Building a Successful Continuing Education Membership Website

Discover continuing education benefits, costs, and career impact. Your complete guide to lifelong learning opportunities starts here.

In this informative show, we explore the vital aspects of Continuing Education and why it’s crucial for personal and professional growth. From understanding different learning formats to identifying funding options, this guide will equip you with the knowledge needed to enhance your skills. Whether you’re considering a certification or looking to expand your expertise, this video covers everything you need to know.

This Week’s Sponsors

Kinta: Kinta

LifterLMS: LifterLMS

Rollback Pro: Rollback Pro

The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:00.940] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 147. In this show, we’re going to look at continuing education. Can you build a great membership website around continuous education? We’re going to be looking at that in the first half. And then, in the second half, we’re going to be looking at improvements to a very popular newsletter platform, but it’s now called Beevehive. It should be a great show. I’ve got my great co-host with me. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

[00:00:51.400] – Kurt von Ahnen

Sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Annen. I own an agency called Mañana Nomas, and we work directly with the great team over at W. B. Tonic.

[00:01:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. Before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve also got a message with our monthly sponsor, and Kirek will go and tell you some more about them.

[00:01:22.360] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, well, Jonathan, today’s episode is sponsored by Misterio LMS, and we’re pretty excited about them. They have a free version that’s not a trial, and it’s not limited. You get unlimited courses, unlimited lessons, unlimited students, and that’s forever with no credit card needed. So if you think about that, you can build your entire course business without paying a cent. There’s a tag-and-drop editor, quiz creation, and student progress tracking. It’s all included with the free version. If you’re ready for certificates, drip content, or more advanced features, they do have a pro version available. But honestly, I think most course creators can launch for free. You can check them out and get more information at Misterio. Com. That’s M-A-S-T-E-R-I-Y-O. Com.

[00:02:12.200] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic, Kirk. If someone were to come to you and ask for a little more information about continuous education and whether it would be a good idea for their membership website, how would you start the conversation?

[00:02:27.340] – Kurt von Ahnen

For me, if somebody has an in with an organization seeking continuous education, or they have a plan or strategy to get into a community that needs continuing education, that’s the number one thing. If you have the market, you’ll never see me talk somebody out of it. It’s like having an ATM. If that’s something you enjoy and a business you want to do, it can be very, very financially rewarding. And I’ve seen a lot of great success with both in the SCORM world, in the corporate world, and in the creator market. I think it’s a great way to go as long as you have the knowledge, the content, and the people to market to.

[00:03:14.140] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, that’s fantastic. Can you give a bit more meat to what continuous education is?

[00:03:19.940] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, I think this is where people get lost in the plot a little bit, Jonathan. We have a lot of content and tools, especially in the WordPress press space, that are specifically geared towards what we would call course creators. So, hey, take my knitting course, learn how to play soccer, learn how to work on bicycles, and that thing. We also have some course creators in the leadership and coaching mindset, and sometimes that can get blended together. But continuous education is a little bit different. Continuous education, or continuing education, is like a dentist who has to recertify every two years to maintain their dental certificate, or a mortgage provider who has to recertify every year or every two years to maintain their mortgage certificate in order to keep their business operating. So continuing education is usually mandated by a governing body, an overarching authority that says, “These are the requirements.” You can create the learning content and certify people with it, but it has to be approved and done on an ongoing, timely basis.

[00:04:42.560] – Kurt von Ahnen

And so there’s going to be minimum requirements, different reporting requirements, and then timeliness is really important. So you have to think about, well, how am I going to manage these students through the program, certify them, and then notify them when they’re due to recertify to maintain their status, and whatever industry they’re in. So it’s usually corporate training, but at a higher-level cohort.

[00:05:13.460] – Jonathan Denwood

And what do you mean by cohort?

[00:05:15.500] – Kurt von Ahnen

A cohort, a group of people going through learning material at the same time. So a cohort would be, let’s say that I’m someone who has a monthly course on something. And so I’m going to have the August, September, and October cohorts. Basically, what I’m saying is that during the month of August, you can register for the September cohort, which launches on September first. Everyone who registers during August will be put into that September cohort, and they all take the course or training together. And so it’s a group of people doing training at the same time.

[00:05:56.380] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. I think you would agree with this. I think some of the most successful clients that we’ve dealt with and you’ve helped with have been in the continuous educational space. Would you agree with that statement?

