will see you next week, folks.
Thanks for listening to the Membership Machine show. Make sure you subscribe.
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