[00:06:11.900] – Kurt von Ahnen

I do agree with that. And that was how I opened up with our show today, Jonathan. I was trying to be super clear because we have done content, you and I, in the past about your goal as a course creator: to have a minimum viable product and find your first 10 paying students, and that thing. Typically, people entering a continuing education framework aren’t in that mindset. They’re not in that mental state anywhere. What they have is a source of 1,500, 1,500, and 2,000 individuals who require training to stay in or get into their industry. And so they’ve already got the audience. Now it’s a matter of content and process.

[00:06:59.360] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, but that’s the attractive part. The non-attractive part is that you’ve got to get your material past the organization, either state or industry or Trade Association to approve your course. So it’s satisfying the certification requirements, isn’t it?

[00:07:25.740] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. Well, whoever that governing body is that I mentioned earlier, right? So it could be different. For instance, you and I, we share a client in the Paul Mitchell space. So Paul Mitchell has beauty classes. And so in order to be a Paul Mitchell, every state has their own organization for this. So you and I, we work with the Tennessee Paul Mitchell people. And so that curriculum had to be approved through the formal Paul Mitchell, in order to be part of that. We have peers, I guess we call them peers in the space, a lot of people in the medical space. So a lot of people like, I have a client that has a course on how to properly suture an injury, right? And so that course has to go through and get audited and approved by a sanctioning body. And then once it’s approved, we can implement the content and put it into the framework so that students can access it and we can track their progress, their certification, and the recertification requirements.

[00:08:36.900] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. The leading platform that both of us like is Lyfto LMS, and they’ve introduced a new continuous education add-on, what are the key features to this add-on, Kurt?

[00:08:54.260] – Kurt von Ahnen

I might ruffle some feathers, even with our friends at Lifter LMS on this one, Jonathan.

[00:09:01.530] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, dear.

[00:09:02.280] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think it’s so overdue. So one of the problems, not problems, obstacles. So let’s not refer everything as a problem, an obstacle. When we start talking to a potential client and they’re like, well, it’s continuing education. And then they think to themselves that they have to be in learn upon or Blackboard or something. They start thinking in terms of what would a college use? What does the college go to use as a platform? And then they get into a conversation about budget that just doesn’t make any sense because a lot of those higher level e-learning platforms are very costly to use. So then you get into things like learning TurnDash, Tudor LMS, Lifter LMS. And it was just very recently, I mean, within the last week, 10 days, that Lifter LMS released their continuing education add-on. And to me, it’s just a a long time overdue because these are features that in the continuing Ed space people really, really, really, really needed. And it was if you have to, if you go the WordPress route, and you and I work with this all the time, but for people listening, If you go the WordPress route and you’re trying to build something that you have ownership of and some design freedom and all the benefits we talk about, but you’re in the eLearning space and then you come up against, well, I’ve got to have expiration dates on my on my certificates.

[00:10:31.090] – Kurt von Ahnen

I have to have a way to notify students that are due for recertification. I have to have a way to track continuing education credits. See, that’s something that we hadn’t mentioned yet, but continuing education typically issues credits or credit hours or different ways to track how far someone is towards their overall certification. For instance, I have a client that they run some courses in their site in the medical field, but they also track the certifications for their governing body from other third party sources. So we had to custom develop a way to add third party credits to the reporting to be able to come out in one reported report I think this Lifter LMS add-on, long overdue, is ticking a lot of boxes.

[00:11:24.600] – Jonathan Denwood

What are some of the key things that it does then?

[00:11:27.980] – Kurt von Ahnen

For one, it tracks the expirations for the certificates. Previously, Lifter LMS worked on a certificate issue date. So your certificate was issued November 18th. So it would say when it was issued, but it wouldn’t say how long it was good for. And So the workaround for that in the past used to be expires in 365 days or expires in two years from the issue date. You would have to add that manually to the certificate format, and that would print that But with continuing education as an add-on, we are now tracking certificate expirations, right? So we’re able to manage the expiration and the compliance. And so what we’re able to do is set expiration rules by date and by duration or by calendar year to match the licensing cycle. Because remember, some continuing education sources are going to be recertified every two years. Some are going to be every three, every five years, right? And And then we send automated notifications when the credits earned are near expiration. And so that’s a big deal because typically, let’s say now you and I are big fans of Fluent CRM and putting a CRM in your LMS and all those things.

[00:12:45.720] – Kurt von Ahnen

But a lot of people don’t really want that. A lot of people in the continuing education space, they just want to track the learning and they want the tool to do the job. And so in the past, you would require a CRM tool to take care of your timings, your automations, and your email blasts and stuff. But now Lifter’s built in that automated notification for when credits are near expiration, which is great. And then it also, this particular add-on enables reenrollment for expired continuing education courses. So if someone has expired on their course, they’re able to reenroll and satisfy their credit requirement pretty easily without having to jump through some hoops.

[00:13:30.000] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. So it’s definitely a big improvement in your opinion.

[00:13:36.760] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I think it’s huge. In the past, so for student reporting, for example, you would go into Lifter LMS, you would look at reporting, and then you would see a list of all your students, a list of their courses, a list of the… And there’s columns. It’s like a spreadsheet, right? It’s a report, and it’s all in there. But now with the continuing education deal, they’ve added fields for CEUs. Ceu is a continuing education credit or unit, right? So now we can view those units when they’re earned and when they expire. And we can also add those details to the certificates. When you make a certificate in Lifter LMS, common stuff is done by short code. So you add a short code to a block in the certificate and it automatically adds it to each certificate. And the add The continuing education add-on, adds those elements so that you can add them to your certificate easily.

[00:14:37.620] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. Another thing, obviously, you’ve already got an audience, but based on my experience, have you got any thoughts with the people that you’ve worked with? Because they already got an audience in some ways, they need a pain rather than a vitamin. They got a painkiller. People need to get this training. But I would imagine most markets have competitors. So you’ve got a market. Have you observed anything you can share with us, observing some of the people that you’ve worked with about how they’ve successfully marketed their course in this particular area continuing education?

[00:15:32.700] – Kurt von Ahnen

Continuing education is a tricky one, Jonathan, because we’re tempted to think that we need to market to students. In this situation, most often with continuing education, you’re not marketing directly to students. The trick is to figure out who’s actually swiping the credit card and making a decision for this training for this group of people or for this audience. That’s one of the hardest things to figure out. Is it the human resources department? Is it the vice president of training? Is it the… There’s all of these nooks and crannies to try and find the decision makers for your audience. Once you have the audience, now this is the cool part about continuing education is once a company or an organization picks a continuing education provider, they don’t typically make changes to that. They get lazy. They make the decision, boom, it’s done, and this is going to be the vendor until everybody dies. From that perspective, there’s a lot of stability in continuing education that other course-That’s good and bad, isn’t it?

[00:16:42.520] – Jonathan Denwood

Depending, isn’t it? That’s a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing if you’re that provider, but if you’re trying to become a provider, that’s not quite so good, is it?

[00:16:54.780] – Kurt von Ahnen

If you’re the new kid on the block, you might have some work to do. You got to find a way to overcome And so that’s my point. You want to find out who is the decision maker, who is going to be the one buying the seats. And that’s why tools like with Lifter LMS use groups. So you would do group sales, right? And so if you employ with groups, with your continuing education training, you’re going to be able to give the decision maker access through the front end of the website to actually see the progress and reports of their students. So I just think Lifter put themselves in a really good position with this release. I wish I could say more negative things about it, but the only negative thing I have is that I think it’s just a little late. It would have been great if we would add it a long time ago.

[00:17:41.060] – Jonathan Denwood

So really, as you were saying this, really, instead of the normal classic business to consumer, the scenario you were outlining was more business to business, really, wasn’t it?

[00:17:57.660] – Kurt von Ahnen

I believe more business to business. Now, where it’s not business to business, where it’s business to consumer, it’s more like business to solopreneur. If you think about the example I used with a mortgage broker, a lot of mortgage brokers are solopreneurs. They run their own office somewhere, but it’s still business to business. Dentists. If it’s a dentists part of, what is that? The big dentists group that’s called Smile, I think out of Colorado, they have probably 150 dentists. They probably have a central purchasing source for their training needs. But some dentists at an independent office in town is going to be an independent solopreneur student coming to you. It’s still business to business sales, but there’s some nuances to it. And that’s where, well, as with anything in marketing, Jonathan, when you target what’s the size of the company? Like, who’s your avatar, right? Is it a dentists that owns his own office? Is it a dentists that’s part of a franchise? Is it a dentists that’s part of a corporate overreaching Spider Web network. But you figure that out and your marketing has to match that.

[00:19:07.860] – Jonathan Denwood

To finish up before we go in to have a break and do our second half, where does it compare Now with the new add-on to some of the leading competitors like LearnDash or Tuta LMS, I don’t know how much you know, but do they provide good solutions or is Lifter ahead of the pack, do you think?

[00:19:31.600] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think this is the feature that puts Lifter ahead of the pack. There’s always room for custom development. In the past, we’ve done this for clients where we’ve added a column to the student reporting. I mean, there’s always a way in WordPress, there’s always a way to manipulate a platform to your needs. But for out of the box, plug and play, ready to go, build a continuing education platform, right now, I think Lifter is well out in the lead.

[00:20:00.760] – Jonathan Denwood

Was the analytics, is it? Do they provide reasonably good analytic interface?

[00:20:08.140] – Kurt von Ahnen

Help me with defining analytics.

[00:20:10.360] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, how many students? How many sales? How many students, yeah. How many had their progress? Can it produce reports that the governing body might require?

[00:20:20.500] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. For internal use, Lifter LMS has the dashboard which says how many recent enrollments or for this time period, how many enrollments, how many sales, how much revenue. So that’s internal for the people providing the continuing education. But through the student reporting, you’re able to pull complete reports of all of your students, what courses they’re in, their progress, their grades, their scores. And Lifter does something that’s pretty interesting, and a lot of people miss this detail, Jonathan. Whenever someone’s going to pull a full report out of Lifter LMS, I always recommend that they go into the status menu, and they clear the student cache because these databases can grow over time, right? They become server-heavy. So Lifter doesn’t update all of the student information instantly. It caches that information. And so if you’re going to pull a full report, it’s best to clear the student cache. That brings everything up to the minute on the full reporting status, and then you pull your report and you’re good to go.

[00:21:28.700] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. It’s a $299 add-on. They charge. If you host with WP Tonic, you get this add-on as part of your hosting package, folks. Just want to point that out. If you’re looking to do continuous education, it’s a great idea. Like I said, if you host with WP Tonic, you get this add on as part of the hosting package. We’re going to go for our second half. In the second half, we’re going to be looking at Beehive. They’ve just had a major update. Got some great insights. Should be a great second half. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Before we go into the second half, I want to point out we’ve got some great special offers from the major sponsors of the show, plus a created list of some of the best WordPress plugins and technology to help you build either a membership or community-focused website and a load of other free resources. You can get all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals. Wp WP Tonic, WP-Tonic. Com/deals. And also you get access to a course done by Kirk himself, which shows you how to build from scratch a WordPress membership website from beginning to end using the best technology, and you get that at half price, folks.

[00:23:08.030] – Jonathan Denwood

So it’s a great deal. So let’s do our review of Beehive. They had a major update. Before I influence you a bit, hopefully you’ve had time to have a quick look at what they’ve done. What’s your initial impression and thoughts, Kurt? Oh, that was a big song.

[00:23:33.840] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, my initial impression, and Beehive is not the only one, but my initial impression when I see these things is I go, why? What in the world is what problem is this solving? I’m always like, what is this about? Because there’s other tools. There’s other tools that have been around forever, seemingly forever, that do much of it. So then I have to force myself to say, okay, I am not Kirek. I have to take myself out of the equation and go, I’m just some non-bespoke person, and I’m looking for a tool, why would I pick Peehive? And then when I do that and I start looking at the details, some of the finer points begin to rise to the top, and I start to see that there is some value, and there’s a value in their value proposition. It just doesn’t line up with me very well, but there is a value in their value proposition, and I could see where this could be a good tool for some folks.

[00:24:31.540] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I’m surprised in a way. I’m more upbeat about it, but I do understand. This is my interpretation, folks. You’ve seen this in all the leading SaaS, Software as a Service platforms. It really depends where they established their user base. Beehive started around 2021. It got investors. I think the initial round, it got almost two and a half million invested into it. At the present moment, I think over 34 million has been invested. It established itself in the newsletter space, which until about four or five years ago, you would never think newsletters was going to come back, but they have. And one of the main competitors, Substack, also has a lot of private equity had investment into it. So Beehive started as a newsletter. Now everybody’s in approach, I’m struggling for the right word, they are poaching or moving into other people’s territory. And you’re seeing this on almost all the platforms, all the SaaS platforms there, like Derby, of added community, which, to be fair, is probably a more natural, but they’re all poaching into traditionally that was other people’s territory. Now, with this, they really have improved on some areas that were weak.

[00:26:40.920] – Jonathan Denwood

They’ve increased the… They bought a other company, and they’ve imported the technology. They’ve improved their website builder, and they’ve now got our AI builder as well. And the newsletter, they’re given more flexibility around the looks, the templates, around the newsletter builder, the website builder. They’ve got what they call Beehive Boost, which basically, when you’re looking for a particular category or you’re putting it in the search, that’s right. If you’re using the free plan, you can allow this to happen, or you can check a box and not allow it happen. When people are doing a search in the interface, it can recommend other newsletters. If they sign up for that newsletter, you will get some affiliate money. They’ve also got a marketplace where people can actually… You can make money, but by promoting other newsletters and other features. They’ve now introduced digital products. You can sell PDFs, other digital products, Physical products, I mean, they’ve got podcasting, paid subscription, and optimization. Basically, they’re really approaching something like Kajabi or Podia or Convert kit, Kiss as it’s called now, kit as it’s called, Ghost. They’re really poaching into the more traditional membership area. Would you agree with that?

[00:28:54.280] – Kurt von Ahnen

The more that I saw the referrals and the the promotional stuff that you could do inside of it, like sharing ads, like some podcast platforms have where you can upload your podcast and then it’ll say, Oh, do you want to add a paid ad into your podcast? And it’ll find suitable vendors or suitable clients for you to add for inside your show. This does a very similar thing. Like, here’s a list of advertisers. Do you want to add this to your newsletter? When I see that, it It reminds me of when we talked about school, right? When we talked about school, we said, oh, it’s like this eLearning marketplace where you could recommend other people’s courses with your course. It’s very interesting. It’s one of the things that I think adds value to the platform. When I said there is a value proposition, I think that value proposition is if you started your own thing on your own website, whatever the platform you chose, you would have this uphill battle of, can I find any advertisers? Can I find a sponsor for this? Who do I sell this to? Or what are other people I can refer and get a kickback from?

[00:30:10.740] – Kurt von Ahnen

And you’d be struggling from a starting point of just yourself. Whereas if you’re here, it’s like you’re part of this little Beehive community and you’re sharing in the success with others and hopefully getting an earlier boost of success at the very beginning.

[00:30:27.160] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. I watched their launch video and they really, really were plugging it hard, but they’re bound to. But it was a little bit over the top a little bit for me I think some of the traditional players like Kajabi, Podia, Ghost, I I think they’re encroaching to some degree on Patreon, because I think Patreon is also encroaching a bit on what Beehive are doing. Funny enough, I think the obvious competitor, Substack, is not quite… They’re going… Substack has got some of the features, but it’s still… I just got the feeling they’re not poaching into the community as much as they are attempting to get Kit, or Ghost, or Kajabi, or Podio, where they’re building this Unite. I’ve attempted to build something similar for WordPress, but I probably will have to give up on that because nobody sees my vision. Everybody just thinks I’m wasting my time. I will have to give up on that. But I see what they’re trying this… Of this united platform that offers… In the WordPress space, there was a company that sold to WP Engine called Studio Press, and they attempted, but it was for podcasting. They attempted to build a unified platform, and they failed.

[00:32:24.700] – Jonathan Denwood

And that was one of the reasons that led them to sell to WP Engine. But they’re trying… It’s a unified platform. I don’t think it attacks Substack so much, but it’s aimed at the digital creator, the creator industry of YouTube and creators in general, isn’t it?

[00:32:51.400] – Kurt von Ahnen

What pulls my attention is when these tools were launched and became popular. In 2021, if we can take our brains back to that space and time, a lot of us around the world were still experiencing lockdowns, businesses were closed, everybody had an opinion, and everybody wanted- Sorry to interrupt, but doesn’t that seem like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? It does feel like a lifetime ago. Unfortunately for me, I still hold a little bit of a grudge, so it fluffs up to the surface for me quite a bit. It was only a few short years ago, and everybody had an and they were stuck at home, and tools like this, I think, really had a great appeal in that moment. And I stress that, in that moment. I feel like now, if I wanted I could put my opinion out, I could make a newsletter on LinkedIn, it would cost me nothing. I could put a post on Medium, it would cost me nothing. You mentioned Patreon already. Substack. I think Substack has a certain appeal in its simplicity.

[00:34:01.360] – Jonathan Denwood

Yes, you put in it much better than I did. It’s aimed at a particular niche audience of professional writers and broadcasters and all sorts of people in the traditional media that now in the nontraditional media.

[00:34:19.820] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. I think about people like Aneel Gupta with his sub stack that he puts out every week. He is such a good communicator. He just wants a plain page to put his thoughts and his content on. He’s not looking for any other distraction around that. I know other people that do that. I think Substack really hit its niche right there. Now, I know that you like Beehive, but I I think, visually, Beehive is, to steal one of your phrases, is a dog’s breath. I don’t like the look of it at all. I think the design is horrid.

[00:34:53.780] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, no, it’s totally different. But I’ve I think it’s what they’ve done with this update is they’re really after the traditional teachable, Finkific, Podio, Kajabi, Ghost, Kiss, to some extent, Patreon. But they’re all encroaching on what… That’s the word I was looking, encroaching on everybody else’s garden, aren’t they? Or yard. Now, that’s a good thing. I think it’s still good because I think the thing that people can understand is the pricing. They have a very They use the MailChimp model. They got a free program and it gives you a fair bit of functionality and it gives it to free. And it’s up to, I think, two and a half thousand subscribers. But there are things missing. You go up to scale, and that starts at 49, but only gives you a thousand subscribers. If you use your two and a half, it’s going to be a bit more expensive than 49 because they only give you a thousand. Then they got the max that gives you more, everything. But that starts at 109, but that only gives you a thousand subscribers. Melchimp a bit like that. You get the headline price, but if you maxed out on the free program at two and a half and then you transfer to scale, you’re not going to get it for 49.

[00:36:41.780] – Jonathan Denwood

Does that make sense?

[00:36:43.680] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, the price Everything blew me away a little bit, Jonathan, and maybe that’s why I was being a little bit critical about the design and stuff like that. I’m like, wow. So I go back to influencer math, right? If I’m an influencer and I’m building an audience, it’s not uncommon for these folks to have an audience of 25,000, 30,000. And if you start looking at those numbers, you go, oh, my goodness, 25,000 people on the scale plan is $120 a month. That’s if you pay for it yearly, but it’s $170 a month if you go month to month. It’s a lot of money to send out a newsletter.

[00:37:25.380] – Jonathan Denwood

It is, but it It just depends on people who have built whole businesses on Substack and on Beehive. They’re profitable businesses.

[00:37:41.960] – Kurt von Ahnen

I have a question for you because I think you’re more optimistic in this space than I am. In today’s market, knowing how hard it is to sometimes close the deal on something, how do you propose somebody starts selling a newsletter? From a startup, from a getting started?

[00:38:03.720] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s why they like the marketplace. You can pay, you can set your newsletter up on Beehive, and then you can put in a pot of money and say, if other newsletters in your category will allow your newsletter to be advertised, and that’s part of Boost and the marketplace, you can have your newsletter marketed or boosted to existing newsletters that have a similar audience that you’re trying to get into. But that’s a two hedge sold because they’re established players. Why would they want their audience? It sounds attractive, but I wonder if it really works as well as Beefhive promote it. But maybe I’m being a bit cynical there.

[00:39:13.380] – Kurt von Ahnen

I’m just wondering What audience is actively looking to pay to read a newsletter?

[00:39:21.440] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, there is, but there are people that… But I would have thought, depending on how much each newsletter costs, It’s the same thing with Substack. There must be a limit on how many individual newsletters somebody’s prepared. But if you’re in finance or in some niche medical calls or finance, people in finance have to sign up to very expensive subscription and newsletters, and they spend a substantial amount of money on research newsletters and white papers. But it’s a large market, isn’t it? I think the other factor you got to understand, folks, is they’ve taken a lot of money as investment, total raised 46 million. Substack have raised over 100 million. Substack says that they’re not going to I don’t believe, this is my opinion, anybody that’s taken 100 million. And obviously Beehive, at some stage, will sell. You are building your business on somebody else’s property. If you choose to take everything that Beehive offers, you’re building everything on somebody else’s property. And I don’t personally think that’s a great idea. I think using maybe it, and it does integrate with WordPress quite well. They provide a good plugin. On the free, it’s a bit basic.

[00:41:14.820] – Jonathan Denwood

You get more options on the paid versions. But I would hesitate to build my whole business on somebody else’s platform. I think that’s the great strength of WordPress, is you’re not building on somebody’s own property. How would you respond to that, Kurt?

[00:41:38.700] – Kurt von Ahnen

In my mind, I look at the pricing page and what I get or what the site does. And then I think, okay, given what we know about WordPress, we can build something that executes for us in WordPress. Just look at the WP tonic stack. I can have a CRM that’s going to take care of my mass mailing, it’s going to help me create my newsletter. I got a form for people to sign up. I can sell digital products right through my website. All that’s there. I think the driving difference between this as a SaaS platform is when we get into things like the marketplace, audience, or growth tools, right? If we think about the whole idea of the boost or the referral program, that, to me, is what breaks apart. That’s what it does well for this particular product. But when it comes to the actual product itself, when it comes to writing, presenting, distributing content, I really don’t see any other advantage than having something through WP tonic hosted with the tools that WP.

[00:42:51.580] – Jonathan Denwood

I see because, like I say, I’ve attempted to build something that puts everything in place and adds on to WordPress, but nobody, I could say, can see my vision. They might be right, and I have to accept defeat. But I can see where, because in the end, you’ve got to give up, but nobody sees my vision. But the funny thing in WordPress, the founder of WordPress, folks, Matt Moundweg, bought a platform called Tumblr. Actually, it’s got nowhere. He bought it cheaply, and in my opinion, not much has been done with it. But actually, it could have been turned into a newsletter platform with certain elements, and it could have been a great success, but there was really no vision. But to me, it was a natural for that, a newsletter. I think a lot of that vision has gone into a plugin called Jetpack, folks. I wish them well, but I think the vision could have been Tumbler myself. But that’s gone, really, that horse and pony have ridden off. I think it’s got the AI page builder and the drag-and-drop page builder. I quite like those. It’s got the podcast integration, you got the newsletter.

[00:44:33.040] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s a strong product. Like I say, they’re really gone in for the traditional news. Depending on… It’s not really It’s not competitive when it comes to large newsletter lists, and you’ve got a lot… It’s really aimed for that middle ground between five and maybe 10,000. If you have paying subscribers to your newsletter. That’s the sweet. It’s not meant for mass newsletter marketing. The more traditional players are like Mel Light or Bravo or Omicent. We love Omisend. They’re excellent. But it’s really meant for this creator economy, isn’t it? It’s for YouTube and TikTok creators looking to generate additional income through subscriptions from people who love your YouTube content, your TikTok content, and your YouTube shorts. You want additional revenue, and you want to send them to one place. You have the B5 website. It’s easy to sign up for the newsletter, the paid newsletter, to sell them a subscription. It’s really what, in some ways, and that’s what YouTube’s doing with their membership subscriptions. Everybody’s poaching on everybody’s turf, aren’t they?

[00:46:13.900] – Kurt von Ahnen

Seems to be.

[00:46:16.480] – Jonathan Denwood

I only see that. But I think, obviously, I think Kajabi and I think Podia and the traditional SaaS course platforms, they’re probably worried when they look at something like B5 because they’re really gunning for them, in my opinion. Would you agree with that or do you think there’s a lot more separation?

[00:46:45.200] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think there’s a little more separation, I think. My opinion.

[00:46:49.620] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. All right. So, Kirk, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?

[00:46:57.100] – Kurt von Ahnen

For business, I’m at Manana Nomas. That’s on all the socials, and maniananomas. Com. And then if you just want to make a connection, I’m on LinkedIn nearly every day, and I’m the only current one on in there, so you know you got me.

[00:47:09.600] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, it’s fantastic. We love it when you join the show. If you’re watching it on YouTube. If you’ve got any questions, just put them in the comments, I will answer them. We love suggestions on any topics that you would like us to cover in future shows. We’re not getting a lot of feedback from people, but my analytics on the show are that our audience is growing, so we must be doing something right. I think it’s Kurt. It’s not me, it’s Kurt. But that’s great. We will be back next week with more knowledge to help you build successful courses, membership, or community websites for yourself and for your family. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.

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